Between the World and Me: a review

I just finished reading Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between the World and Me. I think I will need to read it three more times through to understand all that is in it. The cruelty and love and history and hatred and injustice and victories - small, fragile, even temporary as they sometimes are - pile on top of each other in this small book with the might of 500 years.

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Between the World and Me is a history lesson. It is an autobiography. And it is a love letter between a father and his 15-year old son, one that acknowledges how much of their relationship has been determined by the fear with which a Black person in America lives every day, and the force of that fear in seeking to protect their children. Fear is the third party in this book - fear, and an impressive bravery to continue. Coates writes with power, intellect, and honesty that, as I said, requires re-reading. You must work your way up to absorbing these truths. They are not self-evident, and yet when you read them, they are as undeniable and obvious as the ground beneath your feet: 

• Race does not exist - it is not a scientific or biological reality. Again. 

RACE DOES NOT EXIST.

• That is not to say differences don't exist, or that cultures don't exist. It is to say that genetic difference does not make us separate races. 
• Race was invented to justify racism. 
• In order for one human to own another human, they must first create some inviolable difference that makes the owned human not human at all. That invention was race based on skin colour, it could just have easily been eye colour or height or arm span. Literal ownership has changed, but the results still echo.
• I am not white by biology but by training. My delicate sensibilities. My freedom to look away from what upsets me. My desire to be rescued. My opinions and outspoken-ness. These are markers of whiteness more than my lightly-melanated skin. 

Author and Son.

As Canadians we so often want to distance ourselves from the reality of America - of it being built and sustained on the blood and bodies of stolen people. But we are, at the very least, complicit in the continuation of that domination. We trumpet the Underground Railroad as proof of our goodness, ignoring that many of those who found their way to Canada returned to the US seeing no more opportunity here than there. We feign colour-blindness, further denying a reality we don't want to acknowledge and erasing others for their difference. We pretend that Black Canadians aren't policed as heavily as Black Americans. We pretend that race is real and justice is abstract. 

Toni Morrison said this book should be required reading. It should, for most of us, also be required re-reading. Few people who call themselves white will really be able to take in what Coates says on first read. 

oh dear: about the nice white lady's book reviews

Well. That's uncomfortable. I was going to publish a list of my reviews of books by Black authors in time for Juneteenth, and I'm kind of horrified to realise that of the 161 book reviews I've published here, only 8 are by Black authors. Since people of African descent comprise only 3.5% of the Canadian population, I suppose that's actually representative, but it sure doesn't feel right.

Statistics Canada 2016 data

I don't actually review every book I read, but even so, I can and will do a lot better in reading mixed voices. Apparently, only 5% of Canada's population is Indigenous, but I've done an even worse job reading books by Indigenous authors, so ... ya. I've read relatively more books by authors of South Asian ancestry, but I think maybe that reading everything by Michael Ondaatje and Yann Martel, and the majority of Salman Rushdie's books, should really only count for one each - it's diversity of voices I'm interested in hearing. It's the people, not the books.

Anyway, this is the mini-list of now belated Juneteenth reviews/suggestions:

• Washington Black - Esi Edugyan
• Becoming - Michelle Obama 
• A Brief History of Seven Killings - Marlon James 
• Half-Blood Blues - Esi Edugyan 
• The Book of Negroes - Lawrence Hill 
• Say You're One of Them - Uwem Akepi
• Breath, Eyes, Memory - Edwidge Danticat
• Beloved - Toni Morrison

And my take-away - Canada is a lot less ethnically diverse than I thought and I need to do better choosing a wide-range of voices and artists to read.

Washington Black: a review

I hate when I read a book and forget to review it right away - I am simply not reliable to remember the details of the reading experience once I've moved on to another book. Which is all to say, this is what I think I thought about Washington Black, Esi Edugyan's third novel and second Giller Prize winner.

Esi Edugyan is the kind of writer who makes me ashamed to think that I could ever aspire to be a published author. Her skill with character, plot, language, culture, history, atmosphere, and so much more is stunning. Washington Black begins in Barbados (💗!), and travels to Virginia, Nova Scotia, Inu lands, England, Amsterdam and Morocco, all following the growth of our titular hero, Washington Black (aka Wash).

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One of the most striking elements of slavery revealed in Wash's story is how subject to the vagaries of fate and whiteness slaves were/are. The death of a relatively "kind" (one cannot own another human and be kind, but bear with me) master leaves Wash subject to a cruel and mercurial master. Rescued from that fate by the new master's "kinder" scientist brother, Wash has the protection of an "exceptional" mind, setting him apart from the other slaves and from many of the white people - and the free people of colour - he encounters on the plantation and once he and the master's brother flee Barbados.

If I had written this review last year when I read the book, this exceptionalism may have gone unnoticed and uncommented on. As I've recently been doing a lot of reading, listening and learning in response to the Black Lives Matter movement, however, the trope of exceptionalism feels somewhat problematic to me. His intelligence and artistry endear Wash, but I feel uneasy knowing that he has an easier life because of it. Why is the sweet, young, talented boy worth saving but his older, coarse, uncompliant mother figure isn't? Of course he never escapes racism or cruelty in all its iterations and measures no matter where he roams, and I appreciate that truth. Exceptionalism in relation to white supremacy allows for a black president of the United States to be considered "not that black." It allows for highly successful black Americans (Oprah, Tyler Perry, LeBron James) to be considered not representative of the communities they come from. Exceptionalism erases colour by raising the individual "above" others and above the systems in place to keep them "in their place." As a white reader of a book by an Afro-Canadian author, I am aware of this exceptionalism and I assume that Edugyan is using it in some other way - a way I am undoubtedly blind to.

Regarding the scientist brother "saviour," it's possible also to argue that he was not so much kinder as less honest about his assessment that Wash is disposable, useable, and less than fully human. He is painfully exploitive of the problem of the notion of the white saviour. It is a strength of Edugyan's characters that no one is wholly good, no one is predictable, and the "good" are only ever really "less bad" - and that in bits and pieces. Titch's complicity in the slave trade feels much too much like my own complicity in white supremacy for me to be at ease with his role. I am more at ease with the parts of the story that don't include him.

Quick-witted, intellectually stimulating, richly peopled and atmosphere, and moving at a compelling pace, Washington Black is a hugely readable and deeply enjoyable book. When Albert Camus said "fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth," Edugyan was exactly the kind of truth teller he was speaking of, and how fortunate we are to have truth-tellers like her.

Oh, and keep an eye out for the octopus. What an octopus!

Big Magic: a review

Another week, another book review. I'll say one thing for Covid-19 - it's been great for clearing my 'to read' stack. 

The entire premise of Big Magic, the eighth book by Elizabeth Gilbert (famed author of Eat, Pray, Love), is this: creating is scary. Do it anyway. 

Creating is a greatly varied and inherently human activity that we all do every day in some way - even if it's picking out an outfit. While Gilbert acknowledges that early on, she quickly focuses on writing, since that is her milieu, and on consciously and conscientiously choosing to create "to bring forth the treasures inside you." With occasional comments of "or painting, or dancing, or decorating bicycles," most of the examples Gilbert gives are of writers and writing and the writing life. The skills transfer. 

In one of my favourite examples, Gilbert describes being consumed by an idea, researching it vigorously, and then life getting in the way of her expressing that idea in a book. Having sat neglected several years, that idea made itself known to Ann Patchett (one of my all-time favourite novelists and a dear friend of Gilbert's), who had space in her life at the time to write the book - to get the inspiration out. Of course, to understand this example, you have to accept (and I do) Gilbert's vision of inspiration or ideas as free-spirited motes seeking a human partner to be made manifest in the world. Finding Gilbert unavailable to partner with at that time, the idea presented itself to Patchett. The way Gilbert tells the story is almost magical (hey, the book is called Big Magic after all), though she is very clear that magic and inspiration are nothing if you don't put in the time and effort. 

Another of  Gilbert's premises that really speaks to me is valuing curiosity over passion. I have often felt like there is something lacking in me because I don't have one big central driving passion. I have posted about it here several times, most explicitly when faced with the incredible (to me) passion of the man I loved. I enjoy writing, sure, but I also do it because it's easy for me. I equally enjoy singing, and being by the ocean, and chatting with my grandson (who pretty much ignores me right now, but give him time 💓). My point is, if there is anything I'm actually passionate about, it's curiosity. Passion is dark and stormy. Curiosity is a firefly. Passion is a mystery to me - uncatchable and sometimes destructive; curiosity is a life-long friend. Passion is sometimes threatening. Curiosity bring answers, and answers bring peace. When I can't find passion, I always have access to curiosity, which is currently lighting my path alongside a very captivating mote of inspiration. 

I've already posted last week that Gilbert recommends keeping your day job (or in my case getting a day job) and practising creativity daily. The first keeps creativity from crumbling under the weight of the electricity bill, the second makes a practitioner into a master. I may never write a best-seller and go on a nation-wide book promotion tour. Heck, I may not ever be paid to write again. But that's no reason not to write. Every day. Because it is a privilege to create, and playing with words makes me me. 

Reading Big Magic right now is timely for me. I like Gilbert's writing style - it's breezy and delightful. Her mojo might not be everyone's taste - there are certain people I can almost see rolling their eyes and muttering "get real." How very sad for them.

Some favourite motes of inspiration from the book:

on making

I'm midway through reading Elizabeth Gilbert's book on creativity, Big Magic. Full review to come when I'm done, of course, but something I read tonight really struck me. 

Gilbert is talking about keeping your "day job" even when you start getting paid for your art, because it takes the pressure off creativity and inspiration. A chapter earlier she spoke about being devoted to your craft/art/chosen field of expression and creating every single day, which can be a challenge to do when you also have a day job, and presumably outside obligations of family, community, etc. 

In Love's Civil War Elizabeth Bowen never talks about working at her writing like a job, but that approach comes through in her letters, and sometimes in Charles Ritchie's diary entries complaining that she has work to do during his visits. 

The intersection of these two reads comes when Gilbert - giving examples of people working and making time/space for their art - writes, "People don't do this kind of thing because they have all kinds of extra time and energy for it; they do this kind of thing because their creativity matters to them enough that they are willing to make all kinds of extra sacrifices for it. Unless you come from landed gentry that's what everyone does." (First emphasis mine, later emphasis Gilbert's). 

The thing is, Elizabeth Bowen was, essentially, landed gentry. She inherited Bowen's Court - her family estate in Co. Cork - was raised alongside lords and ladies and Sackville-Wests, and she still struggled to live off her earnings as a writer. Her lifestyle wasn't exactly going to land her on People of Walmart, mind you, but she did whatever side writing she could - having a standing order for book reviews for magazines, teaching summer writing courses for adults, taking writer in residence gigs, and just barely being saved from writing a "gauche" interview with Princess Margaret about the princess' affair with Peter Townsend. Bowen was a well-known author of several novels, and she ground away at whatever paid writing she could get to keep body and soul together (eventually selling the family estate and taking up residence in an English cottage). I suppose real landed gentry would have an income from their estate, but my point remains (and this may be a news to no one but me):

1. Writing (or whatever form of creativity inspires and calls to you) must be given time and energy consistently over long periods of you're going to get any good at it. 

2. Almost no one can live off the profits of writing (or painting, or sculpting or dancing, or blacksmithing) alone. That's no reason not to go on creating.