Black Literature – …on the B.L.

Black History Month 2020

February 1, 2020February 1, 2020 RaeAnna

Happy Black History Month!

Holy crap. I can’t believe it’s February already. I feel like I haven’t done anything productive this year. Oh well, there are still 336 days left to turn this shit around.

Back on topic:
There are so many amazing heritage months during the year. Every year, I try and focus on one or two because I can’t focus on them all. Damnit! The very first year, I spent February celebrating black women for Black History Month. (Last year, I focused on Asian American Pacific Heritage Month and LGBTQIA+ Pride Month.) It was wonderful. On Instagram, I talked about a different amazing black woman every day, focusing on lesser known movers and shakers throughout history. I only read books penned by black women. These women are/were incredible. They have been the backbone of this country for centuries. Well, not just this country, but that’s a much longer story. They deserve far more recognition than they have ever gotten. For as much as I knew before that month, I learned so much more. It started amazing conversations, which I would have never had otherwise. I expanded my mind and my heart. I love being a nerdy blogger because my focus is on educating myself and pushing others to do the same. I read books about a variety of things from memoirs by comediennes to novels to nonfiction. You can’t know something until you know it, and there was so much I didn’t know. There is so much I don’t know. It’s why I keep reading: to educate myself, to be better, to do good in the world.

I push a very intersectional feminist agenda. I didn’t have a huge following back then, but I knew from the beginning I wanted to use whatever my platform was to showcase incredible humans of diverse backgrounds and voices. Not to speak for them, but be a channel for which their voices could be heard or realized or found. It’s hard to know something you don’t know, which is why I try to showcase the divergent world in which we exist. It’s so easy to be caught in our own bubble, but outside our bubbles, a world seethes with an indescribable amount of individuality and intersection. We are all humans. Our existence is uniquely our own, but it also overlaps in so many fascinating ways. We are more alike than we are different. But it’s impossible to experience the unique overlapping of humanity trapped in our own spheres of being.

That first year blogging and Instagramming was enlightening. Racism exists. It’s rampant. It’s horrible. It’s everywhere from our grandparents to the media to our own internal bias. For as much love and support as I received, I also encountered a great deal of dickweasels. I lost over 500 followers because I was highlighting black women. I heard “There are incredible white women too,” or “What about black men?” I wasn’t saying black women were better than anyone else. I was saying we, as humans, are all beautiful and fascinating, but let’s bear witness to an overlooked and left behind and oppressed group of people because they need and deserve love and acceptance and have the right to be seen. I may have lost 500 followers, who I didn’t want anyways if I’m being honest, but I gained over 1,000 new followers. I heard so many comments of support and awe. It’s not about the followers; it’s about what those numbers represent. Hatred exists in the world, but I have found kindness and compassion weighs heavier. People want a better world. People want to do better. People want to grow. People want to give and receive kindness.

This year for Black History Month, I’m not just focusing on women. I’m reading books by black authors. I won’t be highlighting a person every day because honestly, it was a lot of work and research, and my job has been keeping me very busy lately, and I don’t have the time. I truly wish I did. I hope to expand my mind and those of everyone who cares enough to follow along on this journey. I’m still completely baffled people care what I have to say, but if you’re listening – in this case, reading – I will be using my voice to raise awareness and advocate for change, peace, kindness, love, acceptance, tolerance, and a beautifully colorful world. Although, I try and do this all the time, so Black History Month really isn’t all that different than any other month. It’s just a more one directionally focused month.

So far there are only seven books on the list, but I might try and sneak an eighth in there since there are eight book review days in February. If you haven’t noticed, I post every Tuesday and Thursday. Send me your recommendations if you have any!!! What I’m reading this month:

The Black Book
Dapper Dan by Daniel R. Day
How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Becoming by Michelle Obama
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Charged by Emily Bazelon (It’s not by a black woman, but it does talk about an issue that affects the black community at much higher rates than white people.)

bisous und обьятий,
RaeAnna

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Books, Fiction

Passing by Nella Larsen

July 10, 2019July 9, 2019 RaeAnna

Worth A Read YES
Length 301
Quick Review Irene Redfield is a proud black woman living in the 1920s. She runs into a childhood friend, who no longer identifies as black.

201907061493772958901412110 — Passing by Nella Larsen | Dress | Belt | Watch | Shoes

Some books stay with you long after you read them; Passing by Nella Larsen is one of those books. There’s really nothing I dislike about this book. Small and powerful, this 1920s novel holds up ninety years later.

Irene Redfield and Clare Bellew grew up in the same neighborhood in Chicago before losing touch. They are both black women living in the 1920s with families when they meet again in a whites only establishment. The difference is: Irene is living her life as a black woman, but Clare is passing in the world as a white woman. The novel continues filled with familial, women’s, cultural, racial issues and more. There is never a dull moment in Irene’s life or mental state.

Passing is told in three parts from Irene’s perspective. Irene is smart, independent, and empathetic but also a product of her time and culture. There is so much emotional variance and abundance throughout the work. Irene is a black woman living in a white world but far more happy in her oppressed circumstances than Clare, who is living as a white woman in a white world with the constant fear of being exposed and a hunger for a community with a shared background. Larsen has so much insight into the human psyche surpassing yet encompassing race.

Nella Larsen is a beloved author of the Harlem Renaissance. Passing is one of her most well-known works published in 1929. A lot of things have changed in ninety years, but we definitely do not live in a post racial world. So many things ring true in this novel. The conversations held in white living rooms feel like something my racist/bigoted family members might say. Questions along the lines of “Oh! And your husband, is he – is he – er – dark, too?” are still uttered by people trying to be tactful but falling absolutely short.

Larsen’s use of language and punctuation is incredible. It’s one of those books you want to sit with letting the words roll through your mind reveling in the meaning and feeling of it all. Authors often use punctuation without thinking about it or having fun with it, but Passing has fun with punctuation using it to make points “And the eyes were magnificent! dark, sometimes absolutely black lashes.” I love her usage of commas; they help bring the reader into the angry, confused psyche of Irene

I have so many things to say about Passing. The ending is incredible. The entire book is an incredible piece of literature. I can see why Modern Library included it in its inaugural Torchbearers series.

Memorable Quotes
“Nevertheless, Irene felt, in turn, anger, scorn, and fear slide over her.”
“Why, simply because of Clare Kendry, who had exposed her to such torment, had she failed to take up the defence of the race to which she belonged?”
“”It’s easy for a Negro to ‘pass’ for white. But I don’t think it would be so simple for a white person to ‘pass’ for coloured.””

Buy on Amazon | Buy on Barnes & Noble | Buy on Book Depository
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Title: Passing
Author: Nella Larsen
Publisher: Modern Library (Penguin Random House)
Copyright: 2019
ISBN: 9780375758133

Books

Blackass

September 25, 2017 RaeAnna

Read Yes
Length 272
Quick Review A modern retelling of Kafka’s Metamorphosis exploring identity through race in Lagos, Nigeria after a black man wakes up as a white man.

A. Igoni Barrett brings a new depth to a classic novel by diving into the complicated issue of race in Nigeria as well as the power of perception. Barrett writes with incredible wit.

Furo wakes up one morning to discover his once dark skin is now very pink and pale. Blackass follows Furo as he navigates the world he was once familiar with through very different eyes.

Furo is a young man in his early thirties. For the young and all ages in between, Twitter and Facebook have become incredibly integral parts of our lives, and Barrett is able to incorporate these aspects into the narrative. An entire section of the novel is dedicated to sleuthing through tweets, as we have all cyberstalked someone once. Barrett also describes the difficult challenge of trying to shut down a Facebook page and needing Google to find the answer. Technology has permeated every aspect of our lives including our literature.

Barrett explores how truly powerful perception can be both in favor and against a person. As people, we immediately begin sorting people into different classes by the way they look. Though we do our best to fight it, it is an intrinsic quality we have. Even the Nigerians tend to prefer whiteness to blackness in everything they do from the little things from bleaching cream to deferential treatment to blatant statements that white westerners are more together than black Africans.

The most interesting aspect of the novel is how well Barrett is able to capture the depth and range of the female experience in such a short novel. There are several women who weave in and out of Furo’s story. Each woman is able to portray a different woman’s part in society. In moments, I was astounded at the depth of understanding Barrett had for the female condition. It is powerful and moving in its unwavering honesty.

Barrett writes a captivating novel from beginning to end.

Memorable Quotes
“Then again, she had never faced the parental pressure he did – a woman can find a husband to take care of her, but a man must take care of his wife…”
“… I was already trying to say what I see now, that we are all constructed narratives.”
“A white man in Lagos has no voice louder than the dollar sign branded on to his forehead.”
“No one asks you to be born, to be black or white or any colour in between, and yet the identity a person is born into becomes the hardest to explain to the world.”
“Who I was as a person was more than what I looked like, but then again, how people saw me was a part of who I was.”
“Womanhood comes with its peculiar burdens, among them the distant reminder of subordinate status whose dominant symptom was uninvited sexual attention from men.”
“Pity the man who never becomes the woman he could be.”
“‘And you’re a white man. You don’t have to fuck anyone for favours.’”
“No one’s path is laid out from birth, we must all choose our own through life, and what greater gift is given a person than the chance to see the destinations where the roads not taken might have led you.”

Title: Blackass
Author: A. Igoni Barrett
Publisher: Graywolf Press (Vintage/Penguin Random House)
Copyright: 2015
ISBN: 9781555977337