Supporting Women Writers

From the WOC Phd Blog:


Recently, when I went into BN for my twice weekly “don’t you think I need more books?” moment, I had only two missions: buy Hijas (which I can’t buy right now anyway) and any other book written by women, particularly women of color, poor women, rural women, or queer women, that caught my eye. I read for fun, but let’s face it, I also read for work and these are the women’s whose lives I usually teach about and who I am usually teaching. As I combed through an area larger than my bedroom and possibly my office put together, I neither found Hijas nor The Guardians. The more I looked the more I noticed a disturbing trend to collapse the available narratives for woc writers into a single thematic space. For African-Americans almost all of the literature followed the Waiting to Exhale trend (I liked that movie, didn’t read the book). For Asians, East Asians and APIs, the exotic past clashing with the present was the norm of the day. For Latinas there seemed to be very little book space at all devoted to them but the few books there were all about migration. White female authors remained quite varied but, with the exception of literary and not so literary explorations of kink, both working class and middle class queer women were largely missing. I don’t think I saw a single book by or about physical ability or mental challenges, though there were many about mental illness. Hijas was not in the store, Stigmata which I promised to buy my mother 5 million years ago, is “special order,” and the beat goes on.

Women’s literature in general seems to be trapped in its own oscillation between memoirs and kink/romance/exotic (depending on which women) or both. It has been a long time since I studied women’s literature, but even then the available narratives seemed much larger. And while white women’s published literature crosses far more genres than that of women of color, it is still trapped in this same oscillation and in certain expected narrative styles. Help me out English professors, do you see this happening too?

How we can help

The second coming of Rev Wright.

Courtesy of commenter Jonzee on Angry Black Bitch's Blog

Wright Prophet, Wrong Direction

The Conflict Called Jeremiah



delux_vivens gives us:

A blogger on the The Truth About Trinity United Church asking some rather incovenient questions....Why is it so much of a political deal breaker for Obama that one of his supporters, and former pastor Rev. Wright to say that Minister Farrakhan is someone respected by Black America and that he's not such a Bad Guy at all??? I mean event Clinton Supporter PA Governor Ed Rendell while he was MAYOR said the same thing. That didn't seem to be such a political liability for him.
And he's NOT the only one, go read the rest, there's video.

Angry Black Bitch wraps it up...
Acceptable blackness is defined as the absence of overt culture and of difference. It is a level of conformity that requires absolute perfection. One break…one mistake…and the illusion is shattered, once broken never to be repaired again.

And the perfection isn’t limited to not indulging in public displays of blackness. Oh no, acceptably black requires perfection in your appearance, manners, speech, family, friends and associates.

I’m not talking about not having unacceptable black friends. I’m talking about not having unacceptable friends…or family…or associates…or pets...or hair...or neighborhood...or car...or musical tastes.

Achieve that perfection and your black ass is acceptable…to a bunch of trigger happy assholes that soothe their privileged guilt by letting you tag along, all the while prepared to lay down harsh and rigid judgment should your perfect mask crack.


...

Do people honestly believe that Senator Obama believes/supports/embraces everything that comes out of Rev. Wright’s mouth?
Or is this about that faux perfect acceptably black mask that Senator Obama never put on himself being removed through unfortunate circumstance to display a real person…with real and totally normal Pastor drama…who fumble a bit in dealing with it because it was real and personal and he is human and so, duh, flawed…and what that lack of absolute perfection does to some people’s ability to maintain…oh Gawd, there’s that word again…tolerance?

Dave Neiwart:
Things Americans don't like to talk about

Jeremiah Wright What Else id going on? Liberation Theology vs the Prosperity Gospel?

As for me, I like the way he pushed back at the media. Specifically, when they impugned his patriotism, he pointed out that by their metric of patriotism, army service; he'd served, whereas Dick Cheney hadn't. (Pity he didn't mention Bush too). Also the part where the reporter was going "goddamn America" and he asked her if she'd listened to the speech and she had said no, that had me cheering with much glee. Because its about time the media is called to the carpet for irresponsible reporting. But, he did go overboard with some stuff, (the man needs remedial classes in science, stat!) And his decision to engage the media in that particular way at the Q& A session at the Press Club was silly. He could have left it at Bill Moyers and the NAACP speech, hell, he could have left it at the Press Club Speech and exercised more control in teh Q &A. . Instead of complicating the narrative, he allowed the media to caricature him again. And that's a pity, because, regardless of some of his more stupid theories, the man has an intellect that could run circles around many of the circle jerks who are expressing all this faux outrage and jingoism every day of the week and twice on Sundays. He let them manipulate him, and he forced Obama's hand. That was truly stupid.