#race in literature

[marauderstars]

Ways J.K Rowling did poc dirty in canon:

Making the last name of one of her most powerful black characters “Shacklebolt” - a crude af reference to slavery and just in very poor taste.

Naming her only east Asian character “Cho Chang” - a Korean surname as a first name for a Chinese character - proving she did no research whatsoever into Chinese naming traditions.

Cho’s characterization also leans in to the trope of tragic Asian female characters being defined by their romantic connections to white men, as in “Miss Saigon” or “A Quiet American.” Cho’s storyline centers on her romantic involvement with Cedric, Harry and Roger Davies. She gets no meaningful arc of her own.

The sidekick-ification of Lee Jordan.

Michael Corner being referred to as “the dark one” which is bad enough, and then him being whitewashed in the films.

Pansy Parkinson’s comment about Angelina Johnson’s braided hair looking like “worms” goes completely unpunished. Rowling treats this as standard bullying instead of a racially-charged comment. Rowling clearly didn’t understand the serious implications of this comment and its rooting in deeply-ingrained discrimination against black hairstyles, or she would have written a similar reaction to this as she did to that of Hermione being called a “Mudblood.”

House Elves as a metaphor for slaves is highly problematic because they are depicted as “liking” their enslavement and being complicit in it, much like the black slaves in “Gone With The Wind.” Despite Dobby being a beloved character, he is also seen as an anomaly for desiring freedom, and many other House Elves are depicted as grotesque, fawning, ridiculous or sinister. Pretty garbage metaphor for black slaves.

In Goblet of Fire Rowling describes a group of “African” wizards wearing “long white robes” and “roasting what looked like a rabbit on a bright purple fire.” This is just… *sigh* The way this is worded is very clearly just token exoticism and includes no genuine detail about their clothing, cultural food or nationality. It’s just “wow those zany rabbit-eating Africans and their purple fire.” Once again black characters are being used as examples of otherness rather than shown as human beings.

Rowling has openly admitted that she created a detailed backstory for Dean Thomas, one of the series’ few black characters, but did not include it in the books and included the backstory of Neville Longbottom, a white character, instead.

Approving the casting of a white actress in the role of Lavender Brown in the films, a character the majority of readers assumed was black.

The portrayal of Blaise Zabini’s “famously beautiful” black mother who was known for offing her husbands and taking their money. Like. Come on. Tbh she sounds like a queen but violent woc gold digger is still a shit trope.

Just the entire treatment of the Patil twins at the Yule Ball, the way Harry and Ron treated them and Rowling’s garbage attempt at describing their traditional clothing.

Padma Patil’s portrayal in Cursed Child as the stereotypical controlling Indian wife. The idea of ending up with her instead of Hermione being positioned as some kind of horrible alternate reality for Ron had very xenophobic undertones, and while Hermione is portrayed as black in the play, I don’t believe that Rowling originally intended her to be a black character nor that casting directors deliberately set out to cast a black actress as Hermione in Cursed Child initially.

[metamorphesque]

oh moon, hungry moon, unkissed & silent, I would kiss you.

Chen Chen, Race to the Tree

[typhlonectes]

[sanguine-prince]

i’m sure i’m not the first to say something like this, but let me tell you about my poc-passing-as-white jay gatsby headcanon!!

for some background, in the 1920s there was an interesting shift regarding (white) skin tones. previously, tans were viewed as a sign that a person worked out in the fields, and therefore a trademark of the lower class. however, slowly after the industrial revolution, it increasingly became a representation of luxury, since the rich upper class would have the time to lounge about and sunbathe at their leisure.

i say all this to show that a poc gatsby would have the ostensible class and wealth for a tan, which would ‘excuse’ a slightly browner skin tone in the public eye.

(the 20s was also the setting of passing by nella larsen, so that’s neat.)

in my vision, he’s biracial (maybe his mother was black & his father was a german immigrant) with skin light enough to pass for white.

the fact that nick states that gatsby keeps his hair neatly groomed and cut might be to prevent it from curling up.

additionally, i think it could contrast tom’s white supremacy & his fear of poc social progress.

it would also create a deeper divide between gatsby and daisy, and once again the contrast between him and tom. in my mind, daisy wouldn’t know about it until the point where tom reveals everything about gatsby’s bootlegging etc. with jay revealing it to her in the car ride back (oops then she hits myrtle).

then, when she chooses tom and the life of comfort, wealth, status, etc that their marriage offers, she also rejects not only gatsby’s new money but also his race.

it’s a lot more thematically significant for the american dream as well—it’s still unattainable and essentially tainted by capitalism, and it also emphasizes that it’s restricted to the white upper class. social mobility only becomes available to gatsby when he disguises his racial identity.

similarly, it fits with gatsby’s identity reconstruction—the quintessential american is white, rich, and educated.

daisy and tom have that ticket into society because they have that inherent thing that he will never have—pedigree, in both class and race. that’s something that even nick has.

(in my mind, he tells nick all about it the night before he dies & nick understands as best he can and doesn’t think less of him, because it further highlights the differences between his & gatsby’s relationship v. gatsby’s relationship with daisy; namely, the transparency -> acceptance give-and-take that he and daisy never had. because of having to hide himself from daisy in order to maintain her affection, he builds an expectation that he must be someone that he is not as well as developing a transactional definition of love (he gives, and people love him as long as he can continue to give) in order to be loved. therefore, nick’s immediate curiosity and fascination with who he truly is is foreign to him. not to get too into their dynamic lmao i just think it’s really interesting.)

finally, the very last part where nick is sitting and looking at the bay and thinking about the first immigrants and their dreams and how gatsby embodied the purity and naivety of those dreams is further exemplified by his racial ‘otherness.’

and there’s,,, technically nothing in the book to explicitly refute this from what i remember!

(n.b.: it has been a hot second since i’ve read tgg, so lmk if i’ve got anything wrong!)

[gkuvveti34]

MY BABY 😍

[cameliacambell]

Here is my WIP.

"I appreciate your concerns, Charles," Fred said, choosing his words carefully. "But we believe in the long-term vision for the team, and sometimes sacrifices have to be made for the greater good."

The response echoed in Charles's mind as he left the meeting, sounding suspiciously like something out of Harry Potter. Sacrifices for the greater good. But what about his dreams?

[sorryforthebonyelbows]

Maggie Stiefvater, The Scorpio Races

Margaret Atwood, You are Happy

Anne Sexton

Beatrice Crane

Anne Sexton, Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters

[highway80stories]

Listen/purchase: Water Fountains by Highway 80 Stories

During Mike Broussard’s early childhood, his family lived in Shreveport, Louisiana, but later he moved to Vivian where he owned a business and lived out the remainder of his life. The experience described in this song, when Mike was twelve years old, affected his attitude towards race relations from then on. One of the oldest movie theaters in Shreveport was The Strand. It had different entrances for blacks and whites and water fountains marked for the different races, as well. During the ’60s, most southern cities had two simultaneous phenomena: demographically a significant percentage of the population was African-American (Shreveport was about 60% black) and as a consequence whites and blacks unofficially interacted a lot. The other aspect was a policy of official segregation. This manifested itself in a myriad of ways beyond the obvious, e.g. separate drinking fountains and different entrances to movie theaters. However, relationships between whites and blacks could be warm and friendly despite official segregation. Into the demographic mix were other ingredients. Louisiana had a relatively large number of Italian Americans, mostly Sicilians. These immigrants also experienced some discrimination, and in general did not share the otherwise pervasive white attitudes about African-Americans. When Mike Broussard served in Vietnam he met an African-American from Detroit, D.W. Washington, and they became life-long friends. Mike and D.W. talked about their plans when their tours were over, and D.W. went back to Vivian with Mike and they operated a filling station and auto repair shop for more than forty years. D.W. was Mike’s closest friend. © 2019 Frank David Leone, Jr./Highway 80 Music (ASCAP). The songs and stories on the Highway 80 Stories website are works of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. 

[electrosweaters-arts]

Been really into drawing my jnh guys in lil cars recently

[beljar]

If children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason alone, would the human race continue to exist? Would not a man rather have so much sympathy with the coming generation as to spare it the burden of existence, or at any rate not take it upon himself to impose that burden upon it in cold blood?

Arthur Schopenhauer, Studies in Pessimism: The Essays, 1890

[opens-up-4-nobody]

I don't care if no one else wants it but please talk about naruto from a cardassian perspective. u are so right about Jiraiya and Curzon

Okay. So cardassian literature according to Garak is full of repetitive cycles, they see an elegance in it. In these stories, a cardassian devotes themself to the state, grows old and dies, and the next generation does the same thing. Naruto is also a story of cycles. Cycles of souls (the alien bros i cant remember the names of, hashirama & madara, naruto & sasuke), recycled situations (2 boys and 1 girl teams over and over and over, hashirama as naruto, yahiko as naruto, obito as naruto, naruto as naruto), war after war after war. It's all a cycle of violence and devotion to the state of Konoha. And that's a bad thing. It should be a bad thing. Except it's not because the cycle is never actually broken. Naruto devotes himself to the state and says he'll change things but they don't really change and the next generation carries on the fighting. So, I think cardassians would like naruto as a story. Except they'd probably like itachi, kakashi, and danzo because of their level of unhinged devotion (because theyre all fucking brainwashed... well danzo might just be fucked up but the othet 2: brainwashed). Tldr: Naruto to me is a work of cardassian literature because kishimoto made everyone a fucking insane nationalist trained in ninja murder and never broke the cycle of violence

[intotheescape]

this semester's reads (spring '24)

[joelletwo]

@coquelicoq tagged me to list 5 topics i can talk on for an hour without preparing any material.......... fascinating!! thank you

animal care at this point i still retain most of the info i learned for my last job. if i had to narrow it: i never got very intimately familiar w small mammals. lizards confused me and have such a wide range of needs per species. invertebrates dont need enough care to talk about for an hour LOL. but almost certainly i still know enough about fish husbandry and tank maintenance to fill up an hour easy peasy without even going in depth on any of it. (or dog/cat food nutrition but only from a 'collating data' viewpoint and not a 'having confident opinions about any of it' one)

the intersection of thematic elements and real-world production circumstances of a small unrelated circle of media lol. the hs-gintama-orv-umi-twig venn diagram that lives in my head at all times.

i transcribed a lecture on baroque and rococo architecture that charmed me enough that i did attempt to replicate it for my roomie. transcribed material was always like. i understand it while working on it but lose it once i try to convey it to someone else lol so it wouldnt be very Coherent but it would be Impassioned. and for top lectures to vicariously listen to its between this one and the biology class one about the function of hormones from pregnancy to birth to childhood to adulthood to old age, and i have an easier time remembering architecture details

hmmmm riffing on yours. put any amv in front of me and i could talk about its choice of song/scenes/editing an hour easy.

ICE OVA

tagging @arytha @istherewifiinhell @yamameta-inc if yall want bc im interested in what ud pick and ofc as always anyone who thinks this'd be fun to do :)

[criticalrolo]

why are so many stories nowadays about the end of things. the fall of civilizations. the end of eras. the sad slow death of the past into a grimmer future. this sense of living in the End Times has permeated sooo many genres for a literal Century and it just makes me sad that the change is. always towards the world getting smaller and darker and less magical