Gretchen

Hi! I have never posted here..so let me say hello first.. I have come across a few things these last couple of weeks. Things that have bothered me and I am usually, how can I say, pretty patient? I live in IN so the ridiculousness of a certain group of people is frequent in this state. That does not make it right by any means. I am just saying I exercise a lot of patience. I read a lot. I have found some things that have made me very uncomfortable, or pissed off is probably the word that describes it better. First, has anyone ever read Native Son? It’s an old book about a young Black man written by Richard Wright. I read this book recently. I wanted to do part of it as an audiobook. The narrator of the audiobook is WHITE. That is a big deal to me. I don’t think Richard Wright would appreciate that. I couldn’t even listen to it. It just sounds..wrong. I wish I knew who chose him, I wish I knew how to rally to get that changed. It’s disrespectful as hell. This is a Black mans book about the hardships of Black people. Worse than that, if you haven’t read this book, let me tell you. The word nigger..is used excessively! Not only is this White man just wrong for this book he is happily saying “nigger” over and over again. I couldn’t even do it. I listened to for about 2 min and I quit. There were also some reviews from Black people who were not happy with the narrator choice either. I know they could have gotten Morgan Freeman to do it. He has done a bunch of audiobooks. I’m so serious. They need to pull that. I have added three photos. Two come from a book review for a book that is called Ghettoside. It was written in 2015 I believe by a white woman named Jill Leovy who researched gang murders and the detectives who pursue justice for those murders. I never read the book. I ran across this by accident. Anyway. I am a Book of the Month member. In 2016 some guy David Sedaris recommended this book to the club, maybe he works there. As you can see David has said in his review of the book: “Why had he thought that families of the victims, people to whom gun violence is an everyday event, would accept the death of their teenagers without anger or grief, as simply par for the course”? Yes David why the hell would you have thought that? IS HE CRAZY? This really pissed me off. WTF are we? ANIMALS? Who gets desensitized to their children being killed? When there is war and people are dying, is there ever a point where they knock on a door to notify the family, and the family says “oh well that’s cool, it is war and they are killing each other everyday” David how many white kids have to be killed before white parents stop getting angry and stop caring? How long was the Holocaust? Ask any survivor did they ever stop caring about who died? (Those are things i would say to david) If could find him I swear. I just can’t believe he thought that and then wrote it down and posted it on a website and NO ONE thought anything was wrong with what he said.BUT..he did start the review with “What hit me the hardest in 2015 was Jill Levoy’s Ghettoside.” ‘It’s just the sorta thing I go for: an exhaustively researched non fiction account of PEOPLE I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT!” Then he goes on to say that’s ok when those people are from India but in this book these strangers are Americans. He says they live in our towns but the part we avoid. Is talking about us? WTF? He talks as if we are another species. Foreign to him like he has never interacted with Black people. NOTHING David. You don’t know NOTHING about Black people in 2016? Lastly I attached a page out of a book I was reading. I like Grisham I think. I stop reading this book because I need to maybe go back later and re-evaluate. Grisham wrote this book in 2019. The way he is writing Black people and their interactions with white people was throwing me off. The book set in 1988. I was a kid then. I didn’t go to the South maybe I don’t know. The part in that photo was the last page I read before I put it down. When Jakes wife asked him if Lettie was nice. Jake said “Nice enough. We didn’t talk long. I got the impression she’s a fairly typical Black woman for these parts, with a house full of kids, a part-time husband, a minimum wage job, hard life.” WHAT? Now what is Grisham basing this on? I don’t care for that. Why is writing that BS? How the hell does he know what a fairly typical BLACK woman is?ANYWHERE! Then Jake went on to accuse her of sleeping with the man she worked with cuz he left her some money. I didn’t finish reading it. I don’t know if she did. Why the negativity toward us? I don’t care if it’s a fiction book. Why write us this way? It’s other stuff, that bothered me but that about “typical Black woman” bothered me the most. Well it’s out now. (Exhale)...I don’t think we are getting anywhere..smh