Ship Of Souls: A Novel of Revolutionary Nature

The best way for me to describe Zetta Elliott's novel is to say that it is revolutionary but not necessarily because it makes any overt political statements (although there are a few), but because it is a rarity; Ship of Souls is a Young Adult fantasy novel and all three of the protagonists are Black teens. In my experience, it is difficult to find a YA novel about Black teens much less a fantasy YA novel. As a writer, it is my goal to achieve what Elliott has -- and that is to write a story about human relationships wherein the characters happen to be people of colour. This leads me to discuss the book itself.

For those who don't know what the novel is about, the summary is as follows: a mysterious and supernatural bird takes three unlikely friends, D, Hakeem or "Keem", and Nyla on a "perilous journey that will take them from Brooklyn to the African Burial Ground in lower Manhattan, and into the very realm of the dead" (from the back of the book). Not only is the fantastical element of the novel both chilling and intriguing, Elliott masterfully balances the otherworldly with the banalities of adolescence. While D is coming to grips with the fact that he can speak to a bird, he also worries about impressing the beautiful Nyla, fitting in at school, and whether or not he's "Black enough"; issues that concern Black teenage boys as well as teenage boys of other racial backgrounds. Thus, Elliott succeeds in exploring themes that reach a specific (and often overlooked) target audience without excluding other readers.

The characters were also very enjoyable to read; D, Nyla and Keem made a wonderful dynamic since all three of their personalities were wildly different. I found myself drawn to Nyla's tough and independent nature and her sassy wit made me laugh on more than one occasion. While D is the main character, Nyla is the most active out of the three, and I was immensely pleased to read about a female character who was not passive in any sense and who didn't apologize for her personality or her beauty but who did not exploit her appearance either.

This is all to say that I read Ship of Souls in one sitting and while I deeply enjoyed the novel as a reader, I also deeply respected it as a writer. Zetta Elliott is a master of balance and nuance; she is able to use specificity to achieve universal appeal and I would highly recommend this novel for any young adult.

I've Been Gone For A While ... Only To Reappear With A Little Self-Indulgence

http://www.cbc.ca/books/canadawrites/2011/11/writer-to-watch-zalika-reid-benta.html

Invisible Women in Invisible City: The Issue That Isn't Acknowledged In Hubert Davis' Documentary

After hearing all of the hype surrounding Hubert Davis’ Invisible City, yesterday I decided to go and watch it for myself. While I found it a little slow-paced, I enjoyed the cinematography and thought the film did an excellent job in illustrating instances of systemic racism. A specific instance is when Mikey visits his guidance counselor and asks to be transferred from applied math to academic. Despite his B average in math, the guidance counselor questions whether or not he would be able to handle the workload in an academic class and keeps him in applied. Invisible City also provides an excellent example of stereotyping when interviewing Kendell’s basketball coach. The coach essentially said that he likes to bring boys from Regent Park onto the team for their inherent toughness and aggression. His comment reminded me of an article I had to read in my Grade 12 English Class that basically stated that while Black players have an inbuilt talent and “flow” for basketball white players are more strategic and tactical in their game. I remember being the only student offended by the notion and shut down by my teacher when I raised my contentions. But anyway, even with these necessary and illuminating scenes, Invisible City is fundamentally problematic for two interrelated reasons:

(Lack of) women and the portrayal of motherhood.

Granted, Invisible City follows the lives of two Black teenage boys: Kendell and Mikey. But there is hardly any representation or acknowledgement of Black teenage girls or Black women in the entire documentary. From what I remember, there are two instances in which the camera focuses on Black girls. One instance is when Kendell is playing basketball and a girl, presumably his girlfriend, is watching him play; the other is when Mikey’s sisters are studying and Mikey’s VO states that his mother doesn’t understand that his sisters don’t have to deal with what he deals with: racially prejudiced teachers, racist cops, and the temptation to follow his friends into trouble.

Both instances are loaded with issues. Mikey’s VO is his opinion but the documentary implicitly takes on the view that Black girls simply don’t face as many problems as Black boys. While it is true that Black girls aren’t confronted with all of the same problems as Black boys, there are plenty of racially-inspired hurdles that both genders face. For instance, Black women face just as many stereotypes as Black men. To name a few, we are stereotyped as being promiscuous, as being “baby-mamas”, as being loud-mouthed, and as being difficult and aggressive. Speaking from experience, teachers and authority figures do in fact label Black girls just as much as Black boys, their stigmatization predicated on the aforementioned stereotypes. Furthermore, Black women must deal with Western standards of beauty and must contend with the fact that we are represented as ugly in comparison to white women. A shocking example of this is the online article Psychology Today posted then deleted, arguing that, scientifically, Black women are less attractive because we have more masculine features compared to women of other races. Growing up with these notions of beauty and ugliness most definitely makes teenagehood for Black girls difficult and cruel and it is plainly wrong to suggest or imply that Black girls have it easy compared to Black boys. Our issues are merely different.

The shot of the girl watching Kendall play basketball bothered me because I found it to be a manifestation of a running theme in the documentary: that Black women are passive and bystanders to men’s lives. The portrayal of the mothers reiterates that theme, for the documentary doesn’t portray them as having active roles in their sons’ lives. Indeed, Davis illustrates that they love their boys and that they work extremely hard to provide for them but when it comes to their sons’ constant run-ins with the law and their inattention at school, the mothers’ vocabulary are filled with phrases such as “I wish”, “I hope” and “I pray.”

Furthermore, the mothers are put in stark contrast with Ainsworth Morgan, former pro-athlete and a local role model, who does actively participate in Mikey and Kendell’s lives, who talks to them “on the real” about how they’re screwing up their lives. He is essentially the father-figure to both boys and to other boys in the community – and he is the one who can put the boys in line. Now, I do think it is extremely important and absolutely necessary for Black men to take up their responsibility and parent their children – sons and daughters – but to suggest, like Invisible City (in my view) does, that Black boys absolutely need their fathers to teach them right from wrong, to keep them in line, to “be a man” essentially, is not only misogynistic, but a Western way of thinking.

But Davis isn’t the only director who takes this approach. John Singleton and Spike Lee treat Black women in very much the same way. While Boyz N The Hood and Do The Right Thing are fictional films, they still make commentary on the social conditions of Black boys and the Black community. In Boyz, Tre moves in with his father because his mother admits she can’t teach him to be a man. When talking about his other, fatherless friends, Tre’s father states that they have no one to teach them responsibility. The women in the film are either drug addicts, neglectful and cruel mothers, or they easily navigate the education system and experience no hardships or issues in their advancement. In Do The Right Thing, the women have a muted presence and are generally portrayed as passive.

Films like Boyz N The Hood, Do The Right Thing and The Invisible City are a good commentary on the social conditions of the Black community in North America, and they are good snapshots of what Black boys have to experience on the day-to-day. But they are incomplete in their commentary on the social conditions because they hardly acknowledge how Black girls deal with the conditions. All in all, there needs to be more films and more books (fictional and nonfictional) that deal with the experiences of Black teenage girls and the struggles and issues we must contend with growing up.

The Lovely Bones: Garishly Sentimental and Blatantly Stereotypical

With the exception of Inception, the Pirates of the Caribbean series, and the Harry Potter series, I like to think I don’t watch movies because of the hype that surrounds them. Or I at least don’t watch them when the hype is still fresh. So I felt safe watching The Lovely Bones the other day considering that it has been about a year since the movie has been released. While I certainly did not like the movie, I can’t say I absolutely hated it. It is more appropriate to say that the film frustrated me.

Before I begin my rant I suppose it’s necessary to provide a brief synopsis of the film. Essentially, Susie Salmon, a fourteen-year-old girl, is murdered by her neighbour George Harvey. Instead of “moving on” to heaven, Susie stays in the “In-Between” world and watches as her family and murderer deals with and tries to move on from her death. When her murderer is brought to justice, when her family is no longer fragmented and when she fulfils her dream of kissing her crush (which she does in a very Ghost-like moment wherein she inhabits the body of another girl) Susie is able to leave the In- Between and go to heaven. The end.

Now, I haven’t read the novel and there is a good chance that I won’t enjoy it if I do decide to read it, but even so, I can still tell that the film is a bastardization of the book. The characters are one-dimensional, failing to portray the complexity of grief and of losing a child/sibling (VERY disappointed in Mark Wahlberg who I generally enjoy watching onscreen), the motives of the murder are nonexistent, making George Harvey a crude villain (although I do admit that Stanley Tucci does a great job considering the limitations of his character), the in-between world itself is garish and cartoonish, and the overtly sentimental tone of the overall film (exacerbated by the unnecessary narration and maudlin script) either forced me to change the channel for a few seconds or yell “PUH-LEASE” or “COME ON” at the TV. However, none of these aspects irritated me as much as the stereotypical character Denise Le Ang a.ka. Holly Golightly, a girl Susie meets in the In-Between.

I was upset by the fact that Denise Le Ang, an East Asian girl, is a type of “Magical Minority” character in that she just appears to Susie with knowledge of the In-Between and subsequently serves as Susie’s guide through this ethereal world, which is characteristic of Magical Minority characters, such as Bagger Vance (Will Smith) in The Legend of Bagger Vance and Cash (Don Cheadle) in The Family Man. In relation, I was irked by the fact that Denise was allotted the minority best-friend role. Although it is revealed by the end of the film that she was also a victim of George Harvey’s, throughout the narrative, she is given no back story, no desires, no wishes – her only goal is to help Susie move on from the In-Between and into Heaven. She has absolutely no personality or character. Even when the film reveals that Denise died at the hands of George Harvey, Susie finds out for herself and through her narration, tells the audience. Denise isn’t even given enough agency to tell her own story – a robbery that reminded me of Edward Said’s Orientalism in which he summarizes the maxim of imperialism as being “they cannot represent themselves, they must be represented.” I do not think such a reading of Denise’s character is too much of a stretch or too heavy-handed, for film does perpetuate these types of sentiments, perhaps unconsciously, but they’re still present and prevalent and they still come through.

It is true that overall The Lovely Bones is a one-dimensional and, despite the heavy subject matter, almost frivolous film that contains a variety of stock characters from the father, Jack Salmon, to the murderer, George Harvey, to Susie herself. However, none of these characters are stereotypical and therefore none of these characters are complicit in perpetuating typecasts and imperial limitations in relation to racial minorities. I cannot say the same for Denise "Holly" Le Ang.

Sex and the City 2: Superficial, Racist, and just overall Bad

So this post was a long time coming. I meant to write it right after I saw the movie but I was sidetracked with school, work, exams etc. Anyway, here it is now. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t find certain things about this sequel humorous, but, I felt a strong sense of guilt and dirtiness whenever I laughed at a joke because, at least for the last half of the movie, a joke was made at the expense of another culture.

Before I get into this post, I suppose it’s important to quickly summarize what the movie is about or at least the part I will be focusing on.

The sequel takes place two years after the prequel. Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte are all leading lives that are (supposedly) more stressful than before: Samantha, now 52, tries to keep her libido alive by using hormones and at the same time she must deal with menopause; Miranda chooses to quit her job because her chauvinist boss constantly shuts her down; Charlotte’s two daughters are a handful – the eldest is needy and the youngest constantly cries – and she’s worried Harry may have an affair with the stay-at-home nanny; and Carrie’s marriage to Mr. Big is in a rut as she wants to go out but he merely wants to stay at home, watch TV, and eat takeout.

Maybe half-an-hour into the film, Samantha is approached by an Arab sheikh to devise a PR campaign for his business, and he offers to fly her and her friends on an all-expenses-paid luxury vacation to Abu Dhabi where they are given attractive man-servants amongst many other ridiculously excessive “perks.” While in Abu Dhabi, many things take place: Carrie runs into her ex-fiancé Aidan; and Samantha, Charlotte, and Miranda run up against a culture clash in the Middle East, as their style and attitudes contrast with Muslim society but none more than Samantha.

My issue is with the way the culture clash was depicted because, really, Sex and the City portrays Western views as progressive and liberating while the Islamic society is illustrated as primitive and oppressive. When the four friends discuss Western men and Western society, they all agree that while men in the States like to think they’re progressive, they really want “us [women] to wear burqas around our face.” Thus the film is stating that Western men are not progressive thinkers because they secretly harbour a desire to conform to Middle Eastern customs.

How ignorant, arrogant and completely vile is that sentiment?

Near the end of the film, when the four friends rush to make their flight, Samantha’s purse drops and a bunch of condoms fall onto the ground in the middle of a marketplace. At seeing the condoms on the ground, a group of local men begin to aggressively berate her to which Samantha yells “YES. I LIKE SEX.” A group of local women, dressed in burqas, help the four friends escape the angry mob by pulling them all into a room in which they commend Samantha for her outburst. After which, they take off their burqas and reveal they are wearing Western designer clothes beneath their traditional dress. This was supposed to be an emotional, touching and empowering moment for women but really, it was incredibly offensive. The Arabic women are only considered empowered because they’re wearing Western fashion and conform – to what the movie portrays – as Western beliefs, because we all know it’s impossible for Middle Eastern women or men to be progressive in their own cultural context.

Furthermore, the film illustrates the Islamic culture as something that is meant to be gawked at and ripped a part. When Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte first arrive at their hotel in Abu Dhabi, they go to the pool and make commentary on the burquinis (a burquini is a head-to-toe swimsuit that enables women to adhere to the Islamic dress code). If the commentary was merely informative then there wouldn’t be a problem but the commentary was meant to illustrate the swimsuit as ridiculous and oppressive and the audience was meant to laugh at the sheer ludicrousness of it. I honestly don’t understand how there has been no outcry over this movie!

And moving away from the blatant stereotyping, I don’t even understand how this movie is supposed to be empowering to women in general. Is it because the four protagonists are women? Is it because these women are sexual? Is that all it takes for a movie to be considered empowering to a female audience? None of these women have real problems to overcome! Charlotte has two daughters that cry a lot. What child doesn’t? She has a husband, a stay-at-home nanny, and she’s wealthy, and her problem is that she doesn’t have any time to herself? Puh-lease. As a child of a single mother, I was extremely insulted.

It really disheartens and angers me that the movies studios are making for female audiences consist of movies like Sex and the City 2 and the Twilight “saga”, for they are fundamentally problematic in more ways than one. That studios are also making racially prejudicial and offensive movies like Sex and the City 2 and Avatar merely prove the lack of progress we, as a society, have made in regards to race and other cultures, for film, like literature, is a mirror of the issues, prejudices, and concerns of the time and society in which it is made.

Good Hair (film) Waste of Money and Lack of Sociopolitical Bearing: Forgets to Explore the Question Why

When I first heard about Chris Rock's documentary, I was extremely excited. Finally, a (somewhat) big budget film dedicated to intelligently exploring the dysfunctional relationship between Black women and the concept of "good hair." Unfortunately, I was immensely, nay, profoundly disappointed. I thought the title "Good Hair" would be ironic because Chris Rock would explicate why Black women resent their natural (and beautiful) hair and strive to achieve and maintain straight "silky" white hair. Instead, the title is ironic because Chris Rock (in my view) belittles, condescends, and criticizes Black women for spending large sums of money on achieving and maintaining "good hair." Chris Rock fails to realize or he merely disregards the fact that the colonial legacy in North America plays a fundamental role in the way Black women view beautiful hair and beauty itself. Frantz Fanon attributes this phenomenon to two processes - the lactification of consciousness and the epidermalization of inferiority - both of which are the interiorization of an inferiority complex due to socioeconomic depravities, and the desire to "whiten the race as if to become like milk" (pg. 47).

Chris Rock touches upon this only a little in that he interviews various Black celebrities and hairstylists who state that Black women want "Fara Fawcett" hair or "Bond girl" hair etc. The problem with this is that Chris Rock does not follow up on this by illustrating that natural Black hair is indeed beautiful and valuable. He does not show that some powerful and beautiful/sexy Black heroines in film do indeed have natural hair, such as Pam Grier's character Foxy Brown. Furthermore, what really disappointed me was that when he facilitated a dialogue in which a group of women told one group member who was sporting an afro that she does not look "put together" or "professional" enough to be a lawyer (for instance), he does nothing to contradict them. He doesn't even give the woman with the afro any screen time to respond to these criticisms. He doesn't even try to find the root cause as to why these women feel this way or try to find out how Black women have come to the idea that to look professional one needs to have straight hair.

In addition, I found "Good Hair" highly misogynistic in that Chris Rock treated the men in the film as rational, as the voices of reason while the women were foolish hair-buying fanatics. The film completely disregards the reality that Black men are just as particular about Black women having "good hair" as Black women are. Many of the Black men in the film did not seem to respect or sympathize with Black women especially since Chris Rock characterizes the men as the breadwinners or as the funding behind the trips to the hairdresser. And when he showed Black women getting their hair done (according to the film, the cost of weaves range from $1000 to $3,500) he felt the need to ask these women what they did for a living, which I found demeaning. I did not find the film to be an insightful text and I truly feel that the film provides white audiences with even more stereotypes regarding Black women. Since the film does not seem to have a point, I think it is a very dangerous possibility that whatever white audience the film acquired will leave thinking Black women are foolish and indulgent, while Black women will leave feeling belittled.

In the end, I found "Good Hair" superficial, insulting, and incredibly disappointing as Chris Rock fails to provide any insight regarding the reasons why Black women are so hateful and insecure about their natural hair. As the film does not problematize the term "good hair" and only the women who try to acquire it, I don't think it does the Black (female) community any favours.

Black Children's [Canadian} Literature: Findings by Zetta Elliott

After Zetta Elliott, a Brooklyn-based African-Canadian author and educator, realized her books were not getting much attention in Canada, she decided to do some research and compile a list of children's books with Black protagonists. What she found was that the few Canadian children's books with Black protagonists available in bookstores or schools were written by white authors and the stories themselves did not take place in contemporary African-American communities. To take a look at her research follow the links below:

http://zettaelliott.wordpress.com/2010/04/06/numbers-dont-lie-do-they/
http://zettaelliott.wordpress.com/2010/04/05/stats/
http://zettaelliott.wordpress.com/2010/04/02/aint-they-black/