Still alive.
Sep. 15th, 2010 08:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
supermouseI'm not doing my daily posts because I am too ill. I've done most of the things on my daily post though, so go me.
Today I wore a necklace I bought second hand. It's costume jewellery, with pewter flowers set with glass brilliants. Very gothic, very heavy (weight, not design) and very, very shiny. Pol admired it greatly. If it were diamonds, I wouldn't like it any more than I do. I have a definite love of costume jewellery, but very rarely do I get a piece I can actually wear. It cost me £3.50.
Yesterday, I spent most of the afternoon/evening in a sweating, semi-hallucinatory haze, convinced I was in a garden in Spain. It was all very green. Today, I curled up reading Green Knowe books while the rain hammered on the windows. Treasures of Green Knowe is cringingly racist in the paternalist style, with a black character who not only learns to read and write in English, but helps teach an English girl to do the same - and yet he never learns to conjugate his verbs. 'Me help Missy.' 'Bird no fall down that way'. And so on. At least he's there, though, and playing a major part in the story, which is as much his story as it is Tolly's or Susan's - his part in the narrative isn't always to help one or the other of them. Just... mostly. If it wasn't for the broken English, he'd probably be a really neat character - and the book does tackle slavery head on. The racism towards Rom is really stark and unleavened throughout the books - Gypsies are dirty, lying thieves, always. And lay curses on things. And practice black magic, which is to say UnChristian magic.
I can't believe I grew up loving these books and never noticed how at least the first two treat non-white characters as barely people. I'm now going to sit and read the rest, but I am dreading the introduction of the Chinese boy.
Today I wore a necklace I bought second hand. It's costume jewellery, with pewter flowers set with glass brilliants. Very gothic, very heavy (weight, not design) and very, very shiny. Pol admired it greatly. If it were diamonds, I wouldn't like it any more than I do. I have a definite love of costume jewellery, but very rarely do I get a piece I can actually wear. It cost me £3.50.
Yesterday, I spent most of the afternoon/evening in a sweating, semi-hallucinatory haze, convinced I was in a garden in Spain. It was all very green. Today, I curled up reading Green Knowe books while the rain hammered on the windows. Treasures of Green Knowe is cringingly racist in the paternalist style, with a black character who not only learns to read and write in English, but helps teach an English girl to do the same - and yet he never learns to conjugate his verbs. 'Me help Missy.' 'Bird no fall down that way'. And so on. At least he's there, though, and playing a major part in the story, which is as much his story as it is Tolly's or Susan's - his part in the narrative isn't always to help one or the other of them. Just... mostly. If it wasn't for the broken English, he'd probably be a really neat character - and the book does tackle slavery head on. The racism towards Rom is really stark and unleavened throughout the books - Gypsies are dirty, lying thieves, always. And lay curses on things. And practice black magic, which is to say UnChristian magic.
I can't believe I grew up loving these books and never noticed how at least the first two treat non-white characters as barely people. I'm now going to sit and read the rest, but I am dreading the introduction of the Chinese boy.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-16 08:56 am (UTC)I think it's only in the last year or two I've had my bubble burst and started even noticing stuff like this, for which I can mostly thank RaceFail and the people I started reading as a result.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-16 09:52 am (UTC)