Maybe I'm being hasty.
But when I found pulitzer-price winning Alice Walker's recent biography shelved under African-American Fiction in my local Borders, I got a little upset.
Back when I lived in North Florida-- part of the rural South, mind you-- I was outraged but unsurprised to find all black authors shelved in the African-American section, and all out Gay/Lesbian authors shelved in the Gay/Lesbian section. Books-A-Million was normally comprised of fifty-percent Christian reading material, and gauging by the overall intolerance of the regional area, it only served to follow suit and segregate in this manner. I really should have been surprised they allowed sections for blacks and gays at all. Still, I was upset then, in 1998, to find books by Alice Walker shelved between books concerning African-American studies. Jeannette Winterson novels could only be found among books posing the question of what it meant to be gay.
Imagine my surprise when, this morning, strolling to my local Borders in Los Angeles, I was unable to find Alice Walker: A Life in the Biography section. (Where it is correctly placed in the neighboring Barnes & Noble.) I did a quick search on the catalog computer, and not only was the Biography qualified as Fiction, but it was only shelved in the African-American Fiction area of the store. It was adjoined by a similar shelf for Gay/Lesbian work, reminiscent of the shelving schema of the Florida Books-A-Million. Alice Walker's biography was not misshelved-- it was accompanied by biographies for Zora Neale Hurston, Audre Lorde, and other prominent black poets and authors.
A quick search on Google brings up a Mother Jones article on the subject: Color Coding. I'm surprised I didn't find more articles on the subject, and I'm surprised that several of the black authors in the article thought it was alright or even in their favor to have a seperate, segrated section for literary figures who happen to be black.
Terry McMillan notes her mixed feelings in the Color Coding article, saying "...it's insulting and flattering at the same time that we get our own special section." I wonder if people were ever flattered that they got their own special drinking fountains too.
UPDATE: I went back to Borders.. which incidentally I frequent because it joins the ranks with Barnes & Noble as being the only two bookstores within walking distance of my house. I inquired of a store manager, who coincidentally happened to be black, why an Alice Walker biography was shelved with black fiction, and why the section existed at all. Apparently Borders has no Biography section, for one thing. Biographies are shelved according to subject-- so an Alice Walker biography is put on the shelf next to an Alice Walker work of fiction.
Fair enough.
But the section...? She eyed me dryly, saying she could clearly see both sides of the argument. Customers could find the books they wanted more readily with an African-American section in place. I wanted to ask what she thought, but obviously there was a conflict of interest, as a store employee. She sided with the store for the most part, and I felt awkward asking who to complain to, as she behaved as though no complaint were necessary.
I still find the system flawed, and ultimately upsetting. What to do about it? Advice from peers mostly falls into the range of "support your local independent bookstore." Which all in all isn't bad advice, but does it help?
I watched Out of Africa for the first time last night. It has become one of my favorite movies, and worked its way deep into my subconscious.
I don't think I've seen better emotional commentary on the way people love eachother. I see so much of myself in the film, and I fell in love with it, and it broke my heart.
I've spent today poring over the real life facts over the extraordinary Karen Blixen. And I find myself with an odd longing to have a pet owl.
My favorite quote from the film, attributed to the screenwriter Kurt Luedtke, is "The earth was made round so that one cannot see too far down the road."
My relationship with coffee has become too intimate, I'm working too much these days, and I'm boring myself with it. My hands busy themselves while my mind had been wandering to the tune of Amiri Baraka, and William Burroughs.
...I got posted on Sorry Everybody a couple of days ago. It's a small measure of consolation. I designed, posted and sold $500 of shirts in three days, in another recent political venture. My brain is still ticking away at how to change the world. There's got to be something bigger, something to combat the specter of things like this, and like this.
It's hard not to look at the remnants of Kerry 2004 stickers that litter Los Angeles, and not have my heart pinch a little, my face fall a bit. I thought vehement Bush supporters made me cringe before election day, but now all voting paraphenelia for any candidate gets me into a tizzy.
There are stories like this and this that scare the bejesus out of me.
My parents voted for Bush along with 59 million other people. And I -- along with a great deal many others -- can't seem to understand how people can get behind him and still feel good about themselves. My only intellectual recourse is that they must not be aware of how his stances affect women's rights, or civil liberties, or international relations, or the environment, or.. on and on.
Growing up, I thought politics was a lofty, intangible thing reserved for hardcore academics-- certainly, my family or schooling afforded me no palpable grasp on the issues or what they meant.
As I get older, I'm beginning to realize that politics is determined more by faith and by fear than I ever though possible. And that's a pretty scary concept to me. That we live in a world not where those of high-mind and adequate grasp are making decisions for the best of our country and sense of humanity-- but in a world where we roll around in legal measures against what makes us feel "icky."
I spent the weekend with two of my favorite people in a butterfly town by the sea. The contrast of the miniature paradise is none the greater when compared to waking up this morning.. in a country I'm not sure I recognize anymore.
The shape of things is loosening, threads falling from themselves.
I'm contemplating revolution. And I'm contemplating travels.
...And in the meantime I am sketching out my shape of things, writing in longhand where I think my road is going. I'm clothing myself in drawings, and poems, and other things to insulate me in the coming winter months.