Song of Solomon - Toni Morrison
There is so much about this book I'm still figuring out, but indeed it is an EXCELLENT read.
I don't want to give any spoilers, but if i do I'll be sure to give a warning
Although a lot of these questions i have gone over before in my head (it's because my brain goes over 9000 miles a minute and never stops) , reading the book made me revisit a lot of these question, about how i define my own identity in the context of nationality and race. and although my identity in these contexts may seem simple to others how i define myself and wish myself to be seen in is much more ambiguous due to the nature of my upbringing, that i was not raised surrounded by people of the same race, apart from my parents. And how i never identified people by race, because in doing so i would make an outsider out of myself, because i grew up in North Carolina and Virginia for my schooling days up until middle school, and when it wasn't until i moved into a VERY VERY diverse town in Maryland that i met people in the US who weren't family/family friends that were of the same ancestral heritage.
It took me until about last year when i visited Bangladesh and read "The Woman Warrior" to fully understand how stereotypes of people are reinforced by parents (my parents speak about stereotypes and more often than not believe them to my dismay , though my life experiences had solidified that stereotypes are wrong by the time i noticed my parents racial conceptions) and by racial isolation. I was always around people of different races, and never had the luxury of saying "these people are different than my people because..." because i had never had to define myself in the context of race. I'm not even sure i completely/clearly understood that people of different races had different cultural backgrounds or different perspectives until a certain age (which i cannot pinpoint, but it was sometime in late elementary school) . i saw it the same way as someone being short or tall, of having different hair color. i mean , i kind of felt some of the effects of not being able to share a part of my culture with people who wouldn't understand them. when an Indian girl came to my school , i was kind excited in 2nd grade because the word in Hindi for "water" was the same as the Bengali word, which became our password. (later on i learned that she was really bossy , and there was a friendship battle between her and some of the other girls in my school, who couldn't get along with her, probably because she was bossy... . recess wasn't great after that battle started, because i had to pick sides a lot, and i wasn't able to form a single, strong relationship with anyone. when she went on vacation to India and missed school for a month it got rid of some drama and i was able to hang out with people). i think in first grade an Indian girl moved to my neighborhood, but that friendship came to an abrupt end when she pushed me into a swimming pool)
but like, it didn't really get through my head. (same thing could of said of gender differences in identity , until 3rd grade, when i discovered that girls and boys could have "crushes" on eachother ;) , which kinda ended up in me having both feminine and masculine personality traits, and being straight, this makes my future love life difficult, because guys feel threatened by my masculinity, and i always end up in "friend zone" , which is fine now, because I'm not allowed to date anyway, and guys make better friends than girls :/ . like, my personality in intrinsically odd, and i was really quiet in elementary school , so most girls wouldn't hang out with me because i was weird and most guys wouldn't hang out with me because i was a girl, so i hung out with the few people who didn't give a damn, which was a mix of guys and girls. [as i got older, this became less of an issue once older] . but this has nothing to do with song of Solomon, as in this book, gender roles mostly defined, the way they were in the time/place setting that the book was set in -- but that's a tangent, and I'll stop the tangent now)
so my sense of ideneity is purely based on behavior, not of race (or other arbitrary factors). Even cultural heritage blended into the background as i realized my Bengali heritage as a factor in my love of music and movies was just as strong, if not less than my settings, and this was only because they brought home Hindi movies and spoke Bengali in the home. But those were matched by my watching movies in English, and my interaction with classmates in the English language. (i wasn't properly able to communicate in either language fully till about 2nd/3rd grade. i could understand other people, but i had a hard time getting people to understand me, as i spoke a combination of Bangla and English, which i call "banglish", and it took me a while to separate the words i knew into 2 different categories, and learn which to say when.
The book talks about **SPOILER** : the following has references to some stuff in the book. i try not to go into detail but no promises will be made. this is my blog -- i do what i want plz.
...
...
...
...
or at least implies that to the community in point, in this case, the black community, their perspective on other races (in this time period, in this context of what we assume is Detroit during the 60's) , and in particular, the white race, which is regarded as unnatural, (for the story line. And The Woman Warrior by Maxine Kingston, whose character were Chinese immigrants who saw those of other ethnic identities as ghosts, and not of the same type of people. And i have observed first hand this, when visiting family members in Bangladesh, that very plainly, in conversation, will ask "What kind of nationality immigrant is your favorite" and will ask what RACE my friends are (out of curiosity mostly likely though, because in Bangladesh everyone is, well, Bengali)
But it just seemed so odd to me, that anyone would CARE what race my friends were.
And apparently it's an important factor in marriage too, to them. Like, i don't give a shizz, as long as they're my type, and a good person, and we share similar beliefs and interests. race and national origin is NOT running through my mind when it comes to guys :/
when i told them that, they were like "Bu what language will you speak!"
i really wanted to rant at them saying that if they hadn't noticed, my English is MUCH better than my Bengali (though my typing while blogging may say otherwise, due it it's lack of revision and sloppy keystrokes)
Song of Solomon presents white people as distant oppressors, who generally take time out of their foreign lives to make sure that they have asserted their superiority. Now, today this is untrue, but in the context of 1960's Detroit, no one will deny that racial division was a cause for major confrontation (despite it's silliness). A lot of kids from my generation (maybe not most, but a heck of a lot) have my perspective on race, and don't look at it when considering friendships and relationships.
***
End of (possible) spoiler
so i leave you with these thoughts, and some possible ponders
how does racial identity and ethnicity play into someone's idea of their identity?
Does being in a culturally diverse area dissolve barriers between races?
What are some other personal insights given by song of Solomon?
Why are so many people (even today) still ethnocentric?(my friends who share my view of race may disagree on this point, but dears we live in a special and culturally rich town. In previous places I've lived, although there wasn't outright racism for the most part, ethnocentric and racial overtones did exist)
And any other random crap you'd like to talk about
:P
I don't want to give any spoilers, but if i do I'll be sure to give a warning
Although a lot of these questions i have gone over before in my head (it's because my brain goes over 9000 miles a minute and never stops) , reading the book made me revisit a lot of these question, about how i define my own identity in the context of nationality and race. and although my identity in these contexts may seem simple to others how i define myself and wish myself to be seen in is much more ambiguous due to the nature of my upbringing, that i was not raised surrounded by people of the same race, apart from my parents. And how i never identified people by race, because in doing so i would make an outsider out of myself, because i grew up in North Carolina and Virginia for my schooling days up until middle school, and when it wasn't until i moved into a VERY VERY diverse town in Maryland that i met people in the US who weren't family/family friends that were of the same ancestral heritage.
It took me until about last year when i visited Bangladesh and read "The Woman Warrior" to fully understand how stereotypes of people are reinforced by parents (my parents speak about stereotypes and more often than not believe them to my dismay , though my life experiences had solidified that stereotypes are wrong by the time i noticed my parents racial conceptions) and by racial isolation. I was always around people of different races, and never had the luxury of saying "these people are different than my people because..." because i had never had to define myself in the context of race. I'm not even sure i completely/clearly understood that people of different races had different cultural backgrounds or different perspectives until a certain age (which i cannot pinpoint, but it was sometime in late elementary school) . i saw it the same way as someone being short or tall, of having different hair color. i mean , i kind of felt some of the effects of not being able to share a part of my culture with people who wouldn't understand them. when an Indian girl came to my school , i was kind excited in 2nd grade because the word in Hindi for "water" was the same as the Bengali word, which became our password. (later on i learned that she was really bossy , and there was a friendship battle between her and some of the other girls in my school, who couldn't get along with her, probably because she was bossy... . recess wasn't great after that battle started, because i had to pick sides a lot, and i wasn't able to form a single, strong relationship with anyone. when she went on vacation to India and missed school for a month it got rid of some drama and i was able to hang out with people). i think in first grade an Indian girl moved to my neighborhood, but that friendship came to an abrupt end when she pushed me into a swimming pool)
but like, it didn't really get through my head. (same thing could of said of gender differences in identity , until 3rd grade, when i discovered that girls and boys could have "crushes" on eachother ;) , which kinda ended up in me having both feminine and masculine personality traits, and being straight, this makes my future love life difficult, because guys feel threatened by my masculinity, and i always end up in "friend zone" , which is fine now, because I'm not allowed to date anyway, and guys make better friends than girls :/ . like, my personality in intrinsically odd, and i was really quiet in elementary school , so most girls wouldn't hang out with me because i was weird and most guys wouldn't hang out with me because i was a girl, so i hung out with the few people who didn't give a damn, which was a mix of guys and girls. [as i got older, this became less of an issue once older] . but this has nothing to do with song of Solomon, as in this book, gender roles mostly defined, the way they were in the time/place setting that the book was set in -- but that's a tangent, and I'll stop the tangent now)
so my sense of ideneity is purely based on behavior, not of race (or other arbitrary factors). Even cultural heritage blended into the background as i realized my Bengali heritage as a factor in my love of music and movies was just as strong, if not less than my settings, and this was only because they brought home Hindi movies and spoke Bengali in the home. But those were matched by my watching movies in English, and my interaction with classmates in the English language. (i wasn't properly able to communicate in either language fully till about 2nd/3rd grade. i could understand other people, but i had a hard time getting people to understand me, as i spoke a combination of Bangla and English, which i call "banglish", and it took me a while to separate the words i knew into 2 different categories, and learn which to say when.
The book talks about **SPOILER** : the following has references to some stuff in the book. i try not to go into detail but no promises will be made. this is my blog -- i do what i want plz.
...
...
...
...
or at least implies that to the community in point, in this case, the black community, their perspective on other races (in this time period, in this context of what we assume is Detroit during the 60's) , and in particular, the white race, which is regarded as unnatural, (for the story line. And The Woman Warrior by Maxine Kingston, whose character were Chinese immigrants who saw those of other ethnic identities as ghosts, and not of the same type of people. And i have observed first hand this, when visiting family members in Bangladesh, that very plainly, in conversation, will ask "What kind of nationality immigrant is your favorite" and will ask what RACE my friends are (out of curiosity mostly likely though, because in Bangladesh everyone is, well, Bengali)
But it just seemed so odd to me, that anyone would CARE what race my friends were.
And apparently it's an important factor in marriage too, to them. Like, i don't give a shizz, as long as they're my type, and a good person, and we share similar beliefs and interests. race and national origin is NOT running through my mind when it comes to guys :/
when i told them that, they were like "Bu what language will you speak!"
i really wanted to rant at them saying that if they hadn't noticed, my English is MUCH better than my Bengali (though my typing while blogging may say otherwise, due it it's lack of revision and sloppy keystrokes)
Song of Solomon presents white people as distant oppressors, who generally take time out of their foreign lives to make sure that they have asserted their superiority. Now, today this is untrue, but in the context of 1960's Detroit, no one will deny that racial division was a cause for major confrontation (despite it's silliness). A lot of kids from my generation (maybe not most, but a heck of a lot) have my perspective on race, and don't look at it when considering friendships and relationships.
***
End of (possible) spoiler
so i leave you with these thoughts, and some possible ponders
how does racial identity and ethnicity play into someone's idea of their identity?
Does being in a culturally diverse area dissolve barriers between races?
What are some other personal insights given by song of Solomon?
Why are so many people (even today) still ethnocentric?(my friends who share my view of race may disagree on this point, but dears we live in a special and culturally rich town. In previous places I've lived, although there wasn't outright racism for the most part, ethnocentric and racial overtones did exist)
And any other random crap you'd like to talk about
:P
posted by SiR at 10:07 PM
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