Stephen Matlock > Recent Status Updates

This book is a hoot! While I'm not always able to appreciate the local color, the writer is enthusiastically funny, mordant, witty, and quick with the Irish retort.

Thoroughly enjoying this so far.

This book is fire!

Re-reading with a friend. Looking forward to seeing new things.

This is not at all what I expected--in a good way.

I was expecting a more scholarly approach, a more studied approach to the topic (which of course I know *nothing* about), but this is instead the careful, heartfelt, even passionate witness of a man who is within the Disinherited and who would want only to be heard.

Super, super challenging and full of wisdom.

Currently on Ch 1 "Jesus—an Interpretation"

Thurman avoids the common tropes of the tamed Jesus with a mystic message and an avoidance of conflict, and instead digs into the character of Jesus as a Jew suffering under the oppression of the Romans, and how he had to handle the smoldering resentment of occupation without resorting to actions that would instigate violence and destruction.

On Chapter 4. This is tough reading, but I've worn out one highlighter and working on my second

Man, this book is kicking me. I'm immersed in the narrative, but as Dr. Kendi explores the three main ideologies of racist, assimilationist, and anti-racist, I'm finding that there are so many things I believe and even say that are frankly either racist or assimilationist.

So far so good. I'm interested in the *actions* necessary to break out from the way we are to the way we can be.

Complete

Earnest and careful.

Really hit the wall now. At the point where my own "goodness" and intent is not going to carry me further. The work to examine myself--OK, great. The work to push in and grind out the changes--I'm reluctant to push further because it is getting quite HARD to continue.

Working through this book with my study group and responding with thoughtful answers takes time, y'all.

But the work is worth it, to dig into myself and open up some primary locked information about myself.

I can't read this fast. I have to read it paragraph by paragraph, sentence by sentence, phrase by phrase. This isn't a book, this is a college course. So much information, so much insight.

There are about 300 pages remaining, and I am not sure I will complete it in my lifetime!

Gotta confess, I'm struggling with this one to be fair. I've reacted to a few things where I felt the analysis or the statement was unfair or unfounded (in spite of the author's determination to follow T. Sowell's advice to not say anything that can't be sourced). I'm feeling that this is more a polemic than a series of thoughtful essays, which is more about me and my expectations. I'll continue reading...

Holy moly, this is good stuff. I'm just started and I am highlighting just about every other sentence.

This is deep stuff to chew on, for me, and it's giving me a lot to dig into. I'm hoping it gets even better the more I read.

This is a beautiful book. It is careful about the details and careful about the presentation. This, along with "The Seminarian," help to present Dr. King as a man who had to grow into his existence. Maybe by the end he was starting to become boxed in by the definitions of others--and he struggled to continually break free and to present his thoughts honestly and well. But this is the story of a man who lived.

Brutally honest and yet not destructive. Just what it is to be an American and Evangelical, not based upon theology so much as upon behaviors and expressed words.

This is profoundly moving, and I am finding that I'm not able to process in words the things I am thinking and feeling.

It is haunting and cruel and tender. It is the story of an America that never was, a story of an America as it is. I want to put it down as it drains me with the horrific ordinary wickedness and evil disguised as cheerful white accommodation to a white supremacist minority.

But I keep on reading because woven in the fabric of this dull banality are threads of gold, of the best of what humans *can* be.