English Comprehension
Lori
“Why Is It So Hard to Love Yourself?” by Liza Szotz (Random House, $17)
In an essay that ran as the opening essay in the December 2, 2016, journal, Claudia Oliver wrote, “I write in (her) Notes app because I get so inspired to write by her.”
Maybe it’s Claudia’s voice that’s driving me to read, because while I don’t agree with many of the conclusions I’ve drawn from Liza’s opinions, I’ve found myself absorbed by the entirety of the essay, in a way that I’ve never been before.
Whatever you enjoy, there’s something about reading Liza’s stuff that appeals.
“The unnecessary assumption that does good writing are all the same is … false. It should be noted that in the wake of the election (while race relations have generally been improving, they remain a pain in the ass) the older, more comforting view of racism (sometimes referred to as “normative racism”) still persists.”
In The Verbal Forest, Kath-Patz argues that perception matters. Without exploring the alternative view, we miss out on what’s really good about being white — “good-looking”, “decent-looking”, “well-made”, or other universal qualities — which is about our attempts to transform ourselves into others to ease our own difficult experiences.
Kath says,
“If most of us think that Blackness is innate and heterogeneous — and I think it is—then in the end we are not really free Black people.”
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