The Help and Reality

Have you ever heard of white privilege?  As a white person, it can be hard to take.  However, it must be acknowledged for real racial healing to occur in our society.  For those of you who may not understand, white privilege is being born white, therefore never having to deal with being a minority.  As whites, we already have a “step up” in opportunity.  As a product of a working class family, this was difficult for me.  I didn’t always see a lot of opportunity.  However, we need only look around us at the characters on our television shows, the spectators and owners of professional sports teams, the ceo’s of businesses, the majority of people in government, especially the federal government, the majority of public servants like firefighters and policemen, to see that white people are the majority.  That is not because white people are the majority in our society.  Since white men started bringing Africans over and enslaving them, whites have not always been the majority in every area of the US.

I saw “The Help” yesterday.  It had some redeeming qualities.  It was entertaining.  There was a tone of racial reconciliation, but more for the white heroine of the film, rather than the black maids.  She could move on and pursue her dream of writing, while the maids are still stuck in Mississippi.  The acting of Viola Davis was extraordinary.  She was able to evoke some of the very real psychic pain that comes from years of being oppressed and un-free.  There was also the Hollywood fluff aspect, which was distracting.  That said, this film was adapted from a book by a white woman with a black maid.  Therefore, I wouldn’t expect a lot different.  I might point out if this was a film written by a black woman about a black woman it probably wouldn’t have been made.  I may be wrong, but show me how many films by and about black women have been made.  Yes, half a handful.

I recently read a book about the 1927 Mississippi River flooding.  Many blacks were forced to work for free, backbreaking work, to keep the levees in the lower Mississippi from breaching.  It was a vain attempt because the river management program was designed by competing white men, and doomed to fail.  Many blacks were forced to live for months on top of the levees.  Planters, who didn’t want to lose their labor force, prevented them from leaving the area even when rescue boats came for them.

I’m reading now Cane River by Lalita Tademy.  This is more realistic than ‘The Help’, in terms of the experience of African Americans.  I’ve just started it.  Tademy researched her ancestors, who came from the Lower Mississippi area.  It is the story of her foremothers, beginning with Suzette, who was a slave girl.  She was impregnated at age 12 or 13 by a friend of her master’s family, a Frenchman.  The novel speaks acutely of Suzette’s confusion and feelings.  Her work for the household began when she was 7 or 8.  Slavegirls and boys were never allowed to be children.  I have much more to read.

I’ve often taken issue with the idea that Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson were in love.  I think the fact she bore children by him is well established.  However, she was a slave.  She had no choice, she had to allow him to have sex with her.  I’ve realized this awhile, but after reading about Suzette’s experience in ‘Cane River’, I wondered about the age difference between Hemings and Jefferson.  Jefferson was about 30 years older than Hemings.  She was born about 1773, about the time Jefferson was writing the Declaration of Independence (a liberating document for white men).  Hemings was his daughter’s slavegirl.  She was in France with Jefferson, and enjoyed some of the trappings of high society there.  However, she was a slavegirl.  Jefferson had sex with, or dare I say raped, his daughter’s slavegirl, over and over.  I know that sounds harsh, but it was probably her reality.

As whites, we have to accept that while there may have been fondness, even love, between maids and the babies they cared for, slavegirls and their child masters, they were still slaves.  They could be killed for not agreeing with every word a white person said to them.  They had to work 12 hour days, 6 & 1/2 days per week.  They had to get up before their masters did to cook their masters’ breakfast. They had to submit to every white person’s sexual whim.

We also have to read our history.  While former slaves had some opportunity and protection during Reconstruction, it lasted only about 7 years.  The ensuing cultural climate enabled blacks to be enslaved all over again.  Many, I daresay most, whites still considered them unequal to themselves.  There were lynchings, rapes continued.  Remember Strom Thurmond and the maid he raped?   That child, now an elderly lady, was vilified for coming forward just a few years ago!

Blacks were paid below minimum wage.  My own aunt had a store, and black people worked there.  None had insurance, but she paid their doctor bills, made sure they were fed during hard times, etc.  However, even in the 30′s-50′s they had no opportunity to be free.  This was an economic prison for them.

Well, I’ve wanted to write about this issue, and some of the films and books I’m taking in are helping me form my words.  Thanks for reading.

I read 3 books this week

The first, Disgrace, I mentioned in my last reading post.  I had just started it.  It is written my J.M. Coetzee, a South African writer.  It was excellent.  I’m always pleased when I find good fiction.  I rarely read fiction.  I went to the library and checked out another book by him called Elizabeth Costello, which I will start tonight.  Actually, I checked out 3 books at the library, and started the first few pages of each, which determined the order in which I would read them.

The first book was Facing the Wind by Julie Salamon.  I just finished Shake the Devil Off by Ethan Brown.  Both of these books were about men who became mentally ill and killed their loved one(s).  In the first, it happened in about 1976, and it was an interesting study in the question of sanity, and redemption and remorse for me.  I felt like, deep down, the protagonist was a sociopath, who truly didn’t have remorse for what he did.  Even though he was found not guilty by reason of insanity, he never demonstrated appropriate remorse.  He seemed to think he should go on with his life, and he pressed to get his law license back since he was found not guilty.  He seemed narcissistic.   It was a very sad situation, and the book was pretty good.

Shake the Devil Off was very well done.  I love books that pay a lot of attention to the sociology of crimes.  This was about a gruesome murder perpetrated by a Kosovo & Iraq war vet in post-Katrina New Orleans.  The writer is an excellent journalist also, and it was an excellent book, well researched.  It was also very sad. 

I’ve read several books about people who were either soldiers in the wars in Iraq and/or Afghanistan, or journalists embedded with soldiers.  The interesting dichotomy is how we really don’t act like a country at war.  It’s the longest voluntary (military) war our country has fought, and we civilians act like it isn’t going on.  We are very removed, unless we are the family of a soldier, or a soldier.  It’s so sad to me.  We’ve sent all those young people over there and forgotten them.  It’s hard for them to deal with civilian life, because it is so separate and alien from the life they’ve been living on the front lines.  I so wish we never went there.  I can’t stand how many lives have been destroyed because of it.  I knew we shouldn’t go, to either place.  We could have accomplised so much more from the air.  Of course, then I think about what we did from the air in Japan toward the end of WWII.  I wouldn’t want that, either.

Whatever, once these soldiers have served we need to take care of them in every way possible.  Many of them are really suffering, and not just physically.

I’d say the Coetzee novel moved me because of its prose-just beautiful and artful.  It was an excellent story.  Shake the Devil Off revived a lot of my grief about the wars, and the waste of life, money and potential.  No one should be put in the position these men and women have found themselves in.  It’s very sad.

Reading, read

Down Around Midnight by Robert Sabbag.  He wrote the bestselling book about cocaine trafficking called Snowblind.  This book is about a plane crash he survived shortly after he wrote Snowblind.  It’s a fascinating study in memory, dealing with trauma, etc.  This was in 1979.  He didn’t think a lot about it for years, then he decided to reach out to the other survivors to  test their memories of the crash.  Once person died & several were badly injured, including him, so it was very traumatic.  It was a very quick read.  A few years ago my uncle survived a plane crash.  He acted like it wasn’t a really big deal, but this book made me think about how this must have affected him.  He could have died, easily, because he was barely conscious after the plane crashed.  He’s never talked to me about it, but I don’t see him more than a couple of times a year.

Anyhow, I also plowed through a tome called The Senator and The Socialite, The True Story of America’s First Black Dynasty by Lawrence Otis Graham.  It was a little dry, but very informative.  I read another book or two while I was reading this one.  It is about Blanche Kelso Bruce, a former slave and the first black senator in the United States.  It also traces the failure of reconstruction, something I always wondered about.   It amazes me how different the history lessons I learned about the Civil War as a young student are from what I’ve learned by reading since.    It wasn’t easy to read, but I’m glad I did. 

I may have read something else, but the next thing I remember is the book I just finished, Fatal Cruise, The Trial of Robert Frisbee by Canadian attorney and author William Deverell.  He defended this man, Robert Frisbee, who had allegedly murdered his elderly employer, Muriel Barnett, on a cruise.  This book was very well written, with many touches of appreciated humor.  This was in about 1984 or 1985.  I remembered this story, vaguely.

At the library I also got a biography of the prophet Muhammad by Karen Armstrong, a writer I like, which would have been very illuminating, but I just couldn’t get into it after 35 pages.  Since it’s a library book I’m not sure if I’ll go back to it because it’s due this week.  I also started listening to A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, the American classic by Betty Smith.  I’ve probably gotten through about 1/2 of it, or maybe not.  I don’t remember it being so long, but I’ll have to give it up to or renew it at the library this week.  Interestingly, Smith uses the Tree of Heaven as a metaphor at the beginning.  I only realized what this species of tree was a few years ago.  It’s one of those invasive species from Asia that grows anywhere, like between cracks in the concrete, or under the deck.  If you ride down the interstate, you can go for miles and that’s all you see.  It’s like kudzu, taking over the indigenous fauna.

I purchased Disgrace, by J. M. Coetzee, and another book (can’t remember the title now) from Borders, and forgot them, then rediscovered them a few weeks later!  I started Disgrace today.  It’s riveting!  It’s one of those books that really gets you thinking.  This one hooked me by about page 5.  I’m on page 39 now.  Already I’m thinking about rape, power and control, art and  literature,  seduction.  I love books that are so stimulating. 

So, that’s it.  I’ve done a bit of reading this summer, as usual, and not as much writing as I’d like.  However, my time isn’t as free as it once was.  Back to reading now!  Ta!

Feldenkrais and Reading

First, just let me say, I think I’m going to like this Feldenkrais work.  I’m familiar with lots of healing modalities, but I’d never heard of this.  Nancy Dawe, Feldenkrais practitioner extraordinaire, worked with me this morning, and then, literally put me to bed.  She said I have to rest “be comfortable” twice a day.  Tim & I are both learning how to take better care of ourselves.  Difficult lesson I might add.  As I think most people in our society would find this difficult.

Started reading a novel by a little gem Tarheel named Clyde Edgerton.  It’s called The Bible Salesman.  It’s about. well, a lot.  I’m finding it very interesting.  It takes place in eastern NC,  my second home.  Perhaps I need to write about Belhaven, and the time I spent there.  That aside, Henry is a naive young Bible salesman, questioning some of the things he’s reading, because he’s always been told (by my nemesis, the apostle Paul) how the Holy Bible is the true word of God.  Yet, he’s reading it and keeps coming up with these contradictions, and wonders why his preacher nor his aunt (who raised him) never addressed them, since it was Bible study, after all!  Humourous, too.For me, geography plays a big part in my enjoyment of a film or book.   I’m delighted I’ve discovered Clyde Edgerton (love the name!) and plan on reading more of his work.

I also picked up at the library Joe McGinniss’s Never Enough about Robert & Andrew (and murderess wife Nancy) Kissel.  I read another books which was more about Andrew & his wife, but I thought this take would be interesting as it focuses more on Nancy & Robert.  I also got Peaches & Daddy by Michael M. Greenburg about a young girl in the 20′s who marries a Manhattan millionaire, age 51.  Apparently they both had a penchant for exhibitionist behavior and moolah!  Should be interesting.  The byline is “a story of the roaring 20′s, the birth of tabloid media, & the courtship that captured the heart and imagination of the American public.”  All of my requirements for a good read-in case you’re wondering, it is true.  Sort of a group study of a scandalous event.  Oh, how I love sociology!

I borrowed several books from Amanda.  Escape was one of them.  There’s also another about one of the boys in the FLDS, some other non-fiction & Norton’s Anthology of Narrative, because I’m on a reading frenzy.

Okay, need to walk my girl then go get Barrett at school.  I’m feeling a lot better!!

Why Am I Up?

1. I’m a night owl.  But I was doing great tonight, in bed before midnight.  I finished A Season In Purgatory.  I love Dominick Dunne.  His writing really developed over the years.  I called this tome fluff in an earlier post but it is not fluff.  It’s a well written page-turner!

2. My dear hubby is snoring loudly tonight.  He doesn’t usually snore that much.  I know I do, so I’m certainly not complaining, but I’m really tired, so I came into the family room and set myself up on the couch and….

3.  I really wanted to talk about the book I started after I finished the novel.  My friend, Kim K.S., recommended this book.  It’s called The Creative Habit  Learn It And Use It For Life by dancer/choreographer Twyla Tharp.  I’m already hooked!  I’m sure she’s on to something here.  Suddenly social media and marketing types are talking about creativity and business, and she was talking about it 3 years ago.  And she lives it. 

4.  The meds to heal my bronchitis/asthma are upsetting my tummy and it’s hurting.  Bummer.

So these are the reasons I am up.  I’m going to go to sleep, but I’ll probably goof around a little bit with Bookworm before I do.  And it’s 2am!!  Oh, well, I’m blessed to not have to get up early most mornings.  I’m am very grateful for that.  My spirits have lifted so much.  My heart was heavy for 36 hours about a silly communication fiasco on Facebook.  My feelings were so hurt, plus I felt guilty for my part in it, and I was torturing myself with it.  Gerardine Baugh helped with that by commenting on my writing, just a little while ago.  Click on her name to visit her site.  She writes beautifully.   I’ve asked Spirit to take the burden for 36 hours, and I think it is slowly lifting.

I am very grateful.

I am reading…

In the Cellar by German intellectual/writer/philosopher/linguist Jan Philipp Reemtsma.  It is about his own kidnapping in 1996.  I understand he’s a bit of a controversial figure.  The link I provided is from a magazine to which he is a contributor.  Wikipedia was in German, and its portrayal (after Google translation) was slightly confusing because of the crude translation and not complementary at all.  I definitely want to know more about this gentleman.  After I read his book I will do more research on him and his writings.  

I’m finding his book very interesting.  It was translated beautifully by Carol Brown Janeway.  I like the writing; it is obviously intelligent.  He recounts his thoughts, his misperceptions, and his attempt to resist identifying with his kidnappers while in captivity.  I am about half way through it.  Because of his strong literary background, he refers to many literary luminaries of all nationalities, which also interests me.

So, back to the book, then off to bed!