Movies, race, and cultural appropriation

Sooooo tired. May have to up sleeping from eight hours to ten, which sounds ridiculous to me. But seriously. I have had my requisite cup of caffeine, and I still can't concentrate.

I was going to write separate posts on Blood Diamond and Casino Royale and cultural appropriation and post-colonialism and race, but looking at my current record, I may as well just do short blurbs and get it over with.

No spoilers for any of these, just cut for length.

( Blood Diamond )

( Casino Royale )

( The Painted Veil trailer )

Alexander, Alma - The Secrets of Jin-Shei

I was very wary about picking up this book because it's about a) a mythical China and b) sisterhoods. I am normally very pro-a and -b, but when they go wrong, I start frothing at the mouth and attempting to chuck things at walls.

I was almost going to write a glowing review in which I talked about how the author didn't fall into the associated traps that I thought she would, how refreshing I found that, how awesome it was to get a book with eight different female characters and their relationships.

And then the ending fell into all the associated traps and I avoiding chucking the book at the wall only because I didn't want to pay for any potential damage (to the wall, not the book).

Sigh.

In the fantasy China analogue Syai, women can swear into a bond of sisterhood, called jin-shei (the sworn sisters are then your jin-shei-bao). Tai somehow manages to become sworn sisters to the Empress, the circle increases, and much plot ensues.

The potential traps that I was desperately hoping to not have to read about were: 1) the circle of friends falling apart because of envy of each other, 2) the insane-sounding character from the cover flap to be the insane envious character who ruins everything, 3) tragic fates befalling everyone except the narrator, and 4) circle of friends falling apart because of envy. I know 1 is 4, but this is very important to me.

I have a vague feeling that many stories of sisterhood tend to end up with the sisterhood falling apart because of envy or jealousy, but I cannot substantiate this at all. I also have a vague feeling that many stories of brotherhood tend to not fall apart because of envy or jealousy, but I also cannot substantiate this at all. Mostly, I have a general impression that whenever female friendships are written about, the focus is on competition and cattiness (unsubstantiated generality on my part).

I was very, very happy with this book at first. The eight women all had different personalities and different jobs; there were writers and healers, empresses and warriors. It wasn't limited to one specific thing. And the author didn't seem to be weighting one occupation over the other. I also liked that the women listened to each other, that they respected each other in spite of their differences, that there weren't Stupid Misunderstandings.

Alas and alack, Nhia lost her personality mid-way, the empress indulged in multiple Stupid Misunderstandings, as did nearly everyone else, and the story collapsed into what felt like largely pointless gloom and doom.

I feel that if you want the gloom and doom to be less pointless, you should not write a prologue that strongly foreshadows said gloom and doom and generally makes the reader not care about characters that they know won't make it.

Also, in the very end, despite the diversity of the characters in the beginning, in the end, the happiest ones are the ones who have gone away from the public sphere and settled down with a husband and kids.

I am even more mad because the book was going so well until the last two hundred pages or so! I mean, I liked the China analogue! It felt real and non-cliched and non-stupid.

Needless to say, by the end, I really wanted to throw the book at something.

( Giant honking spoilers so I can rant at everyone )

Tatum, Beverly Daniel - "Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?"

(full title: "Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?" and Other Conversations about Race: A Psychologist Explains the Development of Racial Identity)

I should have written this up a long, long time ago. Instead, I procrastinated, and now you all are going to get a short write-up dredged from the depths of my poor memory instead of a nice, long meaty review.

I am not going to be rational about this book. I read it in the aftermath of the Great Cultural Appropriation of DOOM and in the middle of making a post on Race and PotC2. This is an Important Book to me, since it came at the right time to shape how I thought about race and racism. It gave me a vocabulary for concepts that hadn't yet solidified in my head; by doing so, it gave those concepts a specific shape. I can't even begin to say how much just that helped.

Tatum didn't invent the definitions of her terms and she didn't invent the terms themselves, but she made them accessible to me. I learned about aversive racism, racism = prejudice + power, reverse racism and why it's not that accurate to call it racism (not the same amount of power involved). She gave me the moving walkway analogy: Racism is so pervasive in society that it's like a backward-moving walkway. If you don't do anything, you're moving backwards (aka, you're as racist as the rest of society). Very racist people actively walk backwards. You can walk forwards, but if it isn't at a rate that's faster than the backwards-moving walkway, you can still be contributing to the overall racism in society. To be actively anti-racist, you have to walk at a rate faster than the walkway, and this takes a lot of effort.

If Tatum had just given me these tools to think about race and racism, that would have been more than enough. But she also brought in her own compassionate point of view. She's very straightfoward with those who ask loaded questions or come in feeling entitled or people who just haven't thought that much about racism, but she also takes the time to answer their questions kindly as well. And I found for all the crap that she must have had to put up with (I figure she is probably getting a lot more pointy questions than she writes up), she's still patient and compassionate.

The book's subtitle is about the development of racial identity, but the book itself addresses more than that, because one's racial identity ties so firmly into societal notions of race and racism.

I particularly like that she has sections of the book dedicated to specific minorities; there's not much, since she says that would be huge, but the bit on Asian Americans addresses the problems of the "model minority" myth and etc. There's a chapter on the formation of white identity, how to educate white children on racial identity, and another very helpful chapter on affirmative action. Finally, she addresses how to form coalitions and get allies, how to engage in the issue and start being anti-racist.

I'm not summarizing this well, but this book is excellent. It was an anchor for me during those crazy debates online, and will continue to be for quite some time.

Links:
- minnow1212's review