About #BlackLivesMatter, #MeToo, and Gender Identity
Three magnificent books inspired by the time, but were not damaged by it.
What are you inside?
There is an opinion that the 21st century is a century of a tolerance cult and people must express their point of view with extreme caution. On the one hand, all these processes are natural and fair, but on the other, how much freedom an author has?
When I was told about the book by South African writer Bianca Marais “Hum If You Don’t Know the Words”, I understood that the novel with a poetic title like that is written by a soulful person and from the heart, because the author knows what she is talking about firsthand.
The book is an elaborately constructed drama on the background of real historical events, which took place in RSA during the Apartheid. We will witness this tragedy through the eyes of completely different female protagonists: 9-year-old Robin from a trouble-free white family and Beauty, the mother of three black children, and who has to leave her village to search for her daughter. The world through the eyes of a child and from an adult’s perspective, so many differences!
And what if one of them is mistreated because of her skin colour and the other has been taught since childhood that those others are not like them, that they are potential servants, who she needs to be afraid of? How to avoid getting lost in such difficult times, and how to love another person if you are full of prejudices?
The novel “Hum If You Don’t Know the Words” is about that. This is a book filled with humour and warmth, about love and friendship that doesn’t know any borders in skin colours, orientation, and age. Surprisingly, but Bianca Marais wrote a story that a person of any generation may like. I don’t know if you manage not to cry, I couldn’t.
Be like everyone…
I walk through the Moscow subway underpass, finishing “Milkman” by Anna Burns while strolling. I can’t stop reading, but in a while, I’ll be apart from the book, which I, unfortunately, was going to finish 300 pages in.
It’s ironic, but it was the novel protagonist’s habit of reading-while-walking, which attracted the attention of all the residents of her neighbourhood. She was announced the hoods screwball and gained a whole mess of related problems by that.
So Ireland, 1970s, if you stand out in some way you risk being a target for a paramilitary underground or even worse, policemen; you have to be careful of what you do and places you visit, you don’t have a right to violate the rules of your neighbourhood, in case of emergency going to a hospital is off limits, otherwise you are considered a government informer so don’t expect of returning home alive, and in case you are a young girl you have to be extra alert.
The book is a complex and slow read, but on the other hand, what do you expect from a psychological novel?
It’s as if you get into the head of an 18-year-old protagonist, who have to struggle with attacks of the society alone.
In my opinion, Milkman reflects not only the now-popular subject of violence against women but also the issue of keeping personal borders in the era of collectivism, and the problem of personal openness and confidence in the world.
It may be easy for me to talk about empathy and trust, representing a generation of millennials. Now it’s nothing wrong with going to psychologists, visiting all sorts of training, and stand out. So honestly, when I dove into the world of Burns’s book protagonist, I exhaled!
In some way, it’s easier for us to live.
Milkman became a window to the past for me. Thanks to the author for this opportunity!
My Body, My Business!
Middlesex is a bestselling novel by Jeffrey Eugenides (no, it’s not autobiographical, but personal, do you feel the difference?), it is a story about a Greek family which has to escape from its country to the US. Middlesex is a tale by Cal Stephanides (trans man, who had been raised as a girl up to his early teens, but who then discovered that he was another person), protagonist, the last scion, about how it is for any of us to be not like the others. Middlesex is an Ancient Greek tragedy about the divine fate.
Today, the issue of gender and national identity stands out sharply as never before. The world is arguing about the rights of various minorities but sometimes forgets about the pain which is hiding behind the favourite slogans (banners). The world is arguing hard, but the world has never had an empathic ability. That’s why, while discussing a lot of undoubtedly important issues, the world tends to forget about the most important thing, which is trauma. That hell’s torment (damnation) which people suffer to accept who they are. Eugenides’s novel is not just a novel about people with traumas but it’s a novel about the inner destruction, which no, doesn’t divide life into “before” and “after” but puts things in order. Grandparents of Cal (let’s call them insane (incogitant) sinners, but no more spoilers) leave Greece in their youth: the God of War follows them unfailingly; his face is monstrous, his wrath is inevitable.
It’s needless to say that Gods are fierce creatures (even merciless); a long time ago people gave them human attributes to have a mere hope that Gods will have mercy on them if they touch the marble floor of a temple with their foreheads enough times. People created female gods and male gods, brother-gods and sister-gods, father-gods and sun-gods, mother-gods, and daughter-gods. Living in an incredibly dangerous world many thousand years ago people decided that it’s better to behave well, otherwise divine punishment will get you. Each new century was refreshed with new rules of a correct behaviour, but the higher power always remained a higher power, no matter what face was given by human fantasy. If you are a sinner, you’re going to be punished. A fairytale, which is older than dirt, fairytale, made up for a dream about the well-being and redemption.
So two insane sinners cross the ocean trying to escape from their Gods, suffer hardship, and receive a new life (but how can you hide from the power of bolts from the heavens?), a life in which you don’t have to look backward expecting that a sword of justice is going to descent on their mere necks any moment. They live their lives, keeping with all the Orthodox traditions, being homesick, hiding from God’s eye in a far country, filled with riches, but how can you escape from fate?
Ancient people were semiliterate and wild, but they were certainly more sensitive than any person living today. Telling each other scary stories about those fools who were punished for their efforts to escape their fate, they were sure that it was dangerous to argue with Gods. Not just you risk of being cursed but the whole of your kind does, given that Gods do have a sense of humour. Time passed, science has been developing. We tell each other comforting stories about DNA without paying attention to what we are talking about in reality, we are talking about pre-destiny. No matter who you are, you will have to drag a heavy burden of your ancestors’ mistakes behind you. And, God forbid, (ha-ha) you will pause to think one day about what is fate and what is sin in a midst of a happy every-day hustle of your friends. Gods are crafty; they learned to pretend that they don’t exist until somebody will think of them in vain.
One day, a baby who is seemingly a girl is born in Detroit. She is named Calliope, after one of the muses. Callie would have been a happy girl if her grandparents were usual grandparents, not incogitant (insane) sinners, who were hiding from the God of War, who banished them from their home country, sinners who got well out from harm’s way (ha-ha!), as if their sin wasn’t a reminder of a crime committed long ago. Calliope was an unusual girl; in a certain age (you can’t escape from fate) she was destined — as if destiny wasn’t a certain set of chromosomes — to become a boy. To have mercy is very human, but Gods are impervious to human feelings. The only thing left is to write down the moral of the story and then, maybe, go to a temple to touch a marble floor with the forehead, but will that help?
But no, perhaps the most breathtaking part of the novel is devoted to the transformation. Tormenting metamorphoses: physical one doesn’t differ from mental; consciousness is permeated with pain. Do you remember yourself as a teenager? Do you remember your furious desire to be unlike the others and your suffering from the acute feeling of your otherness? Do you remember the riot of your body against you, which made you feel so awkward? Awkward and good-for-nothing. We are trying so hard to forget our own traumas that we don’t want to accept that after all, we forget to think about the others. About those who had their house destroyed by the God of War. About all the insane (incogitant) sinners, who pretend to be usual people if only the fate won’t get them. “My Body, My Business” is not a slogan about how it’s great to weigh 330 pounds; this is a slogan, which tells that the other does know nothing about how is it to live in your body, how is it to feel it every day, how is it to be upset with it, how is it to accept yourself, and how is it to be born in a body to which you don’t belong. And yes, it’s not a crime to share the experience of your living in your body with someone, but empathy is a direct obligation of a listener. After all, any experience is unique.
Be empathic. And Gods will probably have mercy on you.
Omnifinery — Feel Comfort in Your Individuality
Text: Nelly Zaks and Victoria Loco
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Evgeny is an art director and a global citizen based in Hong Kong and working between Asia and Europe.
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