#4 - Ramblin' and readin'!

While I've been in the air constantly, it's provided an opportunity to catch up on reading I've wanted to do for years. I mean, like, since I was in my late teens. It's a preferable diversion to clutching my armrests to semi-frequent turbulence, and man, I never get used to that.

What I've been reading:

• I'm currently barreling through Living In, Living Out: African American Domestics and the Great Migration by Elizabeth Clark-Lewis. I was assigned this book in college, but shamefully enough I didn't finish it. I was working like crazy at the time, but it's not that great an excuse. Anyhow, I always intended to finish it, and here I am. It's a wonderful account of the life stories of African American women workers from the early-to-mid 1900s. It's particularly crucial history given that my job is building student solidarity with campus service workers, the vast majority of whom are Women of Color, usually of African descent or immigrants from Central America.
  
  
• For St. Patrick's Day, I read How the Irish Became White by Noel Ignatiev. Another book I'd intended to read for a while, it's a pretty depressing account of the ways that recent Irish immigrants to the U.S. took the side of the slaveholders and shifted identities from Irish (or often as from a particular county in Ireland) to "white", with all the oppressiveness that whiteness entails in the U.S. It also draws out the story of the foundation of labor as racist protectionism through the examples of political manuevers in Philadelphia (a city with a large Irish immigrant population in the mid 1800s). Yikes. Positive things include the St. Patrick's Brigade - a group of Irish immigrants to the US sent to fight Mexico who defected and fought on the Mexican side. But that's not much in the grand scheme of things. I'll mention here that I'm part Irish - actually a pretty large part, but ya can't tell by looking because I'm also Hungarian, which makes me olivey and dark-haired and stuff. But more on myself, presentation/perception, background, and complicated stuff like that later.
  
  
• I blazed through This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (eds. Gloria Anzaldúa & Cherríe Moraga). I had read about a third of it long ago, and re-read that third two years ago. While I feel guilty to admit it, I had never finished it until recently, but it was incredibly refreshing to read it in its entirety. It's one of those books I forget to recommend to people because I assume that everyone I talk to has read it, because they SHOULD. But therein lies my hypocracy, until recently. I had read later bits as copied readings for various study groups, but reading it in a single sitting is a different experience. While I was reading it, I was inspired, corrected, challenged, and elated - my favorite being Pat Parker's essay at the very end (Revolution:
  It's Not Neat or Pretty or Quick.) But I also had a new reaction - there was one piece by hattie gossett about Bilie Holiday (Billie Lives! Billie Lives!) and the song "Gloomy Sunday" that caused me to seriously examine aspects of my Hungarian-ness. I don't actually agree with the piece (which is healthy) but understand where the artist was coming from. I think that my reaction and thoughts warrant their own post so I'll spare you here.
  
  
• Guns, Germs & Steel (Jared Diamond). This 400+ page tome was actually a real page-turner for me. Now, I'm a total geek (this may have become apparent by now) so that may have had something to do with it. But now when I sit down to eat, I think about all the places the ingredients were first domesticated and their impact on human societies. One person said to me offhandedly, "Oh, you mean, the book about how white people aren't responsible for imperialism?" I can understand that perspective on it, for sure. But the primary thesis of the book is how environmental factors (not deficiencies in people themselves, as racist premises go) account for the different trajectories of human societies and their massively consequential impacts - like, how people in Europe wound up resistant to smallpox while people indigenous to here weren't. He doesn't get into the stuff where then invaders from Europe deliberately spread it as a weapon after realizing this impact, and that's for sure problematic. I'm interested to read his next book and see where he goes from here.