A Geography of Reading

"It is by reading novels, stories, and myths that we come to understand the world in which we live." -Orhan Pamuk

Reviewing Board Books with My Son

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I may be 10+ books behind my Goodreads Challenge reading goal for the year, but that doesn’t mean I’m not reading. I simply haven’t figured out how to get Goodreads to count the 100+ times I’ve read Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See? aloud to my son Remy. Though those readings used to be initiated by me, at fourteen months he’s now old enough to bring me a book that he wants read. Even cuter, he sits in front of the shelf in the living room that contains his books and pulls them out, one by one, and reads a few pages aloud (“Da di da ba da”) before discarding that book and reaching for the next. The result is him sitting inside a nest of books. He’s my son.
remy-books

So I thought I’d share our thoughts on a few of the books we read most often.

Mr. Brown Can Moo! Can You? by Dr. Seuss

Mama’s Take

mr-brown-can-moo-can-youThe rhythms of this book are fantastic. It’s a lot of fun to read aloud and I think my poetry has gotten better as a result. Making animal sounds is supposed to be a good way to help kids learn language and Remy seems to love when I dig in next to his ear and announce, “BOOM BOOM BOOM Mr. Brown is a wonder. BOOM BOOM BOOM Mr. Brown makes thunder.”

What Remy Says

I like the sounds my mom makes when she reads this book. And it’s delicious. I ate up so much of one copy that my dad said we had to put it away. That’s okay, my mom bought me a new copy. It tastes just as good as the first one.

Little Blue and Little Yellow by Leo Lionni

Mama Says

little-blue-and-little-yellowThis is one of the books the library very wisely allows parents to take out on loan permanently. We all know what kids can do to books. No one wants them back after they’ve been out on loan. But the book is terrible. Little Blue leaves the house when his mama tells him not to (after she’s left him home alone). He and his friend Little Yellow cry so hard that they meld identities and their parents no longer recognize them. The illustrations appear to be made of torn paper. I don’t know why I keep reading it to my son.

Remy Says

Dot colors. Mama’s always taking this out of my hands and returning it to me upside down. More dot colors. Friends and play and parents with hugs. What’s not to like?

The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle

Mama

the-very-hungry-caterpillarTorn paper done right. I still vaguely remember doing kindergarten projects with tissue paper in imitation of Carle’s iconic style and was delighted when my husband wanted to buy a copy that came with a little stuffed caterpillar for our little baby. Though the sentences are a little long and meandering, I love the focus on days of the week and counting and the story’s good. Even if it makes me want ice cream cones. We used to read the book with the caterpillar weaving in and out of the holes in the pages. But now Remy’s all business and I have to hurry if I want to get to the end. Bonus Eric Carle book is the aforementioned Brown Bear—talk about rhythm and I think the repetition is really good for language learning. I was dreading the day someone would tell me I look like the teacher in the book. It happened. I lived.

Remy

I like the short pages with holes that fit my fingers. I don’t know why my mom always wants to talk at the long pages, but this book is the best. Even when she reads it upside down. I even know what plums are. I eat them with breakfast sometimes.

Jacob Lawrence in the City by Susan Goldman Rubin

Mama

jacob-lawrence-in-the-cityArty parents trying to expose their kids to arty books can’t really go wrong with this book. The author does a good job of incorporating a blues rhythm into the text and I enjoyed getting to know more of Lawrence’s work. There’s also a book in this series that uses Magritte’s work that is more imaginative but the text and images in the Lawrence book work better together overall.

Remy

Flip, flip, flip. People in the city. Next book.

The Game of Mix-Up Art by Herve Tullet

Mama

the-game-of-mix-up-artSpeaking of arty books, I adore Tullet’s books. I sometimes fantasize about my husband becoming a childrens’ book illustrator and these books feed that fantasy. This one doesn’t have any words, but it’s filled with abstract illustrations cut at odd angles and I like seeing what picture Remy will make with it next. You may have heard of Press Here which is a super fun book to read and I think will get better as Remy gets older. My least favorite Tullet so far is The Game of Red, Yellow and Blue. The color combinations are okay and I like the shape cutouts, but the “Fab-racadabra” rainbow carnival at the end does not translate well into English.

Remy

Lines go with dots go with squiggles. I could flip through this book all day. I have a favorite picture picked out, but I flip back and forth because it seems to make Mama happy.

Counting with/Contando con Frida by Patty Rodriguez and Ariana Stein

Mama Piensa

counting-with-fridaOne of the things I’ve been trying to make sure Remy gets is exposure to other languages. I started reading him Garcia Lorca really early on and when I saw this adorable little book, I thought it would be a good chance to learn to count and for me to get my tongue around Spanish in ways that we could both practice. The illustrations are so attractive and I liked the book so much that we now have all of the books in the series. Probably the second best is Lucha Libre Anatomy/Anatomia and not just because I like shouting “ombligo!” on the belly button page.

Remy Dice

Frida is beautiful. She isn’t on all of the pages, but I know which pages to turn to so I can see her face. I used to kiss this book, but now I’m trying to be less obvious. On the page with five portraits of her, I like the one best where she looks like an Eskimo. I don’t know who that dude with her in the middle portrait is, but I could take him. I love pressing each of the tres flores in her hair over and over.

Bear and Ball by Cliff Wright

Mama

bear-and-ballThis is another book I liked so much that I bought everything else by Cliff Wright I could find. It’s a very simple book with just a couple of words on each page that match the illustration. Still, Wright achieves a kind of story with the pictures and I love the summary at the end where you can see all the pages at once. The rhyming is nice, too.

Remy

I like to bring this book to Mama because I can understand the words she uses while telling me the story. It’s a good substitute for when we can’t play with an actual ball. And it’s not so long it’s boring. Ball. Ball. Ball. Maybe those squiggles below the pictures actually mean something.

Guess How Much I Love You by Sam McBratney

Mama

guess-how-much-i-love-youI knew this book was a classic and I loved the sentiment of not being able to quantify the amount of love a parent has for a child. What I wasn’t prepared for is how competitive it is. Geez Big Nutbrown Hare, just let your kiddo have the upper hand one time fer Chrissakes.

Remy

I like the way Mama snuggles me when she reads me this book. I don’t know why she always cries at the end.

Sharing Our World: Animals of the Native Northwest Coast by Ian Reid

Mama

sharing-our-worldOne of the wonderful things about having a community of people around you when you have a baby is that they expose you to new things. I’ve always resisted Native American art because I didn’t understand it. But a Native friend gave this book to us at a baby shower and I love learning about the iconography of Native Northwest coast tribes and also some of the lore that accompanies it. Like the books says, “Raven teaches us to be clever and creative” and I’m really glad my son will have some exposure to a culture that’s very important in the area he calls home.

Remy

Caw caw. The black bird in this book also flies past my window every morning and every night. I point at him whenever I see him flying with his friends.

A is for Activist by Innosanto Nagara

Mama

a-is-for-activistSome books are written for parents. This is one of them. I’m a socialist. I’d love for my son to be politically involved and try to make the world he lives in a better place. I don’t often read him this book, though, because there are a few things I need to teach him before he absorbs messages like “No! No! No! Yes to what we want. No to what must go.”

Remy

No! No! No!

Thanks for indulging this new mom. Reading is one of my greatest pleasures. And although I probably won’t finish that Garcia Lorca or the Wallace Stevens I just ordered anytime soon, snuggling with my son while he learns about the world is a pretty great substitute.

If you’re hunting for board books or anything else, I always recommend Bookshop.org, and not just because I receive a commission when you click that link.

A Man Called Ove – The Lovable Curmudgeon

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a_man_called_ove_-fredrik_backmanThis week my Facebook feed is filled with #meinthree posts: stacks and stacks of status updates where my friends describe their best traits in terms of beloved characters from Alcott, Rowling, and beyond. Also this week I met the character who might be the most like me: Ove from Fredrik Backman’s A Man Called Ove.

Now, you might wonder what a thirty-something writer mama marketer from Seattle has in common with an elderly widower from Sweden. More than I’d like to admit…

Characters We Hate to Love

I was predisposed to hate Ove. He’s so upset about everything. “He’s the kind of man who points at people he doesn’t like the look of, as if they were burglars and his forefinger a policeman’s flashlight.” He knows nothing about modern technology and everything about the way the people around him should live their lives. As I read more and more about this irascible curmudgeon, I started to wonder why I was so upset at him and why I couldn’t stop reading his story. Because usually when I dislike a character too much (or at least can’t find any redeeming value in their narrative), I put the book down and never pick it up again.

Not so with Ove. The more he railed against drivers who disobeyed traffic signs and became frustrated with neighbors who didn’t understand the simple way things ought to be done, the more I recognized him and his unhappiness. Images of a certain blonde shrieking at drivers who won’t yield to pedestrians and muttering about neighbors who park improperly came to mind. I saw in Ove the same tightness I feel when I’m upset and don’t have the communication skills to express my feelings in any proper (or productive) way.

There’s an art to describing a character who’s so unpleasant to be around and Backman’s nailed it. Although we steadily learn more and more about Ove and why he is the way he is throughout the book, that reveal isn’t fast enough for us to forgive Ove’s “right fighting” straight out. Nor should it be. If we understood Ove’s reason for being immediately, we’d sympathize with him and maybe clap him on the back and ask him to buck up. But that wouldn’t be giving Ove’s feelings his due and we’d be in serious danger of reading the rest of the book in a pool of sympathy for Ove.

Instead, Backman lets us find Ove annoying and opaque, but he does two specific things that gave me reason to read on: 1) he slowly reveals good deeds Ove’s done (even if somewhat reluctantly) over time and in the present so I learned that Ove did have a good heart in there somewhere, and 2) Backman gives us Parvaneh, a character who believes in Ove and his goodness even when he (and we) do not. There are other characters like this in the book, including the glimpses we get of Ove’s deceased wife, but Parvaneh has the most faith in Ove. Even when she’s busting his balls.

The Language of Comedy

I struggle with books I know are meant to be funny. Maybe because I am like Ove, maybe because I’m tone deaf to comedic writing, who knows. But one thing I noticed about this book was the way Backman structured the tempo of his sentences:

“Ove is fifty-nine.

He drives a Saab. He’s the kind of man who points at people he doesn’t like the look of, as if they were burglars and his forefinger a policeman’s flashlight. He stands at the counter of a shop where owners of Japanese cars come to purchase white cables.”

– Fredrick Backman, A Man Called Ove

Beyond the fact that Backman does a wonderful job of conveying how out of his element Ove is in that moment, these first sentences of the book are so staccato that they must be meant to be funny. It’s obvious that Backman’s using these short sentences intentionally because he does us the favor of alternating them with longer phrases, but the sentences never flow, just as Ove never flows through life. There’s just enough detail to get us through and absolutely no unnecessary ornament.

Compare this with the final sentence of the first paragraph of Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood:

“She was a fat woman with pink collars and cuffs and pear-shaped legs that slanted off the train seat and didn’t reach the floor.”

– Flannery O’Connor, Wise Blood

Here O’Connor, who is also writing a comedic book (according to the introduction, I’ve barely started reading it), takes exactly the opposite approach and not only feeds us a luscious running sentence with no punctuation to slow us down, she also overloads us with detail. There is still some staccato in this sentence with the alliteration of “collars and cuffs” but I love the way that plays against the melody of the rest of the sentence.

You won’t find this curmudgeon laughing out loud at either book, but I can recognize the craft that goes into this kind of writing and I hope you’ll fall in love with Ove as I ultimately did. Maybe he’ll even teach you a little something about yourself.

As for me, I’m embracing my inner Ove and squeezing some love on into that little stickler for rules to see if I can’t get myself to loosen up a bit. Even if you won’t find me in the Apple Store anytime soon. And if you’re wondering who my other #meinthree characters are, I think I’m also a little Elizabeth Bennett and more Sophie MacDonald (from The Razor’s Edge) than I’d like to admit.

If you want to hang out with Ove, pick up a copy of A Man Called Ove from Bookshop.org. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

Reading into my Grandmother’s Bookshelves

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What stories do the books on our shelves tell about us as readers, as people? I had a chance to ponder this question recently as I read through a few of the last books my grandmother, my beloved Baba, ever owned. When she passed away in 2011, she had already diligently shed nearly all of her books, which means that my library is already full of tomes that were once hers from her French grammar books to a copy of Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses.

It was that last book that inspired me to write to my grandfather, my beloved Djiedo, and tell him that I was reading her books and thinking of the two of them. In reply, he offered to let me take whatever I wanted from the 30 or so books that remained. So I did. And less than a month later I opened a treasure box of Baba’s final books. Now my to-read shelves are filled with titles like Death in Kashmir, Great Cases of Scotland Yard, and The Judas Kiss.

The First Thing about Baba

She loved mysteries. I know that from the books left on her shelves but also from the years of Sue Grafton, Mary Daheim, and Dick Francis novels traded back and forth between her and my father and aunts. In fact, when I picked up Great Cases of Scotland Yard, Djiedo said that had been a particular favorite of hers. I haven’t read it yet. I’m savoring it. But what about the books I did read?

Birds of a Feather by Jacqueline Winspear

birds-of-a-feather-jacqueline-winspearThis second book of the Maisie Dobbs mysteries has a smartly dressed woman on the cover with fabulous roadster and a lot of birds flying about. It’s set in 1930s Britain as Maisie tries to figure out what happened to the daughter of her client because the girl seems to have disappeared. The mystery is interesting and well-plotted. There are even some unusual elements about it (no, I won’t spoil them for you), but what I loved most about this book is imagining Baba reading it.

That action itself is likely a fiction. There was a piece of paper left in this book about 60 pages in. A bookmark, I’d imagine, Baba was always kinder to books than I. So it’s possible that this is the last book Baba ever read. Winspear pays a lot of attention to Maisie’s wardrobe and I could imagine Baba reading through and happily recalling the fashions of her girlhood. Maisie is also quite a pistol, I think is the accurate type of phrase, and I loved imagining Baba celebrating each time Maisie outsmarted one of the men who looked down on her—a cultural phenomenon that still isn’t fixed but which must have been prevalent throughout Baba’s life. My Baba had a quick wit but a quiet way and I enjoyed picturing her delight as Maisie triumphed (quietly and loudly) once again, always beating expectations.

There were moments when the book was plain slow and I also wondered if Baba would have rankled at the tangents or sunk in for the ride. Whether she would have skimmed impatiently through as I did or savored every single word. On my own I don’t know that I would have had the patience to finish this book, but reading it “with” Baba made the whole experience special.

Gilgamesh as translated by Stephen Mitchell

This was the first book I read from my latest (and last) raid on Baba’s shelves. Perhaps the most surprising thing about it was that there was a letter inside from the friend who had given it to Baba. I won’t disclose the contents here, but reading the letter reminded me that Baba was a whole person and not just my grandmother. I know it’s a juvenile revelation, but it’s one I was finally ready for. In some strange way reading the story of this king who must step down from his throne and literally go to hell and back in order to become a more whole person while starting to think of Baba as human was just what I needed to start accepting myself as human. More on that in a bit.

The Right Attitude to Rain by Alexander McCall Smith

the-right-attitude-to-rain-alexander-mccall-smithI kept looking for the mystery in this quiet novel set in Edinborough because the other books I’d read by McCall Smith were in the Ladies Detective Agency series. Instead I was surprised by a smartly modern narrative about an older woman and the life she’s choosing the make for herself. I write “older” though the character is 40 because I mixed Isabel Dalhousie up with Baba somewhere in my brain and averaged them out at 60-something.

Although the jacket copy describes this as the next (second) installment of Isabel’s adventures, so little happens in the way of plot. Instead, we spend a lot of time in Isabel’s head as she contemplates whether to have a love affair with a younger man. It’s a slow but thoughtful read and I loved thinking of Baba reading through this book and pondering what she would have thought of the characters and their choices. I like to think she would have celebrated Isabel’s quiet brashness in the same way she would have celebrated Maisie’s.

I suppose that’s the beauty of “having” this “conversation” with her now, I can imagine any point of view that suits me. But I’ve often heard touted that Baba said when she turned 60 she could finally say whatever she wanted. And with her quick wit and winning smile, I bet she got away with a lot. I’m in a place now, nearing 40, where I’m ready to do the same and it was nice to have the encouragement. Even if only from my subconscious.

Why Baba, Why Now?

I believe if I pay attention that the right things happen at the right time, and I needed this box of books this past month. It’d been kind of a rough year, really. What I thought was a struggle to fit back into work after maternity leave turned out to be a fundamental discord with the strategic direction of the company I was working at. Though I didn’t speak my mind at the time, I see in retrospect how much happier I would have been if I had and if I had left earlier. Instead I was laid off one month ago, and while that was a bit of a psychic relief (because we really were going different directions), it also thrust me into an accelerated job search. All while all I wanted to do was snuggle with and stabilize my family. If I’d had the strength, I might have dug us an actual bunker because I needed that much to feel safe and surrounded by the people who loved me. Baba was part of that. An amazing support group of fellow laid-off employees was, too.

I was fortunate enough to be offered two positions on the same day and now I’ve been at the one I chose for a whole week. I’m settling in okay (though adjustment to a new crowd for a shy introvert takes a lot of energy). I like the people, the work, and the office. I think they even want me to speak my mind. That’s an adjustment, too, but I think Baba has my back.

Thanks for bearing with me through this long silence that had become my blog. I struggle to speak publicly when I’m truly unhappy which sucks, because sharing books with you is a source of happiness. I still don’t have a lot of time to read and write, but I’ll post here whenever I do.

Oh, and if you’re hiring for anything related to digital marketing, I know a fabulous group of people.

Lost in Translation: When There Aren’t Words

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lost in translation - ella frances sandersThere are a lot of reasons I haven’t blogged lately. Only one of them is that I’ve been having trouble finding the right book. I don’t have enough to say about my troubled relationship with Winnie the Pooh or a deep enough understanding of Taoism to make my thoughts on The Te of Piglet worth sharing. The random thoughts that catch my attention in Nobody’s Home aren’t concrete enough to justify me blogging about Ugrešić again. I haven’t had the attention span to properly read Mary Jo Salter’s A Phone Call to the Future yet, either. The big one, though, is that I’m wrestling with some pretty big relationship stuff with my mom and I’ve been spending most of my energy working on an essay about that.

So when I found Lost in Translation: An Illustrated Compendium of Untranslatable Words from Around the World by Ella Frances Sanders at a nearby Little Free Library (I swear I still spend most of my free cash on books, but you really don’t want me to blog about There’s a Wocket in My Pocket, do you?), the idea of focusing on one word at a time seemed perfect.

This is not a new concept. I can’t tell you how many blog posts I’ve read about untranslatable words. I’m either especially drawn to them (likely) or they’re everywhere (oh, internet). But there is always something extra lovely about holding a book in my hands, and despite the fact that the illustrations sometimes occlude the words and that one of the snippets of exposition beside the words seems to fit a different word entirely, I will love this book more than I can love any blog post of the same nature.

These are the untranslatable words that speak to me…

Hiraeth (Swedish) – A homesickness for somewhere you cannot return to

Having spent a year in Chile under Pinochet’s dictatorship, a year in Poland as the country transitioned to the west, and a childhood in a strangely liberal and artistic Idaho town that’s now closing its theaters and opening up Baptist church after Baptist church, I feel more than my fair share of Hiraeth. This and the liminal feeling the exposure to and removal from places, cultures, and friends has likely shaped me more than any other thing. Hiraeth has shaped the deep, instant attachments I feel to friends and the strange way I expect almost nothing in return—simply the knowledge that my people are okay. Hiraeth also led me to settle into and create a home as soon as I possibly could after leaving high school—a home that so nourishes my sense of well-being that sightings of me outside of it (except when I’m at work) are quite rare.

Feuillemort (French) – Having the color of a faded, dying leaf

Language is ineffable. Life is ineffable. This word speaks to me of fragility and the gorgeous things that can happen to our languages and our soul when we take a moment to observe closely. Which is the only thing worth doing in art.

One of the things I enjoyed most about Lost in Translation is that many of the words themselves feel ineffable. They refer to things so momentary that we can’t quite catch them. I loved the feeling of trying to capture those feelings that I’d not yet taken the time to examine and appreciate.

Sobremesa (Spanish) – Time spent chatting over a table with friends long after the food is gone

This word is not in the book, but I discovered it recently on the internet and I used this word to change my life. Having a child, especially one who’s transitioning to solid foods, became an excuse (or created an imperative) for my husband and me to actually eat at our dinner table. Which was wonderful. But after we adults finished eating, my husband would spring from his seat and start cleaning the table and erasing all the evidence of our having cooked.

Don’t get me wrong, I love having a clean kitchen, but discovering “sobremesa” gave me the language I needed to ask my husband to linger, let the dishes rest for a bit, and talk with me. When you have a nearly one-year-old baby, any time you can actually have a conversation is a gift.

Kummerspeck (German) – Grief bacon or the excess weight we gain from emotional overeating

“Language wraps its understanding and punctuation around us all, tempting us to cross boundaries and helping us to comprehend the impossibly difficult questions that life relentlessly throws at us.” – Ella Frances Sanders

Except it doesn’t. There are some things that are still beyond language. Which brings me to the real reason I’m writing this blog today. My friend lost his newborn daughter on Thursday. When my husband spoke the words “lost their baby” as I was emerging from a nap, I thought, “How on earth do you lose a newborn? They aren’t all that mobile.” And then understanding hit me.

Feel that silence? That blow? That complete failure of language? I know I do. We reached out, like you do, like so many did. We offered love and support and love. I cringed in anticipation of the normal platitudes people send in response to loss—the things we say to reassure ourselves that there’s a reason behind such a thing and that it couldn’t happen to us. They were mercifully absent. I’d read a blog post earlier in the day about a woman whose friend lost a 21-month-old baby and her own experience with wordlessness. That post had made me sad, but it was nothing like the reality.

My husband, who is always better at translating the untranslatable feelings into words and action than I am, helped me find something to say, something to do. But language and all the love in the world cannot fix what happened.

“Words reduce reality to something the human mind can grasp, which isn’t very much.” – Eckhart Tolle

To my writing soul, language is everything. And although sometimes language just isn’t enough, I have to keep trying.

If you want to explore your own glossary of untranslatable words and feelings, pick up a copy of Lost in Translation: An Illustrated Compendium of Untranslatable Words from Around the World from Bookshop.org. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

Interrogating Myself with Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

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between the world and me ta nehisi coatesWhen a dear friend sent me a copy of Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, he said it was because I had a son. I don’t think I would have read the book if I’d understood it was about race in American society. But that skirting of uncomfortable topics is exactly why I needed to read this book. It’s why I think everyone should read this book.

The Art of Persuasion

Because I’m white and because I (like everyone else) have no choice as to what race I am, I’ve often felt impugned by conversations about racism. I grew up in a very white town, but I’ve always had friends of all colors. I was pretty sure I’m not racist and so, while I know we are not at all post-racial, I haven’t really found a way to engage in the conversation about racism. So when I realized that this book was about being black in America, I was prepared to feel attacked once again for things that “aren’t my fault.”

Coates schooled me good. And he did it in two really effective ways.

Owning Your Own Experience

In reading Coates address responsibility, I began to understand the burden on the opposite side of my privilege:

“You are a black boy, and you must be responsible for your body in a way that other boys cannot know. Indeed, you must be responsible for the worst actions of other black bodies, which, somehow, will always be assigned to you. And you must be responsible for the bodies of the powerful—the policeman who cracks you with a nightstick will quickly find his excuse in your furtive movements. And this is not reducible to just you—the women around you must be responsible for their bodies in a way that you will never know. You have to make your peace with the chaos, but you cannot lie.” – Ta-Nehisi Coates

I realized the struggle African Americans are speaking of and experiencing isn’t about me at all. Sure, the actions I take have an effect on the world and I should do the very best I can to look beyond skin color, but I need to stop putting myself at the center of someone else’s suffering. The voice saying “this is wrong” needs to be heard. And saying “this is wrong” is not the same as saying “this is your fault.”

Reinforcing the Humanness of the Struggle

We’ve all read about slavery in school. Slavery was bad. We’ve read about racism. Racism is bad. There are some icons we remember from our history books and bandy about in conversation, but it’s far too easy for all of those struggles to seem past and pat once we’ve heard the same broad stories over and over again.

Coates unpacks the experience of slavery, racism, and being black in America in such a human, visceral way that it’s impossible to ignore.

“I have raised you to respect every human being as singular, and you must extend that same respect into the past. Slavery is not an indefinable mass of flesh. It is a particular, specific enslaved woman whose mind is active as your own, whose range of feeling is as vast as your own; who prefers the way the light falls in one particular spot in the woods, who enjoys fishing where the water eddies in a nearby stream, who loves her mother in her own complicated way, thinks her sister talks too loud, has a favorite cousin, a favorite season, who excels at dressmaking and knows, inside herself, that she is as intelligent and capable as anyone. ‘Slavery’ is this same woman born in a world that loudly proclaims its love of freedom and inscribes this love in its essential texts, a world in which these same professors hold this woman a slave, hold her mother a slave, her father a slave, her daughter a slave, and when this woman peers back into the generations all she sees is the enslaved. She can hope for more. She can imagine some future for her grandchildren. But when she dies the world—which is really the only world she can ever know—ends. For this woman, enslavement is not a parable. It is a damnation. It is the never-ending night. And the length of that night is most of our history. Never forget that we were enslaved in this country longer than we have been free. Never forget that for 250 years black people were born into chains—whole generations followed by more generations who knew nothing but chains.” – Ta-Nehisi Coates

Wow. Re-reading that now as I type it out for you still overwhelms my nervous system with awe. Because when my son was born I saw for the first time in my life how each human was a life who should be loved and cherished. And yet it’s so easy, and I have been guilty of, failing to see that humanity in each and every soul.

It doesn’t hurt that the language is flat out gorgeous.

The Pain and Poignancy of Parenthood

As you can see from the quotes above, this book is written as a letter from Coates to his son. That hits me especially hard right now as I’m trying to shape the brain, life, and values of my own young son. I worry for his future as I can see Coates worrying for the future of his son. Although my son is white. Coates writes to his son, “The price of error is higher for you than it is for your countrymen.” And I know that my son, who although he is the most important child to me in the world is not more important to the world than any other child, is far less likely to get shot for shoplifting or walking down the street.

The most impactful moment of this book, a book that is deeply impactful overall, is when Coates takes his son on an interview with a black woman whose son had been killed by a white man because he had refused to turn down his music. She wonders, “Had he not spoke back, spoke up, would he still be here?” And then she speaks to Coates’s son:

“You exist. You matter. You have value. You have every right to wear your hoodie, to play your music as loud as you want. You have every right to be you. And no one should deter you from being you. You have to be you. And you can never be afraid to be you.”

This woman who had lost her son because he stood up for himself, a loss that must feel like losing everything, still had the courage to encourage another young man to stand up for himself. Because it is the right thing to do. Although it carries a danger only she could truly understand in that moment, she knows the cost of giving in is too great. I hope I have the courage to teach my son to stand up for his convictions. I know when I tried to describe the dichotomy of trying to raise the best person and at the same time wanting him never to get hurt, I ended up crying.

What it’s Like to Feel Threatened

As a woman, I’m so used to feeling like a smaller mammal that I barely even register the ways that feeling affects my behavior on a daily basis. I’m not “playing the victim card,” it’s just my life experience. I’m careful about where I walk and when, who I sit next to on the bus, and taking the risk of challenging someone. I alter my language, the strongest tool I have, so that I do not offend, because offending someone bigger could get me hurt.

So when I read about the hundreds of sexist letters. No. They weren’t sexist, they were abusive. They might have been sexist too. The language they used was certainly ugly and usually only directed at women. When I read about the hundreds of abusive letters sent to female Seattle City Council members by sports fans angry they didn’t get their stadium, I was surprised to find myself shocked into silence. For a few minutes I could not even speak. I could barely move.

I tried to explain what I was feeling to my husband, but it was so big, so new to be talking about this feeling that I tried never to even think about. I was shocked at how ugly people can be (even though I know people can be ugly). I was angry that those men (and one woman) were being so childish. I was scared that they would feel so free to do something so public (it’s my assumption that all government emails are subject to potential disclosure) to public officials. If women of stature could be treated that way in a city I love…

When the subject was revisited in Crosscut a few days later, I finally found my voice. I knew I wanted to speak up, so I went to Twitter. I don’t have a huge following, but it’s the most public voice I have (that isn’t work-related). I tweeted this:

I was a little afraid to put myself out there, but I felt stronger for speaking. I got four retweets and five favorites – both high stats for me. And then I got this response:

Twitter___Notifications_3
I’d show you the embedded Twitter post instead of a screenshot, except he’d deleted it by the next day.

The response is banal enough. Kind of aggressive and accusative, and he puts some words in my mouth, but there’s nothing overtly threatening about it.

Except that’s not how I felt. Receiving this one response, even in a social media world I know is full of trolls looking to pick fights, I felt afraid. I dreaded the conversation spiraling. I worried what might come next and if I’d be the next recipient of some of the really ugly words being bandied about. I feared that my very dear coworkers would jump in on my side and just make the whole thing flare up even worse. I started considering how public my life is—listed phone number and address, easily accessible email, every vulnerability of my soul spelled out on this blog. I considered how secure my passwords are lest they get hacked. I worried for the safety of my son. I was inside a full-on fear response.

Maybe I was overthinking things or aggrandizing my own importance because after I summoned the courage/bluster to post this self defense designed to deflect not inflame:


The conversation died out. Sometime after that he deleted his tweet. But the feeling of fear remained. And the next day I decided I would not be silenced:

It is incumbent on me to use the power of language, the power that I have, to contradict wrongs. Those are values I hold very strongly—that I want to pass on to my son. Sometimes I need to do speak softly and sometimes I need to shout, but I need to show him that I have a voice and he has a voice and that our voices matter.

How This Changed My Feelings about #BlackLivesMatter

I’d spent a lot of time thinking that the Black Lives Matter movement was an outsized response to a real problem. I watched activists shouting down people who were on their side (like Bernie Sanders) just to be heard. And one activist reshaped history at a public event in a way I felt was downright dishonest. I started to agree with the #AllLivesMatter folks. Even though I knew that second movement was deafly trying to say “hey, your struggle isn’t all that special.” I shook my head and thought about more effective ways these activists could get their point about the continued effects of racism heard. I understood the privilege that comes with my light skin color in this society, but I did not understand what it felt like to be unprivileged. All lives matter, but not everyone has to fight for the respect we all deserve as humans.

After my tiny little Twitter battle, I realized that Black Lives Matter activists are finding their voices like I was. They’re so accustomed to living in a world where they carry the burdens of our society’s reactions to their skin color that they have every reason to believe if they engage in a civil discourse about police brutality that too often leads to deaths these activists will not be heard.

I still think the movement hasn’t found the way to communicate that will actually create institutional change, but now I wonder if that’s their goal. Perhaps they’re just saying, in a world where they’re pretty sure change is impossible, “I exist. I matter.” And they do.

“I am speaking to you as I always have—as the sober and serious man I have always wanted you to be, who does not apologize for his human feelings, who does not make excuses for his height, his long arms, his beautiful smile. You are growing into consciousness, and my wish for you is that you feel no need to constrict yourself to make other people comfortable.” – Ta-Nehisi Coates

So, Am I a Racist?

This probably isn’t even the right question, but yes, as much as I wish I just saw color as a descriptor, I am racist in some ways. I try to challenge myself when stereotypes bubble to the surface, but, no matter how much my friend group may look like a Benetton ad, I have a lot of work to do before I can even begin to consider myself post racial.

I hope that more people will read books like Between the World and Me and think deeply about how we all relate to one another. And if even one more person could write a book this excellent that taught me this much…

If you want to interrogate yourself, or even just read some really gorgeous writing, pick up a copy of Between the World and Me. Better yet, buy two copies. Give one to a friend who has a different life experience than you do. Then ask them to share their point of view with you. You’ll learn a lot by listening.