CBR10Bingo: Fahrenheit 451 (BINGO!) When I named Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon as one of my three desert island books earlier this year, I realized two things: (1) I’ve only read it once, and that was about 15 years ago, and (2) I haven’t even owned a copy for half that time, having lost track of my original through several big moves (I blame my ex). I bought a fresh copy this spring, and when CBR10Bingo rolled around, I had this book in mind for […]
The kids are all white
Margaret Hagerman* puts a new spin on how we race by exploring the development of racial attitudes among affluent white midwestern tweens. Hagerman interviewed children from families in three different neighborhoods in the same midwestern metropolitan area, each with varying degrees of wealth (though all families are affluent) and diversity. She interviews not only the children, but also the parents, with the goal of illustrating how children formulate ideas about race. Rather than adopting their parents’s notions of race uncritically, children engage with the world […]
Modern Fairytale. Race Relations. Intriguing premise, flat execution.
Ohhhhh boy. This book. This was the last pick of the local library book club of the year, and it was much anticipated. It has received much acclaim, NPR said great things about it, and but for me, and my book club, it widely missed the mark. It was NOT loved. Or liked even. At this club we (about 16 folks) go around the room and give a score to a scale of 5 and this one didn’t even get past three. And there were a […]
“I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks.”
Straight up, this is a classic even among classics, and so I’m giving myself permission right up front for this review not to be important or add anything to the conversation at all. I don’t actually think I’m capable of saying anything that hasn’t already been said by people who said it better than I ever could. I feel like the only way this book can be reviewed now is either by looking at it through the context of today’s societal lens, or by relating […]
A sadly relevant tale: the 1970 murder of an innocent black man by three white men
The state of North Carolina is a perfect example of “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” In Blood Done Sign My Name, Tim Tyson recounts a story from his youth in Oxford, NC in which a young black man is murdered by three white men, all of whom were fully acquitted by a white jury. The heart of Tyson’s story is the 1970 murder of Henry Marrow, a black Vietnam veteran with a wife, two children, and another on the way. […]
Sore Thumbs
This year I started teaching a class of Seniors. It had long been a goal, and now I got to do it. I wanted to create as much of a collegiate simulacrum as I could. So I brewed up some lectures and led each week of instruction, discussion and reflection around a prominent theme in literature generally–with specific attention paid to African-American experiences (slightly awkward for a transparently white guy to do for a class full of black kids). And to guide my lecture creation […]