THOUGHT-PROVOKING MEMOIR
Self-Portrait in Black and White: Family, Fatherhood, and Rethinking Race by Thomas Chatterton Williams (2019)
Even before his marriage and the birth of his first child, Williams straddled, or at least experienced, both the white and the Black worlds. His father is a Southern Black and his mother a white woman, and while mixed race, he identified as Black. His writing career gave him opportunities to work abroad in Berlin, but mostly in Paris. Subsequently, he married a white French woman. In France, he felt he was received first as American and then as something other than white.
When his daughter Marlow arrived blond and blue-eyed, Williams’ views on race were upended. Forced to confront his own sense of race, he explores how other writers and philosophers have described race—and how some have dealt with it in their own lives.
Given the mixed context of his own extended family, he asks the question, “What is race if a man, at various stages, can be either ‘black’ or ‘white’? In my own family, when I can look to my mother’s side and I see my aunt Shirley’s Facebook posts about our immigrant ancestors diligently pulling themselves up and out of German, or to my father’s side on Ancestry.com and stare into the abyss of chattel slavery, I concur that race is hardly more than the difference between those who descend from the free and those who do not.”
He goes on to state that, “mental liberty, inner, mental freedom, is never something another person can give to you but rather something hard-won that anyone interested will have to take for herself, will have to seize with conviction, if she will have it at all.”
Reading his book, I found myself puzzling over the fact that if I meet another individual and I can’t immediately assess whether they are Black or white, it becomes a matter of concern. As if I had to peg them in a particular slot before I could move on to any extended interaction. Intermingling the scholarly with the personal, Williams has given us a thoughtful meditation for our polarized times.
Williams also wrote the initial draft of the now much discussed “A Letter on Justice and Open Debate” signed by more than 150 public figures and published in Harper’s Magazine. (~JWFarrington)
CULTURE NOTES—THE NEW YORKER FESTIVAL
I am somewhat late to the game in taking advantage of lectures and concerts available online. This week that changed. I registered and paid for tickets to two events in the annual New Yorker Festival line-up.
New Yorker staff writer Michael Specter interviewed Dr. Anthony Fauci. In the course of the interview, he played a few audio clips of Dr. Fauci’s involvement with earlier epidemics. Specter and Fauci have known each other a long time which was evident from their warm interaction. The technology worked, and it was an informative and enjoyable program.
The conversation between Margaret Atwood and Jia Tolentino was less successful. It was a treat for me to see and hear Ms. Atwood, a long favorite author. But, Ms. Tolentino had problems enabling the audience to hear the author, resulting in several long delays. And she came across as a less skilled interviewer, with long-winded questions and not always giving the author time to finish her thoughts. Fortunately, Ms. Atwood was gracious and patient. She shared her insights into the current political climate vis-a-vis her novels on the Gilead dystopia and why she signed the Harper’s letter mentioned above.
HOPE FOR A DYSTOPIA
The Testaments by Margaret Atwood (2019)
I read The Handmaid’s Tale when it was published years ago and have not watched the TV version. I purchased this sequel several months ago, but it has been languishing on a stack of other to-be-read volumes. Prompted by the upcoming conversation with Atwood, I started it. Why did I wait so long to read it?
I found it utterly fascinating, even gripping. Once the linkages between Baby Nicole, taken to Canada and raised there; Agnes Jemima, a Supplicant and aspiring Aunt; and the elderly Aunt Lydia, keeper of a secret journal, were clear, I became even more immersed. How will these women fare? What happens to Gilead, the corrupt totalitarian society that has taken over the United States? It is a magnificent novel and a more than worthy successor to its precursor. And it can be read on its own. Highly recommended! (~JWFarrington)
Note: Header photo of yellow trumpet flower ©JWFarrington (some rights reserved).
