Lola's awareness campaign

I'm not done thinking about what I'd want to achieve here--or rather, why--and this is important because the questions shape the answers, so they better be good questions.

But, I can express the technical part of the project in terms of a numeric goal which will ensure (as long as I follow it!) that I actually DO make a change in my reading patterns, while I keep mulling about the "philosophy" of the whole thing and see what other aspects I may want to include.

I decided to adopt a point system, awarding points to three broad categories by author--women, PoC and sexual/gender minorities--and that in inverse relation, getting highest numbers of points for category I read in least, lowest number for category I read in the most.

In case of category overlap (e.g. WoC), only the higher number of points will count.

So far, I read most frequently, in decreasing order, PoC, sexual/gender minorities, women.

Therefore, I shall count 3 points for female authors, 2 for sexual/gender minorities, and 1 for PoC.

I'm aiming for a total of (at least) 120 points by the end of the year.

This is not perfect--obviously there's a possibility that improving in one regard, e.g. women, could still mean I read a great majority of white authors etc. But I'm loath to dissect the categories further at this point when the imbalance is so great as to dwarf any category other than "white male author". Later on, as the numbers improve, I shall consider a more nuanced approach.

I've decided to count both fiction and non-fiction. For one thing, non-fiction is what I read most and I simply can't take on more reading. For another, there's a lot of non-fiction, philosophy and theory especially, by women/trans* author I've collected and am planning to read in near future, and it seems crazy not to count such works.

Year to date stats:

Books by women: 2 (The Sadeian woman, Les armoires vides)

Books by PoC: 5 (Down the emperor's road with Hiroshige, Notes sans titre, Akbar and Birbal, The sailor who fell from grace with the sea, Pensée fidèle)

Books by sexual/gender minorities: 3 (The man who folded himself, Fearless speech, The sailor who fell from grace with the sea)

Total points: 17

I have some comments about the definition of my broad categories, and especially PoC, but I must reserve them for another day.

Still thinking about what I want to say about my categories.

In the meantime: I read The lonely Londoners by Samuel Selvon.

 

First published in 1956, it deals with the West Indian immigrants to Britain, drawn by the postwar "open door" policy (repealed some years later) and the difficulties they face trying to find a place for themselves in an environment that would be forbidding and strange even without the racism. Racism, of course, makes it all a million times worse. Selvon wrote in the vernacular, which gives the book a wonderful energy and immediacy.

I also started and abandoned after 4-5 chapters Andrea Levy's Small island. It just bored me. I must feel that there's something novel and original, something I've never heard or thought before, or someone--a voice, a person, an imagination--I've never met before, to enjoy a book.

Total points, heigh ho: 18/120.

Read a lovely collection of poetry by Cuban Nicolás Guillén, Sóngoro cosongo.

 

The poems in the collection were written and published in the 1930s, as various freedom movements, for independence from colonialism and against fascism, were getting stronger. The combination of Afro-Cuban rhythmic forms and liberation messages is heady and potent.

My points: 19/120

 

The diary of Vaslav Nijinsky (1936 edition), edited by Romola Nijinsky

This is the infamous heavily edited version of Nijinsky's diary, whose contents were manipulated by his wife Romola in order to change the aspect of his sexuality, his attitudes to her, and a lot of material pertaining to his everyday routine. Nijinsky, once the star member of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes and today still the most famous male dancer ever, began showing signs of schizophrenia in his twenties. His diary captures the deterioration of his mind, the increasingly intense obsessions with religion, but also reveals a lot about the person he was before the illness claimed him. I have the recent unexpurgated edition of the diary on the way (because I'm obsessive like that), but even this version conveys the sadness and horror of his decline.

Points: 21/120

 

Cotton comes to Harlem was first published in France, in French, in 1965. There's probably some story behind that, but I'll have to look into it later. I've never read Himes before and know nothing about him except that he was an African-American writer of noir and crime fiction (not too many of those around in his time, apparently?)

The story is alive with atmosphere, tragi-comical events and graphically rendered characters, mostly black, who use strong language (but, oddly, while "shit" and even "cunt" are allowed, "fuck" has been replaced by "frig" and "rape": as in "mother-raper" and "frig that"). There is white police brutality against the blacks that could have come from today's paper (no words for how depressing it is to realise how little progress has been made) and a lot of astute commentary on racism, if you don't mind it coming from sardonic low-lifes and cops, but I must mention there's also quite a bit of misogyny. It feels awkward for me to comment on relations between the sexes among black people. I'll just say that some of the features of current hip hop culture I've seen criticised seem to have older roots.

Points: 22/120

Better late than later or never, I'm going to make a note about my opinions on the designation "person/people of colour", although I don't feel I can give them the best form now.

1. I am using "PoC" because, in context, I believe most people understand what I mean by it, but...

2. I do not like it.

There are no good ways to point out what we call "race". Moreover, the concept is fluid in many ways, including the fact that in some contexts it doesn't exist at all. For example, for a good part of my life, up to my arrival in the United States, I had no sense of myself as a "white" person. Chimananda Adichie (I think it was she) said the same thing about her experience--only she "discovered" she was black.

I'll note immediately that this was so although I grew up in part in Arab countries. I didn't think Arabs weren't white. They were linguistically and culturally something different to me, but skin colour didn't come into it (even in retrospect, it just doesn't fit, many of my Arab friends, the population in general, were as pale or paler than I was, tanned bark-brown nine months of the year).

Race seems to be a mostly social construct. It depends not only or even most significantly on the subject (is A white or something else?), but on the context (is A in France, Japan, Nigeria or the United States? In ancient times, 15th century or early 20th?)

Europeans and Americans don't experience or think about race in the same way. Some problems are similar, but the resonances are different, in their respective contexts. I've only very vague and confused notions on the topic, but I think the same concepts are not equally applicable in the US, Brazil and Europe.

And, there's PoC as an umbrella term for all "non-whites", with it's centre of reference being the whites, who are a global minority. There is no excuse for such a silly and arrogant definition--outside, perhaps, the North American context.

So that would be my explanation--the context in which I happen to live and from which I largely (but not entirely) look out at the world, in itself--this context--a transient, ephemeral thing. That context allows or even demands such usage, considering the problems we are trying to tackle when we use it. I don't doubt something else will replace PoC and "white" too.

But, I don't know, I just wanted to make a note about my dissatisfaction with the slighting (IMO), biased, and inadequate nature of the term.

 

Read L'élégance du hérisson (The elegance of the hedgehog) by Muriel Barbery, a book I hated more the more I thought about it. I kvetched about it at length already in "Reading books by women", so won't repeat it here...

 

Also read The widowmaker by Maria Fagyas, based on real-life events in a village in Hungary after WWI, when lots of men, deemed obnoxious or inconvenient by their familiars, mostly women, started dying of arsenic poisoning, resulting in a real epidemic that was spreading to other villages as well. Fascinating story that makes one truly appreciate the advantages of divorce (unavailable in Hungary of the times) and female emancipation.

Points: 28/120

 

I read Journey by Marta Randall, a 1978 science fiction novel about human colonists on an alien planet. In terms of female characterisation it stands up head and shoulders above everything else I've read in my "old science fiction" read so far. Don't think it could be bettered today (and from what I hear, plenty of contemporary sf/fantasy falls below its standards.) The plot itself didn't thrill me too much, it's basically a slow tale of growth over twenty years--life is hard, babies are born, people die, the prodigal son slowly returns...

Points: 31/120

 

Nirad Chaudhuri's most famous book (as far as I know) is The autobiography of an unknown Indian, which I have but haven't read yet. Once I do I'll probably have more to say about this one, which on its own is chiefly interesting as an example of the more rare version of the East-West contact--a non-European travelling in and commenting on Europe, and seemingly for a non-European audience. This is a record of Chaudhuri's first voyage outside India, when he was already 57 years old. Invited by the BBC, he spent most of his trip in England (other than that he saw Paris and Rome). He begins the book commenting on the differences in climate, especially the quality of the light, and goes on to architecture, clothing, social interactions, the appearance of the towns and crowds. He's subtle and understated in comparisons to India, apt to quote in French and German, and draws profusely on English poetry.

 

Rumer Godden is another author I'm meeting for the first time in what's not her best known work, nor is it a particularly engaging work on its own. On the basis of this trifle I'm not even sure I should bother further, but Black narcissus has me interested for the background lacking in the movie (which I liked very much) so I guess I'll get to it sooner or later. The basic plot of the theft of a little statue of Shiva and the involvement of various parties to keep it or get it back is so spare I don't even know what sort of amplification could have saved the book. It feels like a touristy little anecdote to sum up thus, in "Have You Heard" fashion: Hindus believe their gods are living and walking among us.



Elena Ferrante is a pseudonym of some unknown author; there has been lots of speculation about which already established Italian author could be hiding behind it, including some very ugly claims that "she" must be a man, because no woman could write like this. I hope the author breaks the pseudonym one day, and I hope on that occasion everyone who thinks so has their head explode.

I was bowled over by the first book of Ferrante's I've read, The days of abandonment, and then continued to be bowled over by the rest. It didn't occur to me for a second that the books had been written by a man (whether a man COULD write them is a different question and doesn't interest me in the least.) The point is that the voice sounds authentically female, that the emotion is palpable, and the experience painfully, violently real.

Until the trilogy L'amica geniale (My brilliant friend), Ferrante's narratives tended to be short and taut, and I think I'll always prefer those, especially the sublimely raging, scorching Days of abandonment. But I loved this first volume of the story of friendship between two girls, then women, born in a poor working class section of postwar Naples, burdened by violence, of history and custom. Lila Cerullo is born an amazing character; her friend Elena will, as we gather, become amazing, in homage to her friend's betrayed dreams.

Points: 38/120

Finished the second and third book in the "L'amica geniale" sequence and now am feeling bereft. A fourth book is supposed to come out this fall.

I could say a thousand things, if only I knew where to begin. Maybe later.

Points: 44/120

Rumer Godden is pretty light-weight, especially by your standards, so I think you could give Black Narcissus a skim and skip the rest of her oeuvre.

Thanks for that review of Marta Randall. There's a sort of sub-genre of women's fiction called "sit and watch the grass grow." I find the concept great, as who better to describe how things evolve than women, but I often have trouble reading those kinds of books, as I like to have a reason to pick it up again, which involves some promise of imminent events.

I'm beginning to think I really dislike "worldbuilding" and that's what books like Randall's are mostly about. There have been exceptions and I hope there will be in the future, but, overall, I seem to have a strong preference for "gimmick" or concept sf or whatever it's called... stories that rely on some technical idea or inversion, rather than fantasies of, basically, our current lives with some slight modifications (usually "corrections" according to the writer's taste).

I doubt I'll want to read more Godden after Black narcissus but as I seem to be steering toward more reading related to India, that type of Western book--probably "orientalising" to a degree?--is definitely on the menu.

 

Not sure what the English title of Temps glaciaires will be, a literal translation might be something like "The era of ice", "Icy times" etc. This is the eighth novel in the Inspector Adamsberg sequence, in which he and his team follow a killer's traces between an old accident in Iceland, and 18th century France after the revolution. While I finished the book in one sitting, as usual with Vargas, I must say this is the first one since the second one (L'homme à l'envers, "Seeking whom he may devour") I didn't find excellent. It was somehow less dense, less intricate, the characters less colourful than her usual. It also didn't help that the Icelandic plot was rather déjà vu.

Points: 47/120

Turns out "Ansen Dibell" was the pseudonym of Nancy Ann Dibble, so:



I couldn't find any images of Dibble online.

Although it too could be described as having lots of "worldbuilding", Pursuit of the Screamer was much more interesting than Randall's Journey. For one thing, little is communicated directly about the world, it has to be pieced together from bits of information--actually, at times I felt the disconnectedness was overwhelming. Multiple terms for apparently the same or similar things--places, people, functions--were additionally confusing and I'm completely at sea when it comes to the geographic configuration of "Kantmorie". But the central conceit of the history of that world, colonised by humans who then splintered into various groups and the whole managed increasingly badly and chaotically by a mysterious "central intelligence" deep below the surface, is quite thrilling. Thank god for the AI and the Teks, don't think I could take the medievalistic "ladies" and "keeps" and guildy "smiths" on their own.

Points: 50/120

 

Earthlight by Arthur Clarke, who I learned just recently was gay or bisexual, was a pleasant quick read--utterly old-fashioned regarding diversity, sexism, but it's one of those situations where the sheer lack of female characters also means there's relatively little specific stuff to annoy one in that regard. I think personally, I can deal easier with that type of erasure--at least it's so blatant not many can miss its injustice. "It's the XXII century but not a SINGLE scientist, official, tech, medic etc. is a woman?"

What I find worse is when there ARE female characters, but only to be kicked around, literally or figuratively. Still, basically it's deciding between rocks and hard places...

There's a terrific space battle scene near the end, and another tense episode when crew from a foundering spaceship tries to board another--without space suits. All the science isn't accurate, but as Asimov says somewhere, that's not necessary for kindling a love of science. This is exactly the kind of book I'd have loved as a kid--while feeling immensely lonely, as usual.

Points: 52/120

>14 LolaWalser: Actually I believe Clarke self-identified as bi-sexual.

OK, I'll change--or maybe note it as ambiguous? I wouldn't mind some general term for not-straight people--if only I could come up with something better than "not-straight"...

 

Gender outlaw by Kate Bornstein

I'd be very interested in hearing others' opinions on this. I found it interesting and informative, but then I've read practically nothing either specifically about transgenderism or gender in general (or any feminist theory at all, actually).

As this is probably old hat to others here, I won't repeat what I posted in "Reading Books by Women", just link it.

But, dang, I realised there's a problem with my point system--and HOW could I miss it!!--when I said I'd lump sexual orientation with transgenderism (if the trans authors identify as women or men, shouldn't I do so to? But if I do so, they are getting shortchanged and lost in the crowd of cis-gendered). I'm going to consider them separately--they are likely to be the smallest of minorities in my reads anyway--and take four points for trans authors.

So it's:

PoC--1 point
sexual orientation--2 point
women--3 point
transgender--4 points

56/120

 

City Boy: My Life in New York During the 1960s and '70s by Edmund White (2009)

White has been very important to me as the first American voice that made me feel less alone and weird in the US, and as my first guide through the "gay planet", as I thought of it, one of the most important encounters/discoveries of my life (and probably the only reason I figure the move to North America on the balance sheet of my life wasn't a complete, horrible loss).

I seem to be in the minority that truly likes White's "fictional fiction" and wish he'd done more in that vein rather than the repetitious autobiographical work, but I suppose the latter sells much better, given White's total frankness regarding sexual matters. In City Boy the emphasis is more on his daily work, as a commercial and free-lance writer and critic, and the slews of interesting people he met, befriended, antagonized etc. I was surprised to see how much was new to me although I've read everything else before (minus the third or fourth book based on his life in Paris, Inside a pearl) and raced through it with unflagging interest.

 

Angelo by Dario Bellezza (1978)

Bellezza was one of Pasolini's discoveries and protégés, and did some clerical and creative work for him. He seems to have been best known as a poet. Angelo is one of his few prose works, a novel about the decline of a young gay man who becomes hooked on drugs. The story is told in the first person by a protagonist named Dario (like the author), impressionistically, in long incoherent ramblings which create a lot of uncertainty and ambiguity about what happened or who's who. There is an older woman, Elisa, a legendary author, who Dario insists is his only love, but who cruelly rejected him after a quick seduction. The thing becomes clearer--maybe too clear--if one interprets "Elisa" not as a human being but allegory for Literature, capital letter, as befits the heightened, baroque rhetoric of the novel. Dario's misery is caused by his incapacity to serve his art, torn as he is by his revulsion over his homosexuality and destroyed by self-hating addiction.

Bellezza died of AIDS at 52, in abject poverty, but I saw just now this is the year they are finally issuing his complete poetry so maybe some posthumous fame will come his way.

Points: 60/120

>17 LolaWalser:, 18 Sorry to take so long to reply. It's Pride Week here and I've been busy.

On Bornstein, I started reading Bornstein shortly after reading Judith Butler and in the middle of my mid-life identity crises. At the time I was very wary of the "I knew from infancy I was X" narrative, which ze discusses in the early pages, though I see from your longer review on the Reading Books by Women narrative that t'll he book as a whole is much more subtle than that. Anyway I stopped reading it, because I needed to figure out things for myself. I'll put it back on my pile and see if I get to it.

On White: Did you read Jack Holmes and His Friend? That covers the advertising period from a fictional pov. I thought it was flawed, but not a bad read. (And I usually don't like books about advertising execs in Westchester, since that was my growing up environment and it wasn't pretty.)

No, I haven't read that--I think I have one other still unread, about... Stephen Crane I think, Hotel de Dream. I liked his early stuff better, I must say.

I found Bornstein very interesting, especially in the light of Caitlyn Jenner's case, which seems to be different. It seems that Bornstein started out but eventually stopped identifying as a woman, arguing for some other position on the gender continuum. Or, at least I think that's where the theory stands.

I finished Nijinsky's unexpurgated diary and need to note that I had wrong impressions about his marriage and wife. For that matter, the whole idea of Nijinsky as a gay icon, which I had taken for granted, turns out to be ambiguous.

But, first, I was unjust in thinking that Romola Nijinsky distorted and changed significantly Nijinsky's diary--this is not the case. Moreover, I was under the impression that Nijinsky was somehow her "victim", as I've often heard from gay men about relationships with women. But, in spite of the complications and strains introduced by his illness (when he literally became dependent on other people for care and protection), it seems obvious that there had been real love and passion between them.

As for Nijinsky's orientation, it seems it's been noted quite long ago (Peter Ostwald in 1991) that his basic inclination was heterosexual, even notably, robustly so. Cases like these demonstrate how difficult and probably pointless it is to try to categorise experiences second-hand.

What seems factual is that Nijinsky as a young teenager had two relationships with older male protectors and mentors, Prince Lvov and Diaghilev. Lvov, like many aristocrats, was in habit of trawling the corps de ballet for lovers; Nijinsky's mother, battling poverty, sent her son to him hoping to procure that situation exactly. Nijinsky himself writes of this as his "sacrifice". Lvov doesn't seem to have been particularly smitten, he dumped him rather quickly for the next boy toy, but did him the favour of introduction to Diaghilev.

As with Lvov, Nijinsky had sex with Diaghilev the first time they met (talk about casting couches) and they were lovers for a couple years. Nijinsky doesn't seem to have had or wanted to have any other male lovers--at least, there's no evidence of it in his writing. In contrast, he keeps turning to sexual fantasies of women, his pursuit of prostitutes, his dance partners etc.

 

Kawabata's Adolescent is a small collection of autobiographical writings, the longest dealing with a schoolboy affair of the heart with a fellow student. Orphaned as a small child and raised by grandparents, he seems to have been of a melancholy, even depressive disposition. (The nature of his death has been questioned, but most evidence points to it being a suicide.) In these writings he repeatedly expresses sadness and self-pity, imagining he's talking to his dead parents--this loss was clearly a wound never healed. The story of his schooldays, when he fell in love with a beautiful younger boy, Kojima, also never rises into a happier register, although Kojima apparently hero-worshipped him and the two boys spent years in loving, pleasant, sometimes even physically rewarding friendship. Curiously, while Kojima was the one decidedly religious, belonging to some odd minor cult, it was Kawabata who at least occasionally agonised over their "sinful" relationship. And, of course, felt depressed about it.

I had no idea previously that Kawabata lived through a what he himself calls "my homosexual love". No idea either how he saw or identified himself; I only found mentions of this one adolescent relationship. Nevertheless, stories like these exemplify exactly the complexity, ambivalence and diversity of human experience, within an individual life as much as in a collective.

Points: 62/120

Another instance where I'm irritated and confused by the "people of colour" category:

 

Al Khamissi is Egyptian. Is he a "person of colour"? Does he think of himself that way? Who would think of him that way? Would he have a "coloured" experience in the US? How about David Suchet then?



Again, obviously it's not about the looks, but the ideological judgements--the RACIST judgements--about histories, individual and collective.

We have seen these judgements in action in Europe for many weeks (years and years actually, but it has certainly culminated now), turning against Greeks, those "degenerates", those swarthy, non-white non-Europeans turned by fiat into a disenfranchised underclass and indentured labour. Everything will be taken away from under them, the rocks they toil on. Let the Greeks die out--the Huns on vacation will bring their own servants.

I'm changing my attitude from one of "cultural" intervention to one of demand for political action.

I will not use "people of colour" any more except when talking about the term as used by others. It's "overclass" and "underclass" from now on: the overclass is white, the underclass is nonwhite--regardless of pigmentation.

Taxi is excellent and highly recommended to anyone interested in a glimpse of harried, chaotic, exuberant and tormented Egyptian every-day.

 

I lost it at the movies collects some of Pauline Kael's movie criticism and polemics from cca 1954-1965. Kael still excites passions, that's how brilliant (if uneven), original and embattled she was. And the battle goes on.

 

The Leavenworth case (1878) is credited with giving detective fiction its classic mould and first series detective, Ebenezer Gryce (plus aides). And again I wonder, whither poor Émile Gaboriau and his Monsieur Lecoq? The juggernaut of English-language mystery fiction seems to have effectively steamrolled this French source out of public consciousness.

I'm only moderately a fan of mysteries, and prefer those with flamboyant characters to painstakingly worked-out puzzles, so this neat procedural with very cardboardy characters wasn't exactly my cup of tea, but it nevertheless held my attention because the two central female characters, cousins Mary and Eleanore Leavenworth, both murder suspects, had a relationship out of the usual "best friends forever" or "deadly enemies" binary. They weren't crazy about each other, but they didn't hate each other either. In fact, and this is positively stunning to someone used to female stereotypes, they each cared about treating the other decently.

Points: 69/120

 

The history of white people by Nell Irvin Painter drives home the point that "race" is a social construct, by examining the changing attitudes, in the American context, towards various groups of "white people".

The largest part of the book is a history of racialist ideas that held sway in the United States for several centuries and which are still present in some form today. Most of us have encountered the dominant paradigm--the very whitest blondest--"best"--people on top, the very darkest--"worst"--on the bottom, with a continuum of shades in-between.

Painter gives many examples of how complicated this model could get, and what circles professional racists ran in order to keep their cockamamie theories afloat. These are fascinating, in a way, but the sheer craziness and wilful stupidity get wearisome rather quickly. What should keep the attention going is the devastating fact that no matter how idiotic and wrong, how evidently self-serving and supremely malicious these myths, they were used to govern policy and order society.

Unfortunately (in my view), Painter's book isn't a criticism so much as a history, although, obviously, a lot of criticism is implied.

What emerges, to me, is that racism was invented to oppress politically those we want to use. Black people and poor white people were needed as beasts of burden, therefore they were claimed to be no better and no other than beasts of burden, vaguely humanoid cattle.

The American context makes this especially clear. America (United States in Painter's focus), was a developing country, such as, say France or Germany, were not. The genocide of Native Americans literally and figuratively opened up room for settlement and large-scale industries. There is nothing in capitalist ideology to restrain the abuse of labour--capitalism in fact strives toward its total enslavement. With collusion from the church (slaves will get their reward in heaven) and support from the academia (or "academia" as the case may be), this economic system could exist with the semblance of moral and scientific justification.

Points: 72/120

 

Citizen: an American Lyric (2014) by Claudia Rankine is described in the blurbs as "prose poems" although the "lyric" nature isn't evident in many and to me at least the title sounds profoundly ironic. Some fragments relate incidents of racist micro- and not so micro aggressions from the author's and other black people's lives (for instance, multiple meditations on the treatment of Serena Williams in the media), some are commentaries on the political events such as the incidents of abuse of blacks by policemen, some are philosophical... In sum they make a devastating impression.

75/120

 

The stories in Alice Munro's The moons of Jupiter typically focus on some psychological moment in characters' lives--a realisation, a change, some crystallisation of experience. The catalyst can be some event or just a word. If there is drama, it tends to happen off stage or even long in the past--what's in the picture is one's present mind. What's amazing is how familiar she makes what all these characters are going through. A great writer in the most classic sense of the word.

78/120

 

I'm chickening out of describing Cahier d'un retour au pays natal (Notebook of a return to a native land) by Aimé Césaire, a punchy, poetic, delirious and surrealist howl about what has been done to people--black people, Césaire's people, people among other people--and the straining for rebirth, the new existence. One of the great hymns not just of Negritude, but human liberation.

 

Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life by sisters Karen and Barbara Fields, a sociologist and historian, respectively, is a book I'll be returning to constantly--first for a reread here on LT in October, if anyone cares to join (I think the thread will be in Pro & Con group, though, which is where several discussions on racism--and yes they sporadically get very ugly and upsetting--took place.)

These essays were so dense with insight, new knowledge, ideas, that I can't possibly sum them up in a single post (besides, I'm not halfway to having absorbed it all).

There's one central idea, insight, conclusion I wish to note above all: that racism produces "race", and not vice versa. This is something that most people would probably first react to as totally counterintuitive and "obviously" wrong; but that is the crux of the problem. By the time we see "race" we have been taught to see it. It also brings me personally to where I once long ago used to be--back to my pre-New Worldian colourblindness. But this time it is not a superficial, textbook colourblindness ignorant of the reality of racism.

So it is and isn't the same spot. But then I never wavered in what I thought was right, correct, true; I always knew and held it true that we are one species and all equal--I knew it because science knows it and justice demands it. What happened to me is what happens to anyone coming to exist with privilege in a racist society--you become a racist in act, or at a minimum passively implicated in sustaining the system that privileges you. Racist behaviour was being forced on me because (I was told, directly) that's how people with my skin survived among those others. I rejected this teaching, but I couldn't reject the privilege passively accrued to me just by the fact of my skin. (Nor did I understand things fast or well enough to prevent myself from unwittingly committing some racist acts whose nature simply flew under the radar of my consciousness.)

I put it in personal terms but you will see exactly that process analysed by the Fields. It was as cathartic as it was sad to read about, to see that, well, one, "I wasn't crazy"; two, that my first childish innocence gets redeemed as the natural gift of all children and something that adults must return to.

Anyway, I'll probably get back to it here too once the group read gets under way.

 

To get the most unpleasant out of the way first: Ishmael Reed, who is apparently a controversial author in some way (I knew and still know practically nothing about him or the polemics he apparently has/had with various people), has it in for feminism, or maybe predominantly white feminism (it's not easy to tell always when or if he's making a distinction), to the point that, while not personally, directly using the term "feminazi" (at least not in this book) he writes repeatedly about women "marching in lockstep" behind Gloria Steinem and quotes approvingly a paragraph by the despicable Camille Paglia where she does call other women "feminazis". He also, he says, wrote a novel in which women defended a character based on Eva Braun, just because she was a woman.

Ironically, Reed will apparently defend any black man just because he is a black man. And I do mean "any". He says he wrote a novel in which two old black men unearth evidence of O. J. Simpson's innocence. He mentions several black men whose various sexual shenanigans landed them in the news, such as Clarence Thomas, but only to retort--but what about the white men doing the same thing?

The book is a collection of articles and commentary Reed wrote during Obama's campaign and after election. There is a lot of repetition, and perhaps it is because of that, that, for instance, it seems as if Gloria Steinem looms much larger in Reed's life than she could ever in the media. I was interested enough to read through it all, because I think Reed says important things. Despite the "feminazi" ugliness, despite the bias--ah well, it is that bias that is the point.

I must agree with him on the basic: as long as any black man will get attacked just because he happens to be a black man, it will be necessary to defend any black man.

I also must agree with him, against Steinem (at least as he quotes her, over and over) that, in the American society, the "most restrictive" condition indeed isn't gender, but race.

That it is true, in short and general, that black men have it worse than white women.

Does this mean I agree with defending Simpson and Thomas? Only insofar they have been attacked for their race more than for what they did, or what is thought they did. Have they? I don't know. But it must be admitted, surely it must, that there IS an enormous prejudice against black people in the media and in culture. Every police shooting of unarmed blacks, of excess force, every racist insult hurled at Obamas is proof of that.

So that's how it is: I think Reed is right in almost everything he says, but not in how he says it. He mentions repeatedly that he's been called a misogynist (even "worst misogynist in America"), and not just by one person, or one sex, or race (I think the first instance he mentions is by a black feminist. I'm not sure I want to dismiss him on those grounds after this book, but I do wonder why those other people thought so.)

If you can set aside the "feminazi" thing, I would recommend looking into his publications--it looks as if most of these might be available on Counterpunch.org--for a type of voice that is never heard in the mainstream media.

Points: 83/120

Catching up with listing books that fit in here:

L'Armée du salut (Salvation army) by Abdellah Taïa consists of two autobiographical "tellings" (they hardly deserve to be called "stories" or the whole thing a "novel") by a young gay Moroccan man. The first is the record of his lust and erotic attachment to an older brother and the second describes his untoward arrival on the doorstep of a European lover in Geneva, who didn't expect the young Moroccan to take his invitation all that seriously. Hence the young man ends up spending a few nights in a Salvation Army hostel, until he hooks up with a French sugar daddy and moves to Paris. I didn't care for Taïa at all, due to his misogyny. Gay or not, obviously ALL men profit from keeping the women down back home in Morocco...

Ein Tag im Jahr (translated into English as "One day a year") by Christa Wolf collects her descriptions of every 27th September for forty years, beginning in 1960.

The date had no special significance for Wolf (she picked it out of a poem), although as it fell a day before her younger daughter's birthday, there's a touching constant through decades of preparations for celebrations, ordering flowers and cake, from the time the little girl turns four, to at least calling her on the phone in her forties. This is a hugely complex narrative that should be broached from several sides and I don't have the ability to deal with any of it; not as East German, or Wolf's personal history. In fact I didn't plan to read the whole book but got drawn in despite my intentions. Certainly this speaks to the interest of the material itself, but I know I missed a lot.

I discussed Grass by Sheri Tepper in the SF group. Some years ago I started and abandoned her The gate to women's country--can't remember exactly why, just didn't care for the set-up--and this one strikes me as a better book. The alien planet of Grass and the mysterious Hunt that aristocrats indulge in are very memorable. With this book the trend I've been noticing of "women write women better" continues.

I've read Tooth and claw by Jo Walton, on a suggestion in the SF group, with great amusement, although I'm not fond of historical romance with its structural misogyny. Still, this is easy to forget when "damsels" are dragons and lunch on a side of beef... raw and bloody.

I've also read Between the world and me by Ta-Nehisi Coates. I recommend this highly literally to everyone. Coates' insistence on what racism does to a body--body as in physical object, and body as in person, individual--is really the first thing to understand (those of us who don't experience it) before any discussion of racism. And it is, of course, part of that discussion. I expect to talk about this book more in the "Racecraft" discussion.

Some bits: on language:

The point of this language of 'intention' and 'personal responsibility' is broad exoneration. Mistakes were made. Bodies were broken. People were enslaved. We meant well. We tried our best. 'Good intention' is a hall pass through history, a sleepy pill that ensures the Dream.

On hate (a point most important, psychologically and politically--will come back to it):

If (Malcolm X) hated, he hated because it was human for the enslaved to hate the enslaver... He would not turn the other cheek for you. He would not be a better man for you. He would not be your morality.

On presumed natural inferiority of the blacks, a response to a shameful remark of Saul Bellow's:

Tolstoy is the Tolstoy of the Zulus.

And, I read Jenny Erpenbeck's deceptively slight and calm-voiced Visitation, a harrowing chronicle of German recent barbaric history told in miniature, focussed on diverse lives spent on a piece of lake shore near Berlin.

Points: 98/120

I'd forgotten about Amy Poehler's memoir, Yes please!, lent to me by a younger colleague (along with something by Lena... Dunham? should get to it asap), thanks to a conversation about young women and feminism nowadays... what they think, who speaks to them etc. The audience, not the writers (Poehler for instance is only a year or so younger than me).

I had mentioned how much I liked Poehler's character in the Parks and Recreation series and she said I'd probably like her voice in the memoir as well, and it's true, I did. But I don't have much to say about it beyond that. I'm not familiar with 99% of the projects and people Poehler was involved with during her career and the emphasis was strongly on personal contacts. She's effusively lovely about everyone, critical only toward herself, there are some valuable flashes of insight and wit--stuff that makes you go "oh listen to this" to others in the room...

 

My first Iris Murdoch was her second novel, The flight from the enchanter, and it certainly made me interested in reading more of her.

It's a somewhat odd book, more like a rotating gallery of characters and their relationships than a proper "story"--although stuff happens galore, lots of it bizarre, comical, and terrible. The "enchanter" of the title is less of a physical presence than a mental oppressor to his many hapless victims--although why or how they came to be that is never clearly spelled out. Female characters are all put upon by men in various ways, with the exception of the troop of ancient suffragettes who show up cavalry-like at one point to save a faltering feminist magazine from falling into the hands of a declared misogynist.

I expect I'll get a better idea of what this is all about once I deepen my acquaintance with Murdoch.

Points: 104/120

More Murdoch: The sandcastle. I found it less interesting than the previous one, as story (will he, won't he, the middle-aged married man, leave his unhappy marriage for a relationship with a much younger, loving woman), but I think I'm beginning really to like Murdoch's trademarks, the quirky incident, the well-observed individual, the concern with the philosophical view of life...

Catherine Lubrano's Ouvrage de dame... les filles naissent dans les roses (Lady work... girls are born in roses) is a charming and unsettling work of art, combining as it does the colours and textures associated with soft femininity with barbed text and remarks--very much like a thorny rose itself.

Lorraine Hansberry's A raisin in the sun reads amazingly and perhaps sadly fresh. At its centre is the problem of the black man besieged and hampered by a hostile, racist society, who can't affirm himself as men are traditionally forced to--he can't take his family out of the poverty, and while they struggle, he can't find self-respect. A self-effacing female chorus assists, you could say, his birth.

For the oldie sci-fi thread I read Margaret St. Clair Sign of the labrys, which, while exhibiting various marks of its period and in general not being a great piece of literature, in comparison to most of other examples of that vintage is distinguished by a special care and respect for its female characters, at least the two most significant.

Points: 116/120

 

Alain Mabanckou's deeply ironic Verre cassé (Broken glass) flows like a river or a song, free of paragraphs or full stops and this may be, partly, why the various voices represented sounded rather same-y to me. The structure is simple: an ex-teacher, nicknamed Broken glass, is writing down the life stories of several down-and-out characters who hang about the same bar in Brazzaville, Congo. They are all men, all beaten down, and all resentful of women in the same way, so it's not surprising perhaps that it comes across as one loser's long, un-self-aware complaint, the more so as every character has the same very recognisable trick of "referencing" the titles of French (mostly) classics and bestsellers.

The mentality shown isn't attractive, but Mabanckou doesn't allow simple disapproval, or unreserved sympathy. The defeat and humiliation of these men came by through many factors exacerbating each other, and challenging them more than others, the privileged ones, will ever be challenged.

Points: 117/120

 

I was drawn to read How to read the Qur'an, copyright 2007, because author Mona Siddiqui is a woman and a British Muslim (otherwise there are many similar basic introductions to Islam, some of which I've already read) and we are witnessing a crisis at the clash point of Islam and the West in which the role of women is assuming an ever greater importance for deciding on the possibility of co-existence with Muslims in the West.

You can guess at the general stance she takes vis-à-vis interpretation just from looking at her photographs: she's devout, but does not wear religious covering (one expects she would in a mosque). Coverings for women have become completely politicized, especially in the West, with many Westerners assuming, as do many Muslims, that it's a legitimate Koranic tradition. But it isn't.

Like every other "holy book", the Koran is interpreted, and interpreted in various, even wildly divergent ways. Siddiqui argues for contextualising the Koran (and the hadith, the later sayings attributed to Muhammad), understanding the historical circumstances in which specific verses/prescriptions arose, for evolving interpretations in harmony with the necessities of modern life, and for "generosity" in interpretation: choosing the positive over the negative, the kind over the harsh, mercy over antagonism.



Many people will tell you plays ought to be seen, and I don't disagree, but I ALSO love reading plays. Even when they REALLY need to be seen to grasp fully, like this one. It's a coming-of-age story of a girl nicknamed Li'l Bit (a reference to her private parts, like all the rest of nicknames in her scary, inbred hillbilly family), who is desperate to get away from the poverty and general sordidness, and the sick spell her troubled in-law uncle Peck cast on her, lying in wait for the time she becomes "legal". The growing girl's increasingly conflicting emotions, confusion, fear, attraction and revulsion, desperation and guilt, are masterfully conveyed. Vogel uses devices such as a female and male chorus that voice various single roles, intercutting action, slide projections, suggested music and so on, that are not difficult to follow on page, but must add so much more in live performance.

But even just reading, one is aware of the great power of the play.

Points: 123/120

Threshold crossed!

In conclusion... I can't have set myself a particularly serious challenge, because I never felt the pressure to choose my reading to meet it. On the background of total reads, this selection was still a small minority--about 15% of my total. (Well... a little higher actually, as I didn't include here some technical works and things like catalogues etc. authored or co-authored by women etc.)

The best thing is that I am more conscious of my biases and the need to compensate for them.

I ran into trouble with the "PoC" category. I decided I cannot think about people like that outside a highly specialised context, subject and audience. As to myself I'm just "myself", I don't feel comfortable using such terms. Human species is inexorably one to me; categorising people against "whiteness" is deeply repugnant. And yet, I recognise that racism has splintered us in various ways and that in order to pay attention to what is happening to the underprivileged I need some symbolic language. But instead of mulling over some encompassing scheme that would be applied to all outside the "white" axis, I think the next time I'd do better to choose one specific group.

For the next year I'd like to improve my still-abysmal record on female authors.

Still using a point system, I'll raise the goal to 200.

Categories:

White female: 1
Not-white female: 2
Transgender female: 3

Picking up again...

Under the net by Iris Murdoch, her first published novel. Central character is a feckless male writer, sort of charming but lost. As in the other books, quirky things happen and odd characters behave bizarrely, but there is also a good bit of philosophical dialogue and political humour. I don't think I really understand any of her characters and I fear I couldn't make heads nor tail of Murdoch herself, but as long as we stick to Plato, socialism and love of Paris, I feel I can muddle through.

I fell in deep love at first sight with Maira Kalman's The Principles of uncertainty and My favorite things let me relive that feeling. She makes me exult and cry at the same time.

First read of the new year was Marian Engel's terrific Bear. It begins with a deeply wounded woman--a person who, because she's female, has felt apologetic about being alive, taking up space, existing without "justification". A person who let herself be used by men and then never forgave herself the rage she felt and expressed for that.

She is given a break--a summer cataloguing a legacy on a remote island in Northern Ontario, with her only steady company being a tame, chained male bear. I suppose the quickest way to describe what happens is that "the bear helps her find herself", but it's not something that happens swiftly or straightforwardly. The ghostly influences of dead people, conveyed on scraps of paper and in books, lead her along in her strange, transforming relationship.

At the end, she is better off than she was at the beginning, feeling "strong and pure".

Points: 3/200

I got Melting Away: A Ten-Year Journey through Our Endangered Polar Regions as soon as I saw the cover with the whale-like blue iceberg, not knowing anything about the book or the author. Turns out Camille Seaman's life story is as interesting as her photographs are beautiful: daughter of a Native American father and black American/Italian mother, art student in a prestigious Manhattan high school, homeless at fifteen but with a camera in hand, a respected craft artist in California, and then at thirty finding herself walking alone on the frozen sea between Alaska and Russia...

As for the ice, what is there to say. The snows of yesteryear are sinking into the seas and so will we.

5/200

Just quick roundup of books by female authors I've read (minus a couple art books) since the last post:

Ainsi soit-elle by Benoîte Groult, non-fiction about feminism, captures the France of 1975 and, troublingly, I don't think all that much has changed... Ever since reading Ferrante I've been curious about "reconstructing" the world I missed (due to not existing and/or being a kid at the time), the world my mother inhabited as a young girl and woman, so I'm sort of navigating to picking up more stuff by older feminists--I hope to get to Jong, Millett's classics sooner rather than later, and when I can, accompany that with more recent books by black feminists.

Cultivating humanity : a classical defense of reform in liberal education by Martha Craven Nussbaum provided some much-needed concepts for understanding why diversity is important, in general and in "liberal education" in particular.

Gigi : roman by Colette is a collection of several pieces, including a beautiful essay on plants and fruits written in wartime Paris, when the latter were scarce.

The Book About Moomin, Mymble and Little My by Tove Jansson I got for a friend's kids, but then went with another gift. I'm glad I kept this, the illustrations feature cut outs and I've a mini collecting interest in unusual picture books. Sweet story as ever with the Moomins.

A God and his gifts by Ivy Compton-Burnett, one of my favourite authors. Another story where the dark underbelly of family life and individual consciences is glimpsed through a layer of incessant polyphonic chatter.

10/200

Adding up:

Desperate characters by Paula Fox, a perfectly captured moment of tension in the civil-rights era United States; The sign in Sidney Brustein's window by Lorraine Hansberry, an ambitious play set in the same period; David Golder by Irène Némirovsky, a character study of a man who defined himself, and therefore had others define him, entirely through his ability to make money; Un peu plus loin sur la droite and Sans feu ni lieu by Fred Vargas, the second and third book in her "three evangelists" series; and the last book in Elena Ferrante's magnificent My brilliant friend opus, Storia della bambina perduta, in which the story of the most vital relationship in the lives of two childhood friends ends where it began.

17/200

Onward, upward, widdershins!

The life-changing magic of tidying up by Marie Kondo turned out to be an unexpectedly moving book. Going past the basic recipe takes one into thinking about the space we live in and the relationships between the organisations of the internal and the external.

The story of a single woman is Uno Chiyo's autobiographical portrait of her impoverished early life in repressive misogynistic Japan. Innocent and headstrong, she pays no heed to the forces that would break her and preserves her character integrity no matter how much she's made to suffer.

Roxane Gay's Bad feminist collects her magazine and blog articles on topics of feminism and race in confrontation with media, politics and pop culture.

Le Coeur à rire et à pleurer : Souvenirs de mon enfance by Maryse Condé is composed of the sensual vignettes of childhood in Guadeloupe and the more documentary ones from the time she becomes a university student in Paris. I frequently wished themes were expanded, for instance the dynamics between the segregated white colonists, the "mulattoes", and the blacks; the "alienation" of her upper class parents from the poor blacks (how did Maryse see it once she grew up?); awakening of sexuality, and political consciousness... All were touched on in such a way to seem a prologue to longer treatment. I look forward to her novels.

25/200