Hodgepodge: Black History Month 2024

We are winding down, though there will be two more posts in this section.

There were some things that almost became themes. For example, there were two works invoking feminism, differently, but in differently needed ways.

Hood Feminism: Notes From the Women That a Movement Forgot by Mikki Kendall

Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay

I love both writers, and these are very different approaches.

Kendall focuses on how feminism needs to include economic issues and survival of the marginalized, or it is only maintaining privileges for the already privileged. Recent evens have shown how that doesn't necessarily work, even for the privileged, but there are other, crucial reasons to look beyond that goal.

Gay has a collection of essays about ways in which she might feel that she is letting feminism down by not upholding it correctly. We can have an idea of feminism that overlooks individual needs in the interest of purity, or simply by overlooking how difficult life can be and what is most important.

It is not a coincidence that both of these books were written by Black women (or that a white woman co-opted Gay's title when speaking against #MeToo: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jan/15/margaret-atwood-feminist-backlash-metoo).

For other potential themes, if you include the works by Amanda Gorman, there was quite a bit of poetry. Since she had her own spotlight, that left three, and I was not sure that needed its own post.

Poems by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine

1919 by Eve Ewing

Eve Ewing almost got her own spotlight as well, but her other poetry book and her education book had already been mentioned in other posts in 2021. Then, while I have read some of her comics, she has been writing them so quickly that it would be too soon to do a spotlight for that. 

Suffice it to say, I will read pretty much anything she writes (and she has some Monica Rambeau books now!) so a comic spotlight is not out of the question. Maybe next year.

I would also read more Claudia Rankine. Harper was fine, but I think what I read was pretty complete.

The Book of Delights: Essays by Ross Gay

Not quite poetry, but poetic in its own way, this is the result of an attempt by Gay to find things that are joyful, and delightful. There are 102 short sections. I like his long form work better, but this has value. It is better to break up the reading into short pieces, as he did with the writing.

Black Hollywood: Reimagining Iconic Movie Moments by Carell Augustus

Movie buffs are going to get more out of this than I did, because there are movies that I haven't seen and I know I was missing context. There is still some great photography, and some faces that are good to see.

Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America by Ijeoma Oluo

This one was initially a little disappointing and is more disappointing in retrospect. The title implies a sharp, incisive wit. There is good information, but tending more toward the dull and academic. Then, just recently, I saw some people I really respect complaining of being misrepresented in Oluo's most recent book Be a Revolution. This was specifically related to disability. While harm and disrespect was probably not intended, it still appears to have been done. 

This kind of makes sense to me. While her So You Want to Talk About Race was excellent, I remember sections where she admitted to her own prejudice, more class-based, but it seems completely believable that she could slip into ableism. 

African American Grief by Paul C. Rosenblatt and Beverly R. Wallace

This work is a response to a realization that studies of the American populace focused on white people, and therefore were not complete. 

While it is pretty academic -- and I am not even in the target group -- I have been re-reading it because there are things that resonate that I want to understand better.

Finally, there were an additional three books that relate, but will end up in a post on rock biographies, and not specifically about Black History. I will list them here just to keep them as part of the record.

Will by Will Smith

Chuck Berry: The Autobiography by Chuck Berry

Up, Up and Away: How We Found Love, Faith, and Lasting Marriage in the Entertainment World by Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr. with Mike Yorkey

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