When your body's in business class but your soul's in economy
Hey Anna Burns, I see your reading-while-walking and raise you reading-while-eating-and-flying
Less than 24 hours ago, I was on a flight to LAX and wound up sitting across the aisle from Roxane Gay. I knew it was her but my brain short-circuited completely, caught up in the panic spiral of “Does she want people recognizing her on an airplane? What if it isn’t her and I’m just biased to think all Black women look alike? Which of her books should I bring up? What if I get the title wrong?”
In the end I said some stupid things, she was very gracious (and yes it was her) and I transferred to my transatlantic flight still shaking with the adrenaline that floods my system any time I have to talk to strangers. I envy people who have the courage to ask for selfies and make conversation with people they admire.
A few glasses of wine later, I settled back to my own work. Reading and writing. A few months ago, I made a decision to have “analog meals” which means that eating involves books, not screens. Here are the two books that have been on my mind lately.
Wandering Souls by Cecile Pin
The story of three Vietnamese siblings who arrive as refugees in Margaret Thatcher’s Britain, this literary novel is a fast read, one that feels like being stabbed quickly by an expert swordsman. The knife is so sharp it doesn’t even hurt, but you’ll be changed forever. The hypocrisy of America and Britain is hardly surprising, but Pin doesn’t preach. Doesn’t even bother spending time dwelling on the irony and injustice. Just stabs and moves on. Stabs and moves on. Anyway, I took this photo because I thought it was appropriate that I, as an immigrant, was reading this book while flying business class between Britain and America.
The Good Immigrant, an anthology edited by Nikesh Shukla
Each essay in this remarkable collection comes from a different Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic writer in Britain, on what it’s like “to live in a country that doesn’t trust you and doesn’t want you unless you win an Olympic gold medal or a national baking competition.” Every essay is a gem, but the one that will stay with me forever was Cutting Through (on Black barbershops and masculinity) by Inua Ellams, a Nigerian-born British playwright who visited barber shops across Africa to hear what African men talked about. Juxtaposed with the Twitter trend of #IfAfricaWasABar Ellam cuts past the West’s unwillingness to see diversity within Africa, to the point where in England, in a barber shop, a young actor admitted he couldn’t get the role of “Black man” – he didn’t fit the very particular ideas of the white director of what that was.
The essays in this collection are wry, extremely British in their humor as they work to expand the notion of what being British even is.
I left the sticker on in the photo because I no longer like the politics of the white author quoted above Nikesh’s name and am petty like that.
In writing news:
I finally got around to fixing my website!*
*By which I mean, hired a professional because I may be in tech but even I can’t fight CSS.
Something the designer told me was that since many of my essays and articles had been around for a while, I could repost them on my site, so I’d still have them in case the journals ever died. So I now have a beautiful Media page, including this article I wrote for Mslexia that has so far only ever been available in print, which I still think is one of the kindest, most liberating things I ever wrote.