#interesting that clarence thomas didn’t mention the loving case

[aj-lenoire]

when i was younger i was more of the opinion ‘to each their own’ and ‘it’s okay to disagree with people’ but as more and more time passes i’m noticing that the people i ‘disagree’ with are the people who think some human beings should be denied basic rights because they don’t adhere to a certain (christofascistic) lifestyle

[learmagazine-blog]

Some Lite Irony

I meet Bum el Niño in a local coffee spot called Buona Caffe. The weird thing is, neither of us drink coffee, a kind of irony that Niño exudes in his work: contractions, opposing values, and a sense of clarity that seems slightly out of place. I want to figure out why this album sounds the way it does, where this sense of direction comes from despite the diverse sound scape. Every song on the record is unique. Unique enough to be on a separate album, a fact that of course is ironic as our first few exchanges at the table. I order a spiced tea, and find Niño at the table in the back. He has his own water bottle, which is weird only because he suggested we meet here, yet he orders nothing. I decide to ask him if he wants anything.

Niño: No, I’m ok, I got my water.

The water bottle is a blue 32 ounce wide mouth.

I: What do you usually get from here? You have any favorites?

N: Nah, I’ve had the tea once, but usually I don’t get anything.

I couldn’t help but think of the sign at the counter that asked that all guest purchase something. It seems Niño’s very presence here was a contradiction.

I: So this is just a good spot to conduct interviews then, huh?

N: I really don’t do press (chuckles).

I: Well think of this as a studio session (chuckles).

N: (Laughs): That’s cool. Turn me up on the left.

I: As a prerequisite for my studio sessions with new people, I am a little interested in past sessions.

N: Told you I don’t do press (chuckles). They’ve been productive, which might be another way to say boring.

I: For the latest project in particular?

N: Yeah, those been really productive, but I think the least boring one might’ve been Free Max B. That was a fun session.

I: That’s a compelling record. I imagine you’re referring to the second part. What inspired you, or should I say  what inspired the smoothest brother?

N: Definitely the greats: Bootsy, George and ‘nem. Sly fasho. Probably Sly the most. I was thinking Sly would say some slick, pimp like shit like “I know you like to be polite, but baby I can do ya right” you know? And alot of funk seemed like the the soundtrack to black power. So I tell my people don’t give up so easy, which I think we know but forget sometimes.

I: People as in black people?

N: Yeah.

I: Of which we’re the only two here, if you noticed (laugh).

N: (Laughs) Oh yeah I always notice.

I: So this is kind of an interesting place for a studio session coming of this album. It seems like you’re making some strong statements about race throughout-

N: If you’re about to ask if the album is for Caucasians, then no (laughs),

I: (Laughs) That reminds me of a line on Let Loose: “I am not from the Caucasus, I am not Caucasian”. When I heard that line I thought of irony.

N: Ok, why’s that?

I: The line seemed out of place. I think you created a world on the project, in which white people are very, uh, absent. Like this album is that  juke spot on the corner where the racial make-up is opposite of this spot. There are two of fewer white folks, and you can feel the results of their actions, like maybe segregation, but everyone is so concerned with enjoying their time, no one thinks about segregation or racism.

N: Except the conscious, afro-pick soul brother.

I: (Laughs) Exactly, that line on Let Loose is that dude, always chanting about the man keeping us down.

N: Is he a drunk?

I: Maybe a little (chuckles). It makes me wonder, who are you speaking to on the song? Which makes me wonder who you are speaking to throughout the project.

N: A bunch a different folks. ‘Cause you know how Let Loose starts right? Like (sings) “I know he need you”. So like a love interest is distracted by another person. But the chorus is speaking to America. Like black people been parenting and grandparenting this mug since it started you know? But I think that line came from seeing alot of people forget about the roots of Hiphop. They forget this is black music, even though it’s alot of people who ain’t black involved now. Them people don’t rap about helping us. Sometimes it seems like they exploiting the art form.

I: I see.

N: But your take is bonkers, I’m feeling that.

I: (Chuckles) I wonder if some themes you deal with are sort of difficult for the black community to talk about. There’s a line in Supa/Fun: “Fuck Clarence Thomas, God Bless Anita Hill”. That case was a little before your time, and I think about how some of us really thought Anita Hill should’ve sacrificed her own well-being for the sake of Thomas’ progression as a black man.

N: Yeah, that’s part of what built this country. Black people, and especially black women, putting themselves aside so other people can shine. But whoever don’t get that just being selfish. Those people couldn’t achieve their own accomplishments because their selfishness lead to nowhere, so it hurt them to see other selfishness get interrupted. That be some of them fist afro pick dashiki niggas too.

I: (Laughs) Are there times where you’re a fist afro american? I think of a line again on Supa/Fun: “I flow ‘cause they swam through my ancestor’s blood”. It seems like you’re providing the audience, which is our community, with consciousness. All these lines are amazing by the way. You wrote them all right? (laughs)

N: (Laughs) Yeah, I wrote everything except the verse on Lite In The Daytime. And yeah sometimes you gotta let em know.

I: Kick the knowledge. Speaking of Lite In The Daytime, this album sometimes feels like Rakim and sometimes feels like Pimp C. What were you listening to during the process?

N: Like I said, alot of Sly. There’s A Riot Going On.  Probably listened to that like 50 times. A record by Bobby Hutcherson called Head On was in heavy heavy rotation. One of my homies from the web had the cover on his social media profile back in 2013, and I’ve been listening ever since. It gives me direction when I’m making an album. It’s where I got the seven track method, the switch-ups, alot of technical shit.

I: So hold on, homies from the web?

N: Yeah, met him through Instagram.

I: Ah, I’m not on that.

N: Quick story, he came to the city once bought me some breakfast, and dropped like 2 g’s on records. I ain’t even have no job at the time so I was like “yo that’s wild”, but you know, some people get down like that. (Laughs)

I: Do you collect records?

N: Not quite. I buy records to listen to ‘em.

I: (Chuckles).

N: Man some people buy records just to say they got ‘em, never play ‘em, just take pictures of em or brag about special presses or retail value. I think it’s silly. Like if you ain’t doin’ nothin’ with it, you may as well give it to somebody who can use it.

I: You mentioned Bobby Hutcherson; he’s a jazz musician correct?

N: Yeah, vibraphonist.

I: You might be the first rapper I’ve met who knows that. Did you sample any of his records on this project?

N: Can’t tell you that (chuckles). But nah I didn’t. But he inspired what I was trying to do alot. Sometimes you gotta have reverence when it comes to sampling. Some records shouldn’t be touched. Like have a top five that you’d never sample.

I: What are yours?

N: Hmm; it’s gonna seem like I was waiting on this question but Head On, I Fooled You This Time, Original Ragga Muffin, What Time Is It, and Is My Living In Vain. I’ll never flip anything on those. They’re too good.

I: That’s outstanding. That last one’s a gospel record correct?

N: Yeah, The Clarke Sisters.

I: So how’d you feel about the Jay-Z sample? (Laughs)

N: Terrible. (laughs) Like one of the worst flips I ever heard. But it’s on my forbidden list so I wouldn’t even touched it. Honestly, I didn’t care for the flip on Lite In The Daytime at first. But when the bass line hit I started feeling it.

I: How’d that song come about?

N: The homie I worked with, Jermond, was saying how he rapped. And you know, everybody be rappin’ so I ain’t really pay it no mind. Most of the time, I don’t take rappers seriously unless I hear ‘em do some freestylin’. I think that’s the mark of a dope emcee. So one day I heard freestyle and I was like “ok you got skills”, so I told him I made beats. Fast forward like two weeks and I’m listening to a famous harmonica player. I found like a six second section I liked. Broke up the notes in the [Boss SP] 303 and then played em backwards. Then I added some drums from a lil mini drum machine. Then I was like, this beat is trash. The thing about the 303 though is it saves workflow, so it was still even after I turned everything off. So the next day, I turned the 303 back on, and it was still there. I got out my bass machine and just started playing a random scale and boom, there it was. As I was playing the bass line, a hook came to my mind. It felt like some pimp shit (chuckles). You know Maya Angelou was a madame? So I thought of some Maya Angelou pimp shit (laughs), like I’m tryna put you on game, share some wisdom you know? Anyway, Jermond spit a dope freestyle, and one day we was at work not doing much and I showed him the beat and the hook. He was like “Oh snap that shit crazy” you know. And I was like ��yo you wanna get a verse on here”, and he was like “Hell yeah”. I sent him the beat to his email. So fast forward another two weeks, and I recorded the hook. I also had a verse partially written down on the cover of a Klique record. So I hit him that day, no answer. Very next day: I was just about to go in to record that partial verse, and he calls me, kind of drunk. He was like “I got a verse ready man” and I was like “when can you record” and he hit me with the “I’m out of town these next couple weeks, but after that anytime”. Man I was like “aight” (laughs). So in the two weeks, I’m listening to the Streets Taste song and this instrumental, got them both in heavy rotation. And I think hearing together made me like the instrumental alot. The hook and the bass line made it more enjoyable for me. Two weeks pass, and I finally get Jermond in the studio.

I: (Laughs) And smooth sailing from there?

N: (Laughs) He didn’t have the verse written if that’s what you mean by smooth sailing. But he did bring a notebook and his own water. No pen though. So I had to play the beat over and over, and he finally got it finished, and recorded in a only a few takes. That’s when the smooth sailing probably happened. Like on his way out the door. But it was a fun session, and his verse ended up being the length of the rap section so it worked out. But yeah dope bass lines, catchy hooks, and listening a thousand times might make you like a beat more (chuckles).

I: (Chuckles): That makes me wonder, what are some of your favorite songs on this project?

N: Knock is wild. Shout out to Bruce and Daniel; they came through on them joints for real. I really love that (sings) if I had a-nother sack/I would roll it light it pass it around. That’s exactly the music I was trying to make. Of course Streets Taste. James was behind that beat. That was the first one that was made so everything else kind of fell into that genre. It’s like the running theme. What they call it, thesis?

I: Right.

At this point things started to make sense. The irony of being black in America ties this album together, tied this very conversation together. We don’t really belong here, but it wouldn’t exist without us. We all experience being black differently, but get treated with the same disdain. It seems that Lite Won’t arrive Late is summarizing or soundtracking this phenomenon. Niño continues.

N: Let Loose was a dope session. Art came in straight killing it from the jump. Harmonizing like Zapp and Roger and shit. Then we put that Color Me Badd on there. Oooooh!

Niño beings to sing the song, replicating the beat on the table with his fist, knuckles and snaps. As a white woman looks over, he simply continues, failing to acknowledge her. Again irony arises.

N: (Sings) I wanna bless you up! Ooooh. That joint was wild, man.

I: So since we’re back at Let Loose can you talk a little about  your rhythmic approach.

N: Nah that’s a secret (chuckles). But lemme talk about skits. To all the sorry, non-creative ass rappers out there, you gotta be thoughtful about the skits. They gotta bring your shit together.

I: Do you think the skits help with the coherence?

N: Yeah that’s what they there for (chuckles). You heard Badillac?

I: Yes. Very powerful record.

N: ‘Cause the skits.

I: Were you influenced by any West Coast rap on that one?

N: Most def. I was tryna get that G-funk feel in the whole thing. Yo, Ice Cube had them skits!

I: (Chuckles): You drew from alot of comedians also. Was that intentional?

N: Can’t tell you none of that, but test in power to Bernie Mac.

I: Indeed.

Niño begins to rise, collecting his water bottle.

N: Is this the part where I plug the album?

I: It can be.

N: Well I’ll say go write ya’ll Congresspeople to get the monuments at the Legacy Museum in Alabama and work on ya’ll skits!

As I leave the coffee spot, Niño hands me a cassette tape of the album.

N: (Raps) Never put me in ya box of ya shit eats tapes (Laughs). Peace man.

The irony that Niño masterfully displays in this project, along with the technical skill, creative risks and wins, and themes of black empowerment makes Lite Wont Arrive Late required listening in this turbulent era, where too many give up on progression to easily.

Ian Greenwood is a journalist for Leer Magazine, father of five, and music professor  at Paint University. 

[topmixtrends]

GROUNDBREAKING NEW feminist books like Roxane Gay’s Not That Bad and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Dear Ijeawele proffer strategies for navigating Trump’s America, and bookshelves are stocked with volumes celebrating high-achieving female rulebreakers, like Samhita Mukhopadhyay and Kate Harding’s Nasty Women and Anne Helen Petersen’s Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud. But in 90s Bitch: Media, Culture, and the Failed Promise of Gender Equality (Harper Perennial), journalist Allison Yarrow takes a step back, seeking to account for how we got to a place where Americans elected a confessed sexual predator and women are still, nearly a half century after Roe v. Wade, fighting for ownership of their bodies.

Yarrow argues that we laid the foundation for our current cultural moment 20 years ago, during the golden hour before we succumbed to internet culture. Despite massive potential in the ’90s for women to claim agency at work and at home, Yarrow reveals that “the decade was marked by a shocking, accelerating effort to subordinate them.” Women who gained too much power, or got too angry, sexual, or ambitious, ended up reviled by American culture. Yarrow painstakingly revisits the stories of figures like Tonya Harding, Monica Lewinsky, Anita Hill, Janet Reno, and Nicole Brown Simpson, offering deft reinterpretations of the subtext that rendered them controversial in their own moment. Yarrow coins the term “bitchification,” the formula that “reduced women to their sexual function in order to thwart their progress.” Bitchification, as Yarrow theorizes it, is a socio-cultural process by which a woman makes headlines, breaks patriarchal mores, is judged by her sexuality, and sees her credibility and reputation shattered. 90s Bitch presents a convincing case that women lost political, cultural, and sexual power grabs in the last decade of the 20th century, shaping the gender inequality we’re still experiencing today.

As a ’90s kid myself, I recall that the way we treated the women mentioned above — like punch lines, rather than human beings — never sat well with me, though I couldn’t say why at the time. Like many of Yarrow’s readers, I absorbed stories like Hill’s and Lewinsky’s before I’d embraced “feminism,” a term that conjured unshaven legs and bra burning in a decade that glorified the hyper-feminine girly girl. Now I know why I squirmed: those attacks didn’t just target powerful and misbehaving “bitches” in the public eye, they targeted all women.

“Bitchification” may be a new idea, but “bitch” isn’t. Yarrow reminds us that the term has long been “the worst invective hurled at women.” Etymologists trace the origins of “bitch” to Artemis, the Greek goddess of chastity who could transform into a dog and was seen as secretly begging for sex. “From its very conception,” Yarrow explains, “‘bitch’ was a verbal weapon designed to restrain and silence women and strip them of their power.” By 1811, the word was codified in an English dictionary as a greater insult than “whore,” and by 1987, two chart-topping rappers centered the term. Public Enemy released “Sophisticated Bitch,” while N.W.A. dropped “A Bitch Iz a Bitch,” which characterized bitches as money-grubbing sex fiends who could “eat shit and die.” Over the years, women have attempted to reclaim the epithet, and Yarrow observes that “what was once a derogation is now seen as an appellation of empowerment and sisterhood.” Millennial women might jokingly refer to their “resting bitch face,” ironically embrace the label “basic bitch” — and the fashion and lifestyle implications that come with it — or don the title “boss bitch,” to signal career ambition and independence. Earlier generations started the trend, though. Meredith Brooks’s 1997 hit “Bitch” left radio stations debating whether to bleep out the word, since Brooks used it not as a slur but to signify strength and power. And a 1985 record dispute led to Madonna famously saying, “I’m tough, I’m ambitious, and I know exactly what I want. If that makes me a bitch, OK.” Still, Yarrow argues that attempts to use the word to capture the multiplicity of female identity will be feeble if we don’t face how the moniker still “degrades, disparages, and disenfranchises.”

Yarrow is a skillful scene setter, and unpacks trends that objectified women’s bodies, making it easy for bitchification to take root. The ’90s saw the rise of the human Barbie doll ideal, memorably celebrated and critiqued in Aqua’s 1997 hit single “Barbie Girl,” and driven by stars like Pamela Anderson and Anna Nicole Smith, whom the media (and not just tabloids) characterized as breasts, personified. Yarrow cites a story in The Economist claiming that with Smith’s breasts, “a girl from nowhere […] could do anything.” But Smith’s body was also her undoing. She began to “swell and then shrink over the years, making her a target” for cruel media scrutiny. When she died, Smith “was ceaselessly mocked for pursuing love and self-esteem from the outside in, even though it was exactly what society had instructed her to do.” This bait-and-switch tactic, which penalizes women for playing to the feminist ideal and for opting out, crops up throughout 90s Bitch.

Yarrow shows that fat-shaming was standard for fictional characters on primetime TV, too. Monica Geller of Friends fights to live down her history as “fat Monica,” while the 90210 pilot shows Steve taunting Kelly for her nose job, asking if she’ll turn to liposuction or a tummy tuck next. Yarrow posits it’s no coincidence that plastic surgery rates skyrocketed, teen diet programs abounded, and Victoria’s Secret boomed as women tried to fit the new model of beauty: “bionic, breasty, and blonde.” They were promised that “this was achievable through consumption: buy this diet or this underwear to make men want to sleep with you, because being desired by men is the path to self-esteem, power, and love.” In other words, success for American women was still about attracting male attention, but now they could achieve this success at the mall or on the operating table.

To further complicate the landscape, abstinence-only sex education made girls gatekeepers, and laid the onus of preventing STD transmission and unplanned pregnancies on them. “Boys were encouraged and even pressured to pursue sex (with girls and girls only),” writes Yarrow, while girls were “blamed and shamed for sexual consequences.” It was a lose-lose situation. Girls were taught to fear sex “in school and society, and by elders and peers,” but this advice was at direct odds with what they “were sold about sex” on TV and in magazines. It was under these conditions, Yarrow asserts, that the pattern of bitchification could take hold. If “society values female bodies primarily for their function and consumption,” it’s easy to shift the conversation away from their skills and qualifications. This reinforced the message that when women posed a threat to men, they’d be trivialized and knocked out of power. Girls waiting in the ranks learned there wasn’t a place for them.

Yarrow shows that, while the recipe was always the same, bitchification came in popular flavors, like femme fatale and frigid old maid. Much of 90s Bitch is smartly organized around unpacking these labels, with chapters on how women were punished for being too sexual, cold, angry, unfeminine, or simply too competent. To demonstrate, Yarrow opens the vault of high-profile cases that were either too hot or too cold. Anita Hill, to detail one example, was simply “too cold” to be credible in her case against Clarence Thomas. In 1991, she testified against Thomas’s appointment to the Supreme Court, citing the years of sexual harassment she suffered as his subordinate. Yarrow conjures the “indelible image of Hill sitting alone behind a microphone, testifying opposite fourteen white male senators performing their disbelief on behalf of disbelieving men everywhere.” They seemed bent on bitchifying Hill, a lawyer and academic. Senator Howell Heflin asked Hill if she was a “scorned woman” with a “martyr complex” and “militant attitude.” Rather than focus on her testimony, they attacked her character, labeling her desperate for male attention. A law school classmate “detailed how Hill couldn’t stomach men rejecting her.” Hill was pegged an erotomaniac and paid with her career; she relocated to Oklahoma to escape Justice Thomas’s advances, taking a job at a barely accredited institution, while Thomas still sits on the Supreme Court. Hill was punished for speaking up, and is remembered as a controversy rather than a flag bearer.

Yarrow doesn’t have to dig through right-wing sources to reveal the rampant sexism and double standards that plagued women during the ’90s, often in ways that we continue to experience today. Her research shows that the liberal bastions publishing #MeToo exposés and touting body positivity today were as culpable as the tabloids in the pre-millenium period. A New Yorker article quipped that before the Clinton affair, Monica Lewinsky’s “only other serious interest in life was dieting.” The New York Times’s Maureen Dowd called Lewinsky “too tubby to be in the high school in-crowd,” ditsy, and “pathetically adolescent,” mockingly referring to her relationship with the president as “way unique.” Dowd won a Pulitzer for her coverage. Lewinsky is only now beginning to shed the stigma she has lived with for two decades.

Even women who weren’t sexual at all could be lambasted. Yarrow traces how ruthlessly Janet Reno, the first woman attorney general, was maligned for being unfeminine. Reno, a tall, single lawyer with cropped hair, “lacked the feminine qualities and life choices typical for women, and the run-of-the-mill sexism wouldn’t work.” Instead of an ice queen or dangerous seductress, she was “a man in women’s clothes.” On Saturday Night Live, Will Ferrell implied he did Reno a favor when he played her straight in “Janet Reno’s Dance Party,” because she seemed so asexual. “Ferrell said he wouldn’t have crafted such a sketch if Reno was a ‘normal woman.’”

Conditions were even worse for women of color. Yarrow flags how concepts like the “damaged girl” trope told the story of straight white women who turned to cutting to cope with unachievable body standards. But, it left out LGBTQ women and immigrants whose self-injury might stem from other pressures, like the experience of navigating gender identity or being a first-generation American. Women of color were more likely to be perceived as dangerous than their white peers. “Unless it could be commoditized, like Alanis Morissette on the cover of Rolling Stone, public brashness and anger was unacceptable for women in the 90s, mostly because it was feared,” Yarrow explains. “Black women’s anger was feared even more.” Yarrow shows how this played out for TLC’s Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes, who was vilified in the media for setting fire to the house she shared with NFL player Andre Rison. That Rison abused her before the blaze is usually left out; the press played up the spectacle and deemed her out of control. Further, Yarrow shows how, while white women like prosecutor Marcia Clark were attacked for being working mothers, black women were conversely ridiculed for not finding jobs: “While white mothers who worked […] were pilloried for appearing to shirk domestic and motherhood duties, unemployed or underemployed black mothers were shamed for failing to work and staying home with their kids.” For women of color, the trap of bitchification was doubly complicated, and the long-term effects of those damaging narratives and roadblocks to success are still playing out today.

The best moments in the 90s Bitch are when Yarrow swivels away from the archives to reflect on her own participation in the cultural process of bitchification. Here’s how she evaluates her teenage response to Fiona Apple’s hit music video “Criminal,” which featured an emaciated, 19-year-old Apple writhing on the floor of a house party, sarcastically confessing to mistreating men:

I was Apple’s target demographic, yet I absorbed the critiques of her and parroted them myself […] I was sold and bought into what Apple was rejecting — beauty, sexuality, and even personality shaped and policed by men. Apple’s attempt to undermine the “perfect girl” aesthetic — shaming the gaze, spilling her guts, and starving her flesh from her frame — threatened the affable, obedient, perfect-girl archetype that my peers and I were trying so hard to mirror. […] Apple was “damaged goods” — something I longed not to be. She upset me. Now I realize that was exactly the point.

That’s the real power of 90s Bitch — it looks beyond the gender war many girls didn’t realize they were fighting to show how they were implicated in their own submission.

Even worse, girls were promised a solution that turned out to be a mirage as “self-esteem” became the buzzword of the day. “We were told to ‘have’ self-esteem and, if we didn’t have it, to ‘get’ it,” Yarrow writes, “but nobody told us precisely how.” That’s where marketing stepped in. Brands promised women and girls that they could perfect their bodies and purchase confidence. Stores like Limited Too might have touted Girl Power but they diluted the movement into “a shopping spree.” Embracing girly fashions may have felt like freedom — “Choice, after all, was a feminist plank” — but Yarrow argues that we’re still paying for the loss of true empowerment.

There are statistics to back up this claim. Millennial women hold more bachelor’s degrees than men, yet they haven’t achieved workplace equality. Women’s median hourly wage is up — but it’s still only 84 percent of men’s — and they are still hired and promoted less frequently than male counterparts. Teen pregnancies have dropped, but maternal mortality rates have risen, and the United States remains one of the only developed nations without mandatory paid parental leave. While the current round of elections witnesses the entrance of female candidates in greater numbers than before, Hillary Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election “delivered an undeniable blow to American women.” In light of bitchification culture, Trump’s election was a natural development, Yarrow argues, being as he is a reflection of “the blatant and lewd sexism woven into the fabric of our society finally emerged unabashed in a modern presidential campaign, and in the White House itself.”

For those pining for simpler times, Yarrow’s 90s Bitch is an uncomfortable read and a reminder that widespread sexism and misogyny aren’t new problems — and that the solutions won’t be easy. The good news is that we can use Yarrow’s framework to reevaluate the stories we tell and the narratives we accept about women who step outside the prescribed lines of female success. In doing so, we can set aside some of our ’90s nostalgia and work toward a future of gender parity.

¤

Randle Browning is a writer living in Brooklyn, New York. Her book reviews and essays have appeared in LARB, The Brooklyn Rail, Electric Literature, and elsewhere.

The post The Bitchified Decade We’re Still Paying For appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

from Los Angeles Review of Books https://ift.tt/2M7cvur

[mariacorley]

How to be Black

My original reason for self-publishing a novel was to allow my protagonists, Langston and Cecile, the light of day. I started with the notion that if only a handful of people read my book, my beloved creations would still have lived and breathed somewhere other than on my computer. Publishers who cater to people like me used to be called vanity presses; there's some truth to that. It didn't take long before I began to dream of a larger audience, watching YouTube videos and absorbing blog posts that purported to show indie authors how to achieve unimaginable success. One of the most important parts of the plan seemed to be reviews, and so, emboldened by three 5 star reviews from total strangers, I asked everyone I could who had read my book if they would mind posting their opinions about it on Amazon. Some did, but many didn't, so I took it to the next level, paying to join a database that allowed me to contact random people who had demonstrated an interest in writing and sharing reviews.

I sent out numerous requests, but so far only a couple of those people have followed through. One of them is the inspiration for this post. Dr. Jacques Coulardeau sent me his review—two pages so full of inaccuracies and negative extrapolation that I was shocked that he gave me 4 stars—on Martin Luther King Day, a coincidence that I find ironic. Examples of his misleading statements include his portrayal of Cecile as “one who makes love with any boy available that is rather good looking,” for whom “pre-marital intercourse is a basic principle,” even though she has sex with exactly two men in the book, the first a one night stand during which she loses her virginity, the second her eventual husband. Coulardeau then glosses over the character's considerable internal conflict between her religious background and her sexual relationship with the “love of her life” by saying, “She does not realize her contradiction.” Um...not true. When Langston and Cecile meet, the reviewer says that Cecile “of course gives herself as if it were a question of life or death,” even though their relationship unfolds long distance. He even rebuts his own statement by adding “Cecile in a way makes the relation kind of satirical, humorous, un-serious.” Dr. Coulardeau states that Langston's decision to open a West Indian restaurant is simply because the cuisine is trendy. Um...nope. He also mentions that Langston's friends-with-benefits relationship, while in college, with the daughter of his Italian boss is doomed because of her father's disapproval, implying that Langston and Marietta aren't both aware, from day one, that their contact is a dalliance, and failing to mention an even more intense disapproval from Langston's Jamaican grandmother. And so on.

I won't dispute every incorrect statement, but—call me Donald Trump—I can't leave his final conclusion about my protagonists alone: “They definitely tricked their life-treks and they ended lost in some kind of tasteless, heartless, mindless deculturated wasteland.” His evidence? The characters are neither black nor West Indian enough for him. They eat West Indian food, but they don't speak the way he thinks they should (he is apparently a linguist; I'm merely someone who grew up as a Canadian West Indian). Further evidence of lost cultural identity includes Langston's decision to cook a  jerked turkey with mango salsa at Thanksgiving. I forgot to mention that the expert on what West Indians are supposed to be is an elderly Jewish man, who also took time out to pass judgments on Cecile's Christian journey in ways that my devoutly Christian readers did not. Huh?

These days, it's rare that a white person is overtly paternalistic enough to publicly claim knowledge of who black people should be, which is pretty much the same thing as informing us of our proper “place.” For obvious reasons, these kinds of statements are not nearly so uncommon in the black community. For example, the inability to “code-switch” is seen by some melanated people as proof of being an oreo: black on the outside, white on the inside. What does that mean, though?

Being an immigrant changes things, whether your relocation is voluntary or involuntary. Isn't it both natural and human to exert and receive influence as a result? When Dr. Coulardeau rails against the evils of multiculturalism, I think he may mean that distinct ethnic groups shouldn't lose touch with their cultural heritage. I support this idea, however, what does that include and exclude? Am I allowed to like only a particular kind of music, or cook a particular kind of food? If I am allowed to like things that aren't native to my ethnic group, a concept that has become hopelessly tangled, in most cases, by intermarriage (and here I mean even Jamaicans marrying Nigerians), how much should we like those things? How often can we indulge in them? What if we understand some of our ancestral language or dialect, but aren't fluent? Do we all need to repatriate to a country of cultural origin? Can we live in the suburbs? Or should our entire lives become a kind of performance art?

Coulardeau noted that “Canada is the best representative of multiculturalism and New York (where Cecile attends Juilliard) is one of the most diverse melting pot or salad bowl in the world,” calling the references to the various cultures there “anecdotal.” First, Canada is a vast nation, and I can assure you that most of it isn't particularly multicultural, although Toronto, where Langston lives (in Little Jamaica!), certainly consists of distinct ethnic enclaves. My main focus in writing the book, however, had to do with issues of personal growth that people can confront regardless of their race. Nevertheless, one reviewer said, “The issue of race is an important sub-stratum of the story and adds to its depth.” Another take: “How refreshing to encounter complex people who deal with racism and nonetheless dream beyond the limits of what's realistic. Unlike a lot of prime time television, Letting Go's characters defy stereotypes and earn your trust as a reader.” This reviewer, who is an African American female activist, also said of Cecile, “She's confident in her blackness and even when she's down, she's not out.”

Enough self-defense. I am more drawn to people's internal lives, so people who are looking for detailed discussions of place may be disappointed; my references to setting have a tendency to be secondary. That said, my book is semi-autobiographical (SEMI!), and I certainly could have included more of my own experiences with race and culture, including the very self-conscious efforts made by me and my black friends to reject as much as possible that wasn't considered “black,” whether it was by claiming to hate most of the music on the radio in our overwhelmingly white town, or never wanting to say a white person was attractive, because black beauty was so undervalued that it seemed wrong to add to the problem by endorsing the prevailing notions, even slightly. Some of my other formative experiences with my culture included learning about slavery and segregation, both in America and the West Indies, being sent to classes in West Indian dance, joining the Junior Afro-Canadian society consisting of my siblings and friends (to mirror the Afro-Canadian society my parents had joined), annual visits to Bermuda with my mom, and learning Jamaican folk songs from my dad. I also felt especially proud of hall of fame quarterback Warren Moon and the similarly storied hockey goalie, Grant Fuhr. Then again, was it “black” to even be aware of hockey? Or was that, too, the result of losing touch with my roots? Was it breaking down a barrier or assimilation when Arthur Mitchell founded the Dance Theater of Harlem? And if ballet is okay for black people, should Misty Copeland have ended up in a predominantly white company?

To be fair, I suspect Dr. Coulardeau might have been okay with Cecile's focus on classical music if the book had followed up a conversation about the need to incorporate music by black composers into her repertoire— something I endorse and have put into practice—with concrete examples. I admit to dropping the ball on that one; I was more interested in her character's awakening as a self-confident woman, just as I was interested in Langston's need to confront the fears that kept him bound, but although the book is already 500 pages long, a few sentences here or there would have made my novel richer. Them again, why should any black person, real or imaginary, have to define him or herself by someone else's cultural standards, which are higher, in this regard, than the bar most white people need to reach? One answer is that everything about black people has been denigrated so much that we need to affirm our identity. The thing is, we're still human, which means we're not monolithic. Will black people ever earn the right to just be, in all of our complex variations and manifestations? Or should all books feature black protagonists who speak mainly the vernacular, ideally in the inner city, during slavery or the Civil Rights era? Will melanated people always have to earn their “black card,” even if they're fictional?

Coulardeau sarcastically refers to Langston “so black...that his first girl friend is a white woman.” I put that relationship in my book is because seeing a black man with a white woman still produces a twinge in my gut, even though I realize that the importance of race has been inflated by a history of hate. If I'm honest, I must confess that I have some litmus tests of black authenticity: Clarence Thomas doesn't pass, for example, because his Supreme Court rulings and other statements have shown what looks to me like evidence of self-hatred. Still, I don't think it's reasonable to assume that every black man who gets involved with a white woman has fallen for the false notion that their pale skin makes them the biggest trophy of all. I want black men and black women to heal the deep wounds inflicted by injustice, set down the resulting baggage, and truly embrace each other. Still, it is my firm belief that we can love ourselves without climbing into a box. At least, I hope so, because the opposite of multicultural is homogeneous. Even if it were possible to retreat behind impenetrable racial and cultural fences, is that advisable? Can't I be black and still cook a damned turkey? Especially in Canada, where Thanksgiving isn't connected to its ancestral sins against aboriginal people (which certainly exist), but rather the thought that having a day off to sit down with your family and express some gratitude sounded like a good idea?

People have mentioned finishing my book and wondering what the characters did after it ended. Despite everything I just said, if I do write a sequel, I may just go into more detail regarding culture, which is something I don't always analyze deeply unless affronted. So even though I find Coulardeau's  comments presumptuous, misleading, and at times completely inaccurate, they did make me think.