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well let me just say that I was a very voracious reader but I'm not sure I was a very discerning reader
I think a lot of things went over my head i can remember now
reading some things that I clearly had no business reading
and I know I read some things that went way over my head erskine caldwell comes to
mind you had no business reading erskine caldwell I had no business but my parents were
so deferential to authority and the authority of this nicely bound book
from the public library hey they never questioned what i was reading
uh... i don't know uh... i just I was a born nebish i was a born nerd
the earliest I can remember i was the braniac I was the smart kid
and I just loved books
our little world was so closed like I said our only social outlet was
church choir practice wednesday night church all day sunday
movies were a huge event when i was a little kid you dressed up for them there were six kids
two parents so we didn't go very often
and this stuff didn't exist the ESPN zone and laser tag and computers
kids had to make their own world and i think i early discovered that in books I could
go around the world in twenty days i could go twenty thousand leagues under the
sea
uh... i could go on the moors with heathcliff and kathy I could mutiny on
the bounty I could go to the south seas
and in books
our home was so straight laced and your wants were just not very important if you were hungry
tired sleepy doesn't matter you're alive you've got a roof over your head but in books my
emotions mattered I'd sit there reading with tears streaming down my face
or laughing so hard and that was a place where didn't have to be decorous and
calm and quiet i could go off in a corner and laugh my head off and read a
passage five times so my feelings mattered I was free in books and the
more i read the freer i could be as our household became
more and more a danger zone
books in the bathroom going up and down the steps i walked out into traffic
i lived my whole life in books do you think there was any downside to the
reading of books I mean did you for example get ideas in your head
that as a young person
as an older person you might reject as a younger person you had no background to reject
I could when i said i wasn't a discerning reader
I read some things that were clearly we didn't know I didn't know anything about black
literature until I taught myself in my twenties I didn't know anything about the harlem
renaissance I didn't know black people could write books
until I stumbled across maya angelou's first memoir when i in
my late teens
so i didn't say man i wish i could read about black people
but i definitely understand that I could read these books
but i couldn't really exist in them they weren't for me I was allowed to watch them but
i could never imagine myself as kathy you know i could never imagine myself
uh... as madam bovary i could never be that was for white
people and it was clearly i would read things that were insulting and
derogatory samba i read a lot of fables and fairy tales and stuff like
that
but i don't think on a conscience level
i said wow that was really no that never happened
i but i think i stored these things away and fit into in the book
i talk a lot about my years of self hatred and you know uh... and being
hating other black people and that's partly because you lived in two
different worlds you lived in a white world to for awhile
explain that briefly if you will in nineteen sixty seven or so as a direct result of civil rights movement
uh... i was in
in a very early integration class of the gifted elementary program in north
saint louis saint louis was firmly racially segregated north side
black south side white
working whites
suburbs white people with money
um... and to get into this program was this incredible thing my parents
debated about it for ever but i really wanted to go not because i wanted to
strike a blow for racial freedom or for women but i just wanted more school i
went better school my neighborhood school had stopped being
challenging
and i everybody hated me because i was i had no social skills i was always
correcting people and arguing with the teachers and that sort of stuff and I
was a really good girl I was the hall monitor I was the teachers pet i didn't know
how to sort of to go along to get along if I knew the answer you're wrong it's two
you know
and at the white school they were teaching you things that made you devalue
absolutley
you know you'd go home the one example I always remember is
fine is cup
cup and table yeah
as opposed to cup and saucer
and instead of being mad that people's futures
get decided on these tests on the basis of
oh he's stupid he doesn't know it nobody used cup and
a saucer would be something to eat off of in my house you don't put a cup on a
but I knew from my reading and it set me apart from people in the neighborhood
and i would think them stupid for getting that wrong on the test you know the description
of what that uh... the uh... young kid that little boy said
and you wrote it in dialect about
who the hell be usin' a cup and saucer around here I mean
nobody it really it really it really said it all
it really said it all