The Book Club by Mary Alice Monroe

So, this book was better than The Jane Austen Book Club. Much. It was a little bit better than The Knitting Circle, I think. I had the same problem with it that I had with The Knitting Circle, though - it made me feel paranoid about mrpet suddenly dying. Maybe I've read too many books about widowed women. Maybe I need to read more about people with really successful longterm relationships. But somehow those don't seem to get written as often. I guess conflict moves plots forward?

Anyway, it's fairly similar to The Knitting Circle. A bunch of women, see how they interact while they do, and don't, get together for their monthly meetings of X. One thing I liked about this book was that the focus was not on the books that they were reading, and not even really on the meetings. Much of the plot happened while each woman was on her own.

I liked most of the viewpoint characters. They were belieable and I was able to identify with all of them at different points in the book. There was one viewpoint character I didn't like, though, Gabriella. She is portrayed as a hardworking Latina nurse who loves to make traditional Mexican food and wear bright colors. Where the other viewpoint characters have deep emotional issues (like unresolved issues with a dead spouse, worrying that their childbearing years are over, not feeling as accepted because they don't have a husband) this one has an unemployed husband. If she has an interior life beyond worrying about money and wishing her house was cleaner, we don't get to see it. She lacks depth. I would like to think that it's a coincidence that she's the only non-Caucasian character in the book, but I'm not convinced that's true.

The other thing that I didn't like about this book came towards the end. After tragedy strikes the members of the book club, the members talk about what they can do to uplift their spirits. Someone suggests as a joke that they try reading the Bible, and everyone goes, "Oh, yeah, we should do that! Our pastor will help us!" The cultural assumption in that bothered me. Not one member of the group was other than Christian, or had turned away from the church, or anything? It seemed heavy-handed and not very believable. "Now we'll all go read the Bible and it'll make everything better." I would have been more interested and more comfortable if the author had followed the spiritual transformation of one member. I didn't like reading the Bible as being a matter-of-course solution. No alternatives were discussed.

Anyway. This book was very engrossing but I felt a little bit odd at the end of it, like I had gotten an experience different from the one I bargained for. So I'm only giving it three stars instead of four.

reading that I am doing today on race

So, I know that I do not know enough about racism. I am not a person of color, and I have not seen very much blatent racism in my life. Therefore, further research seems indicated. I know my work is not done. As others have recently posted, we're all soaking in this issue, all the time. I know that when I am walking alone late at night, if I see someone else walking, my perception of their race and gender definitely influences how safe I feel, and that's just one example. There are probably dozens of other ways that I contribute to this system. Even by referring to people of color as minorities, which I sometimes do without thinking. I'm pretty sure there are more people of color on the planet than there are white folks like myself, after all.

First, I read a short biography of Malcolm X on wikipedia. I haven't yet managed to get through his autobiography, which is very long, but I figured I could make it through a wikipedia article. What I found most striking about it was the reference to an incident I have heard of, where a white college student approached X and asked what she could do to help improve relations between "whites" and "blacks"* and he told her there was nothing she could do. According to the article, he later regretted this incident, when he came to believe that Islam could allow people of all races to live together in harmony.

"Brother, remember the time that white college girl came into the restaurant — the one who wanted to help the Muslims and the whites get together — and I told her there wasn't a ghost of a chance and she went away crying? Well, I've lived to regret that incident. In many parts of the African continent I saw white students helping black people. Something like this kills a lot of argument."

That's nice to hear.

This inspired me to read his most famous speech "The Ballot or the Bullet."
The two things that struck me about the speech were its polarizations - white versus blacks, and the new generation versus the old - and its eminent practicality. This speech advocates a philosophy of Black Nationalism. The idea it espoused is that blacks should be loyal to their communities - the more you spend outside the community, it said, the richer The Man gets and the poorer we get. It advocates supporting small businesses in your area, which are owned by members of the community, so that they will thrive and can offer jobs to other members of the community. It also advocates putting aside religious and political differences, recognizing that the community all wants the same thing - freedom - and just has different ideas about how to get to freedom and how to interact with God. I liked the speech. You should be warned, though, if you read it, it is long. Quite long. They don't make speeches like that anymore!

I also chose to read this post on IBARW, which in turn led me to an essay by Audre Lourde, There Is No Hierarchy of Oppression. I liked that as well, and it's short and sweet. In much of the reading I've done on oppression, it seems that writers consider one kind of oppression to be "the source," and it seems to generally be whatever their core issue is. So, feminist writers write that the patriarchy is the root of oppression, people focused on issues of color say that colonialism is the real problem, etc. I don't have an answer to that. I don't know if there is one and I'm pretty sure it doesn't matter what oppression came first. They're all interlocked, which is good because our activisms can help people who are not in the population we're working for, and ideally we can make common causes with each other.

What have you read recently that informed your ideas about racism?

*Quotes because race binaries are a human invention, from my perspective. But they are very real in their consequences.