Wednesday, December 13, 2017

What I'm Reading

Me reading, 1974

this interview, again, with Claudia Rankine by David Ulin in The Paris Review, Winter 2016:

Rankine:

I think people forget that white people are just people, and that we're all together inside a system that scripts and constructs not just behavior but imagination.

Interviewer:

The imagination first, don't you think? The imagination dictates the behavior.

Rankine:

Right. Ours is a structural and institutional problem. It's complicated because of the vast amount of privilege white people are allotted inside the system, but nonetheless we are a society, and if people are walking around feeling fearful based on imagination, an imagination put in place by a white-supremacist understanding of the world, that's a problem for everyone.





If you haven't read Rankine's book Citizen, you should order it right now and read it.

4 comments:

  1. Our public library had a copy that I had to put on hold because others wanted to read it. I recommend it, too. I wonder what you were reading in 1974. I was 24 years old then. Interesting to see which books were published in 1974. Of the writers I remember reading are Annie Dillard, Ursula Le Guin, Robert Pirsig, Studs Terkel, Lewis Thomas, Joseph Heller. In those years, I bought and read many more books than I do now. Now I rarely buy books but am reading more books than I have in years. Free used books come to me, and I put books on hold at the public library. Most recently I have read Citizen, Bob Dylan: A Spiritual Life; Sula, by Malka Marom (ordered from Canada); You Don't Have To Say You Love Me: A Memoir, by Sherman Alexie; I Am Not Your Negro (transcript for the film) and Parable of the Sower.

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  2. Parable of the Sower is one of my favorites, along with most of her other books. The recent photos of the fires in Southern CA reminded me of that book.

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    1. So much that happened in that book has happened this year. Happening as I was reading the book. The fires on the West Coast. https://sites.google.com/a/depauw.edu/the-parable-of-the-sower/society/politics

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  3. Wow, I might need to read Parable of the Sower again!

    And Elizabeth, Citizen sounds like a must read. I'm off to order it.

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