The Sunday Post is a meme hosted by Kimba at Caffeinated Book Reviewer. It’s a chance to share news, recap the past week, and showcase books (and, for me, music) every Sunday.
What’s new?
Not a whole lot to report this week from the Land of the Morning Calm. School was out again so I was back to desk-warming duty. While I didn’t actually have any work to get on with, my co-workers spent hours each day screaming and shouting across the office to each other, getting into arguments and storming out of the room.
As next week marks the start of the new school year, tensions are high. People are either trying to get their affairs in order as they prepare to transfer to another school or trying their best to get everything sorted before the new students arrive. Some were bound to butt heads.
Luckily for me, my deskwarming duty meant I had a lot of free time to read and get a few things ready for my upcoming move.
Books Read This Week
+ Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
+ Shoot Down the Wendy Bird by Julie Zantopoulos
+ I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou (re-read)
Yup. I did manage to get through Lolita with my stomach in tact. What a strange whirlwind of emotions we go through reading that, eh? To have a paedophilic narrator take you through his life is unsettling but, apparently, not enough to make you want to stop reading. I wish I hadn’t looked up reviews and critiques of the book though because there are a disturbing amount of people who agree that, as HH is not 12-year old Lolita’s “first lover” and she’s the one who first initiates sex, HH can’t be considered a criminal.
Honestly, people scare me.
Shoot Down the Wendy Bird is the debut book of my lovely friend, Julie Zantopoulos. A collection of short stories and poems that, honestly, put me through every emotion possible. I actually found myself having a lot of flashbacks to the university years while I read it: It reminded me of sitting in Creative Writing workshops and suddenly discovering this whole other side to your friends that they were only able to get out on paper. It also helped that quite a few of the stories reminded me of the writers I’d read all those years ago like Plath and Wurtzel whose woeful prose would make your heart literally ache. I’m so proud of you, Jules.
And then, of course, I re-read one of my favourite books by one of my favourite writers and heroes. What can you say about Maya Angelou and her writing that hasn’t already been said?
What gave Caged Bird a fresh perspective this time around though is that straight after I finished it, I picked up Yes, I Can by Sammy Davis Jr.
While being roughly around the same age, Angelou and Davis’ experiences of being Black Americans during the first half of the 20th century are actually both horrifying and fascinating in their similarities and differences.
Angelou spent the first 12 years of her life in the deep South where black and white lived far apart, and the Klan ran wild. In spite of the fact that through her teen years, Angelou attended a mixed high school on the West coast, there’s an ongoing theme of fear of white people throughout her adolescent narration and very little – if any – integration.
Davis, on the other hand, was raised in showbusiness – a world where everyone performed, ate, and hung out together, no matter their race. He openly describes how the protective bubble his father and uncle helped create around him blinded him to what the world was really like. In fact, it wasn’t until he enlisted in the army at 18 that the harsh realities hit the surface and literally smacked him in the face.
While Angelou grew up always knowing that, in her world, black was considered the lowest of the low, Davis didn’t, and was then always unable to comprehend why someone would hate him because of his skin colour.
Angelou’s book is nothing but a showcase for her strength and force. I haven’t finished Davis’ yet but, so far, it exposes the incredible vulnerabilities and softer side of a member of the seemingly untouchable Rat Pack.
Currently Listening to:
This week was George Harrison’s 73rd birthday so I spent days at a time listening to his albums. (Even the bad ones😉 )
The last 3 days, however, have been filled with the sounds of Mr Davis. I mean, while reading his book, why wouldn’t I be listening to that magical voice?
Links to things I loved this week:
“The Revenant” is the Donald Trump of This Year’s Oscars @ The New Yorker
A Brief List of Terrible Things White Celebrities Have Said About #OscarsSoWhite @ Bitch Media
What Does Black Leadership Look Like to You? @ Huffington Post
