sigelphoenix (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sigelphoenix) wrote2006-12-23 10:23 pm
sigelphoenix) wrote2006-12-23 10:23 pm
Entry tags:
Books, games, and getting older
I made it safely home to my parents'. The train ride was uneventful, as usual, and during the trip ![[insanejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/ij-userinfo.gif)
kyonkun lent me her DS and let me start Phoenix Wright. Since then (Thursday), I've been playing pretty non-stop and have gotten through half of the fourth case. It's so much fun. XD And so slashy. XD;;
Time not spent either with Phoenix (my new favorite dweeb :D) or my family has been spent reading -- for fun. How joyous! At the moment I am just over a third of the way through Anything We Love Can Be Saved, a collection of essays by Alice Walker. It's been very ... comforting to read. Lately, I feel like I have two settings when it comes to my anti-oppression experience: "Kind of Shitty" and "Really Shitty." Reading Walker's writing in this context is immensely soothing. Part of this comes from her serene demeanor - Samuel Zan, the general secretary of Amnesty International in Ghana, gave her the nickname "peaceful woman," and I can see why - which just emanates from her writing. She is implacable in her anti-racism and feminism/womanism, and yet she does not come off as vindictive or hateful. Here's one of my favorite passages so far, from the introduction to the book:
"I have learned to accept the fact that we risk disappointment, disillusionment, even despair, every time we act. Every time we decide to trust others to be as noble as we think they are. And that there might be years during which our grief is equal to, or even greater than, our hope. The alternative, however, is not to act, and therefore to miss experiencing other people at their best, reaching toward their fullness, has never appealed to me."
What I like best about this passage - and what is evident in all the essays I have read so far - is that Walker acknowledges that yes, shit happens. She's not inspirational in a shmarmy, naive way. Her style of hope is that battered, sometimes painfully starved form of hope that is most honest and believable. At the same time, she doesn't despair - just before this passage comes a short anecdote about how she overcame her mistrust of one of the white Civil Rights workers she knew in the 60s.
This ties into another reason Walker's writing has been so helpful for me. She is a woman of long life and full experience, having spent her youth as part of the Civil Rights movement, and having worked against racism and sexism for decades. If nothing else, her experience reminds me to keep things in perspective. No matter what kind of crap we - or I - go through now, it's not as bad as it was just decades ago. More importantly, the people who lived through that time also endured, and prevailed. Remembering this makes the petty stuff seem more petty, and the important stuff seem more important.
(Ironically, I was first introduced to Walker's activism through a critical lens. I read an essay about her film Warrior Marks, a documentary on female genital cutting, that described her treatment of FGC as inaccurate and appropriating. Obviously, I still find value in Walker's work, though I do still agree with much of that criticism.)
In other reading news, I've finished the first six collections of Runaways, which is now my favorite work by Brian K. Vaughan. As part-superhero saga, part-teen adventure, it appeals to my love of both traditional Western comics and shounen manga. As the least overtly political of his titles, it does the best job of conveying his political beliefs without beating us over the head with them. Asratzeo (whom I borrowed the books from) and I've discussed, this makes his beliefs more convincing, in a show-rather-than-tell kind of way.
I'm also 22 now. Thanks to everyone who gave me birthday wishes, birthday gifts, and/or attended my birthday dinner. ^_^
And alas, I'm on a dial-up connection here (14.4kps, WOEZ), so this may be the last you hear from me until I get back to Seattle on the 30th. I'm trying to keep up with email and LJ, but it'll be a test of my patience. I may just give up on the Internet and go back to Phoenix Wright. XD;;
kyonkun lent me her DS and let me start Phoenix Wright. Since then (Thursday), I've been playing pretty non-stop and have gotten through half of the fourth case. It's so much fun. XD And so slashy. XD;;Time not spent either with Phoenix (my new favorite dweeb :D) or my family has been spent reading -- for fun. How joyous! At the moment I am just over a third of the way through Anything We Love Can Be Saved, a collection of essays by Alice Walker. It's been very ... comforting to read. Lately, I feel like I have two settings when it comes to my anti-oppression experience: "Kind of Shitty" and "Really Shitty." Reading Walker's writing in this context is immensely soothing. Part of this comes from her serene demeanor - Samuel Zan, the general secretary of Amnesty International in Ghana, gave her the nickname "peaceful woman," and I can see why - which just emanates from her writing. She is implacable in her anti-racism and feminism/womanism, and yet she does not come off as vindictive or hateful. Here's one of my favorite passages so far, from the introduction to the book:
"I have learned to accept the fact that we risk disappointment, disillusionment, even despair, every time we act. Every time we decide to trust others to be as noble as we think they are. And that there might be years during which our grief is equal to, or even greater than, our hope. The alternative, however, is not to act, and therefore to miss experiencing other people at their best, reaching toward their fullness, has never appealed to me."
What I like best about this passage - and what is evident in all the essays I have read so far - is that Walker acknowledges that yes, shit happens. She's not inspirational in a shmarmy, naive way. Her style of hope is that battered, sometimes painfully starved form of hope that is most honest and believable. At the same time, she doesn't despair - just before this passage comes a short anecdote about how she overcame her mistrust of one of the white Civil Rights workers she knew in the 60s.
This ties into another reason Walker's writing has been so helpful for me. She is a woman of long life and full experience, having spent her youth as part of the Civil Rights movement, and having worked against racism and sexism for decades. If nothing else, her experience reminds me to keep things in perspective. No matter what kind of crap we - or I - go through now, it's not as bad as it was just decades ago. More importantly, the people who lived through that time also endured, and prevailed. Remembering this makes the petty stuff seem more petty, and the important stuff seem more important.
(Ironically, I was first introduced to Walker's activism through a critical lens. I read an essay about her film Warrior Marks, a documentary on female genital cutting, that described her treatment of FGC as inaccurate and appropriating. Obviously, I still find value in Walker's work, though I do still agree with much of that criticism.)
In other reading news, I've finished the first six collections of Runaways, which is now my favorite work by Brian K. Vaughan. As part-superhero saga, part-teen adventure, it appeals to my love of both traditional Western comics and shounen manga. As the least overtly political of his titles, it does the best job of conveying his political beliefs without beating us over the head with them. As
ratzeo (whom I borrowed the books from) and I've discussed, this makes his beliefs more convincing, in a show-rather-than-tell kind of way.I'm also 22 now. Thanks to everyone who gave me birthday wishes, birthday gifts, and/or attended my birthday dinner. ^_^
And alas, I'm on a dial-up connection here (14.4kps, WOEZ), so this may be the last you hear from me until I get back to Seattle on the 30th. I'm trying to keep up with email and LJ, but it'll be a test of my patience. I may just give up on the Internet and go back to Phoenix Wright. XD;;