Racial Issues within the LGBT Community
I just checked out this latest episode of “Cherry Bomb” from AfterEllen.com. I think it is one of the most honest conversations about the subject I’ve seen in awhile. It should serve as a great kickoff to further, more in-depth discussions regarding the subject. What do you think?
Next Book Discussion
I can do nothing but apologize to you guys regarding the book discussion. My life over the last two weeks has taken a swan dive (pun intended) into the amazingly craptastic and I’ve been a bit discracted.
I hope to have the wrap-up discussion of “Passing For Black” up by tomorrow night and it’s up to you guys whether you want to dive right into “The Other Side of Paradise” or wait until next Friday.
“Passing For Black” Discussion – Chapters 17-24
SPOILER ALERT: As usual, if don’t want to find out the happenings in this book, kindly click a link to the right.
Well ladies, it looks like these chapters were truly the lightning round of the book both in terms of chapter length and plot. Chapter 17 finds Angela a week later splitting her time between her parents house in Mount Vernon and Mae’s Manhattan studio apartment. She finally tells Mae about Cait and she’s nothing but supportive, encouraging her to fix things with Cait which she does.
After a week of euphoric make up sex, Cait springs the “I’m trying to get pregnant” bomb on Angela and she takes it fairly well, to the point that she and Mae are picking out the sperm donor for Cait.
Apparently, while this is all going on, Keith has been moving along quite well with Tatiana Braithewait. This fact is made plain when Angela returns to Keith’s apartment to get her clothes and finds them getting down to Barry White. Tatiana has also been chosen to be on the cover of Desire magazine which adds salt to the wound.
Since it was bound to happen sometime, the two couples finally have an icy meeting at a holiday party at which Angela is trying to hook Mae up with the host, Rufus. Though the main thing going on there is Angela’s discomfort of dancing with Cait in front of everyone. They soon leave along with their box of sperm and ride the train home. Spurred on by another lesbian couple “passing” yet making out, Angela kisses Cait before realizing that Nona, her mother’s “Too Black, Too Strong” friend, has just seen her.
Phew!
I know lesbian relationships tend to move quickly but this has to set the couple to baby speed record. Then to try and frame it as if she is just the girlfriend and won’t have to have an attachment to the baby. What couple works that way? If that’s the case, why are you picking out donors? Why are you worrying if people would think you were the baby’s nanny?
This also brings up a lot of questions regarding interracial lesbian couples and children anyway. Both in this book and in “The L Word” it was really important that the baby have a black donor. If you had a white partner, how important is it to you that your children reflect your race? Also, would you continue a serious relationship with a woman if she told you after a week that she was trying to get pregnant?
Now on a lighter, more positive side. Did anyone else think it hit home when they started listing all those sterotypical movie plots. I’ve heard them called the “Magic Nego” plots when the wise and worldly black person shows the confused white person the right path to take.
Rachel Maddow corrects Pat Buchanan’s racist assertions.
There is a certain type of white person who will always try to deny the fact that America’s wealth is directly attributable to their reliance on slave labor and that white America’s elevated living standard is the direct result of conscience racial oppression that was often government sanctioned. It is this denial, along with what I like to think of almost as a cultural sociopathy, that allows them to exhibit such indignation at “reverse racism”. Pat Buchanan is the perfect example of this.
Here he is discussing Sonia Sotomayer’s confirmation hearings with Rachel Maddow. I could describe it but you actually have to hear him to believe it.
After watching this, I thought Rachel was being a little too gracious, not calling him out on his facts. I thought about writing a blog post about it but I am so, so, so, tired of corrected the misguided assumptions and boldfaced lies of racists who will never be convinced either way that I let it slide. Last night though, Rachel redeemed herself in the following video rebuttal. I could not have said it any better.
“Passing For Black” Discussion – Chapters 9-16
SPOILER ALERT: We will be discussing plot points and events that happen in this book. If don’t wish to know, click away now. There are some great links to the right.
When we last left Angela, she was getting kicked out of the lesbian sex conference after being outed as a jounalist at a no-media event but not before she found out from Suzy Q the whereabouts of the sex party that evening that Cait is helping to organize. Before Angela can go to SUCK, she and Mae have to meet Keith at a party thrown by aquaintance, Tatiana Braithwaite, a person Angela does not like at all because she is too perfect and a Republican.
Nothing much happens at the party except a jealous reaction by Angela to the extra attention Tatiana pays to Keith. Oh, and Angela finds a gaggle of prescription pills in Tatiana’s bathroom. This whole event is basically transparent foreshadowing.
Time is not wasted at this stage however as Angela lies to Keith and hightails it over to the lesbian sex party to smooth things over with Cait. After some rather tame voyeurism, Angela finds Cait and they end up getting into a hot and heavy make-out session in a supply closet. At this point Angela goes home, takes a bath and releases her pent up sexual energy on Keith.
Email arrangements are quickly made for Angela and Cait to meet again at Cait’s house where we are introduced to lesbian stock character one: snarky, child-adverse single woman and lesbian stock characters two: white couple with ethnic baby. As soon as they leave it’s on as Angela and Cait commence to finally sealing the deal.
A couple of days later, stuff hits the fan at a faculty meeting when Cait reveals to Keith what happened. When Angela finally goes back home, she finds Keith drunk and mad. With a backhand and some shouting, he kicks her out of the house and Angela heads to her parents in Mount Vernon where she finally reveals to her mother, while heading into Church, that her and Keith broke up. She doesn’t mention Cait at all.
Now I don’t have a lot of questions per se. I am just going to let you guys know my impressions of what I’ve read. Not to get negative or anything but this book is starting to disappoint me a little. Angela’s almost constant avoidance of anything truly proactive is proving very frustrating. I almost want to yell at the book.
I’m also finding myself way more sympathetic to Keith than I thought I would be in the beginning of the book. I struggled with my sexuality too and did not come out until my late 20’s and Keith holds many chauvinistic views but he’s not a mind reader which Angela freely admits to.
In my opinion, Cait was just being an insensitive pig at the faculty meeting. The fact that she could so cavalierly push Angela into such a life-altering situation like that just makes her out to be a bitch. If Angela chooses Cait, isn’t she basically going with a white Keith with a vagina (I have no idea why, but I have worked the word vagina into like 80% of my writing this week).
What do you guys think?
Also, last week there was some great points made in the comments that I wanted to address but didn’t have the time to properly do so. I’ll be going back from time to time and leaving replies here and there on all posts. Check back or when you leave your comment, check the box on the bottom to be notified of replies.
Time for Next Discussion
I have been trying to get a regular routine down while running around trying to turn 20 dollars into 355. The new discussion post will be up at noon tomorrow.
“Passing For Black” Discussion Prologue – Chapter 8
SPOILER ALERT: We will be talking about things that happened in the book so if you have not read it and don’t want to know what happens, click away now.
Let me apologize for getting this post in a day late. Dealing with some monitor death issues. It should not happen again.
As the book opens, we read about the first meeting of Angela and Cait. We are told right away that Angela is attracted to Cait and that this is not a one-off attraction. We are then introduced to the other major players in Angela’s life. Her fiance, Keith who is no friend of Cait’s to be sure. Her best friend Mae, a buxom Southern woman trying to steer Angela in the “right” direction. Her mother Janet Wright, a local anchorwoman famous for letting her fro fly.
Besides the set-up, another major event in this part of the book is the Lesbian Sex Conference where Angela goes under the guise of working but really it’s just another opportunity to see Cait again. After a rather interesting workshop (Am I the only one who thinks that SuzyQ is based on Annie Sprinkle?), she sneaks into the transgendered “safe place” with her tape recorder to investigate the controversial decision to allow only bio women into the conference.
The overall feeling I get from the begining of this book is the trememdous amount of mental energy Angela has to put into being accepted by the very people who should accept her no matter what. It seems like every move she makes, what kind of clothes she wears, even what opinions she expresses, has to be filtered through a percieved black orthodoxy.
Some questions that came up while I was reading:
01. Why did Keith have such a viceral reaction to Cait when she entered the classroom. I understand they had some sort of academic differences but Villarosa makes of point of having Keith’s body language claim possession of Angela.
02. After his icy exchange with Cait, Keith states his indignation at gay people “appropriating” the language of the Civil Rights Movement. Do you find this feeling more or less pervasive than say, ten years ago?
03. Angela is facing pressure to set a date for her wedding. Am I the only one slightly annoyed by her weak response?
04. After observing the interaction in the transgendered trailer, Angela makes the following observation regarding the men and women there:
“She had all of the trappings but none of the history, a work in progress as far as her female authenticity. Despite their high-fem exteriors, Helen and the other male-to-females exuded a kind of pushy air of assumption that screamed, “I’m always going to be a man”. And Pat, though she had all the tough-guy accessories of a man, wasn’t wearing them well. She and the other female-to-males still possessed a mannered tennativeness that whispered “woman inside”.
So is gender as much culturation as biology? Is there ever a point when a transperson loses that masculine/feminine engery (for lack of a better word). Should they have to?
What to you all think? What has jumped out at you so far?
Welcome Everyone! First Installment of Book Club.
So, here it is. The official kick-off of the book club dedicated to stories by and about black lesbians from around the world. I’m very excited about this.
The book chosen is Linda Villarosa’s “Passing For Black”.
What the jacket says:
Being black, the right kind of black, was difficult. It was like being in a cult — a secret society with rules as fluid as waves . . .
In the six years that Angela Wright has been with her fiance Keith Redfield, her life has settled neatly into place. Keith, a professor of African-American history, has helped her become comfortable in her own skin. And Angela’s career at Desire Magazine is thriving. She’s got nothing to worry about — or so she thinks.
Angela’s best friend Mae is always there to ground her, whether they’re talking incessantly about their hair or gossiping about their rival Tatiana Braithwaite — a milk chocolate Barbie with beauty, breeding, and an irritating knack for perfection. Mae reminds Angela how lucky she is to have found a successful, single brother. But when a chance meeting leaves Angela consumed with desire for an intriguing stranger, she impulsively decides to follow wherever it may lead — from outrageous underground sex parties to intimate encounters that are both torrid and tender.
Now everything that Angela has come to believe about sex, love, identity, and race is called into question as this explosive new passion blows her world wide open . . .
Discussion schedule:
Chapters Prologue – 8: July 10th
Chapters 9 – 16: July 17th
Chapters 17 – 24: July 24th **Will also be announcing next book at this time**
Chapters 25 – Epilougue: July 31st
The copy of the book I bought has about 15 great discussion questions in the back, but it assumes that we’ll be reading the whole book beforehand. They’re great to use as a guide while you’re reading. I’ve already started underlining points I would like to talk about with you guys.
As always, feel free to put your reading suggestions and any other thoughts in the comments below and be sure to spread the word. I want as many voices as possible. Happy reading!!
Going through some theme fittings
I think it’s time to update the style of my blog. Since I don’t have time to sit down and go through a bunch of CSS code to customize, I will be trying diffrent WordPress blog themes to see which one I like best. The goal is to go with something that is clean but not too sterile with easy access to links. I really would like my links section to be a real go-to resource.
Feel free to chime in with opinions if you stop by.
