16 December 2008

Black White and Jewish - Autobiography of a Shifting Self by Rebecca Walker

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All ye betweenshippers and shape shifters out there should read this one. It reminded me very much of a childhood spent trying to fit in: in school, at home, with my father and his Chinese friends. Reminded me of a time I had wanted to forget: the early teens.

Made me laugh. Made me really sad. A tad too long, but well written and quite engaging. Spending my X-mas in another town, far from my copy of the novel, I gotta remember to write down a few more of my fave passages later on.

Once again, read an excerpt here.

10 December 2008

Not Finishing #3 - Winter Plans



I am not going to be too specific with my reading list this time. Think of it more like some titles I randomly throw out from my bookshelves to why not-maybe read this winter:

Ulrika Lorentzi - Något bara kvinnor kan?
Tobias Hübinette & Carina Tigervall - Adoption med förhinder
Tove Jansson - Mumin: Tove Janssons Samlade Serier del 1
Christian Catomeris - Det ohyggliga arvet
Liv Strömquist - Einsteins fru
Rebecca Walker - Baby Love
Fanny Ambjörnsson - Vad är queer
Elisabeth Hjorth - Kärnfamiljen
Michał Witkowski - Lubiewo
Chandra Prasad (editor) - Mixed

Mostly Swedish this time. Probably because our smaller (greater) publishers had a really great X-mas market sale the other day. And the day before some of my fave Swe comicbook artists signed my copies of their books.

Currently (Still) Reading: Walker

Sometimes I have to leave it be for a while, Black White & Jewish. Reading it is like revisiting my own childhood, something I can only do for brief moments at a time.

Rebecca Walker writes about her early life moving back and forth over the US, between her african american mother and her white jewish father and his new wife.

"[Mother's] presence at the table would grant me the great luxury of being able to love my family unreservedly, to take them irrevocably as my own. As it is, the specter of my mother, of race, really, and the inability of my relatives to deal with it, leaves me somewhere on the periphery of my own experience, unable to commit to fully being there. Haunted by her absence, I pull back cautiously and feel, even as I laugh and play with my cousins, as if some part of me is alien to the others, as if I am in the family through some kind of affirmative-action plan and don't entirely belong."

08 December 2008