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Tsundoku

12:19 AM

Aug 22, 2020 at 19:10, by Eddie Kal

My recent struggle has to do with convincing people that a lot of things are not opinion-based. Racism is a fact, not an opinion. So is homophobia. But a lot of people have to be on their toes even when they are stating a fact: there's systemic racism in the world.

Reminds me of something Baldwin wrote in No Name in the Street: "White children, in the main, and whether they are rich or poor, grow up with a grasp of reality so feeble that they can very accurately be described as deluded—about themselves and the world they live in. (...)"

"The reason for this, at bottom, is that the doctrine of white supremacy, which still controls most white people, is itself a stupendous delusion: but to be born black in America is an immediate, a mortal challenge."

Basically, white children grow up with the illusion that there is no such thing as racism, while black people can't escape it. (And the book contains many examples.)

Another literary anniversary: Golding's Lord of the Flies was published 70 years ago.

8 hours later…

Tsundoku

8:46 AM

@NewTopicChallengeSuggestion The James Baldwin proposal needs (at least) two extra votes if we want this reading challenge before the end of his centenary year.

Rand al'Thor

9:32 AM

@verbose For my part, I simply have no clue (and don't care) about the skin colour of most of the authors proposed for topic challenges. Maryse Condé and August Wilson, for example - I wouldn't even have known if either/neither/both of them were black, until you mentioned one but not the other in your little list of black authors. I'm interested in their works, but unless they're writing about race issues, I really can't see any relevance in their skin colour.

I'm also personally much more interested in reading African literature than any kind of American literature (including African-American). I'd like to learn more about the many African cultures and peoples and the rich history of that continent, whereas US culture has already imposed itself enough on the world that my default (which may of course change according to the blurb for a given proposal) is to view any American-literature proposal as not being in the spirit of topic challenges.

Tsundoku

9:47 AM

@Randal'Thor The thing is that if you're white, you have (or: one has, since that includes me) no experience of systemic racism, whereas black authors who have lived in the Western world always have. Skin colour is very relevant to racism.

Rand al'Thor

Of course skin colour is very relevant to racism, but neither of those are necessarily relevant to the appreciation of literature.

Tsundoku

Antiquarian booksellers are a weird lot. Sometimes, almost every copy of a book I look up on Buchfreund.de (which allows you to search the catalogues of dozens of such booksellers) is more expensive than when I buy it new, even when the book has no special value to book collectors. They often set prices that are disconnected from real market value.

New Topic Challenge Suggestion

10:18 AM

A: New Literature SE Topic Challenge Suggestions Thread

The Works of Mariama Bâ Mariama Bâ (1929–1981) was a Senegalese author and feminist. She published two novels in French. Une si longue lettre (1979; translated as So Long a Letter) is a semi-autobiographical epistolary work in which she expressed her frustration with the fate of African women. B...

Bookworm

10:54 AM

Q: Is there an edition of "Life on the Mississippi" with historical commentary?

I've just started reading Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain, and have already noticed both obviously erroneous statements (like the claim that the Mississippi together with the Missouri is the longest river in the world) and unfamiliar historical contexts. Being non-American myself (and not h...

9 hours later…

Clara Díaz Sanchez

7:54 PM

@Tsundoku “One reason the owners of secondhand bookshops always seem slightly unearthly is that many of them really are, having strayed into this world after taking a wrong turning in their own bookshops in worlds where it is considered commendable business practice to wear carpet slippers all the time and open your shop only when you feel like it.”

Tsundoku

8:09 PM

I had to look that up. I've never read Terry Pratchett.

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