Tag Archives: book

Note to self: Always bring Kleenex

I don’t know what’s wrong with me lately. Maybe for once it’s really not me that’s at fault. Maybe it’s The 2012 Best American Short Stories collection that I have been reading. I have cried suddenly and uncontrollably over several passages. None of them were overtly sentimental. Certainly for a collection of this caliber you would not expect a blatant tearjerker. Melodramas are considered to be uncouth and frown upon. Perhaps it’s the understatement, the deliberate nonchalance that tricked me into reacting to them so violently on a subconscious level. An unadorned sentence described in passing the disjointed human interactions plainly yet accurately so much so that I had to pause to feel it inside the hollow of my body. I caught my breath as I caught the profound sadness.

Then, while she is sitting on the toilet, she sinks into the special sorrow of peeing while your mother is out cold on the floor next to you.

She dreams vividly, then can’t call up the dreams on waking, but carries through the day their emotional tone, an echo from the blackout chasm of Darlyn’s free fall. She can hear her soft scream as she tumbles down again and again. This is the harrowing/fabulous form in which love has come to her.

From “The Last Speaker of the Language” by Carol Anshaw, originally appeared in New Ohio Review, which you could read here.

And then the tears came.

The tears came unrelentingly. They flowed with little effort and I was amazed at how much water was stored behind my eyes. The gentle, continuous flow made me wonder whether I was indeed crying. I sat there, with tears falling in silence, until I was caught by an urge to just give in.

Let it out. I said to myself. Just bawl your eyes out. Fling yourself on the bed and bury your face into a pillow. You know, the way you cried when you were a kid. When you broke your favorite porcelain doll that played Für Elise when you wound the knob on the bottom. Or when you came home from school after yet another day of nobody making eye contact. Or when you missed your parents while you were staying at a relative’s house and your cousin was being a brat and was mean to you.

When was the last day I had a good cry like that I don’t even remember.

I had not anticipated the tears as I opened up my Kindle after the plane took off. Something caught on the edge of my neurosis I guess and I simply came undone. At first I ignored the tears and wiped them away surreptitiously with my fingers. Again and again. I stopped reading and closed my eye, willing the deluge to stop. Still the tears continued. I wanted to stay away from clichés such as broken faucet, waterfall, fire hose, but really these would be the most effective way of making you understand the trouble I was having, sitting on a packed plane.

I tilted my head towards the window and angled my body away from the person next to me, worrying that the telltale movement of wiping my face with the heels of my palms would give me away. I soon discovered that not wanting to cry on a plane is very much like not wanting to cough in a movie theatre: Alas, your needing to control it somehow only makes the urge uncontrollable and worse.

Next I was heaving for air. My shoulders trembled. My chest rose and fell. My hands moved like windshield wipers.

I hope nobody notices what a mess I am.

On the other hand, I was wishing someone would have handed me a Kleenex.

I would have started bawling. So it’s probably good that nobody did.

That feeling of paper between your fingers

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Books. I am talking about books here. Books made with paper (or if you are so inclined, dead trees). Although I do also love the feel and smell of new, crisp, uncirculated bills.

I have been very happy with my Kindle (which I named Marvin) esp. when I was trudging through 1Q84 in all its 944-page glory. It was a blessing to not have to log that book around for several months. (I did say I “trudged through” it…)

But I miss holding an actual paper book in my hand, feeling its heftiness of promisses and anticipation. I miss wandering amongst the library aisles picking up random books because, I confess, the book covers look interesting or the book titles sound intriguing, like a mystery waiting for you to solve.

These are chance encounters of the best kind.

You all know Chuck Palahniuk of Fight Club fan, and I know quite a few are rabid fans. How apropos was that I picked up this book from the shelf as I was pondering the enjoyment of feeling papers between my fingers that no technology can replace. In his re-introduction to the re-publication of Invisible Monsters (now dubbed Remix), he said that he wanted to do this book the right way, the way he envisioned it when he wrote the book a decade ago, inspired by his strange encounter with a Vogue magazine (What? No page numbers? And they make you jump back and forth to finish reading an article?)

I really love what he said about his desire to recreate that feeling of holding a hefty Sears catalogue in your hands, not knowing what’s inside, and every time when you randomly flip through the pages, you find something you’ve not seen yet. Full of surprises, promises of surprises.

From Chuck Palahniuk's reintroduction to Invisible Monsters Remix

Don’t worry my dear readers. I am not imaging this post to be a book review or something. I suck at that. What I am good at though is to MARVEL at the brilliantness of people and things that I encounter, and at the randomness of such discoveries. There was no reason other than serendipity that led me to pick up This Isn’t the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You by Jon McGregor and scanned through the first few pages. Once started, I was compelled to sit down in the comfy chair and read half of the book while in the library.

I don’t know how to describe the book. It suffices to say that Mr. McGregor is stingy when it comes to word count. But what he accomplishes in as few words as possible is unsettling and seething, the most disturbing kind of malice. I am still haunted by a few of the stories, wondering what happens next?

Brevity is the trademark throughout the book. The story, The Remains, is only 3-page long… The repetition of simple phrases brought chills down my spine. I have been wondering how one could visually, as in a film, convey this feeling so succinctly.

And for my stream of thoughts, conveniently, he is also fond of playing with syntax, and more, using the page as his canvas (apology for using such a cliche. I told you I suck at writing reviews…)

Could eBooks faithfully represent pages such as this?

Repost: My Problems with “The Help”

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Apparently many of my friends from my “real life” LOVE The Help. Love it. They are telling people on Facebook to “GO SEE THE HELP. RUN. NOT WALK!” including a dear dear friend who studied and wrote about Apartheid in South Africa. As I ponder how much I should share my perspectives with her at the risk of hurting her feelings and alienating her, I re-read my post from January 20. 2010, and nope, my view has not changed. Since the movie adaptation is receiving rave reviews all over and I have not seen my Anglo-Saxon lady friends so enthusiastic about a movie with an African American lead since The Blind Side (yes please argue why the African American characters are at most CO-lead, and you’ll be right in my book), I feel compelled to share this post from almost 2 years ago again.

Or, actually, skip this post entirely and go read My Brown Baby‘s post “I Was the Help —- and My Experience Taught to Dream Big“. If you have been reading my blog and liking what you have been reading, I have a feeling that you are going to appreciate very very much what Denene Millner, the autohor, has to say about the book, the movie and the reception of it. Peace out.

REPOSTED from January 20, 2010

I probably don’t need to publish this post on my blog. It is not appealing. It is not good writing. It will not make you laugh out loud. It is not even a proper rant. Besides, it is friggin’ long – I am amazed at how much I tapped out on my iPhod, and tedious. I am not even making any coherent argument, not to mention grammatical errors! Run-on sentences! totally exposing myself as a feeble-minded person. Even the title spells “MEH”.

That being said, I feel this pathological need to be on the record, I guess. Since I have been treating this blog as my diary, I want everything that comes out of my head to be on here. So, sorry about this… mental puke…

I brought the book, The Help, by Kathryn Stockett with me on my flight back home last December. I have had the whole flight between IAD and Narita to ponder on this book. I won’t even attempt at writing a review since I am really not qualified to do so. And at any rate, there are already more than 1,400 reviews on Amazon.com. Furthermore, all the book reviewers in the major news outlets have done so and waxed poetic on this book, with one of them comparing The Help to To Kill A Mocking Bird.* I will just make a list of things that I have been chewing on. By Tap Tap Tap on my iPhone (without a SIM) and therefore heavy editing involved thereafter.

Spoiler alert: If you are thinking of reading this book, you should skip this. I will also be 100% honest with myself, which means I will be contradictory, at times nonsensical, and possibly offending, especially if you love the book.

Confession first: I enjoyed reading this book tremendously. Cliché, yes. Truth is: it IS a page turner. For me. From the moment when I opened it in August when I first received it, I could not completely put Aibileen out of my head until the Christmas week, when I finally had time to sit down and read the book in long stretches.

The stories are riveting. The voices are, as much as I hate using this word because it is often confused with “stereotypical”, or at the very least “archetypal”, the voices sound to me “authentic”. That is, when I was reading it, when I was caught up in the drama of the story that was being expertly told, when I was kept in suspense as to the safety of the women, when I was hoping with clenched fists and a racing hear that they would triumph over evil and that justice would be done. Well, justice be done to a certain extent, in the strict confines of the story-telling.

Now I ask myself: How many Southerners do I know? None.

Do I know any African American domestic help? Nope.

What do I know about Southern dialects and accents? Not a thing.

So what do I know about whether the book is “authentic” or not? Hasn’t this always been the gripe I have against books like Memoirs of a Geisha? That a fiction novel, on account of its main characters being of a non-white race, is evaluated and praised for delivering an “authentic” portrayal. Do we even care whether Dan Brown’s characters are authentic or not?

Damn the identity politics theories I read, classes I took.

I cannot help, in the back of my mind, though I immensely enjoyed the stories of these women, that a white woman took possession of the black women’s stories twice, especially after I read Kathryn Stockett’s personal note at the end of the book: like Skeeter in the story, Stockett wrote the black women’s stories and gained wild success.

I understand the above statement reeks of identity politics, but I cannot help the gnawing feelings in the back of my head.

What bothers me even more is Skeeter’s cajoling, forcing almost, these women into telling her their stories because she was told that she needed to write something that nobody had ever written before in order to get into the publishing world. Throughout I was extremely uncomfortable with her motive: next to the all too real risk to the black women’s lives, her motif seems so trivial. Selfish even. What is the potential downside for her engagement in this feat? None too serious really. And indeed, there was a happy ending for Skeeter. But for Minnie and Aibileen the future remained uncertain.

Although I do wish something horrible would happen to the wrong-doers and was a bit let down when it didn’t, I do applaud the author for not cheapening the story by taking the easy way out. They are still in the mid 1960s in Mississippi and it is not like they are going to all of a sudden find true equality by the end of the book. I need to give the author props for not providing her White readers with an easy cathartic way to assuage the white guilt. “The villain that caused such misery is dead/appropriately punished, all is well in the universe. Now get on with your merry life.”

As I mentioned, the book received gleaming reviews. From White book reviewers. This could be racist on my part, and certainly identity politics at its worst as some might say, nevertheless, I feel I NEED TO know how an African American reader may feel about this book. NOT because a white woman from a privileged family in the South wrote this book, but because, again, despite my immense enjoyment of this book, and yes indeed I feel guilty for liking this book when I started wondering how my friends back in my graduate study classes would have said about this book, I cannot ignore the conflation of the tropes: 1. the White heroine being rescued, or finding self-realization, through Black folks around her that she does not socialize with, 2. Black people, unable to help or save themselves, being rescued by a White person.

I imagine this book already optioned by a movie studio. Or soon will be. Anyway you look at it, it IS going to be a great vehicle for some of the outstanding African American actresses, and god only knows how hard it is for a good script with a strong minority character lead to make it all the way to some head honcho’s desk. I do hope that the script and the actor that portrays Leroy would breathe some more life into him rather than the one-dimensional wife-beater. When in doubt, we reach for the things we share as women: abusive husbands, cheating boyfriends, sexist Chauvinistic patriarchs. In that process, our men are further demonized. Joy Luck Club immediately comes to mind. I can’t watch that movie without cringing. Not a single man in that movie is worthy of loving. Is it why it was accepted by the white mainstream audience? “Poor Asian women. They are so much better off over here. Away from their men.”

When The Blind Side came out, and the Internet was all abuzz about what a feel good movie it was, it immediately raised the mental red flag for me. “Feel good” means, to me, “Not for you. You are probably not the target audience/reader. Stay home. Otherwise you won’t feel good.”

I asked an African American columnist whether she planned to see the movie,

“No. We don’t consider that movie an attractive idea.” She said coyly.

* The surest way to incite heated debate against the worth of any book is to compare it to the beloved To Kill a Mocking Bird… So if you hate someone, yeah, go ahead and compare them to Harper Lee.

Fireworks

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For this past week I have been thinking of this line by 20 Prospect “There is something unholy about being able to cross the world in a day,” which succinctly summed up the experience of traveling to the other side of the world and dealing with the consequences, as he so poetically yet accurately described jet lag:

Sitting there in the dark… my heart whistled like an empty shell, waiting for my soul to catch up to my body.

While I re-adjust back to the time zone and life back here, and more importantly in the context of this blog, to my role as a virtual resident of the blogosphere, a cog in this massive social network, here is a short post that has nothing to do with my trip…

Many years ago when I was trapped in the house with a strong-willed, persistent toddler that refused to sleep and to be happy and wanted nothing else but me and my unwaivering attention, I thought about running away. Of course I did not. An old friend from college saved me by asking me to select, translate and edit a book of classic English poems, dedicated to the subject of love. The objective is to have the book published before Valentine’s Day. It is a shame that the book is now out of print because otherwise I could send it to you all in lieu of Valentine’s Day cards: at $99NTD a pop, approximately $3 USD, the book is cheaper than most of the Hallmark cards.

It was an interesting experience working on a collection of love poems, including “How Do I Love Thee” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, naturally, when I was decidedly not in any mood for love. In fact, my heart was filled with resentment and guilt, anxiety and angst, panic for a life gone wrong, for the roads not taken, for the dreams unfulfilled. It felt surreal when I was writing the afterword: cynicism was out since the filter through which to appreciate a love poem has to be drastically anti-cynicism; I took on the role of an old woman, the future me who was at peace finally, encouraging the married young women to not lose heart, to force themselves to remember what it was like before all this.

Love. I remember.

(Looking back, I now winced at the cheesy English name I picked for the book. My sincere apology)

I do want to share with you my favorite poem from the selection. Taxi by Amy Lowell.

Ms. Lowell has another poem that is just as brilliant and packs a powerful wallop of visual punch right to the gut. Here it is:

Fireworks

You hate me and I hate you
And we are so polite, we two!

But whenever I see you, I burst apart
And scatter the sky with my blazing heart.
It spits and sparkles in the stars and balls,
Buds into roses – and flares, and falls.

Scarlet buttons, and pale green disks,
Silver spirals and asterisks,
Shoot and tremble in a mist
Peppered with mauve and amethyst.

I shine in the windows and light up the trees,
And all because I hate you, if you please.

And when you meet me, you rend asunder
And go up in a flaming wonder
Of saffron cubes, and crimson moons,
And wheels all amaranths and maroons.

Golden lozenges and spades
Arrows of malachites and jades,
Patens of copper, azure sheaves.
As you mount, you flash in the glossy leaves.

Such fireworks as we make, we two!
Because you hate me and I hate you.

Don’t Judge a Book by Its Cover

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I went to an actual Brick-and-Mortar bookstore today. This is a rare occasion ever since Amazon.com was founded in 1995. (I still remember when I first heard about it. “What a stupid name?! Who would buy books online?! And why would I want to buy their stocks?!”)

I do enjoy going to the book stores in real life: I love looking at the book covers, discovering new books via the store displays, getting a taste of what’s garnering the attention of the masses, detecting the harbingers of the next big thing.

Sometimes I simply like to read the clever titles and corresponding designs on the book covers vying for your attention.

“Pick me! Pick me!”

Sometimes I simply enjoy picking them up, caressing the book spines, feeling the weight of words in my hands.

And sometimes I do get a chuckle.

Since I have an iPhone with me now, anything that makes me laugh simply HAS to be photographed. (OK, I admit, having a blog is another reason…)

Actual page from George W. Bush's memoir. Notice that he's using WMD as an excuse to justify going into Iraq?

Jon Stewart explaining Human Race in Earth

Guess which book is going on my Christmas list?!

What is Fascism? "that thing someone else is doing that I disagree with. Not communism. The other one."

It takes a comedian to provide the best explanations for communism, socialism and fascism...

Raise your hand if you feel like crying because it is Monday? Raise your hand if you could use this book? Raise your hand if you believe that enforcing the said No Asshole Rule requires a good ol' can of Wupass or at least the threat of it?

Sigh.

A Night with David Sedaris

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When I learned that David Sedaris is on a tour for his new book Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary, I knew I had to do something. I checked his agent’s website and saw that he would be in Milwaukee, Wisconsin for a book reading, in addition to book signing. Since I did not think I would be able to fight the rabid fans in downtown Chicago for the book signing, the book reading at Riverside Theatre in Milwaukee sounded like something worth driving 1.5 hour to. So I did.

I am glad I went. First of all, when I asked the bar tender at the bar in the basemen which was EMPTY how much a beer cost, she said with a sheepish grin, apologetically, “4 dollars…” I tried to suppress my smile. This theatre is not called PABST Theater for nothing! What’s more: a cranberry with Grey Goose cost $6, $2 more and you got yourself a double! I fell in love with Milwaukee right then and there.

A book reading by David Sedaris is everything that you may have expected and more if you have listened to appearances on NPR or his audio books, watched one of his appearances on David Letterman. Here are some random things I can still recall from last night while still overcoming the shock…

Always bring a pen and paper with you. Mr. Sedaris did not say this of course. It was what I was thinking when I was sitting there in the dark, murmuring to myself, repeating all the brilliant things he said, hoping by doing so I could at least remember some of them. Afterwards, I raced home in the torrential rain, mind blank, hoping I would get home in time before I forgot everything. (Of course, utterly exhausted, I went straight to bed. So glad I did not get myself killed on the highway. Would have been totally not worth the sacrifice…)

Here’s what I made sure to commit to memory by saying it over and over again in my head, with my eyes shut at one moment the way I did when I was memorizing school works:

“I want my hand to know what excellence feels like”

After he finished most of his readings, Mr. Sedaris took out a book and told everybody to go and get it. Simply brilliant. Everything Ravaged. Everything Burned by Wells Tower. He read a very short excerpt from the book, sighed, in awe of the way the author used the words, or rather, arranged the words, “I would like to know how he came up with these?” Then Mr. Sedaris explained how he has this habit of writing down brilliant things that he comes across because

I want my hand to know what excellence feels like.

He read the story “The Grieving Owl” from his latest book Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk, which was not, as would have been assumed, a collection of fables because “fables have morals.” Here’s the line that’s been etched into my mind:

It’s not just that they’re stupid, my family — that, I could forgive. It’s that they’re actively against knowledge…

About having people he has always imagined to read his stories actually read his stories in the audio version, he could not believe that Elaine Stritch actually read his stories. “If you are gay, you know Elaine Stritch. I don’t care if you have sex with another man, if you don’t know Elaine Stritch, you are not a homosexual.”

Mr. Sedaris walked up to the stage with a stack of papers. No Apple iBook for him. From the pile of paper precariously balanced on top of a wooden stool, he extracted a folder and read the audience a “whimsy” of his, because he did not know how better to label it, titled I Brake for Traditional Marriage. It started out with a “typical” middle-aged white American couple in a clearly disintegrating marriage and family unity getting outraged by the news of the overturn of Prop 8 this August. His tone remained humorous and irreverent, and that’s why we were all shocked when the man took a shotgun out and blew his daughter’s head off. It is a black comedy, so to speak. And though I should not have been surprised, for the first time I felt the anger in him towards the whole anti-gay sentiments exhibited by conservative America especially in their vociferous condemnation against gay marriage. Somehow this defiance, coming from him, the studious, introverted, “humorist” who actually looks more like a college professor, greatly moved me because it was burning the way quiet rage burns underneath the comedic story telling.

I now wish I still had the subscription to The New Yorker so I could quote you some of the choice lines from “Standing By” which he also read last night. It started out as an innocuous story about disgruntled passengers stranded and lined up at an airport ticket counter and evolved into an insightful, even as it was laugh-out-funny, observation bordering on criticism of the current polemic political climate. On the sad state of traveling attire, in addition to freaturing a t-shirt with the words ““Freaky Mothafocka” in the story, here is another widely quoted gem:

“I should be used to the way American dress when travelling, yet still it manages to amaze me. It’s as if the person next to you had been washing shoe polish off a pig, then suddenly threw down his sponge, saying, “Fuck this. I’m going to Los Angeles!”

I laughed till tears came out when he said he would really like to know a person’s political leaning before he engaged in a conversation when the person made a comment such as “None of them want to work, that’s the problem”, and also when he realized the two men behind him were complaining about Obama (and not Bush/Cheney), “Isn’t it amazing how quickly one man can completely screw up a country?” But Obama had been in the White House for 6 months! All that hate. You don’t think we can hate too? Think you can out-hate me, asshole?

Towards the end, he began reading his entries from his journal, the best part IMO, and therefore the following is strictly paraphrasing…

As I watched an old lady… I noticed her bumper sticker that said “Marriage = A Man + A Woman”. *pause* As I watched this old hag *The entire auditorium broke into a hysterical hooting* … … There should be a law against people parking at handicapped park spaces from making opinions. “You’ve got the best spot already. So shut the fuck up!” *More hooting and applause*

On upon learning about barn owl ring bearers which will swoop down to the groom wearing a leather glove and delivering the rings, and upon the delivery, will be rewarded with a live mouse or some other small animals…

For the first time, for all the right reasons, I really want to get married!

On doing book reading and signing in Raleigh, NC, his hometown: His brother brought boxes of bookmarks for him to pass out at these events, showing his brother completely nude with “Sedaris Hardwood Floors” covering the genital area.

The audience were asked to share their best jokes as he signs their books, especially ethnic jokes, since he may as well be an equal opportunity offender so he needs to replenish his joke supply. I cranked my brains but could not remember any racist jokes. I really suck at being Chinese. Nonetheless, the following are some of the jokes he shared (and his introduction to the jokes, paraphrased of course):

Here is a great joke for you at an interview. You know how at the end of a job interview, they always ask you whether you have any questions? Ok, so here, here is the question you are going to ask:

What’s the difference between a Camaro and an erection?

I don’t have a Camaro.

I feel sorry for people who have a Camaro and women because you cannot tell this joke.

This post has taken me more than five hours to put together because I did not want to screw it up. Well, time spent does not guarantee quality but it surely adds to the quantity. It has gone on too long and it is already, in fact, 4 am on Monday. I should stop here and continue my tale of how I got the Chinese version of When You Are Engulfed in Flames from David Sedaris.

In closing, I will leave you with this to ponder…

One of the best t-shirts David Sedaris has seen says this:

I’d call you a cunt but you lack the depth or the warmth.

The Chinese version of his book puzzled Mr. Sedaris: for some bizarre reason, there is a cat, a dog, and an embossed pipe in the middle, on the cover.

Do you know what you are reading to your children?

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Do you really know? I mean, really really? Do you know what you are reading them and how they are hearing what you are reading them?…

I was browsing through the Costco “magazine” (what sadly passes as reading material for me nowadays) in bed when my oldest came to ~~snuggle with~~ sit by me. Not wanting to stop this rare moment, I tried hard to engage him in conversations.

“You like 2012 right?” The DVD is featured in the magazine because it is a shopping catalogue in disguise.

“Oh. That movie is AWESOME!” For my son, things can be easily divided into two groups: Things that are awesome; things that sucks.

I pointed to the DVD for the movie Where the Wild Things Are directed by Spike Jonze (of the Being John Malkovich fame). “Dad said the movie is actually quite good. He saw it on the plane. We should watch it sometimes.” Having two boys five years apart in age, I am constantly searching for movies that will appeal to both of them and are age-appropriate. To be honest, I aim for semi age-appropriate now because the picking is just slimmer than a meth addict on a super model diet. I bet Mr. Monk has watched more PG-13 movies than any other 7-year old in the suburbs.

“Oh. I know what it is about. It is based on the book Where the Wild Things Are…”

Yeah. I was thinking. You and every other person older than three know what this movie is about. Duh.

“It is about this boy who got into trouble. He ran away from home to live with the monsters, and the monsters tried to kill him.”

“What?” I sat up to look at him. “Are you serious? No. Seriously. Is that what you think the book is about?”

“Uh huh. I told you. I have read this book. It was about this boy who went to live with the monsters, then he became homesick. And when he tried to leave, the monsters threatened to kill him. They said, ‘We will eat you up!'” He said, with even more conviction this time.

I laughed, yet at the same time, I was becoming more and more alarmed.

“No, dude. You are just being smartie pants, right? You don’t really think that’s what this book is about, right?”

“I am SERIOUS! That’s really the story! You don’t know anything, mom!”

Mr. Monk walked into the room at this time. I asked (with gnashed teeth) my oldest to not say anything about the book to his younger brother since I really don’t need two traumatized kids on my hand. I asked Mr. Monk whether he knows the story.

“I have the book. I’ll go get it!”

The three of us sat in bed while I read the story out loud. Just like I once did when they were much younger. I remember this book being one of the favorite books for both boys at around the same age.

When we got to the part where Max says goodbye to the Wild Things,

“Oh please don’t go — We’ll eat you up —“

“See? What did I tell you?!” Triumph in his voice now, my oldest moved in for the kill, “And see here? They were threatening to eat him!”

One of the most beloved children's books... What have we done?!

To think that I used to read this book to him before he went to bed. Many many nights.

p.s. No boys were harmed, physically or psychologically, in the making of this blog post.

Wanker Wednesday: My problems with “The Help”

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Now I ask myself: How many Southerners do I know? None.

Do I know any African American domestic help? Nope.

What do I know about Southern dialects and accents? Not a thing.

Damn the identity politics theories I read, classes I took.

I understand the above statement reeks of identity politics, but I cannot help the gnawing feelings in the back of my head.

I asked an African American columnist whether she planned to see the movie,

“No. We don’t consider that movie an attractive idea.” She said coyly.

Live squid is not part of the standard diet in China, or Asia for that matter

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Once in a while I get all riled up with my mouth foaming like a rabid dog. My irrational anger especially loves a good target of Stereotype Mongers and Exoticism Panderers. This is that kind of moment.

PMS. Whatever.

The target of my rant today is this book:

Lost on Planet China: The Strange and True Story of One Man’s Attempt to Understand the World’s Most Mystifying Nation, or How He Became Comfortable Eating Live Squid

Look at that title, and please tell me it is not being deliberately sensationalizing.

Mind you, I have a great sense of humor. Like all great Jewish comedians (by the way, I am neither) I have perfected self-deprecating humor. I can make fun of myself, ourselves, my people, my race.

BUT I was not impressed with the passages my husband quoted me from the book. My “stereotype police” and “pandering to exoticism” antenna immediately went up when the author starts the book by talking about a restaurant menu full of internal organs of a goat. He claimed that was the first restaurant he walked in when he landed in China. Just picked it out of the random. His good luck then. I would not even know where to find one myself.

Let me emphasize this again:

WE DO NOT EAT LIVE SQUID OR GOAT BRAINS AS A DAILY MEAL.

They are probably sold in some specialty restaurants. But NOT part of the standard diet. Can people just please get over it already?! Besides, you eat moldy cheese which is pretty sickening if you ask me. So there, we are even.

And seriously, I HAVE A QUESTION:

How come it is all chi chi, high class, cultured, sophisticated, and cosmopolitan to eat raw fish and octopus in a Japanese restaurant? And live squid is now, YEW. How disgusting. How barbarian.

FUCK ME!

After browsing through the reviews and seeing a high percentage of the people say that they knew NOTHING or little about the country and the culture before they read the book,

GREAT. JUST GREAT! I thought.

I am becoming more and more agitated by the existence of this book.

TTYL. Now I need to go find a book about how white people can’t jump.

“Raw information will become not just a commodity, it will be a nuisance”

The Absence of Alternatives

My therapy sessions…