Fascinating interview with Jennifer Makumbi:
The reality is, as I keep saying, that we all read differently. Remember for a long time, African writers have complained or have been surprised by the way their books are perceived in Europe. For example, in many parts of sub Saharan Africa, Arrow of God is seen as Achebe’s best novel but for some reason the rest of the world claims it is Things Fall Apart. And then again in Things Fall Apart, Achebe’s attention to the idea of fear as a human condition which drives us to great achievement and then destroy us just as quickly is crucial in many parts of Africa. This is ignored in Europe; to them all that Things Fall Apart does is focus on European action in Africa.
The Ivy League and how to deal with the legacy of slavery:
In 2003, Brown University president Ruth Simmons opened an investigation into the school’s role in the slave trade. The findings exhumed unsettling accounts of the many ways in which important founders of the institution participated in and benefited from slavery, including the use of slave labor to construct the oldest and most iconic building on campus, University Hall. Rather than burying these revelations, university president Christina Paxon dedicated a slavery memorial sculpture that now sits on the campus main green during the school’s 250th anniversary celebrations this September, and, in October, a new Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice was opened. Each of these initiatives stemmed from university officials’ desire to acknowledge and make amends.
Our very own Jaya on An Untamed State and The Hunger Games.
A conversation about rape and wanting for words.
HOW watermelons became a racist trope:
Newspapers amplified this association between the watermelon and the free black person. In 1869, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper published perhaps the first caricature of blacks reveling in watermelon. The adjoining article explained, “The Southern negro in no particular more palpably exhibits his epicurean tastes than in his excessive fondness for watermelons. The juvenile freedman is especially intense in his partiality for that refreshing fruit.”
Scripps College is now admitting trans women.
I was relieved to see, upon actually watching the footage, that this person trying to back out of the parking spot is actually a fool, because I myself have made some really embarrassing 345 point turns in my day, and still think about this guy in a white van who witnessed me taking like five full minutes to remove myself from the hospital parking garage last month.
Deaths in The Illiad: A Classics Infographic!
