The Beginning: Listening

The post is the second in a series of reading Black authors last year, to read the first post, go here.

I don’t know if I ended 2016 thinking of reading more Black authors, or if I read books by Black authors and the impact of those books made me want to read more Black Authors. When I started this blog, I named it “Books I Devour, Books I Savor” because I either read a book in 3-7 days and devour it, or it takes me four months or more to read it. There is no in between. Less than a week, or over four months. That doesn't mean that I like one more than the other, I devour books that are fun and exciting and I savor books that are more complicated, that make me do some work.

The Books That Launched The Journey

I started listening to Americanah as an audiobook, and it took me months to finish. Americanah is a book about people's lives, and I had been devouring YA Dystopian fiction for so long that my brain had to work to keep track of a story that didn't follow The Hunger Games plot structure. There was no Games to set up, prepare for, and fight your way out of. Instead, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie writes about Ifemelu, a Nigerian-born woman who immigrates to the United States for university. It is a love story, it is a story about race, and it's a story about identity. I loved the love story, as I love all love stories, and devoured the end of the book. The middle, when Ifemelu has immigrated to America and her narration turns to her surprise at how she is perceived by others because of the color of her skin, took me longer to read. I had to chew over some of the concepts brought up, and wonder how I treated my classmates of color, and how I treat my coworkers and friends of color. I highly recommend this book for anyone who loves contemporary fiction.

The next book of the year was The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead. I bought it because it had won the National Book Award for Fiction and it was on the list for 2017 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, which it later won. Because I follow things like that. I didn't really want to read it, because my initial reaction was, "ugh, I know about the underground railroad. I went to school." But then I thought, "well, yes, but I also read books about people falling in love and I've also done that. How many books have I read about the underground railroad?" Touche, self. I devoured this book more quickly because it was winter break, and I had the time. Also, because it was a little closer to following The Hunger Games plot line. First, Cora is a slave on a plantation. Then, she find out about the Underground Railroad. Soon, she embarks on the underground railroad, which Whitehead actually imagines as having tunnels with railroad tracks and being literally an underground railroad with stops along the way. On the way North, a lot of crazy stuff goes down. It is such an incredible book, and you should read it.

Then, I decided to give myself a semi-break and read a Jodi Picoult book called Small Great Things. I was skeptical, because Picoult is a white lady and the book was about racism. But I was intrigued because the audiobook was narrated by Audra McDonald, and I figure if it got Audra's stamp of approval, who am I to say it is not good? (Audra McDonald has won like 7 Tony Awards for her acting, and is black. You may remember her from the live Sound of Music, where she played Mother Superior.) And I would say that it is not....bad. It is an interesting and entertaining book. It is a really important read if you think that you can be "colorblind" or if you are curious why people get mad at people who say "All Lives Matter." If you read that sentence and think to yourself, "I am not racist, I don't even see color," definitely read this book. Let's chat. If you are the kind of person who gets mad at people who say "All Lives Matter," you do not need to read this book. This is a book that starts out being about a black lady and ends up being about a white lady who learns about racism. Which is a journey all of us white ladies should go on. But since I'd already embarked on that journey, I got very upset that Picoult ditched her main character when the white lawyer showed up, and you might get mad about that too.

The Plan

So after reading Small Great Things, I was determined. Not determined enough to actually proofread the blog post I posted about Small Great Things, but personally determined. And also, I think, more concerned with my own introspection than sharing that introspection with the world. (Probably because I didn’t get enough attention about my SGT post, and I literally live for attention. Yikes.)

I also had a lot of anxiety. I work with really smart, passionate, and well informed people and I thought, “if I write about this journey, they are going to read this and then they are going to realize that I am a complete idiot.” And I am friends with a lot of really smart, passionate, and well informed people. And honestly, I thought you all had better books and resources than I did and I didn’t need to tell you about my little challenge to myself to read more-but-not-only Black authors. And I was exhausted and by the end of my commute home I didn’t have it in me to read books that challenged me and then write about them in a coherent way. I shared some articles on facebook, and I read, and read, and read.

I also argued on the internet. A lot. Because while I assumed you, my facebook friend reading my book blog, was more intelligent and informed than I was, I did feel the need to step in when I saw posts that I perceived as ignorant. Because I knew that my mind was changing because of what I was consuming, I thought that if I just shared the gospel of Anti-Racism, I could convert those ignorant but well-intentioned souls to the path of Equality. Really, I just got depressed getting into arguments with friends or strangers that got deep enough to show real, underlying, deeply held Racist and/or Sexist beliefs. BUT, I did end up reading a lot, because I refused to share an article without reading the whole thing. And I refused to share articles that I didn’t believe had real merit. So, while I may not have converted anyone, I did grow stronger in my own understanding of what the hell was going on. And had been going on.

So, I read. And I chewed on the ideas in my mind that were developing. I felt helpless, and powerless, and overwhelmed. And I felt completely undeserving of those emotions because I was sitting here, a white lady, on my couch, with my wine, feeling bad about things that I had the privilege to learn about. None of this was happening to me personally. It was affecting a lot of people around me, and I had no idea how to stop it. I have no idea how to make real, dramatic change in this world.

"Before we can challenge racism, before we can dismantle racism, we have to learn to recognize it. We have to develop an understanding of not just the bold acts of racial aggression like we saw this weekend in Charlottesville, but of the daily microaggressions that eventually add up to torch-bearing marchers shouting racists slurs through the streets of America's cities." -  Sadie Trombetta, "17 Books on Race Every White Person Needs to Read" 

What will you read next? 

Currently Reading

Book lists
46 Books By Women of Color to Read in 2018
The Michael Bennett Reading List
17 Books on Race Every White Person Needs to Read

Black Girl Magic: 33 Books Featuring Black Female Protagonists
34 Books by Women of Color to Read This Year (2017)

Articles
The First White President, Ta-Nehisi Coates
The Elephant in the Classroom: Segregation in Seattle Public Schools
To many Americans, being patriotic means being white

Videos
Let Her Learn
The Danger of a Single Story


Do you have a question or clarification you would like to send me privately, or even anonymously? Would you like to help answer questions I get about your community? Let me know! (Link goes to a google form.)

Happy Reading

The Underground Railroad (5)

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

The Underground Railroad follows Cora, from her days as a field hand on the Randall plantation to her experience escaping on the Underground Railroad. Whitehead imagines the Underground Railroad as a literal railroad built underground. You got to see her grow from someone who is treated like a sub-human, who is hopeless, who is alone to someone who gets to experience freedom and begins to be able to trust others and build relationships and create a life and future for herself.

I had heard about The Underground Railroad when it won the National Book Award last year. And I thought to myself, well I know a fair amount about the Underground Railroad. I learned about it in school. Why is this book important now? And then I read it and realized oh, I may have a broad picture of what life was like under slavery or what sort of dangers someone who worked on the underground railroad may have faced but I did not take into consideration the specific impact being a slave or working on the underground railroad could have had on a person's life. I never thought about which means I never really thought about what the historical impact of slavery really has on today's society.

After reading it i'm left thinking about how much things haven't changed. I don't think it's enough to say "slavery is over" if we haven't really looked at the impact slavery had on everyone - both white and black - in the system. If you grow up being treated like property because of the color of your skin, that affects you. And as generations pass and, let's be honest, white people keep fighting to make sure you are being treated as less than them from legal segregation to the current #BlackLivesMatter vs. #AllLivesMatter debate. I wonder when, and if, and how we can work as a society to actually treat everyone equally.

So much of The Underground Railroad showed how afraid white people were of the black people they were subjugating. This fear lead to more and more atrocities being committed against people who were just trying to be alive.

"True, you couldn't treat an Irishman like an African, white n***** or no. There was the cost of buying slaves and their upkeep on one hand and paying white workers meager but livable wages on the other. The reality of slave violence versus stability in the long term. The Europeans had been farmers before; they would be farmers again. Once the immigrants finished their contracts (having paid back travel, tools, and lodging) and took their place in American society, they would be allies of the southern system that had nurtured them." (Whitehead, p 164) 

5/5 - Changed the way I think about the world while being interesting and entertaining from cover to cover. Heartbreaking and powerful.