What are you reading?
What are you reading?
Currently I'm reading Nina Burton's 'Livets tunna väggar' which translate to something like Walls of Life. It's a book by a Swedish writer who inherits her mother's summer house. When she wants to renovate it, she finds all sort of life around and in the house. She uses said life to teach you something about the intellect of various insects and animals, which goes deeper than humans normally think.
It's a very interesting book that makes me think about non-human life even more. Creatures that are thousands of times smaller than we are have such complex societal structures. Humans have overcommodified animal life for centuries now, seeing them as property and commodities instead of complex and intelligent life forms.
What are you reading?
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This weekend I started Naomi and Natalie Evans, The Mixed-Race Experience: Reflections and Revelations on Multiracial Identity. It's good so far. Short paras. Lots of empty space due to paragraph breaks. Plenty of headings. Makes it very easy to read.
It's not a 'radical' book. I don't think I'm going to come across any references to Fanon. But I get the sense they're hiding their power level. There's been a bit of a boom in publishing 'anti racism' books and while I've learned something from the few that I've read, I've not been blown away. This one's good.
I'd recommend this one for what I've read so far. It's practical. There's some interview/(auto)biographical work about what it's like to be mixed and grow up in a while household/area for example. And some great observations about different kinds of microaggressions.
It's a bit more like Reni Eddo-Lodge and Akala (both of whom are cited). With all four authors you get the impression they're trying to lead you to the edge of liberalism with a question: if liberalism and capitalism won't work, what then? They leave it open for the reader to conclude with anti-capitalism without stating it. The second interviewee in The Mixed-Race Experience, for instance, seems to be speaking in coded dialectics and they let that come through.
Whereas a few others, like Jeffrey Boakye, are rooted in liberal thought. Capitalist realism kind of stuff. Not to be snuffed. But some of these up and coming authors don't want us to stage a revolution and their books are promoted to the heavens as providing a cure to an ill world. The world is ill, to be sure. But the liberal solution isn't viable.
On my walks, I've been listening to Galeano's Open Veins of Latin America in Spanish. Does that count as reading? It's hard going for me. My Spanish isn't good enough so I'm not sure how much I'm getting. The only thing I'm really getting are the pronouns and something called 'hipotesi'? I don't think that's a word so I must me missing something.
The producers made a weird stylistic choice. Every so often the narrator says, 'nota de autor' and a number. But I'm entirely unsure whether the text that comes before or after this is the footnote. And I can't work out when the footnote ends and when the narrator goes back to the main text.
Would be helpful if he spoke it in a different voice. Or just ignored them. I've had to stop listening to other audio books because the narrator read the footnotes like this. They really need to find another way. They should be read as endnotes or something at the very end of the recording.
I might have a look at Nina Burton. Have you heard of Robert Macfarlane? They sound similar.
Hipotesi is probably Potosi which was a major Silver mining settlement in Bolivia and is one of the early cases explored in the book.
That makes perfect sense! Thanks! I had no reference point for what it might be. I'll look it up and re-listen to the previous chapter.
Hope you enjoy the book! I was reading it with some comrades and learning a lot from it before life got the better of me.
I wanna read the "Open Veins.." in Spanish too for the same reason as you I'm currently reading Pablo Neruda's autobiography in Spanish which is phenomenal I highly recommend you get it.