Posts tagged ‘black writers’
What I am being told I ought to like – by Google! – and how disrespectful it is.
Every time I went on a website, or visited Facebook, I find myself bombarded with right panel advertisements sporting black models. [Apparently, that was what the civil rights movement of the 1960s, “Black lives matter”, and the whole social-awareness thingy is all about: telling me what to buy using a skin color Google and its algorithm have deemed I am likely to trust.]
And I FUCKING FUCKING FUCKING hate it. Not just because black people generally don’t like other black people. And not even because those models look starved, snotty and fucking annoying. But because I FUCKING FUCKING FUCKING hate that I can’t escape the internet trying to paint me in a corner even while attempting to find an explanation for why every member of the not so quiet 99 percenter – but certainly not 1%er – Monterey, CA, community seems dressed up like spoiled-millionaire on Big Little Lies‘ first season finale.
It is as demeaning, insulting, and disrespectful as noticing on Rotten Tomatoes how an exquisite piece of work like “Velvet Buzzsaw” gets a 63% Fresh Review; while that absolute shit-show “Keanu” boasts 77% [because it stars Jordan Peele and Keegan-Michael Key, you understand. One oughtn’t expect the same artistic excellence from black-folk as one ought to from Jewish directors, or even white ones, ought one? Black folk have, after all, been held back. They are segregated and Brown V. Board of Education-ed Against. What is more, their idea of a good movie is whatever shit Tyler Perry decided to throw together]. Downright patronizing when you give an Academy award to Lupita Nyong’o for Best Actress, while all of us know that girl fucking blows as an actor; in awarding Best Adapted Screenplay for BlackKkKlansman – in the presence of other more deserving contenders. And in making the lead guy of almost every movie made since 2000 always always friendly with black people even in shows where racism does not have to figure.
Yes, all politics is local. But does every shit coming off every mother-fucking screen has to be black for a black girl to enjoy it? Need every commercial on TV have a mixed-race couple? Ought the guys at NPR push Cory Booker down my throat as one of the runners with a fighting chance among the 2020 democratic party candidates, when I can tell [all by myself!!] there is not one genuine bone in that guy’s body?! [What next, I mean to say, you gonne touch my hair, call me “Sistah”, and offer me fried chicken?!]
Just saying.
Speaking of Black Mirrors; now there is a delicate balance American directors, American advertisers, would be wise to tread. There black people don’t stand jarringly out. They don’t make your mouth-drop, and/or stop and wonder. They simply blend – the way nature, presumably, intended. But then again, we can’t expect the same kind of artistic excellence and integrity [decency, charm, and wit] from Americans as we do from the British, can we?
And from news websites I visited in the last two hours.
NW
From A to B redux
Sweet stink of the hookah, couscous, kebab, exhaust fumes of a bus deadlock. 98, 16, 32, standing room only – quicker to walk! Escapees from St. Mary’s, Paddington: expectant father smoking, old lady wheeling herself in a wheelchair smoking, die-hard holding urine sack, blood sack, smoking. Everybody loves fags. Everybody. Polish paper, Turkish paper, Arabic, Irish, French, Russian, Spanish, News of the World. Unlock your (stolen) phone, buy a battery pack, a lighter pack, a perfume pack, sunglasses, three for a fiver, a life-size porcelain tiger, gold taps. Casino! Everybody believed in destiny. Everybody. It was meant to be. It was just not meant to be. Deal or no deal? TV screens in the TV shop. TV cable, computer cable, audiovisual cables, I give you good price, good price. Leaflets, call abroad 4 less, learn English, eyebrow wax, Falun Gong, have you accepted Jesus as your personal call plan? Everybody loves fried chicken. Everybody. Bank of Iraq, Bank of Egypt, Bank of Libya. Emrpty cabs on account of the sunshine. Boom-boxes just because. Lone Italian, loafers, lost, looking for Mayfair. A hundred and one ways to take cover: the complete black tent, the facial grid, back of the head, Louis Vuitton-stamped, Gucci-stamped, yellow lace, attached to sunglasses, hardly on at all, striped, candy pink; paired with tracksuits, skin-tight jeans, summer dresses, blouses, vests, gypsy skirts, flares. Bearing no relation to the debates in the papers, in parliament. Everybody loves sandals. Everybody. Birdsong! Low-down dirty shopping arcade to mansion flats to an Englishman’s home is his castle. Open top, soft-top, drive-by, hip hop. Watch the money pile up. Holla! Security lights, security gates, security walls, security trees, Tudor, Modernist, postwar, prewar, stone pineapples, stone lions, stone eagles. Face east and dream of Regent’s Park, of St. John’s Wood. The Arabs, the Israelis, the Russians, the Americans: here united by the furnished penthouse, the private clinic. If we pay enough, if we squint, Kilburn need not exist. Free meals. English as a second language. Here is the school where they stabbed the headmaster. Here is the Islamic Center of England opposite the Queen’s Arms. Walk down the middle of this, you referee, you! Everybody loves the Grand National. Everybody. Is it really only April? And they’re off!
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So reads Chapter 10 of Zadie Smith’s new book “NW”. She is the woman, a girl really [24], after reading whose first novel I joined the Addis Ababa University to study Literature and Language [also the subject of my Like Mike post and the bridge that connected me to my ex-husband Chris – who is also the man that wrote to tell me she’s got a book out and to check it]. She is beautiful, she is talented and knows how to rock a “shash” as well as any konjo Qibe negade in the middle of Merkato. [Not to mention her cunning resemblance to my cousin “Netsa”; who wearth her heart on her sleeve, and is the inspiration for the following paragraphs [and few more not meant for the public eye]].
Read more on “NW”: Same Streets, Different Lives In ‘NW’ London. Or Zadie Smith.
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