drop everything and read
Sep. 19th, 2010 02:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pauraque_bkOh wow, I just found out that ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
50books_poc exists. I wanna do it. As soon as I read what the challenge was, I felt that familiar sense of resistance which I've learned means I shouldn't actually resist. Because it isn't based on actual reluctance -- it's the feeling of my brain fighting with my ignorant gut.
Brain: This would be fun and I'd read a lot of books I'd like, especially the sf/f authors that always get mentioned when someone claims falsely that sf/f is all written by white people, but have never gotten around to reading.
Gut: It'll all be depressing and make me feel guilty, just like the books I had to read in school.
My gut is stupid. I hardly liked *any* of the books I had to read in school, including the ones by white authors. And of the ones I did like, some were by authors of color. And to the extent that the depressing/guilty thing is true, a lot of it was directly caused by my teachers, not the books they set. Nobody ever told me that the point isn't to feel guilty and depressed, the point is to listen, question your assumptions, and discard assumptions that are wrong -- and, you know, to enjoy the book, if it is actually a good book. I do enjoy reading, but I had a lot of teachers to whom this concept was apparently foreign, and even for the ones who tried to show us what was cool and interesting and admirable and enjoyable about Shakespeare or Salinger, it was amazing how their demeanor and the questions they asked shifted when we read POC authors. And not just books that actually were depressing; everything became somber and dry and take-your-medicine-it's-good-for-you, often for absolutely no reason. It was like being beaten over the head with a white guilt stick.
If the prospect of reading another OMG CULTURAL DIVERISTY book makes your class groan because they know what's coming, you are doing it wrong and making shit worse. I cringe at the thought of how those reactions affected the (many) non-white kids I went to school with. How could it come off as anything other than "oh no, we don't want to hear about YOU again"?
Well, fuck you, crappy teachers. I'm going to go read some good books, and you can't stop me.
50books_poc exists. I wanna do it. As soon as I read what the challenge was, I felt that familiar sense of resistance which I've learned means I shouldn't actually resist. Because it isn't based on actual reluctance -- it's the feeling of my brain fighting with my ignorant gut.Brain: This would be fun and I'd read a lot of books I'd like, especially the sf/f authors that always get mentioned when someone claims falsely that sf/f is all written by white people, but have never gotten around to reading.
Gut: It'll all be depressing and make me feel guilty, just like the books I had to read in school.
My gut is stupid. I hardly liked *any* of the books I had to read in school, including the ones by white authors. And of the ones I did like, some were by authors of color. And to the extent that the depressing/guilty thing is true, a lot of it was directly caused by my teachers, not the books they set. Nobody ever told me that the point isn't to feel guilty and depressed, the point is to listen, question your assumptions, and discard assumptions that are wrong -- and, you know, to enjoy the book, if it is actually a good book. I do enjoy reading, but I had a lot of teachers to whom this concept was apparently foreign, and even for the ones who tried to show us what was cool and interesting and admirable and enjoyable about Shakespeare or Salinger, it was amazing how their demeanor and the questions they asked shifted when we read POC authors. And not just books that actually were depressing; everything became somber and dry and take-your-medicine-it's-good-for-you, often for absolutely no reason. It was like being beaten over the head with a white guilt stick.
If the prospect of reading another OMG CULTURAL DIVERISTY book makes your class groan because they know what's coming, you are doing it wrong and making shit worse. I cringe at the thought of how those reactions affected the (many) non-white kids I went to school with. How could it come off as anything other than "oh no, we don't want to hear about YOU again"?
Well, fuck you, crappy teachers. I'm going to go read some good books, and you can't stop me.
