I've been doing a lot of reading: I finished my fourth book this month, which I personally think is wonderful. I am brimming over with renewed faith in intellectual discourse.
I'm trying hard to take my mind off all the travel I'm not doing. The Korean Film Festival opened today, and I was transported to another world for 100 minutes.
The only kind of comparison I want to make is between present Epiphanies and past Epiphanies. I have grown in compassion in the last six years. I have become more tolerant of people of colour whose backgrounds I'm not as closely familiar with as those of Asian origin. I'm more clear on how I want to present in the world.
A reviewer claimed that Susan Sontag's work, 'At the same time', is "excruciatingly white." I could see that coming. Sontag was of an older generation, but when you look at people like Gloria Steinem and the effort she puts in to showcase the achievements of women of colour, you realise that it can be done. And that many people, intentionally or out of ignorance, choose to opt out of a deeper understanding of what it means to be the descendant of colonisers (or simply the beneficiaries of white supremacy).
It makes sense then, that my next book is 'Girl, Woman, Other' by Bernardine Evaristo. I'm already 10% through and it's a pleasure to be reminded of the antiracist truths I have to keep drumming into my head because so much of the background noise of life is all blaring white supremacist overtones.
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