Holy hell, this deserves seven stars at least. The dated section headers (e.g., February 2020, June 2020) feel portentous and Erdrich is definitely whHoly hell, this deserves seven stars at least. The dated section headers (e.g., February 2020, June 2020) feel portentous and Erdrich is definitely who we want to be chronicling our times. Both rich and fun, set in an indie bookstore haunted by a patron whose cause of death might have been the last sentence she read – I mean, good luck to all the other books, living up to this one. It meanders a bit in the second half but I was thrilled that there was so much to read and sad when it ended....more
I can’t do it justice so I won’t try. If you haven’t read it yet, I’m jealous of you and also excited for you. I loved this book so much I hugged it.
I can’t do it justice so I won’t try. If you haven’t read it yet, I’m jealous of you and also excited for you. I keep buying it and giving it away. I am grateful that it exists and horrified that it sat on my bookshelf for a couple of months and what if I never picked it up and read it??
Two favorite excerpts, the first especially because it’s a phenomenon I have chafed at since I could remember, understood it was a way of insisting on the otherness of people of color, and could never articulate exactly why that was, but here it is, from a beautiful genius no less:
I have no illusions, by which I mean to tell you it is a fact, that one of the objectives of popular culture, popular media, is to make blackness appear to be inextricable from suffering, and suffering from blackness. ...Clever as hell if your goal is to make appear natural what is, in fact, by design.
And the delight? You have been reading a book of delights written by a black person. A book of black delight.
Daily as air.
And:
Goddamn. How often do you get to see someone slow dancing with a pigeon! And not thirty seconds later, walking toward Eighth, giggling at my good fortune, a tufted titmouse swooped by my head, landing on a wrought-iron gate, upon which a pedestrian walking past me immediately pulled from her snazzy jacket pocket a baggie of crumbs, and the bird hopped directly into her hand, nuzzling the goodies intermittent with tweeting toward its new pal, the bird and woman both nodding at me gawking at them, smiling at my bafflement, as though to say, We’re everywhere.
Gorgeous prose. I gulped this one down. Some highlights:
"These handwritten words in the pages of my journal confirm that from an early age I have expeGorgeous prose. I gulped this one down. Some highlights:
"These handwritten words in the pages of my journal confirm that from an early age I have experienced each encounter in my life twice: once in the world, and once again on the page."
"She was a Coyote, a trickster, a woman deflecting an interest in her to an interest in others. In my mother's presence, you were heard. And she always left knowing a lot more about you than you knew about her. She preferred it that way. She was warm and gracious in public, but she was a master at maintaining her privacy. Intimacy was on her terms."
"Ravens are standing on a pile of bones–black typeface on white paper picking an idea clean. It's what I do each time I sit down to write. What else are we to do with our obsessions? Do they feed us? Or are we simply scavenging our memories for one gleaming image to tell the truth of what is hunting us?"
"How do you contain within a domestic relationship a howling respect for the wild in each other?"...more
I was hoping this would be calming, beautiful meditations on the natural world, to read in small sips before bed. It started off that way, but oh my lI was hoping this would be calming, beautiful meditations on the natural world, to read in small sips before bed. It started off that way, but oh my lord, this book. I ended up suckerpunched, lying in the dark for hours with giant, peeled eyeballs. Too wrecked to say more so I will just leave you with maybe the most beautiful characterization I’ve ever read of being an artist:
It is six A.M., and I am working. I am absentminded, reckless, heedless of social obligations, etc. It is as it must be. The tire goes flat, the tooth falls out, there will be a hundred meals without mustard. The poem gets written. I have wrestled with the angel and I am stained with light and I have no shame. … If I have a meeting with you at three o’clock, rejoice if I am late. Rejoice even more if I do not arrive at all.
For the first chunk of Orlando, I was one of those readers (see the link below) who super missed the point. It felt lighter and easier to read than whFor the first chunk of Orlando, I was one of those readers (see the link below) who super missed the point. It felt lighter and easier to read than what I remember of Woolf, and I thought it was Woolf’s just for funsies written privately for Vita Sackville-West (whatever that even means for a burning genius). Anyway, I was wrong.
Once Orlando changes from man to woman (not a spoiler), the book skewers male privilege. It’s also laugh-out-loud funny, which is a feat in itself since we’re talking about systemic inequity here. Some favorite moments:
“'If the sight of my ankles means death to an honest fellow who, no doubt, has a wife and family to support, I must, in all humanity, keep them covered,' Orlando thought. Yet her legs were among her chiefest beauties.”
“She was married, true; but if one’s husband was always sailing around Cape Horn, was it marriage? If one liked him, was it marriage? If one liked other people, was it marriage? And finally, if one still wished, more than anything in the whole world, to write poetry, was it marriage? She had her doubts.”
"Surely, since she is a woman, and a beautiful woman, and a woman in the prime of life, she will soon give over this pretence of writing and thinking and begin to think, at least of a gamekeeper (and as long as she thinks of a man, nobody objects to a woman thinking)."
"She had thought of literature all these years (her seclusion, her rank, her sex must be her excuse) as something wild as the wind, hot as fire, swift as lightning; something errant, incalculable, abrupt, and behold, literature was an elderly gentleman in a gray suit talking about duchesses."
I was blown away by how good these essays are - concise, easy to follow, and a touch lyrical. Chang is so smart and so good at articulating why true eI was blown away by how good these essays are - concise, easy to follow, and a touch lyrical. Chang is so smart and so good at articulating why true equity matters (spoiler alert: it’s love, and everyone, oppressor and oppressed and in between, deserves it) without getting sentimental. He uses timely headlines (#OscarsSoWhite, Bay Area gentrification, Ferguson, Fresh Off the Boat) as a starting point to show how we got here. The central premise is that when it comes to the push for racial equality, the US has been caught in repeating cycles of extreme crisis, reaction, and then backlash, leading us back to an environment where the next crisis is inevitable. Guess where we are right now?
Another main theme is that diversity in its current form has been commodified at the expense of true equity, while resegregation has crept back into education, the arts, and of course, housing. Within the collection of essays, the piece on Ferguson and Black Lives Matter then functions as the boiling point and the starkest illustration of the impact of inequality. It hurts to read, which it should, e.g., we get a glimpse of the existential, universal questions Mike Brown was mulling over minutes before he was shot by police.
I also appreciated that nothing in Chang’s essays is simple or distilled down to black and white; the notion of micro-aggressions and being in between permeates throughout. The last essay, The In-Betweens, on the weirdness of Asian-American privilege through omission, the often nullifying experience of being neither black nor white in the U.S., is also a good call to action for everyone, both to get off the fence and not to transfer inequity onto someone else’s shoulders.
Despite its title, the book is slim on hope, but another common thread in each essay is where Chang pushes us to imagine how we could be better:
The real benefit of a vital, equitable culture lies well beyond the money there is to be made. It offers us a sense of individual worth, bolsters our collective adaptability, and forms a foundation for social progress. In that sense, cultural diversity is just like biodiversity—at its best, it functions like a creative ecosystem. The final product of culture is not a commodity, it is society.
But we are far from that ideal. If cultural activism and justice movements can succeed in decentering whiteness and improving access and representation—and all the evidence suggests that the odds on that are still very long—we will still need to address the ways in which we see each other. Perhaps one day we may no longer need an #OscarsSoWhite hashtag. But we will still have to deal with the kinds of inequities that made #NotYourMule. What, then, will a culture of transformation look like?
To be honest, it bothers me a lot that this book has been so under the radar. Seriously, why isn't everyone reading this? Yes, it’s uncomfortable and puts us all on the hook, but that’s where we belong. It’s also really fun to read a smart take on Lemonade.
Since Chang is the most articulate advocate for reading his book, here are some excellent interviews he did:
This is the quintessential book about nothing (really, nothing happens at all, and the climactic scene is an intense conversation in which Colette getThis is the quintessential book about nothing (really, nothing happens at all, and the climactic scene is an intense conversation in which Colette gets to be smug about being too old and powerful to give any fucks anymore). As with all Colette’s writing, her surroundings (St. Tropez this time!) are all-important, vividly depicted, and make you wonder how you tolerate your colorless existence. There’s the sun-soaked garden and swimming in the Mediterranean, fragrant evening air and simple meals and dancing. Excuse me while I weep at my cubicle.
Something I found interesting - this book is supposedly semi-autobiographical and to read it you’d develop the impression that Colette was elderly when it all happened. She was actually probably nearing 50, so that sort of dampens the fascination of a strapping 35-year-old falling in love with a much-older French lady....more
Even though I like almost every book I read, it's so much easier to pick apart the minor grievances of a 3-star book (and feel all smug and annoying wEven though I like almost every book I read, it's so much easier to pick apart the minor grievances of a 3-star book (and feel all smug and annoying while doing it) and so much harder to articulate the genius of a 5-star book. Part of it is intimidation - which of my unremarkable thoughts should I really be airing about Mary Karr, Rebecca Solnit, or Patti Smith? And part of it is a total inability to convey that sense of awe.
I thought I’d give it a try here but I just can’t. Patti Smith processes daily life much more beautifully and interestingly than the rest of us, and that’s all I got. How do I become like Patti Smith?...more
I put off reading this for years because I wanted to have it to look forward to, but picked it up recently because I started worrying I would die befoI put off reading this for years because I wanted to have it to look forward to, but picked it up recently because I started worrying I would die before I got to it. So glad I read it in my lifetime because it was glorious. Oyeyemi gets better and better.
All your books seem to be about migration and the need to belong.
No, no! This is a thing people always talk to me about, but with The Icarus Girl, I wanted to write a doppelganger story. White is for Witching was my haunted-house/vampire story. But people get a bit excited if there's a black person and say, "Oh this is about that thing" when actually it's about expanding the genre of haunted house stories.
Way to shut it down (and what a facile, aggravating line of questioning). It’s so true that we assume immigrant stories must be a quest for acceptance - in part because those were the only stories about immigrants that were getting published for so long - but acceptance seems to be beside the point in Boy, Snow, Bird (it’s often beside the point for immigrants). Oyeyemi has a lot to say about race, but the gruesome fairytale-ness of Boy, Snow, Bird is universal. When you already know acceptance isn’t an option and you’re faced with an existential threat, sometimes your choices are dark, maybe violent.
Just imagine what Oyeyemi will be writing at 65. I’m not sure the world is good enough for that. ...more
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