coraa | (no subject)

Over the past couple of months, I have seen several ugly reminders that racism is alive and well. I just don't see it a whole lot because I'm, you know, a middle-class white woman. I don't have to look if I don't want to, and that's a privilege.

But that doesn't mean that it's not my responsibility to do what I can. So, some promises:

* I am going to do my best to call out racism when I see it. Even if it's my friends doing it. Even if it hurts. Some days I'll have more energy for it than others, but... I already call out sexist speech, and it's short-sighted (and privileged) in the extreme for me to only stand up about things that affect me personally. In other words: I will do my best to be an ally, in whatever small way I can.

* I am going to participate in

50books_poc, the pledge to read 50 books by people of color during the year. (I'm already up to, hm, let's see -- six, I think -- so it's feasible.) I'm not counting manga, not because they're not legitimate books written by non-white people, but because I can read a volume of a manga in twenty minutes, so it isn't much of a challenge to read 50. I may do a secondary challenge to read 25 manga, too. Why do this? Because it's easy for an American reading books in English put out by an American publisher to read very little besides white people just by accident -- so it's worth putting the extra effort in to make sure I'm reading diverse voices. If that sounds cool to you, I encourage you to join! If your reading rate is too slow for 50 to be feasible, you can always pledge to do 50 in two years or something -- that's not too uncommon either.

And if you see me acting in a way that's racist, please call me out, too. (Or sexist, heterocentrist, etc., it's just that those are easier for me to see myself.) I am so far from perfect that it's not funny, but I'm trying.

And if you have any recommendations for books by non-white authors, I would love to hear them!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Romance of the Three Kingdoms (though I assume any translation that you find will have been done by a white person) was enjoyable, if slow in places and not terribly novel-like.

There's also the Tale of Genji, which I keep meaning to get around to. I can't give it a hearty recommendation, for that reason, but I think you'd mentioned it at some point, too, and this can be a reminder.

I hadn't thought about how I felt about white translators, but I think, tentatively, if the original was by a non-white person and the translation was done with some degree of respect inasmuch as I can determine that, I'm okay with it. Otherwise I'm going to cut myself out of a lot of works written by people-who-are-not-white who live in other countries and/or who wrote long ago, and I think that would be sad.

So, thank you for the reminders! (I read excerpts of Genji in college, but never the whole thing.)