Whitney

It's really hard to write about someone you didn't know at all, but whose death has affected you. I feel that way about Whitney Houston (heck, I feel that way about Heath Ledger and Michael Jackson and Jonathan Brandis, but I didn't have a blog during those times, so I was left to my own resources of catharsis).

Whitney Houston was the first woman that my sister's and I emulated. "I Wanna Dance (With Somebody)" was the first 45rpm record that I bought with my own money (she won out against Debbie Gibson's "Out of the Blue"). We would sing all of the songs from Whitney, belting out "The Greatest Love of All", really off-key while jumping, not to hard because we didn't want the record to skip, on the bed, using hairbrushes as microphones, taking turns being the background, Solid Gold-like, dancers and the lead.

I'm sure that I am not the only woman of color who found, in Whitney Houston, a powerful role-model, in my tiny home town there seemed to be so few that I could have direct access to and I recognized in Whitney Houston strength and power.

I gotta tell you that I watched "The Bodyguard", just as much for her as Kevin Costner and, sorry Kevin, the soundtrack became a background to the last couple of years of my high school career, and it is the soundtrack that I took with me to college and it is the soundtrack that I still listen to over and over and over. 

For the record, I never saw the realty show that really made her kind of a household joke and I never saw her in concert. So, the memories I have of her are from the 80s and 90s through the lenses of my teen and pre-teen brain...I kind of like it that way.

I miss the person she was and the person she had the potential to become, as we all have room to change and grow.

I am sorry that she had whatever demons she had.

To me it doesn't matter the cause of death (of course, it's sadder when it is at their own hand or because of their own addictions), I am sorry that another one of my childhood heroes is gone. 

My heart goes out to her family and friends.

AMA's 2009

50 Books in a Year: Book #41 Watermelon Man

     Herman Raucher wrote The Summer of '42, a book I picked up on accident for a quarter at a garage sale. It is beautiful and tragic and real. I've never seen the movie and I'm not sure I want to, since I love the book so much...that isn't exactly how I feel about this other Raucher book Watermelon Man. Written in 1970 a year before The Summer of '42, it chronicles the life of this incredible bigot named Jeffrey Gerber and his inability to find any  substance in his life...that is until he wakes up one morning and he's 'black as night' and getting blacker by the minute.
     In the beginning I found the premise of this book to be quite clever and enjoyed some of the old racial slang being made fun of in a way that must have been totally unexpected and fresh in 1970. By the end of the book, however, I was tired of the jokes and looking forward to watching the movie. Frankly, everything about the book is probably predictable to a modern audience there's jokes about class and race stereotypes including a black mans' prowess in bed, his ability to run a good race and his ability to make light out of just about anything (you know the old Sambo complex). There's a lady at the office who's only interested in him after he's black and while he feels used, he likes the attention. His kids, who are young, don't understand what the big deal is and his wife, who watched the race riots religiously and wanted to help everybody get along is actually, you guessed it, so racist she really can't be seen with or married to him anymore. What I found interesting, however, were all the ways Mr. Gerber tries to get rid of his skin tone there are long steamy showers, creams and powders and lotions...this has to play out quite humorously on film.
     I gotta tell you though, I really wish the book had been stereotypical until the very end, and since it isn't I'm not sure what lessons I'm supposed to have learned. It seems that the only characters who come off as having grown are the kids, and even then I'm not sure if that's true as Jeff, rich and divorced, only talks to them on the phone.
     This book is funny when I think it should be serious and just when I started laughing for real...it pulled the rug right from underneath me.

3 Stars
 

Booking Through Thursday (History)

         From Booking Through Thursday:

     Sometimes I feel like the only person I know who finds reading history fascinating. It’s so full of amazing-yet-true stories of people driven to the edge and how they reacted to it. I keep telling friends that a good history book (as opposed to some of those textbooks in school that are all lists and dates) does everything a good novel does–it grips you with real characters doing amazing things.
     Am I REALLY the only person who feels this way? When is the last time you read a history book? Historical biography? You know, something that took place in the past but was REAL. 

          You are definitely NOT the only person who feels this way BTT. The last historical book I read was The Devil in the White City and that book rocked my socks off and I talk all about it here. And, nerd that I am, I read my college history books all the time. I especially like the ones I have for my American History survey courses. I'm still working on Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow and like to impress people with random facts about the man whose tasty face graces our $10 bill. Did you know that, at one time, people thought that Hamilton was part Black, as he was the illegitimate son of a, for lack of a better word, prostitute and that he was the first American politician to get involved in a sex scandal? Unlike most politicians today, he didn't deny it or try to keep the secret from his wife, and his wife stuck by him until his unfortunate end. Oh wait! Did you know that his son also died in a dual? Seriously, I love that book and have not finished it only because it's really long...I mean really long.

Feel free to share your answers below, on the original post (above), on FB or on your own blog!

Booking Through Thursday (Fluff)

         From Booking Through Thursday:

You’ve just had a long, hard, exhausting day, and all you want to do is curl up with something light, fun, easy, fluffy, distracting, and entertaining.

What book do you pick up?

          Simply put I pick up some Aisha Tyler. Aisha Tyler is smart (she went to Dartmouth) and funny. More importantly...she knows how to laugh at herself. Of course, the book I'm talking about is Swerve: Reckless Observations of a Postmodern Girl.

          Here are some gems from that lovely book:

p15 The concept of the mack is an old one. A gigolo, a pimp, a player--all words used over the years to refer to someone, a male someone, who plays by his own rules. All of these terms, in varying degrees, have come to have a positive connotation: a guy who gets the ladies, a lover, a manipulator of women and rubes. This connotation is so powerful and pervasive that Hugh Hefner can go out with eleven matching pneumatic blondes and be thought of as an international bon vivant, while Demi Moore appears in public with both her ex-husband and her twenty-five-year-old boyfriend and people faint dead away, their hands frozen in the shape of a cross. A woman who plays the field is the modern equivalent of a gorgon--one look and you are turned to stone.
p74 I think girls should make being sassy, o brazen, or feisty, or loudmouthed, or audacious, or brash, or impudent, or any of the other double entendre tidbits that are used to dismiss girls that are just sticking up for themselves and speaking their minds, the normal state of things. We shouldn't feel enpowered to speak out, because it should just be the way we are how we do.
p86 I am a fan of the dirty joke. I do not have fragile sensibilities nor a delicate constitution. I do not faint, or wilt, or even swoon, in indelicate company. I will laugh at almost anything.

And, with chapter titles like "Once More in the Balls, with Feeling", "Martha Stewart on Crack" an "McMarriage", how could this book not put anyone in a better mood?

Feel free to share your answers below, on the original post (above), on FB or on your own blog!

50 Books in a Year: Book #31 The Help

I don't really know how to talk about what I feel about this book. I didn't like this book, the thing is I also didn't dislike the book. Hmmm...maybe I'll just break it down into parts:

Things I like about The Help:
1. The story
Oh...I bet if we talked to any person who was "The Help" in the 60s, they would have such wonderful stories to tell and I believe they would be just as rich and diverse as the stories in this book. What a great, refreshing idea for a book!
2. Mae Mobley and Skeeter
Because we get to see Mae Mobley grow into a little girl, I grew to like her. I like that, although she is crying at the end of the book, she's going to be OK and we know it because of the moment she shares with Aibileen..."You is kind. You is smart. You is important." And, Skeeter, well, Skeeter is just so real that you have to love her. I find it interesting that she really isn't a strong person (she really is a woman of her culture) in the sense that we aren't going to see her at a rally, and she would marry out of duty over love, but she does see things through and she is passionate about people. I would love to meet either of these characters.
3. The setting (place and time period)
I love learning about American History, especially when it is about or enhances my knowledge of African-American culture. I also find it most interesting to read about the Civil Rights Movement, what a passionate part of America's culture.

Things I dislike about The Help:
1. The inconsistent and sometimes down-right offensive dialect
I don't like how the African-American dialect is stereotypical and really does phase in and out at inappropriate intervals. It is not consistent and detracts from the reading of the book. Frankly, just a few bits here and there would have been appropriate and we would have gotten the idea. This is not Uncle Tom's Cabin and doesn't need to be written as such, not to mention that this dialect would have been prevalent in not just the African-American community and it didn't seem to be that the dialect that is "The South" could be seen as strongly in any of the White (there I said it!) characters and that was irksome and made me feel a little bit angry while reading.
2. Each character is stereotypical and unoriginal in action and description...OK, so that seems a bit harsh, let me explain...
All the white people, even Skeeter acted how I assume and have seen people in The South act in the 60s in movies or shows or books. And, all the Black people are what I feel stereotypical Black people are, you know when you read about them and don't know them, even Minny. Everything just seemed too black and white and perfect, where's the gray? Where's more of Hilly being that perfect mother, so I'm conflicted about why I hate her? All of these characters stay in the homes in which the author has created them...and, because of that I don't really learn anything I didn't already know about The South in the 60s, even the death of Medgar Evers was sterilized and perfectly trimmed. Let's just say I didn't feel uncomfortable about anything the characters were doing, and, well, I should have!
3. The setting (place and time period)
So much could have been done and was not. I understand that the author stated that she dislikes people writing about her beloved Mississippi unless they are from there. I don't like reading about such a sensitive period in American History without feeling some of the burn and the burden. I don't like that most of the people I talk to who have read this book mention all the anecdotal stories (the pie, the toilets, the drunken wife), when there is so much more that wasn't flushed out enough for people to talk about (the child abuse, the treatment of women, Jim Crow). This book is Civil Rights-lite for those people who want to talk about it as some sort of background to tea and cake...that rubs me the wrong way.

What it amounts to is...I can think of several books and movies (Corrina, Corrina for one) that are in the same genre and do a better job of rendering characters and setting better than this one. But, the darned story is so good that I can't wait to watch the movie, as I'm sure, with such great actors, most of the things I find wrong with the book will be fixed and ring a little truer.

3 Stars

Black History...

"The Negro pigmentizes all American life, literature, music, art, dancing, dolls, dress, oratory, law and love."

~ Alice Dunbar Nelson

          Writing about race is hard (I've been trying to write something all month, but it always seemed to be without feeling or with too much sappiness--I hope the result of this post is neither), but I feel that February (Black History month) needs to get a little black people love from yours truly. I have always had what I like to call 'Subtle Black Pride'...you know you aren't going to see me at a rally of sorts, but I, in my own way, let you know I love my people. By my people, however, I mean my mixed heritage.

           Although, I have this deep love for my heritage, it has taken awhile for me to feel this power on the inside. In the small town in which I grew up, my sisters and I were the brunt of many racial slurs. Don't get me wrong I love a good joke and we could all learn to laugh at one another a little more often (I do so enjoy that scene in Guess Who where the joking goes a little too far). These were not jokes. The older kids, who only saw our skin color and didn't know us, called us names, kids would play with or would tease me about my hair. Even in high school I had a hard time getting a date for Prom, as the person I wanted to go with couldn't go with me, his best friend said, because his parents wouldn't let him, 'and, you know the reason why, Stephanie', this was 1993, not 1963 just incase you were wondering. And, although my mother is white we were considered black. My mother and my aunts helped us by teaching us to take pride in ourselves and to love ourselves. I spent this time in my life reading all of the books I could get ahold of in search of my elusive black heritage, my favorite, of course, being The Autobiography of Malcolm X, a man who definitely took pride in his black heritage, in being American and in being himself. I took pride in being of mixed heritage and read books like Kim-Kimi, Farewell to Manzanar, Jacob, Have I Loved, The Souls of Black Folk, School Ties, Roots and many other books that talked about identity and heritage.

          It wasn't until I was a sophomore in high school that I even knew that black people would and could even segregate one another based solely on skin tone. This reverse racism or colorism (check out The Color Complex for more information) has roots deep in the African-American community and these roots are as old as slavery. At a summer camp, a handful of black girls told me that they didn't mind if I liked rock music because they could tell that I was of mixed heritage (they said they could tell by the color of my gums, by the way), but they did mind that this lovely (dare I say) darker girl did because "she knew better". In college it got worse, with black guys saying things like you'd be prettier if you 'did your hair' and black girls giving me nasty looks in the cafeteria when I sat with all my friends (some of them Hispanic, but none of them black).  I was too 'white' for the black kids and too 'black' to be white. My sister went to school in New Orleans and there people called her 'high yellow' and berated her boyfriend for dating a white woman. She took it all in stride, although I told her that color terms can be just as racist as the N-word.

         About ten years ago I read an article that originated from The Washington Post by a woman named Lonnae O'Neal Parker. This article incensed me. Parker has a cousin named Kim who lives in some small town in the midwest. She was raised by her black father, but doesn't look or act black (before I read this article I didn't know there were so many things 'black people' did or didn't do) and Parker feels she needs to help Kim, who is staying with her, find her roots by going to 'the race place' and doing such things as pointing out all the 'white' people things she does, watching "Roots", by pointing out that it is her black family that is educated and affluent and, in essence, by trying to change her into something she is not. (You can find this article at The Washington Post if you are willing to pay the archive fee). I wanted to scream at this woman, "You can love yourself and take pride in yourself without yelling it from the roof tops." I felt like O'Neal was not letting her cousin be herself and I was reminded of all those people, who, over the years did not allow me to be me.
          My pride in my race grew stronger, but my love for my black brothers and sisters did not.

          One summer, I was asked by a community member if a girl could room with me while she worked at the Public Defenders office as an intern. I said, "Sure". As soon as I met this girl I understood why. She was black, and in a town that's not so ethnic, I'm sure that the person who asked me thought she would feel more comfortable living with me than with anyone else.

          We had a BLAST! She, too, had problems with colorism, but from the perspective of being a lovely darked skinned African-American. She loved black people, she told me daily, and was sorry that I didn't have any black friends because of my past experiences. She told me she hated race words and didn't like the word 'mulatto' any more than all those other words that divide the African-American into sub groups. We laughed at the same jokes, watched the same movies, but, more importantly, we learned from each other. At the end of the summer I was sorry to see her go, however, the lessons I learned about my race, my own prejudices and myself have stayed with me all these years.

          I have learned that, even if people try to classify me and pigeon-hole me into one category, I am more than that. I am black, I am white, I am a woman, a mother, a daughter, a wife, I am an American and I am anything else that shows my inner and outer beauty...I ignore all else.

The List
(not in any way comprehensive)

Fiction
Books and Plays
Passing
Song of Solomon
Beloved
Annie John
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
How to Make An American Quilt
A Time to Kill
Fences
A Raisin in the Sun
Short Stories
"Sister Josepha" Alice Dunbar Nelson
"Sweet Potato Pie" Eugenia Collier (can't find a link)
"The Goophered Grapevine" Charles Waddell Chestnut
"The Man Who Was Almost A Man" Richard Wright

Non-Fiction
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Coming of Age in Mississippi
The Color Complex
Stolen Childhood
Army Life in a Black Regiment
Days of Rondo
The Souls of Black Folk
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass an American Slave
Roots
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Essays and Speeches
Ain't I A Woman?
White Like Me
Light skin versus dark: A painful topic many blacks would rather not confront
My Turn: I Freed Myself When I Embraced My Locks

Poems and Songs

kidnap poem-Nikki Giovanni

If we must die-Claude McKay
Heritage-Countee Cullen

Incident-Countee Cullen

Lift E'vry Voice and Sing-James Weldon Johnson
Mississippi G*ddam-Nina Simone
Strange Fruit-Billie Holiday
Black or White-Michael Jackson
Black Boys, White Boys-from "Hair"
A Dream Deferred-Langston Hughes
We Wear the Mask-Paul Lawrence Dunbar
Frederick Douglass-Robert Hayden
I Am Not My Hair-India.Arie

Movies

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

Guess Who?

Love Song
Jungle Fever
Amistad
Something New
Corrina, Corrina
Save the Last Dance
Soul Man
A Time to Kill

Websites

Mixed Race Studies

Black History Month