summer 2021 reading

 SUMMER READING 2021

 

Gwendolyn Brooks summed up a lot of folk wisdom in four words:   FIRST FIGHT. THEN FIDDLE.  This imperative does not limit our habitual enjoyment of literature, drama, fiction, the sciences and a range of arts, but it does serve as a powerful reminder that we ought not squander time. We ought to invest more in critical, analytic thinking which empowers us to detect forces that seem to be making remarkable progress in destroying whatever has been positive in the American democratic experiments.

FIRST FIGHT. THEN FIDDLE.

 

We ought to devote summer reading to examining what is prophetic in such political fictions as Brave New World, 1984, and Animal Farm and The Man Who Lived Underground along with the speculative fictions of Octavia Butler, Ishmael Reed, and Toni Cade Bambara.

 

The American population (2021) is approximately 33, 915, 073 plus or minus newly born children and those who die daily from COVID-19.  Life expectancy is estimated to be 78.99 years. We can start with the 2020 Census Report to interrogate the current quality of life in the USA.

 

https://www,census.gov/data

 

It is worth knowing that the census is very selective in reporting crime, focusing on homicide and ignoring data on corporate crime. Note that the census usually excludes "killings in armed conflict" perpetrated by "fairly cohesive groups of up to several hundred members."

 

Two other reference sites worth exploring  are

 

1619 Project ----https://www, project 1619.org

 

and

 

1776 Unites Curriculum ----https://1776 unites.com

 

The oppositional  projects are designed to manipulate the American mindscape in the arena of education and establish boundaries for what can or cannot be taught about the complexity of American history.  This morning's C-SPAN "Washington Journal" cast light on the hegemony of the black/white binary which constipates thinking. The program featured a discussion of the merits and pitfalls of Critical Race Theory between Chanelle Wilson, co-editor of the Journal of Critical Education Policy Studies and Ian Rowe, an American Enterprise Institute Domestic Policy Studies Resident Fellow.

 

Viola Fletcher's testimony before a House Judiciary Committee about the 1921 Tulsa Massacre was an extraordinary instance of "the grit and resilience of the Black survivors of racist violence." With a clear mind and very strong voice, Fletcher (107-years-old) said " I have lived through the massacre everyday. A country may forget this history, I cannot.  I will not.  And other survivors do not.  And our descendents will not."  I want to etch these words in my mind when I get around to reading Karlos K. Hill's The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre: A Photographic History (2021).  Having visual and written  evidence will be crucial as we go forward in the nightmare terrain of 21st-century America. FIRST FIGHT. THEN FIDDLE.

 

Jerry W. Ward, Jr.            May 23, 2021

 


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