History and Writing
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50books_pocReading and Writing: A Personal Account by V.S. Naipaul
Two short essays by a writer about how he doesn't really feel comfortable as either a reader or a writer and would have probably ended up in other media if that had been an option when he was younger. I'm probably being unfair to these pieces, and they might have been more interesting if I knew more about Naipaul personally. But I don't, and I was bored.
Marvellous Grounds: Queer of Colour Histories of Toronto ed. Jin Haritaworn, Ghaida Moussa, and Syrus Marcus Ware
A variety of pieces by Queers of Colour about living in Toronto within and without the queer community. I found this super interesting, but Toronto is my hometown and I'm not sure it would have the same resonances if you're not from around here. But if you want stories of QOC resistance from the 60s on, it's very good.
Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India by Shashi Tharoor
A thorough and well-researched description of precisely the ways that the British screwed over India during the colonial period. Anyone with an interest in history should read this: it puts all the crimes of the British in India into one long list. It's not new information, but it's extremely well laid out here and Tharoor is not willing to let the British off the hook for anything, which is refreshing. He's not quite so clear-sighted about the current government of India, I think, but everyone has their flaws (and he is a sitting politician). (Obviously, I'm not criticising the concept of Indian self-government here, I'm criticising the government they've got, particularly given current events in Kashmir. And colonialism was worse. Just wanted to be clear.)
Image Matters: Archive, Photography, and the African Diaspora in Europe by Tina M. Campt
I really wanted to like this book, but it was so frustrating. The author has access to these two awesome photographic archives: first of Afro-Germans in the 30s and 40s, second of Black Carribbean immigrants to England in the 60s. If you want to look at the pictures, the reproductions of them in the book are great. But the actual prose gets distracted constantly by metaphors about how photographs can teach us things or release emotions and then not actually going into the things taught or the emotions released. For example, there's a fascinating section where Campt describes an interview she had with a Black tailor of the 60s who looked at the second archive of photos and had a million things to say about things like what different suit styles said about the photographic subjects. But she doesn't actually put the information into the text, just the fact that she learned these things! Instead we get a lengthy musical metaphor about how historians need to resist the urge to think they know individuals from their photos, but we can still learn things about people in the aggregate. What she learned about these populations in the aggregate? We don't find out. Just that the learning exists. The whole book is like that: the author does serious research -> the author writes a metaphor; a different set of interviews -> another metaphor. And yet I read the whole thing because the glimpses of straightforward research into the lives of these two populations were very interesting. I just wished she'd actually written a book about them.
Two short essays by a writer about how he doesn't really feel comfortable as either a reader or a writer and would have probably ended up in other media if that had been an option when he was younger. I'm probably being unfair to these pieces, and they might have been more interesting if I knew more about Naipaul personally. But I don't, and I was bored.
Marvellous Grounds: Queer of Colour Histories of Toronto ed. Jin Haritaworn, Ghaida Moussa, and Syrus Marcus Ware
A variety of pieces by Queers of Colour about living in Toronto within and without the queer community. I found this super interesting, but Toronto is my hometown and I'm not sure it would have the same resonances if you're not from around here. But if you want stories of QOC resistance from the 60s on, it's very good.
Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India by Shashi Tharoor
A thorough and well-researched description of precisely the ways that the British screwed over India during the colonial period. Anyone with an interest in history should read this: it puts all the crimes of the British in India into one long list. It's not new information, but it's extremely well laid out here and Tharoor is not willing to let the British off the hook for anything, which is refreshing. He's not quite so clear-sighted about the current government of India, I think, but everyone has their flaws (and he is a sitting politician). (Obviously, I'm not criticising the concept of Indian self-government here, I'm criticising the government they've got, particularly given current events in Kashmir. And colonialism was worse. Just wanted to be clear.)
Image Matters: Archive, Photography, and the African Diaspora in Europe by Tina M. Campt
I really wanted to like this book, but it was so frustrating. The author has access to these two awesome photographic archives: first of Afro-Germans in the 30s and 40s, second of Black Carribbean immigrants to England in the 60s. If you want to look at the pictures, the reproductions of them in the book are great. But the actual prose gets distracted constantly by metaphors about how photographs can teach us things or release emotions and then not actually going into the things taught or the emotions released. For example, there's a fascinating section where Campt describes an interview she had with a Black tailor of the 60s who looked at the second archive of photos and had a million things to say about things like what different suit styles said about the photographic subjects. But she doesn't actually put the information into the text, just the fact that she learned these things! Instead we get a lengthy musical metaphor about how historians need to resist the urge to think they know individuals from their photos, but we can still learn things about people in the aggregate. What she learned about these populations in the aggregate? We don't find out. Just that the learning exists. The whole book is like that: the author does serious research -> the author writes a metaphor; a different set of interviews -> another metaphor. And yet I read the whole thing because the glimpses of straightforward research into the lives of these two populations were very interesting. I just wished she'd actually written a book about them.
