I keep thinking that in conjunction with last week
there are some current events that I should address, but those posts would be
really long. I did just finish my reading this weekend, so let's go there.
I have mentioned already how the writing has thrown
off my reading schedules, so I just finished my Native American Heritage 2014
media in August, start this reading shortly after that, am starting Native
American Heritage 2015 reading this week, and I should start the 2016 Black History
reading about a month after that. Squishing everything so close together may
give me some added perspective. Mainly, it's been kind of heavy.
At the Dark End of the Street: Black
Women, Rape, and Resistance - A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from
Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power, by Danielle L
McGuire
This is a really important reminder of a few things.
One is the way that women so frequently do the work, and then the men become
the stars. Rosa Parks was working for equality and Civil Rights for years
before her arrest, and women were on the front lines of the organizing all
along, but we remember the men's names. Even as the boycott was being
organized, Parks was already being converted into a symbol, not a breathing,
living, and also smart, committed, determined human being.
The other thing that becomes clear is that even
though white men sexually assaulting black women was all too common, the
arguments against integration and equality kept coming back to the danger to
pure white women from black men. It's always been a lie, and it's a lie that
degrades everyone.
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
This is fiction, but it's fiction by an
anthropologist, and based on some real events, so it captures some things. It
can be jarring when it switches between the lush poetry of Janey's awakening as
a young woman to the dialect captured in the towns and camps, but there is a
lot to be learned about life and about being a woman here.
Black Panther: The Complete Collection, by Christopher Priest and others
T'Challa is an important character historically, and
there is a movie in the works, so it seemed like a good time to read it. I
wanted to like it, but it felt like a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing.
It seemed like things were starting to get interesting toward the end, like
maybe I would have been happier finding volume 2, but ultimately it felt like
they were too self-conscious about doing an important black hero to let him
really be human and live. I couldn't relate. To be fair, superhero comics seem
to be my least favorite comics.
The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton
1965-2010, by Lucille Clifton
I tend to have low expectations for free verse, but
I found hers really engaging and moving. I felt like I wanted to know more
about her, to know if the things it felt like she was saying were really part
of her life. What I could find about her does play out. I appreciate the way
she can fluidly move between classical references and things very earthy and
modern.
Breaking Chains: Slavery on Trial in the
Oregon Territory, by Gregory R Nokes
I found the writing style off-putting at times -
especially the foreword - but as a
lifelong Oregon resident, and a University of Oregon graduate, information on
the local history made a lawsuit that would have been interesting on its own
even more fascinating. As much of Oregon's racist past is not
well-known, and this is a book of relatively easy length and reading level, I
think it fills an important spot.
Before the Mayflower: A History of Black
America (2007 edition), by Lerone Bennett Jr
Everyone should read this book. It gives important
information and context to all of US history, therefore an
understanding of where we are now, and is often beautifully written.
Perhaps the most important lesson, and it fits in
well with At the Dark End of the Street, is that there is so much that
history forgets. Yes, there was a Civil Rights movement in the 1960s that drew
popular attention, but there was activism before that, from anti-slavery
activism from before the United States even existed to Rosa Parks' work before she stepped on the bus. There
have always been people who try to abolish rights - rights that were once
accepted as no big deal - and there have always been people fighting back,
often at great personal cost.
It's not over.
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