"That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you’re not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong."
--F. Scott Fitzgerald
Showing posts with label reading. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reading. Show all posts
Thursday, December 27, 2012
I fundamentally don't understand people who don't enjoy reading.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Something E and I [and evidently my friend M] agree upon
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| Reblogged from On the Bright Side |
Friday, July 15, 2011
So something y'all might not know about me
is that my Google Reader be POPPIN. I've never been a magazine or newspaper kind of girl, but I subscribe to 81 blogs and counting. Though my little corner of the blogosphere isn't really that big a deal (12 followers, I'm sorry to tell you that I do this more for myself than for any of you. Please don't be offended, I still love you.), I do lots of lurking and some occasional commenting on blogs that are followed by hundreds of people. And one of the blogs I've picked up most recently is The Black Snob. And I love it. And they have these tote bags and I'm very strongly considering buying one, because I think it's just about the best thing ever:
But if I purchase this bag, which given my proclivities towards shopping, is very likely, I will have to come to terms with something I've been trying to deny about myself for the past few years. I...might be a snob. If not an out-and-out snob, definitely a little bougie, a little uppity, maybe even a bit elitist. I don't always play well with others, particularly others who have had less opportunities than me--I want to, I try to, but it can be hard for me to relate. [I broke through to the kids at the school I worked at last summer with the fact that Renegade is my favorite rap song. They grudgingly accepted this as proof of my cultural legitimacy.] It's not that I don't value those who are less fortunate than me--on the contrary, I'm a sociologist--the people who get fucked over by society are my bread and butter, literally. I know that I'm an exception to every single rule in the book and if even the tiniest thing in my past had gone differently I wouldn't be where I am. I am thankful every day for the circumstances of chance and happenstance that got me to where I am. But still...I'm here. And I don't know what it's like to be anywhere else, really.
I feel pretty similarly to the guy who wrote this article--I can shoot the breeze with professors and high-ups at financial corporations like my mentor last summer in Chicago, but what to talk about with the plumber? I guess what I'm trying to say is that sometimes I feel disconnected from the larger world...all that ivory tower shit and whatnot. It's the same thing that happened at the Black Solidarity Conference when I wanted to come together with this group of people I identified with and feel like a part of something bigger than me (I love that feeling), but I couldn't because I felt so isolated from everything they were pushing for. It's the same thing that happened at the one and only MCIC (Multi-Cultural Interest Club...our closest thing to a minority-focused group) I went to in high school, at the beginning of my sophomore year; the advisors were trying to convince students that the SAT was worth taking and I had already broken 700 in one of my scores.
I've talked to some friends at Princeton about this and they say their families got them used to interacting with quote-unquote "regular people", statements that just highlight the degree to which I've always felt isolated from my family. The vast majority of the people who are related to me live in the South and are practically strangers; the small bit of family I grew up with always treated me as different, causing me to self-isolate. Part of it was being an awkward age--my mom's oldest, I'm only 11 years younger than her youngest sister, and as she was the first of my grandmother's five children to have children of her own, there's no one my age in my family (besides two step-cousins in Georgia)--but more of it, I think, just stemmed from a sense that no one knew exactly where I had come from. So they gave up on trying to convince me to play basketball and gave up on trying to convince me to run around outside and let me read. No team sports for me. Very little interaction with others as a child outside of school, in general. My imagination was my childhood playmate, which led me to grow into an adult whose greatest activity is mental.
I often wonder who I would have grown up to be if I Ms. Lambkin hadn't realized that I wasn't a troublemaker by nature in kindergarten, I was just bored. If they hadn't bent the rules to let me start SEEK (Special Educational Experiences for Kids, a program my elementary school did) early. If I didn't have the kind of mother who was willing to take the bus to the library with me and help me carry home huge stacks of books. If I had been involved in some activity that wasn't primarily populated by other students who were very similar to me in their academic focus. If my friends hadn't been pre-screened by simple virtue of the fact that we were in all the same classes for 8 years. If my mother was as lax with her expectations of me as she has been for my siblings. Would that alter-Maya be able to relate? Could she shoot the breeze easily with people who don't consider themselves to be intellectuals? Would she have been friends with black people before Princeton? Would she draw fewer distinctions between black people here and black people "out there"? Would she have said less there instead of fewer? Would hip-hop be a choice rather than a crutch? Would books be a chore rather than a joy? Would she still be curious or would she feel like the questions she can't answer aren't worth knowing?
On my thesis-reading-list right now is Charles Horton Cooley's Human Nature and the Social Order. On page 7, he says,
But despite all of that, I still don't know how to interact. One could look at myeducation life history (they're really one and the same until I finally get that PhD) as a process of gradually weeding out persons whom society would not deem exceptional in any way. A removing of the masses. I want to be able to dance with a guy at a party and not have him instantly know I go to Princeton as opposed to one of the 10 other schools that are represented. Sometimes I wish I had a diction and a set of mannerisms to fall back on that let me blend in in places like the South Side of Chicago. I wish I had ever felt like I truly belonged in any circles other than the ones I currently frequent. I want to find a way to at least visit peacefully without any inner turmoil.
But at the end of the day, I will never want to be anything but "bougie, brilliant, book-reading,Chai Bigelow brand Lemon Lift tea sipping, uppity, degree-earning, ignorance-eviscerating, talented, tasteful, witty, saddity, uncompromising, revolutionary, daring-yet-caring, in-your-face..." Does that inherently make me a snob? If so, am I allowed to embrace it? Does it have to have a bad connotation? Most of those qualities aren't bad! They're things I strive towards! Can I flip the script somehow like people do with nappy and bitch and the other n-word I don't tolerate?
Can I buy the bag?
I feel pretty similarly to the guy who wrote this article--I can shoot the breeze with professors and high-ups at financial corporations like my mentor last summer in Chicago, but what to talk about with the plumber? I guess what I'm trying to say is that sometimes I feel disconnected from the larger world...all that ivory tower shit and whatnot. It's the same thing that happened at the Black Solidarity Conference when I wanted to come together with this group of people I identified with and feel like a part of something bigger than me (I love that feeling), but I couldn't because I felt so isolated from everything they were pushing for. It's the same thing that happened at the one and only MCIC (Multi-Cultural Interest Club...our closest thing to a minority-focused group) I went to in high school, at the beginning of my sophomore year; the advisors were trying to convince students that the SAT was worth taking and I had already broken 700 in one of my scores.
I've talked to some friends at Princeton about this and they say their families got them used to interacting with quote-unquote "regular people", statements that just highlight the degree to which I've always felt isolated from my family. The vast majority of the people who are related to me live in the South and are practically strangers; the small bit of family I grew up with always treated me as different, causing me to self-isolate. Part of it was being an awkward age--my mom's oldest, I'm only 11 years younger than her youngest sister, and as she was the first of my grandmother's five children to have children of her own, there's no one my age in my family (besides two step-cousins in Georgia)--but more of it, I think, just stemmed from a sense that no one knew exactly where I had come from. So they gave up on trying to convince me to play basketball and gave up on trying to convince me to run around outside and let me read. No team sports for me. Very little interaction with others as a child outside of school, in general. My imagination was my childhood playmate, which led me to grow into an adult whose greatest activity is mental.
I often wonder who I would have grown up to be if I Ms. Lambkin hadn't realized that I wasn't a troublemaker by nature in kindergarten, I was just bored. If they hadn't bent the rules to let me start SEEK (Special Educational Experiences for Kids, a program my elementary school did) early. If I didn't have the kind of mother who was willing to take the bus to the library with me and help me carry home huge stacks of books. If I had been involved in some activity that wasn't primarily populated by other students who were very similar to me in their academic focus. If my friends hadn't been pre-screened by simple virtue of the fact that we were in all the same classes for 8 years. If my mother was as lax with her expectations of me as she has been for my siblings. Would that alter-Maya be able to relate? Could she shoot the breeze easily with people who don't consider themselves to be intellectuals? Would she have been friends with black people before Princeton? Would she draw fewer distinctions between black people here and black people "out there"? Would she have said less there instead of fewer? Would hip-hop be a choice rather than a crutch? Would books be a chore rather than a joy? Would she still be curious or would she feel like the questions she can't answer aren't worth knowing?
On my thesis-reading-list right now is Charles Horton Cooley's Human Nature and the Social Order. On page 7, he says,
"We are born with the need to assert ourselves, but whether we do so as hunters, warriors, fishermen, traders, politicians, or scholars, depends upon the opportunities offered us in the social process."I agree with him 100%. I know that with any of countless slight changes in my history and those of my parents and their parents etc. I could have ended up on the management track at Wawa store 488 as my career as opposed to my job, or I could have ended up a hustler, a dealer, something worse. I could have gotten a two-year degree in something that would turn into a skilled job, and scoffed at the idea of a liberal-arts-college with a degree that doesn't technically mean anything. I don't blame the people that do, but the system that withholds from them the same opportunities it conferred to me, and above that I recognize that even in a world where everyone starts on the same line, not everyone wants or needs a life like the one I lead. I'm okay with that. I'm okay with choice as long as it leads to fulfillment.
But despite all of that, I still don't know how to interact. One could look at my
But at the end of the day, I will never want to be anything but "bougie, brilliant, book-reading,
Can I buy the bag?
Friday, June 24, 2011
"I don't read books. I devour them."
An interesting character on the train today (actual real-life character, not one from the book I was reading) reminded me today that we, readers, bookworms, bibliophiles, are a rare and perhaps dying breed. Maybe we're just being replaced by these newfangled Kindle/Nook e-book readers. [Sometimes I wonder if an alien who was coming to observe our planet would think humans derived their energy from portable electronic machines, the way we're all so dependent on them--myself included. (Think about it, our headphones are chargers. Music on, world off, *regains strength*. Anyway...)]
So I'm sitting on the train, I put lipstick on and then pull my book back out of my bag. [Currently reading How to Read the Air by Dinaw Mengestu. I read his first book, The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears last summer and loved it, so when I saw this at the library, it had to be mine for two weeks.] Out of the corner of my eye I notice this guy (middle-aged, overweight, semi-broke-down looking black man) drinking what appears to be a 1.5ish L bottle of Arbor Mist straight from the bottle alone on the train at 4pm, half roll my eyes, then open my book and continue reading along. A few minutes later, I have the distinct suspicion that I'm being watched, so I cautiously raise my eyes at the next page turn, and sure enough, Mr. Cheap-Fruity-Wine-o [I can't hate too hard, though, I love Arbor Mist, haha. Fruitiness+alcohol=my favorite] is looking at me. *does not acknowledge him in any way, returns to book* Minutes go by, and the next time I happen to glance up to see where we are in my journey to Princeton, I notice that Mr. Cheap-Fruity-Wine-o is speaking, and looking in my direction...oh, is he trying to talk to me? *cautiously takes out one earbud*
This is a paraphrase of his spheel: "I was just looking at your book there. I was just saying how nice it is that you're reading. Don't think I'm some pervert, it's just, that's not something you see everyday on the train, a young girl reading. And I know you're actually reading too, cuz you're turning the pages, that's how I know you're reading. Otherwise you'd just be sitting there on some stupid shit. *realizes I might be offended* Oh I just--that's just how I talk. These just my words, man. Yeah, but you readin. That's, that's what's up." Me, interjecting in my faking-being-sincere-voice: "Thank you!" *tries to put headphones back in* He beats me: "I could tell you some real good books to read. Books that'll flip your mind. Cuz I read them a long time ago and they flipped my mind..." His phone rings. It's his mother. I escape back into my book.
First off, what is it about me that makes strange men think they can just talk to me? Is there an invisible sign above my head saying Open to Conversation? Someone teach me to turn it off.
Secondly...he's right though. I take the train to and from Princeton everyday, and I see lots of people on their cell phones. I see lots of people listening to music. I see people on their laptops. I see people sleeping. I see people chatting and drinking coffee. But I'm not sure I've ever seen anyone else reading. I even have friends at Princeton who simply do not, under any circumstances, read things that aren't for class. And I mean, okay, guys, we are the raised-by-TV generation, but come on now. I love movies and music just as much as the next girl, but I've never reacted to any tangible object the way I react to a good book. I love the chance to be inside someone's or someones' head, to have their thoughts presented to me as if they were my own. I love wrapping myself up in their relationships, applauding their successes and dreading their downfalls. I love both being able to predict what happens next (because real life rarely works that way) and being surprised by a plot twist (because real life works that way). I have learned not to read series, because when they come to a close I feel almost as though I have lost a group of friends. I may never travel to India, or Pakistan, or [insert name of some random small Midwestern town here], but I can know the lifestyle and culture and feel of these places and their inhabitants from the comfort of my...wherever because a book is entirely transportable and will never run out of batteries or overheat. I love the ability to get lost in someone else's life, even if I'm in love with my own--no other medium of entertainment can give me that.
Long story short: read. Evidently it sets us apart from the train-riding masses. Maybe it says you, sir/madam, are an intellectual. Maybe it says you're a thinker or a dreamer. Maybe it just serves as an icebreaker for sketchy middle-aged men. Regardless, read. It will serve you greater purpose than solely being interpretable, I promise.
So I'm sitting on the train, I put lipstick on and then pull my book back out of my bag. [Currently reading How to Read the Air by Dinaw Mengestu. I read his first book, The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears last summer and loved it, so when I saw this at the library, it had to be mine for two weeks.] Out of the corner of my eye I notice this guy (middle-aged, overweight, semi-broke-down looking black man) drinking what appears to be a 1.5ish L bottle of Arbor Mist straight from the bottle alone on the train at 4pm, half roll my eyes, then open my book and continue reading along. A few minutes later, I have the distinct suspicion that I'm being watched, so I cautiously raise my eyes at the next page turn, and sure enough, Mr. Cheap-Fruity-Wine-o [I can't hate too hard, though, I love Arbor Mist, haha. Fruitiness+alcohol=my favorite] is looking at me. *does not acknowledge him in any way, returns to book* Minutes go by, and the next time I happen to glance up to see where we are in my journey to Princeton, I notice that Mr. Cheap-Fruity-Wine-o is speaking, and looking in my direction...oh, is he trying to talk to me? *cautiously takes out one earbud*
This is a paraphrase of his spheel: "I was just looking at your book there. I was just saying how nice it is that you're reading. Don't think I'm some pervert, it's just, that's not something you see everyday on the train, a young girl reading. And I know you're actually reading too, cuz you're turning the pages, that's how I know you're reading. Otherwise you'd just be sitting there on some stupid shit. *realizes I might be offended* Oh I just--that's just how I talk. These just my words, man. Yeah, but you readin. That's, that's what's up." Me, interjecting in my faking-being-sincere-voice: "Thank you!" *tries to put headphones back in* He beats me: "I could tell you some real good books to read. Books that'll flip your mind. Cuz I read them a long time ago and they flipped my mind..." His phone rings. It's his mother. I escape back into my book.
First off, what is it about me that makes strange men think they can just talk to me? Is there an invisible sign above my head saying Open to Conversation? Someone teach me to turn it off.
Secondly...he's right though. I take the train to and from Princeton everyday, and I see lots of people on their cell phones. I see lots of people listening to music. I see people on their laptops. I see people sleeping. I see people chatting and drinking coffee. But I'm not sure I've ever seen anyone else reading. I even have friends at Princeton who simply do not, under any circumstances, read things that aren't for class. And I mean, okay, guys, we are the raised-by-TV generation, but come on now. I love movies and music just as much as the next girl, but I've never reacted to any tangible object the way I react to a good book. I love the chance to be inside someone's or someones' head, to have their thoughts presented to me as if they were my own. I love wrapping myself up in their relationships, applauding their successes and dreading their downfalls. I love both being able to predict what happens next (because real life rarely works that way) and being surprised by a plot twist (because real life works that way). I have learned not to read series, because when they come to a close I feel almost as though I have lost a group of friends. I may never travel to India, or Pakistan, or [insert name of some random small Midwestern town here], but I can know the lifestyle and culture and feel of these places and their inhabitants from the comfort of my...wherever because a book is entirely transportable and will never run out of batteries or overheat. I love the ability to get lost in someone else's life, even if I'm in love with my own--no other medium of entertainment can give me that.
Long story short: read. Evidently it sets us apart from the train-riding masses. Maybe it says you, sir/madam, are an intellectual. Maybe it says you're a thinker or a dreamer. Maybe it just serves as an icebreaker for sketchy middle-aged men. Regardless, read. It will serve you greater purpose than solely being interpretable, I promise.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Meh.
The struggfest between my inner academic and my inner couch computer-chair-potato is madddddd real.
I have a describable and achievable goal, the means by which to get to my end, the time to do it all without feeling rushed...and yet I'm not being productive. I feel...uninspired. I need to refocus. Someday in the not-too-distant future, books and notes like these will be one of the biggest chunks of my life. Remember that fervor we had when we first started our JP readings, Maya? How we devoured article after article and book after book and carried that giant tote bag of library books just to show Alex how dedicated we were? Get that feeling back. Or at the very least, learn how to progress in its absence. #ValuableLifeSkills
I have a describable and achievable goal, the means by which to get to my end, the time to do it all without feeling rushed...and yet I'm not being productive. I feel...uninspired. I need to refocus. Someday in the not-too-distant future, books and notes like these will be one of the biggest chunks of my life. Remember that fervor we had when we first started our JP readings, Maya? How we devoured article after article and book after book and carried that giant tote bag of library books just to show Alex how dedicated we were? Get that feeling back. Or at the very least, learn how to progress in its absence. #ValuableLifeSkills
Monday, June 20, 2011
Today I finished reading a wonderful book called My Name is Memory
Ann Brashares is on the road to becoming one of those authors I read everything by (like Jodi Picoult) because of her ability to be taking me along through a beautiful story that I can get lost in, developing characters whose pain and joys I feel as if they were my own (or, at the very least, those of someone I'm close to), and then all of a sudden hit me out of nowhere with a line or a phrase that brings me up out of this delicious book-world and back into the real world and makes me question something major in my life and the world at large.
All her descriptions of the eternal undying lasting love and devotion between the two main characters nestled warmly into the depths of my heart like someones snuggling under a blanket, but they're not what I want to talk about. That happens a lot these days.
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| Example A |
The little tiny afterthought-like bit that blew me away was as follows:
"It took a half-dozen of those lives for me to recognize the difference between a means and an end." --Ann Brashares, "My Name is Memory" pp. 154I suppose I first wondered some semblance of this towards the end of high school, when Student Council president came around to ask the Top Ten graduating seniors to fill out this sheet with some questions on it for little blurbs about us that would be put in our yearbooks. One of the questions was "What is your favorite memory from your time at Oakcrest?" or something to that effect. The 8 other members of the Top Ten who were sitting in AP Calc with me started laughing and remembering awesome times they'd had in this club or at that party or whatever, and I was struggling majorly to come up with anything worthy of eternal glorification in the pages of my yearbook. It dawned on me then that these people, my friends, had legitimately enjoyed high school to some extent. Particularly after my personal life exploded at the beginning of junior year, I had been treating it and my experiences in it like a means to an end. It was one more thing I was ready to get the hell away from, til it was over and I realized I had never really experienced it at all.
And so I made a vow to myself that I was going to start living my life differently. I was going to stop taking my life and my day-to-day experiences for granted, I was going to treat each day like an adventure, I was going to do x-thing and y-thing and become an awesome person. And to varying extents at various times, I have done those things, I think. But although I pause to look at my life with wonder more often, and I meditate, and I occasionally walk around Princeton just to look at its beauty and marvel at the fact that I'm here, and I tell my friends just how much they mean to me, and I have begun to take chances...just like college was the end-goal of high school, grad school has been sneaking up as the end-goal of college. Professorship as the end-goal of grad school. And yes, these things are my goals, they are what I want to do with my life, and I'm okay with that. I like them. I actively chose those goals over the other options and am happy with my choice (for now, at least). This is what I want.
...But what is the end-goal of professorship? Can that be the end-all be-all of the end-goals? Should it be a means? What end would it serve? #BigImportantLifeQuestions
You know that moment where you can sense something bad is about to happen to a character in a book...
...and you don't realize how emotionally invested you've gotten in him/her until your heart is pounding and you want to scream out a warning? When this collection of words has somehow become a friend that is near and dear to your heart and needs protecting?
I live for that moment.
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