Helga Crane, the protagonist of Quicksand is never happy in one place for long. Through her eyes the reader gets to experience life as a light-skinned African-American in the south, Chicago, Harlem during the Renaissance, Europe, and then the south again. Although the book takes place mostly in Crane's 20s, I see it as something of a coming-of-age novel.
The story of a more or less orphaned half Danish, half African-American adolescent getting used to life in the 'hood, sometimes challenged by and sometimes rewarded for her blue eyes and good hair, The Girl Who Fell from the Sky unfortunately isn't quite as good as scintillating as I wanted it to be. It's particularly sad because the first chapter really got me.
Johanna, one of my favorite zine publishers, hadn't made a zine since issue 4 of Sisu came out in May 2006. For some reason, although I acquired No History, No Self from StrangerDanger back in November, I didn't get around to reading it until just now. (I have a serious cataloging backlog problem, which I hope to clear up by the end of the year!) I'm a fool for letting it go so long, but at least I finally read it. Like all of Johanna's zines, NHNS has strong political content, particularly regarding race, mixed race identity, and identity politics. She has put in her time as an activist and has plenty of cred in that arena (also in feminist science-fiction and vegan communities), so what is particularly affecting to me in this new zines venture is how personal and open she is, about missing New York, trying to make friends, being depressed and contemplating therapy. She lists some great self-care suggestions for dealing with depression, the top three being sleep, cats, and tea, things I can totally get behind. That emphasis on self-care I think in this case extends to the rest of the world. NHNS is gentler than its predecessors. Johanna, who doesn't suffer fools lightly, is more inwardly focused this time around, maybe because repatriated to the UK she's missing her friends from home around whom she can actually be herself. Reading this zine I wanted to give Johanna a hug. I also want to know when issue 2 will be out.
But at the same time I'm not ready to throw labels completely out. Look at the people in the US who want government to stop keeping statistics on race. What would happen? You wouldn't be able to point out, for example, that the worst-performing schools with the least resources happened to have predominantly students of color, or that police stop people of a certain race way out of proportion to their population in the community...because you wouldn't be allowed to keep track. Ignoring race doesn't make racism go away.
I also think the focus on getting rid of labels is part of a homogenizing "colorblind" approach to race that has liberals pretending there's no cultural differences between people, which is offensive & blatantly not true or helpful.
An aspiring journalist ca. 1990 attending a high school journalism camp queried the keynote on what to do to become a foreign correspondent. He (I think it was a he) responded, "Learn Russian." So that is what the Tex-Mex teen set out to do, and that's how she ended up in Moscow for about a year. Hers is a coming-of-age political memoir of a lefty journalist trying to sort out Revolution and her own identity. Well, the identity part sort of came last. She had to visit lots of foreign countries before she realized there were some important things she needed to learn about her own culture.
Staceyann Chin had a pretty bad childhood--abandonment, estrangement, poverty, abuse, fear of sexual assault--and then in young adulthood a certain proclivity that is not well tolerated in her native Jamaica. Yet she manages to tell her story without an excess of anger or emotion. There's no need, as the facts she presents speak for themselves.
New! Favorite! Book! Ms. Barry covers some similar turf as she does in The Good Times Are Killing Me, but O!H!D! covers a broader spectrum of her "autobiofictionalography," plus it's illustrated. In color--over 200 pages. I'm impressed Sasquatch Books was able to put this out for $24.95 in '02. Barry did some zen painting exercise where the artist explores her demons, and this is the result. She shares 17 of hers with us, mostly about her childhood and adolescence, but a few take place in grown up life.
first panel:
During the machine recount I kept the TV on in my studio. It was impossible to work with the TV going but I couldn't turn it off.
TV: Bush's lead is, like, shrinking.
LB: I swear. Ten more minutes.
TV: Or is it?
LB: Then I'll turn it off.
LB: Shh. I'll feed you guys in a sec.
Three dogs: EEE! EE-EE. YEEE!
LB: Wait. Twenty minutes. That's it.
LB: Ok. Half an hour.
second panel:
By the time the manual recounts began, I stopped working altogether. This was bad. Even with the TV off I couldn't concentrate. Why?
LB: C'mon! Clear your mind! Stop thinking about Katherine Harris! Write.
LB: Katherine Harris. Katherine Harris.
LB: This is insane.
p. 197
I borrowed this book from Columbia's Butler Library, which like Barnard's library and unlike NYPL, still stamps the due date in the book, so you can tell how many people have checked it out before you. I miss that, NYPL! The earliest stamp is Nov 15 1989, and as best as I can tell it's been checked out about 15 times, though I have no way of telling how many times it was renewed. In an academic library with semester long borrowing periods, there's a good chance someone hoarded it for a year or two. I did that with Comics Librarianship: a Handbook for like three years in the early days of the Barnard Library Zine Collection. But getting back to the book at hand (sorry!), how did I not join the Lynda Barry cult sooner?
Seventh Grade
From the first day of seventh grade everyone was new. Even if you had known them all your life they were still new. And from the second we walked through the doors we all automatically split apart into groups of who was alike. Everyone knew exactly what to do, like someone was whispering instructions to our hands and feet and hair. Every kid from my old school, all of us who had ever lived on the same street together and played together all our lives stopped talking and walking with each other and never talked or walked with each other again. p. 77
I mentioned my preference for books by women of color in a previous post, and Johanna, a friend with I think pretty similar tastes (woc, but also zines and paranormal fiction) recommended Trumpet. I realized that while I do consistently enjoy books by women of color—American, immigrant-American, and Chinese and African (writing in English), I haven't done all that well with books by British women of color. I'm sorry, but Zadie Smith does nothing for me and Monica Ali less than nothing. I'm sure they're lovely women and skilled writers. Their writing styles just don't appeal to me, nor do those of the other women Brits of color I've read. Therefore it was a relief to dig into Johanna's recommendation by Nigerian-Scot Jackie Kay and realize that I was in the right place for once.
Carla Olivares spends a year in Mexico City trying to engage with the Chicano side of her heritage. At first she spends time only with fellow expats, starting with her trustafarian (her description) ex-boyfriend with whom she lives with for the first few months. She knows very little Spanish in the beginning of the story, but as she works at immersing herself in Mexican culture, she also learns the language.
Earlier this week I read a memoir by a 35-year-old, and a friend was like "Can someone in their 30s really write an autobiography?" So next up, I grabbed one by a 34-year-old. Barack Obama's Dreams from My Father was commissioned by Random House after Obama was made the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. As I've said here before, I'm not drinking the Obama Kool-Aid, but I do kind of wish I was. I want to believe. I want things to be different with him as the U.S. president.