Hey Chittr why did that send one hundred thousand times asking for a friend
(•́⍜•̀)🎪 AMPLIFYING YOUR THOUGHTS SCREAMING INTO THE MF AETHER.
Thank you for always having my back Sedrek, you're the realest motherfucker out there. #streamyungjuggonsoundclawed
Dunno. Guess you really like that book. Got too excited. 'Overstimulated' the kids call it.
I just go all kinds of crazy over some Jamaica Kincaid, what can I say? She has some opinions on the nature of gardening/growing things in a post colonial world, and how the meaning of it changes between oppressed and oppressor. Shit is, as the kids say, wicked.
Damn when you put it like that I'm kinda convinced to give 'er a read too. That and Jamaica Kincaid is a hard-boiled as all hell name.
Definitely her most popular/mainstream thing in human media would be her short story/prose poem, Girl, which is basically a streaming of consciousness of how generationally human girls are forced to think and act like the "proper woman" And her essay "A Small Place" further criticizes imperialism + the romanticization of Caribbean countries as the expence of the locals. (She is Antiguan, so most of her works revolve around the way Antigua is treated in the cultural zeitgeist, but that area as a whole has been subjected to awful things by larger powers that forced industrialization on them for a buck). Good reads. :)
Well since it's a quick read I decided to look up Girl. I ain't the type-a fella this kinda story feels gears toward but I think it's pretty interestin'. I ain't sayin' the mother has points, but the pride and empowerment she feels from domestic work makes me think that even if ya ain't supposed to agree with her perspective, you gotta wonder if anyone can fault her in feeling some kinda empowerment from bein' in a role and bein' good at it. Somethin' worth admirin' in how she seems to squeeze some genuine happiness outta the role. But as someone who likes a dame with fire, you know me. Promiscuity isn't exactly telling a full story of a moral compass, and it can mean different things to different people. Forcin' your limited worldview on others, let alone one someone you care for, would only end up pushing them into the other extreme. And it just ain't fair to already be treatin' folk what you expect 'em to be rather than what they are. You could even argue that the mother 'ere is more finding happiness in a form of slavery, even if it may not be the literal kind. My takeaway here from a former arbitrator's perspective is that even in some of these old-style mindsets you can 'prolly still find a nugget of wisdom in them, especially for folk that seem to want the best for ya in their own way. While you should blaze your own path, it don't mean you should resent any of the wisdom or worldviews that disagree with your own but pick the parts that'll work for ya. So yeah, it was definitely somethin' to chew on. Even for a fella like me.
I think there are a lot of people that might look at the way the Mother talks to the girl and feel a little resentment toward her, this list of instructions to "keep her on the straight and narrow" is almost definitely some level of something that they've heard before. And it's easy to get lost in that resentment and to be upset that this is how she's talking to her. That THIS is the ancestorly wisdom being passed down. This is how you eat so you look presentable, this is how you do the chores, this is how you make yourself palatable. Right? But also this is also a passing down of culture and knowledge, isn't it? This is how make pepper pot, how you grow dasheen, how to keep yourself safe in the sun. This is how you play, this is how to stand up for yourself -- This, daugher, is how you hold yourself, to be an individual. And you're totally right, because sure its a little old fashioned and its a little harsh but at the end of the day its survival. If the girl's mother didn't suffer in someway to society, her mother's mother did, and her mother's mother's mother.. And so on back into infinity. It sounds old and mean because it is old (and people WERE mean, and you need to be resilient and you need to stand up and be strong and don't let ANYONE treat you like anything other than the strong woman that I am raising you to become), the important thing to pick out of things like this is really the meaning behind it all rather than the words used. Antiquated notions are antiquated, but do we stop to consider why Mother feels the need to give her this "to-do list", these instructions on how to survive in a world outside of her home where she can't protect her from the way people out there will perceive her? It's love, it's brutal and exacting. Love isn't always soft, and it shouldn't have to be. But uhm. Yeah! Thanks for taking your time out to read that!! Human post colonial literature is widely disregarded, and there are reasons for that I think that anyone who thinks hard enough about it can guess, so it's cool to get to chat about it. Esp with a fella that might not have stumbled across it any other way than on chittr dot ing.
Hey I'm all for cultural diversity. I even got it painted on the walls of my office so learnin' about these kinds of things are not only interestin', but useful in my line of work. And this may surprise ya, but a hard-boiled fella doesn't often have the luxury of a dames perspective so it's useful to be able to get into the mindspace of it. Frankly puttin' it like that it all does hit close to home. I lived in some pretty rough and tumble times, especially for the ladies, which is why I always had an appreciation for the flappers that had that force of personality to make it their own way in the world. My interests were of course not always philosophical in nature, but admiration and attraction's often are bedfellows, yeah? In any case, it was an enlightening little read. Dunno how a fella like you got interested in stuff like this, but consider the torch passed, pal.