Posts

We will never know. :(

Image
I was about to write my blog post on our main bud Lee Oswal and why he is a Libra, but then it kind of hit me that all of my blog posts this year have been about characters. So, time for something different! Now I have to come up with something to write about besides the characters… :((( Omg Libra was confusing. There were the chapters that were titled with dates and the one that were titled with places, and omg I would flip the page and see that nice big In Moscow or something of the sort in bold and almost breath a sign of relief. The calm between the storms, the clarity within confusion–whatever was going on it felt like Lee's story was the only one I could truly follow. So, I’m kind of huffing and puffing reading this stuff– darn authors writing books that people can’t understand –and I pretty much just threw in the dice on all of this conspiracy theory and let the words pass over me. Whatever is understood is what will be understood. Yet now as I’ve gotten deeper into the boo...
9 comments
Read more

Kindred on Interracial Relationships. Do We Support Kevin?

Image
  Let's say you have a scale, like typical 1 to 10. On the bottom is that big red frowny face and at the top it gets better, and the game is place the white man. Rufus is somewhat ambiguous, but as the book goes on it just gets worse and worse. He acts out of “love”, but those actions include abuse and sexual assault, yet some are inclined to sympathise with him and his conditions. It feels like we are watching him slowly turn into his father, yet it pulled at my heart meeting the kid who faces abuse from his father “He turned and pulled up his shirt so that I could see the crisscross of long red welts… ‘He said I took money from his desk, and I said I didn’t.’ Rufus shrugged” (20). He’s not a one because that would be somebody evil to their core, but, he might be a three or a two. I think Kindred draws a really interesting contrast with Kevin. He has his moments, good and bad, and on the scale would be the inverse of Rufus, not perfect but maybe around a seven. No, a ten isn’t som...
10 comments
Read more

Jes Grew Hits the For You Page

Image
  Charli D’Amelio and Addison Rae dance with   Jalaiah Harmon, the original creator of the viral Renegade Dance. While black style and artists are the root of most popular TikTok dances, frequently white creators go viral with the dances, and the original black creators are left without attribution and much of the profits from their content. When Jes Grew took over the country in Mumbo Jumbo , an epidemic of dance and jazz culture of the 1920s, the readers are left with questions about the role of black culture in a modern, specifically American, society. Mumbo Jumbo tells an Afro-centered history, particularly a cultural history, that traces back thousands of years to ancient Egyptian mythology to demonstrate how Black culture is the root of almost everything in main society. The battle lines between the monotheistic pearl-clutching Atonist and Jes Grew in Mumbo Jumbo is one of the few constants throughout history, from the Wallflower order's plans against the Jazz epidemic...
8 comments
Read more

Wait. Why is Houdini Here Again?

Image
  Wait. Why is Houdini Here Again? That is what I was wondering as the book rounded out – where did Houdini go for the last half of this book, and now why the *beep* is he hanging 12 stories in the air . He was thrown into the last chapter, I suppose to round the story out, but my inclinations say that there must be a deeper story or metaphor here. Those last few pages left me lingering with questions. Just to recap, Houdini – famous historical character, performer to be remembered for centuries – is right now dangling by his feet primed for an epic escape. Once he got all bundled up in a straightjacket, the cable attached to his feet and on the other end a crane lifted him into the sky. This all happens seemingly quite randomly in about the last three pages of Ragtime . I didn't think much of it until earlier when I sat down and googled up the picture on the left. It made me feel a little bit uneasy, mostly because of its similarity to some other historical events. If you put in t...
11 comments
Read more