Gretchen Posted May 21, 2021 Report Share Posted May 21, 2021   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? Itâs 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 donât think Richard Wright would appreciate that. I couldnât 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. Itâs disrespectful as hell. This is a Black mans book about the hardships of Black people. Worse than that, if you havenât 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 âniggerâ over and over again.  I couldnât 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. Iâm 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: âWhy 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 courseâ? 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 âoh well thatâs cool, it is war and they are killing each other everydayâ 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 canât 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 âWhat hit me the hardest in 2015 was Jill Levoyâs Ghettoside.â âItâs just the sorta thing I go for: an exhaustively researched non fiction account of PEOPLE I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT!â Then he goes on to say thatâs 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 donât 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 didnât go to the South maybe I donât 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 âNice enough. We didnât talk long. I got the impression sheâs a fairly typical Black woman for  these parts, with a house full of kids, a part-time husband, a minimum wage job, hard life.â  WHAT? Now what is Grisham basing this on? I donât 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 didnât finish reading it. I donât know if she did. Why the negativity toward us? I donât care if itâs a fiction book. Why write us this way? Itâs other stuff, that bothered me but that about âtypical Black womanâ bothered me the most.  Well itâs out now. (Exhale)...I donât think we are getting anywhere..smh   Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pioneer1 Posted May 22, 2021 Report Share Posted May 22, 2021 Gretchen  Hello, and welcome to the site. I haven't lived in Indiana but I'm from Michigan and used to drive through it quite a bit on my way to Chicago.  The state is racist as hell. And the further South (away from Chicago and Gary) you go the more racist and redneck it seems to become.  I remember driving through some part of Indiana on my way back home from Colorado and I stopped in some town and saw the most Conservative plaid-shirt wearing "straight out of Happy Days" looking people I ever saw East of the Mississippi river...lol.   The narrator of the audiobook is WHITE. That is a big deal to me. I donât think Richard Wright would appreciate that. I couldnât 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. Itâs disrespectful as hell  Is there not more than one narrator for that book? You can correct me if I'm wrong but I thought audiobook was just the recorded verbal reading of a book....not an OFFICIAL publication. I would think a book like that would have several recordings of different people of different races reading it, including  Africans.  Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chevdove Posted May 26, 2021 Report Share Posted May 26, 2021 On 5/21/2021 at 9:16 AM, Gretchen said: Then Jake went on to accuse her of sleeping with the man she worked with cuz he left her some money. I didnât finish reading it. I donât know if she did. Why the negativity toward us? I donât care if itâs a fiction book. Why write us this way? Itâs other stuff, that bothered me but that about âtypical Black womanâ bothered me the most.  Oh yes, I became very frustrated reading what you wrote. What do 'they' know about 'the typical Black woman'? Sometimes, I feel as if, certain White people have created their own negative version of what 'they want us to be'. They want us to fit into their mentality of what they feel we should be. And, I also believe that this type of behavior has been forced on us long ago. Sometimes, I get the feeling that 'they' can accept Black women if, 'in their minds' we look like a past rendition of 'the mammy' but if Black women were to show another type of presence, it would not be accepted. So no, I don't believe that a White person should be narrating a story where the 'n-word' is used!  Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now