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Americanah the book by the Nigerian woman whose name I can't spell or pronounce, which actually is true of a lot of people's names...but that's another discussion, interestingly enough details the tribal aspects of nationalism. A topic that has been bugging me lately. That people identify strongly with "their nation" or "their countrymen", and will often upon re-settling in a new country or culture, be resistent to adapting to that country's culture, insisting on keeping their own. And often will fight to put their nation first, their nation or country or homeland is better, and defend it. The other -- are those in other nations.
She doesn't say any of that of course. It's more...how I interpreted it. There's other ways of interpreting it of course.
Passages from the book that stuck out to me last night...
1. "School in America was easy, assignments sent in by email, classrooms air-conditioned, professors willing to give make up tests. But she was uncomfortable with what the professors called "participation" and did not see why it should be part of the final grade; it merely made students talk and talk, class time wasted on obvious words, hollow words sometimes meaningless words. It had to be that Americans were taught, from elementary school, to always say something in class no matter what. And so she sat stiff-tongued, surrounded by students who were all folded easily on their seats all flush with knowledge, not of the subject of the classes but of how to be in the classes.
Interesting take on education. For me, discussion is the best part. School in the US is very different than abroad. In another place in the novel, Ifemelu decides to teach her nephew math. She calls it maths, he sees that as improper term and they compromise and call it mathematics. She's horrified that at the age of 7, he has not learned long division yet.
2.) Iflemeu's class - is discussing the American mini-series Roots, which Iflemeu saw in Nigeria. This starts out as a discussion about the word "nigger" and becomes slowly about what lies behind it, ie the main difference between African-American, people who were the descendants of slaves, and African (people from Africa) or American-Africans, people who immigrated to the US by choice.
That's a powerful passage. I agree with the firm voice. I've heard, and often, various African-Americans and blacks who aren't African-Americans use the word nigga. They pronounce it differently than whites do. It's niggah or nigga. Not nig-ger. Lighter on the vowel. And in various ways. Sometimes as an endearment, sometimes as a gay man might use the word bitch, or a white woman would use the word bitch. Words change their meaning depending on who uses them and how. Usage is an important in the English language. Also pronunciation.
The tendency to want to outlaw certain words or remove them...because they hurt you or people you love, or you can't use them why should anyone else? Is a bit silly. Because at the end of the day, it is just a word. And we can choose whether to personalize the word or give it meaning.
I think it helps to mix with other cultures, because it keeps people honest.
Regarding slavery and race...I don't think white Europeans or White Americans will ever live down the crime of slavery. My mother was reporting on Colin Whitehead's Underground Railroad which describes what happened in graphic detail. It's horrific. It was worse than the Holocaust. Far worse. In part because it lasted longer.
3.) The head of the African Students Union gives a spiel or welcome talk to new members:
I may be wrong, but I think tribalism is what is destroying our world. I recently read a post by a friend about how it was impossible to definitively determine your racial ancestory or ethnicity via DNA. The best you could get was guess-work. Because there just isn't that much difference between chromosomes in humans across the globe.
This comment echoed something a biologist told me a few years back, which was that race was a construct, something people came up with and there was no scientific basis for it. Outside of physical attributes here and there, humans were more or less one race or species. I questioned this, because some races were more prone to certain ailments than others. But that may not be due to race or ethnicity. I'm not a biologist.
But it doesn't really matter, what matters is the evolved human tendency to seek out people who are like them, is I think limiting. It's safer and easier...because you question yourself less, when surrounded by those who reflect your own perceptions. But limiting. Sort of like putting braces on your soul and brain and spirit, as opposed to just teeth or back.
Reading helps pull us out of that. I try to read a wide variety of books, to question and challenge myself.
What is surprising me about this book, is how much of it truly resonates for me, far more so than a lot of novels written by women who are white, middle class, middle aged, and from the same tribe as me. It shouldn't surprise me. I've often found that I have more in common with those who are on the surface appear not to have anything in common. It's one of the reasons I prefer to live in NYC, it's diverse, and I can find people who are not white, straight, middle class, middle aged, or from my alleged physical tribe, but from outside of it. In the suburbs of Kansas City, I felt...alone and disenfranchised, yet was seemingly surrounded by people who looked like me.
Here, in NYC, and well in college as well, I somehow gravitated to people who didn't look anything like me. This was true in elementary, high school, and junior high for the most part. Although hard to do in those places, if not impossible, since everyone looked like me, and so I had almost no friends...because for some reason we didn't get each other.
For some reason or other...I find myself identifying more with Ifemelu than the protagonists in over half the books I've read. And on the surface, Ifemelu and I couldn't be any more different.
[I'm hoping to be able to discuss this book with my church in the fall. Because it is a book that desires to be discussed in detail. Some books are. Some aren't.]
She doesn't say any of that of course. It's more...how I interpreted it. There's other ways of interpreting it of course.
Passages from the book that stuck out to me last night...
1. "School in America was easy, assignments sent in by email, classrooms air-conditioned, professors willing to give make up tests. But she was uncomfortable with what the professors called "participation" and did not see why it should be part of the final grade; it merely made students talk and talk, class time wasted on obvious words, hollow words sometimes meaningless words. It had to be that Americans were taught, from elementary school, to always say something in class no matter what. And so she sat stiff-tongued, surrounded by students who were all folded easily on their seats all flush with knowledge, not of the subject of the classes but of how to be in the classes.
Interesting take on education. For me, discussion is the best part. School in the US is very different than abroad. In another place in the novel, Ifemelu decides to teach her nephew math. She calls it maths, he sees that as improper term and they compromise and call it mathematics. She's horrified that at the age of 7, he has not learned long division yet.
2.) Iflemeu's class - is discussing the American mini-series Roots, which Iflemeu saw in Nigeria. This starts out as a discussion about the word "nigger" and becomes slowly about what lies behind it, ie the main difference between African-American, people who were the descendants of slaves, and African (people from Africa) or American-Africans, people who immigrated to the US by choice.
"Let's talk about historical representation in film," Professor Moore said.
A firm, female voice from the back of the class, with a non-American accent, asked, "Why was 'nigger'
bleeped out?"
And a collective sigh, like a small wind, swept through the class.
"Well, this was a recording from network television and one of the things I wanted us to talk about is how we represent history in popular culture and the use of the N-word is certainly an important part of that," Professor Moore said.
"It makes no sense to me," the firm voice said. Ifemelu turned. The speakers natural hair was cut as low as a boy's and her pretty face, wide-foreheaded and fleshless, reminded Ifemelu of the East Africans who always won long-distance races on television.
"I mean, 'nigger' is a word that exists. People use it. It is part of America. It has caused a lot of pain to people and I think it is insulting to bleep it out."
"Well," Professor Moore said, looking around, as though for help.
I came from a gravelly voice in the middle of the class. "Well it's because of the pain that word has caused that you shouldn't use it!" Shouldn't sailed astringently into the air, the speaker an African-American girl wearing bamboo hoop earrings.
"Thing is, each time you say it, the word hurts African-Americans," a pale, shaggy-haired boy in front said.
Ifemelu raised her hand; Faulkner's Light in August, which she had just read, was on her mind. "I don't think it's always hurtful. I think it depends on the intent and also on who is using it."
A girl next to her, face flushing bright red, burst out, "No! The word is the same for whomever says it."
"That's nonsense." The firm voice again. A voice unafraid. "If my mother hits me with a stick and a stranger hits me with a stick, it's not the same thing."
Ifemelu looked at Professor Moore to see how the word 'nonsense' had been received. She did not seem to have noticed; instead, a vague terror was freezing her features into a smirk-smile.
"I agree it's different when African Americans say it, but I don't think it should be used in films because that way people who shouldn't use it can use it and hurt other people's feelings," a light-skinned African-American girl said, the last of the four black people in class, her sweater an unsettling shade of fuchsia.
"But it's like being in denial. If it was used like that, then it should be represented like that. Hiding it doesn't make it go away." The firm voice.
"Well, if you hadn't sold us, we wouldn't be talking about any of this," the gravelly-voiced African-American girl said, in a lowered tone that was, nonetheless, audible.
The classroom was wrapped in silence. Then rose that voice again. "Sorry, but even if no Africans had been sold by other Africans, the transatlantic slave trade would still have happened. It was a European entertprise. It was about Europeans looking for labor for their plantations."
That's a powerful passage. I agree with the firm voice. I've heard, and often, various African-Americans and blacks who aren't African-Americans use the word nigga. They pronounce it differently than whites do. It's niggah or nigga. Not nig-ger. Lighter on the vowel. And in various ways. Sometimes as an endearment, sometimes as a gay man might use the word bitch, or a white woman would use the word bitch. Words change their meaning depending on who uses them and how. Usage is an important in the English language. Also pronunciation.
The tendency to want to outlaw certain words or remove them...because they hurt you or people you love, or you can't use them why should anyone else? Is a bit silly. Because at the end of the day, it is just a word. And we can choose whether to personalize the word or give it meaning.
I think it helps to mix with other cultures, because it keeps people honest.
Regarding slavery and race...I don't think white Europeans or White Americans will ever live down the crime of slavery. My mother was reporting on Colin Whitehead's Underground Railroad which describes what happened in graphic detail. It's horrific. It was worse than the Holocaust. Far worse. In part because it lasted longer.
3.) The head of the African Students Union gives a spiel or welcome talk to new members:
"Please do not go into KMart and buy twenty pairs of jeans because each costs five dollars. The jeans are not running away. They will be there tomorrow at an even more reduced price. You are now in America: do not expect to have hot food for lunch. That African taste must be abolished. When you visit the home of an American with some money, they will offer to show you their house. Forget that in your house back home, your father would throw a fit if anyone came close to his bedroom. We all know that the living room was where it stopped and, if absolutely necessary, then the toilet. But please smile and follow the American and see the house and make sure you say you like everything. And do not be shocked by the indiscriminate touching of American couples. Standing in line at the cafeteria, the girl will touch the boy's arm and the boy will put his arm around her shoulder and they will rub shoulders and back and rub rub rub, but please do not imitate this behavior."
They were all laughing. Wambui shouted something in Swahili.
"Very soon you will start to adopt an American accent because you don't want customer service people on the phone to keep asking you, 'What? What?' You will start to admire Africans who have perfect American accents, like our brother here, Kofi. Kofi's parents came from Ghana when he was two-years old, but do not be fooled by the way he sounds. If you go to their house, they eat kenkey every day. His father slapped him when he got a C in a class. There's no American nonsense in that house. He goes back to Ghana every year. We call people like Kofi American-African, African-American which what we call our brothers and sisters whose ancestors were slaves."
"Try and make friends with our African-American brothers and sisters in a spirit of true pan-Africanism. But make sure you remain friends with fellow Africans, as this will help you keep your perspective. Always attend African Students Association meetings, but if you must, you can also try the Black Student Union. Please note that in general, African Americans go to the Black Student Union and Africans go to the African Students Association. Sometimes it overlaps but not a lot. The Africans who to BSU are those with no confidence who are quick to tell you 'I am originally from Kenya (with the dash on the a) even though Kenya just pops out the minute they open their mouths. The African-Americans who come to our meetings are the ones who write poems about Mother Africa and think every African is a Nubian Queen. If an African-American calls you a Mandingo or a booty scratcher, he is insulting you for being African. Some will ask you annoying questions about Africa, but others will connect with you. You will also find that you make friends more easily with other internationals, Koreans, Indians, Brazilians, whatever, than with Americans both black and white. Many of the internationals understand the trauma of trying to get an American visa and that is a good place to start a friendship."
I may be wrong, but I think tribalism is what is destroying our world. I recently read a post by a friend about how it was impossible to definitively determine your racial ancestory or ethnicity via DNA. The best you could get was guess-work. Because there just isn't that much difference between chromosomes in humans across the globe.
This comment echoed something a biologist told me a few years back, which was that race was a construct, something people came up with and there was no scientific basis for it. Outside of physical attributes here and there, humans were more or less one race or species. I questioned this, because some races were more prone to certain ailments than others. But that may not be due to race or ethnicity. I'm not a biologist.
But it doesn't really matter, what matters is the evolved human tendency to seek out people who are like them, is I think limiting. It's safer and easier...because you question yourself less, when surrounded by those who reflect your own perceptions. But limiting. Sort of like putting braces on your soul and brain and spirit, as opposed to just teeth or back.
Reading helps pull us out of that. I try to read a wide variety of books, to question and challenge myself.
What is surprising me about this book, is how much of it truly resonates for me, far more so than a lot of novels written by women who are white, middle class, middle aged, and from the same tribe as me. It shouldn't surprise me. I've often found that I have more in common with those who are on the surface appear not to have anything in common. It's one of the reasons I prefer to live in NYC, it's diverse, and I can find people who are not white, straight, middle class, middle aged, or from my alleged physical tribe, but from outside of it. In the suburbs of Kansas City, I felt...alone and disenfranchised, yet was seemingly surrounded by people who looked like me.
Here, in NYC, and well in college as well, I somehow gravitated to people who didn't look anything like me. This was true in elementary, high school, and junior high for the most part. Although hard to do in those places, if not impossible, since everyone looked like me, and so I had almost no friends...because for some reason we didn't get each other.
For some reason or other...I find myself identifying more with Ifemelu than the protagonists in over half the books I've read. And on the surface, Ifemelu and I couldn't be any more different.
[I'm hoping to be able to discuss this book with my church in the fall. Because it is a book that desires to be discussed in detail. Some books are. Some aren't.]
