Reading Wedn- Thursday
Oct. 3rd, 2013 03:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brigdhWhat did you just finish?
Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age by Kevin Boyle. A nonfiction recounting of a court-case in 1920s Detroit: Dr. Sweet, a black man, and his family bought a house in a predominately white neighborhood. Suspecting that this would not go over well, the Sweets had several friends and family members stay with them to help defend the house. The second night after they moved in, a mob of neighbors attacked the house, and one of these friends ended up shooting into the crowd, killing a man. Precedent pretty clearly stated that a) it's legal to kill in defense of your house and b) it's legal to kill in defense from a mob, even if your perception of the mob's intent is later proven incorrect. The court case was really only deciding if these precedents apply when it's a black man killing a white one. Add in a defense team led by Clarence Darrow (fresh off the Scopes Monkey Trial) and a brand-new NAACP that would be taking the legality of residential segregation to the Supreme Court later that year*, and it's a pretty important case.
So, this book was well-written, well-researched, and on an interesting topic. But it took me nearly a month to read it (and it's not that long of a book) because it is also INCREDIBLY DEPRESSING. Which I guess should have been obvious from the subject matter? But I could only handle so many descriptions of lynchings, race riots, KKK rallies, stonings, lying police chiefs, and so on and so on. And then when it wasn't racism being depressing, there were babies dying of tuberculosis and domestic violence and suicides. Yay! I guess overall I recommend the book, but perhaps not if you're looking for something cheerful to read.
Gora by Rabindranath Tagore. The is the first thing by Tagore I've read! (I think? Unless I've forgotten something.) He is the only Indian to have won the Nobel Prize for Literature (so far, I suppose), and so he's pretty important and I should have gotten to him sooner. Gora (the word literally means "fair", but is also a vaguely derogatory slang term for "white people"; or at least it is today, I'm not sure about the early 1900s, when the book was written) is about a young man who is SUPER INTO orthodox Hinduism, the caste system, and protesting European influence and government in India. Unfortunately, he is not a Brahmin like he thinks, but was adopted as an infant when his white parents died in the 1857 Mutiny/War of Independence. A lot of the book is taken up with arguments between orthodox Hinduism and Brahmo Samaj (Brahmo Samaj is sort of like the Reformed Protestantism to orthodox Hinduism's Catholicism; that's obviously a huge simplification, but let's go with it, since I am not a religious scholar); how interesting you find such arguments probably depends a lot on your tolerance for long philosophical monologues on God as formless vs formed, and debates that boil down to: "I love India the most! You don't know the real India!" "No, I love India the most! YOU don't know the real India***!"
Okay, it was slightly more interesting than that. Also, there are some very sweet romances!
What are you currently reading?
The Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar. The life of a middle-class woman and her poor servant are contrasted in modern-day Mumabi. I read another book by Umrigar and quite liked it, so I thought I'd check this one out.
*A case the NAACP would lose**, thus setting up America for the still-continuing problems of ghettoization and racial segregation. See what I mean about depressing?
**Also yet more evidence to prove Sarah Palin wrong about Roe vs Wade being the only controversial Supreme Court case, though why I still care about that talking point five years later is anyone's guess.
***Debates about who are the "real Indians" are appallingly/hilariously close to debates about who are the "real Americans" (note: usually not anyone who lives in a city, in both cases), which probably says something about human nature. Or perhaps just about the nature of politicians.
Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age by Kevin Boyle. A nonfiction recounting of a court-case in 1920s Detroit: Dr. Sweet, a black man, and his family bought a house in a predominately white neighborhood. Suspecting that this would not go over well, the Sweets had several friends and family members stay with them to help defend the house. The second night after they moved in, a mob of neighbors attacked the house, and one of these friends ended up shooting into the crowd, killing a man. Precedent pretty clearly stated that a) it's legal to kill in defense of your house and b) it's legal to kill in defense from a mob, even if your perception of the mob's intent is later proven incorrect. The court case was really only deciding if these precedents apply when it's a black man killing a white one. Add in a defense team led by Clarence Darrow (fresh off the Scopes Monkey Trial) and a brand-new NAACP that would be taking the legality of residential segregation to the Supreme Court later that year*, and it's a pretty important case.
So, this book was well-written, well-researched, and on an interesting topic. But it took me nearly a month to read it (and it's not that long of a book) because it is also INCREDIBLY DEPRESSING. Which I guess should have been obvious from the subject matter? But I could only handle so many descriptions of lynchings, race riots, KKK rallies, stonings, lying police chiefs, and so on and so on. And then when it wasn't racism being depressing, there were babies dying of tuberculosis and domestic violence and suicides. Yay! I guess overall I recommend the book, but perhaps not if you're looking for something cheerful to read.
Gora by Rabindranath Tagore. The is the first thing by Tagore I've read! (I think? Unless I've forgotten something.) He is the only Indian to have won the Nobel Prize for Literature (so far, I suppose), and so he's pretty important and I should have gotten to him sooner. Gora (the word literally means "fair", but is also a vaguely derogatory slang term for "white people"; or at least it is today, I'm not sure about the early 1900s, when the book was written) is about a young man who is SUPER INTO orthodox Hinduism, the caste system, and protesting European influence and government in India. Unfortunately, he is not a Brahmin like he thinks, but was adopted as an infant when his white parents died in the 1857 Mutiny/War of Independence. A lot of the book is taken up with arguments between orthodox Hinduism and Brahmo Samaj (Brahmo Samaj is sort of like the Reformed Protestantism to orthodox Hinduism's Catholicism; that's obviously a huge simplification, but let's go with it, since I am not a religious scholar); how interesting you find such arguments probably depends a lot on your tolerance for long philosophical monologues on God as formless vs formed, and debates that boil down to: "I love India the most! You don't know the real India!" "No, I love India the most! YOU don't know the real India***!"
Okay, it was slightly more interesting than that. Also, there are some very sweet romances!
What are you currently reading?
The Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar. The life of a middle-class woman and her poor servant are contrasted in modern-day Mumabi. I read another book by Umrigar and quite liked it, so I thought I'd check this one out.
*A case the NAACP would lose**, thus setting up America for the still-continuing problems of ghettoization and racial segregation. See what I mean about depressing?
**Also yet more evidence to prove Sarah Palin wrong about Roe vs Wade being the only controversial Supreme Court case, though why I still care about that talking point five years later is anyone's guess.
***Debates about who are the "real Indians" are appallingly/hilariously close to debates about who are the "real Americans" (note: usually not anyone who lives in a city, in both cases), which probably says something about human nature. Or perhaps just about the nature of politicians.
