December Book Breakdowns

 Title: White Tears/Brown Scars

Author: Ruby Hamad

Summary/Themes:

Breaking down the stereotypes and archetypes that women of color are often forced into. Looking at how these create dangerous binaries.

Notes/Quotable Moments:

"White parents often bequeathed human property to their female children, with land usually passed down to the males."

"When enslaved people could bear no more and attempted to flee, it was often their female owners who places notices in newspapers offering a reward for their return--with explicit instructions not to return the slave to her husband."

"...we still see this kind of exclusion and appropriation of the work of women of color by white feminists today--perhaps most glaringly when white women adopt a self-serving 'intersectional feminist' identity, both as a shield against criticism from women of color and as a weapon with which to silence us by claiming we are causing division in the sisterhood...There is no sisterhood. How can there be, when white supremacy has done such a thorough job of setting White Womanhood apart from the rest of us? There's a division, all right, but it is not caused by us. Yes, there is much for white women still to fight for, but consider that every single obstacle to their advancement is placed there by white society, by their own people."

"White women cannot speak of a sisterhood as long as they indulge white supremacy in its covert as well as explicit forms."

"Eugenicists were obsessed with achieving evolutionary perfection...The women deemed too 'unfit' for reproduction were not only those with a degraded racial status but also the white disabled, poor, mentally ill, queer, and/or genderqueer."

"The categories of white and black were invented to justify slavery, rather than slavery being justified by virtue of the enslaved people being black."

"Whiteness was invisible. White people just were. They set the standard and we had to try to meet it. If we couldn't meet it, well, that meant there was something wrong with us; it was our fault, not theirs. We were the ones who had to change."

"This is a common strategy of white feminism: to align with women of color when it suits, trumpeting a nonexistent sisterhood as a mask for appropriating our work to advance the myth of a better world run by women. The truth is, it is women of color, most especially Indigenous women, who are at the forefront of environmental rights because their own rights are inseparable from the battle for the environment."

"All the structural problems white women face--even climate change--are caused by their own society."

"White women have to acknowledge the unfair advantage their race has given them not just in the sense they have white privilege, but in the sense they have participated in a system where their womanhood is itself a privilege and a weapon...Think of how many white feminists adopt antiracism discourse to denounce "mediocre white men" and "white male supremacy" allowing them to temporarily distance themselves from white power."

"There has always been ripe potential for solidarity between people of color and those more marginalized whites, and that such a solidarity could undo white supremacy. And whiteness knows this. This is why our governments expend so much money to detain asylum seekers in detention and lock their children in cages. It is why white workers are encouraged to blame immigrants for both stealing jobs and simultaneously lounging on welfare."

"Sexism and racism go hand in hand in the West: as long as the myth of sex-crazed, aggressive, inferior subject races is allowed to fester, then so too will the implication that white women need to be protected from them."

"White supremacy is not a left/right issue. It is the very foundation, the structure, the roof, and the contents of our society. Racism is not so much embedded in the fabric of society as it is the fabric of society."

"It is not enough for white women to have their hearts in the right place or to claim they don't see color and treat everyone equally. Feminism must commit to an explicitly anti-racist platform. And that means severing themselves from their historical and emotional attachment to inherent innocence and goodness. As it is, white feminists keep apologizing whenever we raise these issues, telling us they will listen, they will improve, but they never do. And women of color are losing patience. Because white women can't not know. After all the years of viral articles, hashtag movements, and marches instigated and led by women of color, white women simply cannot claim they do not know what it is they are doing to us that is driving us away from them."

"Mainstream Western feminism claims to embrace intersectional theory, but it may be truer to say it is weaponizing it. Unmoored from Crenshaw's critical analysis of institutional power, it becomes little more than a buzzword and a shield for legitimate criticism. More than once I have been scolded by a white woman who believed that because she identified as an 'intersectional feminist,' she couldn't be racist."

"white feminists...does not mean 'any feminist who is white' but refers to feminists who prioritize the concerns of white, middle-class women as though they are representative of all women."

"usually when white women made rape claims against black and brown men they were lying, and white men knew they were lying, because the cry of rape and attempted rape was itself a ruse for justifying white racial violence and fortifying white economic, social, and political domination. Sure, this gave white women a measure of power over black men and over women of color that they lacked in other areas of their lives, but it also ensured they stayed right where they were, sandwiched between white men and men of color in that racial and gendered hierarchy, with women of color lagging below. White men have been socialized by centuries of white supremacy not to believe the sexual allegation claims of white women--unless the accused is a man of color."

"We must be wary of any rhetoric from white women that follows the narrative of "rescuing" and "saving" brown and black women and children."

"The one thing white women have had that sets them apart is their assigned innocence and virtue. But these are purely symbolic, existing not in the world of material reality but in the same world of representation that created the archetypes of Lewd Jezebels, Bad Arabs, and Dragon Ladies."

" 'If racism is so bad, how come you're successful?' The answer is that biopolitics--the structure of society in a way that favors certain groups over others--creates a society that makes it far easier for certain segments of the population to thrive while others are vulnerable to exclusion. In other words, rather than making it absolutely impossible for people of color to slip through, it makes it just hard enough that most of us cannot."

"Western feminism as it currently stands is simply not equipped to deal with this reality. It is crucial here to understand that the history of Western feminism we have inherited, rooted as it is in the politics of the nineteenth century and the struggle for suffrage, is a tradition that embodies this racial and gendered hierarchy. The white feminist battle is not one that aims to dismantle this hierarchy but merely seeks to ensure white women join white men at its helm by agitating only against those limitations imposed on their sex."

Genre/sub-genre: Non-Fiction

Available Formats: Physical book at the DFL, eBook and Audiobook on Libby/Overdrive

Personal Thoughts:

This book is particularly helpful when considering work scenarios, but can be helpful in any social situation.

White women have been weaponizing their tears and their sadness in a variety of situations. For example, when a woman of colors tells her that something she said was hurtful or offensive.

Recommended Resources/Read-Alike Books:

"How White Women Use Strategic Tears to Silence Women of Color" by Ruby Hamad in The Guardian

"How White Feminism Threw Its Black Counterparts Under the Bus" by Joan Morgan in The New York Times

Against White Feminism: Notes on Disruption by Rafia Zakaria

Title: Dial A for Aunties

Author: Jesse Q. Sutanto

Genre/sub-genre: Fiction

Summary/Themes:

Bookflap summary: "When Meddelin Chan ends up accidentally killing her blind date, her meddlesome mother calls for even more meddlesome aunties to help her get rid of the body. Unfortunately, a dead body proves to be a lot more challenging to dispose of than one might anticipate--especially when it is inadvertently shipped in a cake cooler to the over-the-top billionaire wedding that Meddy, her Ma, and her aunties are working, at an island resort on the California coastline."

Themes: family dynamics, familial responsibilities, superstition, dark comedy, romance

Quotes/Notable Moments:

At the very beginning of the book, before the story starts, there is a letter to the reader from the author. She writes:

    "This book is a love letter to my family--a ridiculously large bunch with a long history of immigration. All four of my grandparents came from China to Indonesia between 1920 and 1930, and when they arrived in Indonesia, they changed their Chinese names to Indonesian ones to avoid xenophobia. Chen became Sutanto. Ho became Wijaya. As they fully integrated themselves into Indonesian culture, so too did their offspring...The result of all this moving around is a mish-mash of languages. My family is technically trilingual, but each of the three languages we speak is broken in some way...We we speak to each other, the sentences are jagged and cracked, and we often struggle to convey what we're trying to say. This is the price my parents have had to pay to ensure that my brothers and I were safe and sound.

    Some of the aunties in Dial A for Aunties speak the sort of broken English that my parents' generation does. Their grasp of the English language is not a reflection of their intelligence, but a reflection of the sacrifice that they have made for us."

Available Formats: Physical Book at the DFL, Audiobook and eBook on Libby

Personal Thoughts:

I absolutely loved this book. I thought it was witty and charming, with hijinks and great character dynamics. The main character Meddy's voice is so clear and funny, you'll feel like you're part of her family. What I really enjoyed about this book was the ways in which Meddy shared the responsibility she felt about staying with her mother and aunties in the family business. You can feel how torn she is about making her family proud and sticking with tradition, but also wanting to go out on her own. The book is also a whirl-wind when it comes to plot; the entire book happens in just a couple of days, so you really feel the excitement and the anticipation of this Weekend-at-Bernie's-esque comedy.

Recommended Resources/Read-Alike Books:

Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan

Big Summer by Jennifer Weiner

The Marriage Game by Sara Desai

Natalie Tan's Book of Luck and Fortune by Roselle Lim

In January, I'll be reading:

To My Trans Sisters (Non-Fiction)

Ring Shout (Fiction)

Read along with me!

Upcoming Events from the Growing Together initiative: 

Immigration on the South Shore with the Leventhal Map Center -- Tuesday, January 11th from 4-5pm EST

Join us for a discussion about immigration on the South Shore with a presentation from the Boston Public Library's Leventhal Map Center. This program will be on Zoom, and the event will also be streamed at the library. 

Intro to Pronouns with Alex Brandell -- Wednesday, January 19th from 3-4pm

Join Alex Brandell as they provide an introductory presentation on gender diversity, pronouns, and issues facing the transgender community. This event will be hybrid: Join us virtually on Zoom, or come to the library in-person in the library's Setter Room and watch the presentation in real time.