Booked All Week

Oh. My. Gosh. LIFE SOMETIMES, RIGHT?! A few months ago I warned you that I would likely be very busy with my last semester of undergrad, and other things, and that posting would be slow. Little did you (or I!) know, I was actually about to disappear from this blog for months. MONTHS.

I guess the good news about not having been able to do hardly any just-for-fun reading lately is that there’s not very much to catch up on. :/ On the other hand, it’s been really difficult to revitalize my drive to read, which makes me sad. It’s all over now, but I am intellectually exhausted and want to do nothing but watch X-Files (good thing it’s streaming on Netflix!). So, I’m working on that. In the meantime, though, I will try to remember what I can about the last book I did finish, which also happened to be GREAT and will surely remain one of my favorites this year.

Wizard of the Crow takes place in the fictional country of Aburiria, a totalitarian state in which the people suffer under a dictator who squanders all the nation’s resources on a modern Tower of Babel, a structure tall enough to unite The Ruler with the ultimate power and omniscience of God. But he is challenged by a growing number of subversives lead by the unlikely pair of the elusive mystic Kamiti and the practical, confrontational Nyawira. Posing together as The Wizard of the Crow, they begin to diagnose the corrupt government officials and businessmen that seek their help in secrecy with internalized racism and destructive envy of white male power. Finally their reputation leads them straight to The Ruler himself, who is yet to identify them as the source of the political humiliation he is beginning to suffer at the hands of unruly queuing peasants and, worst of all, non-submissive women, in front of his Global Bank acquaintances and the international community at large.

Though the book deals with heavy themes, it is written with a strong sense of humor and never felt anything but lively despite its great length (though I will admit the last hundred pages–of about seven hundred–were a bit pedantic!). I loved his use of magical realism, his dialogue, and especially his female characters. I especially love that they led the resistance by exaggeratedly fulfilling their traditional roles and, later, by establishing an all female people’s court to try and punish perpetrators of domestic violence, revealing links between “the personal and the political”. This kind of satire may seem familiar, but this book feels far from tired.

Though I know little of Kenya’s history, I think it’s fair to read what I do know into this novel. But having just finished a course on the DRC and Rwanda, it seems equally possible to read a bit of post-colonial Africa in general into it. Towards the end, Thiong’o plays explicitly with pan-Africanism, which I think validates that reading. I look forward to learning more about Kenya’a specific past with this book in mind.

Inventive, ranging, and assertive…this chunkster comes highly recommended.

This book counts toward both The Africa Challenge and my own private Kenya project, on which I have fallen far, far behind. Ditto A Year of Feminist Classics, which I plan to catch up on in good time. 

Wow. So, after making a quick trip to a cousin’s wedding and having to replace my old computer, it’s been really hard to get back into the rhythm of writing about what I’m reading. It’s been made no less difficult by the amount of school work I need to make up, and by the amount of time I’m spending with my band preparing for SXSW next week. In any case, I woke up early this morning, so let’s see if I can eke out just one post real quick!

Feminism is for Everybody was our first pick for The Year of Feminist Classics 2012. It’s a brief introductory text that covers a number of topics and is both inclusive and honest about the strengths and weaknesses of feminist movement politics. hooks maintains a relaxed tone and seems to speak directly and comfortably to the reader about the relationships between feminism, sexuality, class, race, gender, U.S. history, parenting, love, and more. Short chapters keep the reading brisk and engaged, but remain substantive. In other words, it was a great place to start this year’s project.

hooks wrote this book to be a straightforward primer that would serve to explain some of feminism’s key concepts to the uninitiated or misinformed, and in that sense I’d say she the book is a success. However, it isn’t perfect. I wish she’d done a bit more contextualizing, for example…feminism in the United States didn’t start with the Second Wave in the ’60′s and ’70′s, and this work was very much grounded in a specific era of feminist thought.

On the project discussion page for this month, Amy asked:

do you think this book would convince someone who didn’t identify as a feminist why it is important to do so / that they might want to do so?

I really like what onereadleaf had to say about this. She describes coming to identify personally with feminism as a process, and my experience with it was similar. Many of us have had “click moments”, but for me those had to be followed up by long bouts of introspection and info-seeking before I became comfortable using the term “feminist” to describe myself. So, I don’t know if this book alone would “convert” someone who wasn’t already a feminist or at least interested in feminism, but that’s okay: instead, it works to familiarize the reader with a diverse and conflictual set of related questions and beliefs; to reveal the ways in which the struggle for gender equality is relevant to us all, no matter who we are. It’s a place to start.

But, while I would recommend this to new feminists or people interested in feminism, I would include with it recommendations to more contemporary sources, including blogs. The book is only about ten years old, but as onereadleaf also points out, the internet changed a lot of things for popular feminism and this book predates those changes. The content of the book isn’t outdated because of that, I don’t think, but some of the language marks it as very, very ’80′s to me, which: fair enough! bell hooks is certainly the product of an older time, even if the book is new. I was especially struck by her repeated use of “females” and “males” as nouns, for example, because I only ever see them as adjectives in feminist writing now, IF that. Also, phrases like “white male capitalist patriarchy” are not inaccurate in describing interlinking systems of oppression, but they are just so typically ’80′s (and so typically bell hooks, too). I don’t think these things are a big deal, at all. But they don’t feel entirely current.

And another thing: my recommendations for new feminists or those curious about feminism would need to include specific examples about the ways in which we’re all affected by sexism and the strategies that feminists might use to think about them or act against them, too. hooks is great at introducing feminist sensibility, but she can be very vague about it’s application!

Amy also asks:

hooks defines feminism simply as:

“A movement to end sexist oppression”

What do you think of that…?

I like it. I like that it’s simple and cooperative, rather than individualistic. I like that it’s flexible and open to interpretation. I also like “the struggle toward gender equality”, as it’s more about making something than ending something. I like that hooks argues that feminism is and must always be political, and that she emphasizes activism. I don’t think you have to be an activist to be a feminist, though…unless you consider challenging your own viewpoints, the sexist status quo, and standing up for the gender equality you believe in to be activism

All in all, I trust and respect bell hooks, and agree with her most of the time if not all (she said something about prostitution in one chapter that made me lift an eyebrow). I think it makes a good introduction to certain feminist issues, particularly those first articulated in the ’60′s and ’70′s which have persisted to trouble us in the early twenty-first century. I would gladly pass it along to those who’d like a primer, but it probably wouldn’t be the only thing I’d give them. A list of other recommendations deserves it’s own post, perhaps one day to come…

For now, please excuse the possibility of another lengthy blog silence. I will try to schedule some updates for when I’m out of town the next few weeks, but no guarantees. I’ve been reading some really great stuff, and can’t wait to talk about it with you eventually!

ETA: OH, I forgot. This book also counts toward the Read and Resist Tucson challenge, as it’s one of the books that was banned there in conjunction with ethnic studies!

That’s right. At the end of last year, I was aware of few challenges that looked interesting to me, but craving more structured reading I opted for creating two fun projects for myself instead. I’ll still be doing these, but I’m also going to join two new challenges, both because I want to support them and because they overlap significantly with my own projects and with my reading for a Year of Feminist Classics.

The first is Kinna’s Africa Challenge, for which I will read:

5 books.  That’s it.  There will be no other levels.  Of course, participants are encouraged to read more than 5 books.  Eligible books include those which are written by African writers, or take place in Africa, or are concerned with Africans and with historical and contemporary African issues. Note that at least 3 books must be written by African writers.

My previously-stated personal goal to read five books by Kenyan authors, and one non-fiction book about Kenya before my travels there next summer/fall, means that if I satisfy those goals I will also satisfy the requirements of the challenge. I’m going to read more than that, though, and include at least one or two books from other countries so as not feel completely that I’m cheating somehow (though I know overlap is okay). I read The Famished Road by Ben Okri last month, too, so I’m already one book into this challenge

The second I’ll be joining is the Read and Resist Tucson! challenge hosted by Melissa at The Feminist Texican. Like Melissa, I’m outraged about Arizona’s banning of ethnic (Mexican American) studies classes and the subsequent removal of more than eighty books from classrooms and school curriculums–from prominent Chicano/a and Native American authors like Rudolfo Anaya and Sherman Alexie to Howard Zinn and bell hooks–on the grounds that they supposedly:

• Promote the overthrow of the United States government.
• Promote resentment toward a race or class of people.
• Are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group.
• Advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.