“I don’t think many people appreciate silence or realize that it is as close to music as you can get.”
― God Help the Child
― God Help the Child
“Country music was the most segregated kind of music in America, where even whites played jazz and even blacks sang in the opera. Something like country music was what lynch mobs must have enjoyed while stringing up their black victims. Country music was not necessarily lynching music, but no other music could be imagined as lynching’s accompaniment. Beethoven’s Ninth was the opus for Nazis, concentration camp commanders, and possibly President Truman as he contemplated atomizing Hiroshima, classical music the refined score for the high-minded extermination of brutish hordes. Country music was set to the more humble beat of the red-blooded, bloodthirsty American heartland. It was for fear of being beaten to this beat that black soldiers avoided the Saigon bars where their white comrades kept the jukeboxes humming with Hank Williams and his kind, sonic signposts that said, in essence, No Niggers.”
― The Sympathizer
― The Sympathizer
“In that instant, Paul saw how Stilgar had been transformed from the Fremen naib to a creature of the Lisan al-Gaib, a receptacle for awe and obedience. It was a lessening of the man, and Paul felt the ghost-wind of the jihad in it.”
― Dune
― Dune
“You know that there are no black people in Africa,” she said. Most Americans, we have to sit with that statement. It sounds nonsensical to our ears. Of course there are black people in Africa. There is a whole continent of black people in Africa. How could anyone not see that? “Africans are not black,” she said. “They are Igbo and Yoruba, Ewe, Akan, Ndebele. They are not black. They are just themselves. They are humans on the land. That is how they see themselves, and that is who they are.” What we take as gospel in American culture is alien to them, she said. “They don’t become black until they go to America or come to the U.K.,” she said. “It is then that they become black.”
― Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
― Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
The World's Literature in Europe
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Literature from the many languages of Europe: Finland -Joseph Alanen, artist 1880-1920, "Kalevala rya": a woolen rug depicting the scene in the Finn ...more
Science Fiction Aficionados
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Welcome to Sci Fi Aficionados. We love all things science fiction, with an emphasis on the classics of the genre. Members are welcome to discuss all t ...more
Chip’s 2024 Year in Books
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