Started this earlier. I’m not a big fantasy/sci-fi fan because I have trouble suspending disbelief, but sometimes I’m into it. This is really out therStarted this earlier. I’m not a big fantasy/sci-fi fan because I have trouble suspending disbelief, but sometimes I’m into it. This is really out there, but Robin Miles is a fantastic narrator, the production is great & I was willing enough to go along with the improbability of it all. Then someone said «Queer cis bloke».
Interesting telling of African American history by a very good storyteller. I liked Gregory's point of view and the way he highlighted that whiteness Interesting telling of African American history by a very good storyteller. I liked Gregory's point of view and the way he highlighted that whiteness is a social construct rather than a skin colour. Maybe as a person with white skin, I need to hear that lately, since the racism debate has become so heated that some people of colour blame all white people for a system of oppression when some of us want to dismantle that system just as badly. My only hesitation is when Gregory advances his personal theories about what he deems to have been conspiracies to silence prominent black figures, from Malcolm X to Tiger Woods. Much of what he advances is entirely believable, but when he started defending Michael Jackson, I understood his personal relationships with people he describes get in the way of objectivity. All the same, recommended to revisit some defining historical moments from the perspective of someone who was fighting for civil rights for decades. ...more
Incredibly painful read. A single mother of ten (or is it eleven) children who is obsessed with keeping them with her at all cost, even as she abuses Incredibly painful read. A single mother of ten (or is it eleven) children who is obsessed with keeping them with her at all cost, even as she abuses them so brutally and sadistically it almost beggars belief. And yet, these things do happen in real life. The protagonist is one of her daughters, the smartest of the bunch who is determined to get her high school diploma against all odds, with her mother intent on getting her out of school so she can earn wages to help feed the family, and the recently imposed desegregation laws creating more friction than ever.
The small southern town they live in is run by ultra racist white folk intent on keeping the coloured residents “in their place”. They do this by treating them little better than slaves, although as one man points out, during slavery times ‘at least they were housed and fed’. Violence pervades the whole story, which is part of what makes this such a hard read, but what I found most heartbreaking is how our young heroine remains loyal the her mother and siblings through unimaginable abuse.
What kept me fascinated was the way the tale is told, through the viewpoint of young girl in the process of discovering herself and the world and barely able to comprehend what moves her unpredictable mother, and willing to make unbearable sacrifices to satisfy her cruel mother in order to keep her siblings safe. All the while, she holds on to the determination to continue her studies and be the first in the family to earn a diploma so she can get a chance at a better life.
I have more to say, but in truth, I am slightly in shock and still trying to process this story and its implications. It is a story about the struggles of an African American single mother family in the deeply racist America of the 1950s, but it is also a universal tale about a daughters love for her mother and siblings, who endures incredibly difficult circumstances for lack of knowing anything different.
I hesitate to say I could relate to this girl, because I doubt I would have remained so steadfast in my loyalties, but then, it is impossible to say what we each would choose if we’d been formed in such different times with such limiting circumstances and little understanding of what our place in the world might be if all the forces weren’t stacked against us.
Please Stop conflating race & gender. Woke intersectionality claptrap. You wanna talk about race, talk about race. Don’t tell me women have dixks. No Please Stop conflating race & gender. Woke intersectionality claptrap. You wanna talk about race, talk about race. Don’t tell me women have dixks. No to selling us a new religion in the name of human rights....more
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