Some suggested reading
Aug. 7th, 2007 08:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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ibarw for lots of links and resources.
Here's some suggested reading. In no particular order:
1. Richard Wright, Black Boy
An autobiography, taking place in the early decades of the twentieth century. We read Black Boy in high school, and parts of it have stayed with me for twenty years - Wright pretending he can't read and that he's been sent to borrow library books for a White employer; another employer, a housewife, asking "Do you steal?", and Wright laughing at the ridiculousness of the question - who's going to answer yes? But my most powerful impression is of the young Wright's eternal, nagging pangs of hunger.
2. Chaim Potok, The Chosen
Another high school book, this time a novel set amongst Hasidic Jews in New York in the thirties and forties. Pretty much everything I learned about Judaism from The Chosen was new to me. (Weirdly, the Hebrew word chellaf starts turning up in my terrible teenage poetry.) I was fascinated by the young men's complete absorption in their studies - nerd heroes! - and have never forgotten the advice, that you can't just read Freud, you have to study him - applicable to many authors and subjects.
3. Ali Rattansi, Racism: a Very Short Introduction. I'm still a few pages from the end of this, actually. It's pulled together a lot of stuff I already knew about racism, filled in a lot of gaps, and put all of it into context for me. (I vaguely knew that science debunked the concept of "race" - Rattansi devotes a whole chapter to it, which resulted in an incoherent awestruck posting in this very LJ. :-) The book is written in a scholarly style, but without jargon, and particularly focusses on the UK.
4. bell hooks, Bone Black
Another autobiography, this time set in the fifties and sixties. I've read a little non-fiction by bell hooks - the terrific clarity with which she presents her thinking is also present in Bone Black, which is filled with the powerful sense impressions of childhood. The young girl is a misfit in her own family, constantly warned that all that reading will drive her insane. The image that will remain with me forever is of a child putting out the fire in his grandfather's clothes with his own hands: "These are love's hands. They can do anything."
5. Ben Aaronovitch, Transit
Transit remains one of my favourite books from the Doctor Who - the New Adventures series published in the 1990s. Written less like a conventional NA and more like a mainstream SF novel, it's set in a future where Africa has become the "First World", and introduces recurring character Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart to the novels. The Doctor's Whiteness becomes visible for one of the first times in the show's history when he has to busk his way into a Japanese closed community. You can still snavel copies of the book from Ebay or ABE.
ibarw for lots of links and resources.Here's some suggested reading. In no particular order:
1. Richard Wright, Black Boy
An autobiography, taking place in the early decades of the twentieth century. We read Black Boy in high school, and parts of it have stayed with me for twenty years - Wright pretending he can't read and that he's been sent to borrow library books for a White employer; another employer, a housewife, asking "Do you steal?", and Wright laughing at the ridiculousness of the question - who's going to answer yes? But my most powerful impression is of the young Wright's eternal, nagging pangs of hunger.
2. Chaim Potok, The Chosen
Another high school book, this time a novel set amongst Hasidic Jews in New York in the thirties and forties. Pretty much everything I learned about Judaism from The Chosen was new to me. (Weirdly, the Hebrew word chellaf starts turning up in my terrible teenage poetry.) I was fascinated by the young men's complete absorption in their studies - nerd heroes! - and have never forgotten the advice, that you can't just read Freud, you have to study him - applicable to many authors and subjects.
3. Ali Rattansi, Racism: a Very Short Introduction. I'm still a few pages from the end of this, actually. It's pulled together a lot of stuff I already knew about racism, filled in a lot of gaps, and put all of it into context for me. (I vaguely knew that science debunked the concept of "race" - Rattansi devotes a whole chapter to it, which resulted in an incoherent awestruck posting in this very LJ. :-) The book is written in a scholarly style, but without jargon, and particularly focusses on the UK.
4. bell hooks, Bone Black
Another autobiography, this time set in the fifties and sixties. I've read a little non-fiction by bell hooks - the terrific clarity with which she presents her thinking is also present in Bone Black, which is filled with the powerful sense impressions of childhood. The young girl is a misfit in her own family, constantly warned that all that reading will drive her insane. The image that will remain with me forever is of a child putting out the fire in his grandfather's clothes with his own hands: "These are love's hands. They can do anything."
5. Ben Aaronovitch, Transit
Transit remains one of my favourite books from the Doctor Who - the New Adventures series published in the 1990s. Written less like a conventional NA and more like a mainstream SF novel, it's set in a future where Africa has become the "First World", and introduces recurring character Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart to the novels. The Doctor's Whiteness becomes visible for one of the first times in the show's history when he has to busk his way into a Japanese closed community. You can still snavel copies of the book from Ebay or ABE.
