Tayari's Blog: By The Book

Posted by TayariJones on September 30, 2007 07:22 AM
Filed under Bookshelf

Carleen, the Empress of Pajamaland, tagged me on a book meme. So here is my attempt at being a good citizen of the internet.

Total Number of Books I Own: Don't know. I have six shelves here at the apartment. One big shelf at work. I don't know if we can count all the remaindered copies of my own novels that are stacked up in my mama's basement.

Five Meaningful Books:

  • One: Native Son by Richard Wright. My dad hipped me to this novel when I was about fifteen years old. He said that it made him so angry that he "wanted to kill somebody." I read it and, while I wasn't moved to murder, I was very affected by the novel and it's overt critique of racism. I used it as the subject of my AP English essay. (I failed the exam.)
  • Two: I'll choose Native Son for my second novel in the list, too. When I was a student at Spelman College, we read Native Son in a class called "Images of Women in Literature", taught my Gloria Wade Gayles, the most popular professor in the English Department. Professor Gayles didn't just enter the classroom like a regular person, she sort of barged into every space and occupied it completely. "Did Bigger Thomas kill on purpose?" We all raised our hands and the professor called on me and I insisted that he had killed the white daughter of his employer by accident and didn't deserve the death penalty. The professor cut me off. "You forgot Bessie," she said, reminding us that Bigger did in fact murder his black girlfriend. "It's bad enough that Richard Wright didn't really consider this murder, but this is Spelman College! Bessie matters here."

    I think of this as one of the pivotal moments in my development as a woman, a writer, and a thinker. I learned how a writer by emphasizing or de-emphasizing certain details can shape the way a reader understands the events in the text. That reading of Native Son also taught me about reading against the text, how to be a resistant reader.

  • Three: The third book, is Maud Martha by Gwendolyn Brooks. I hardly ever re-read this novel, but from it, I learned that a book can be quiet. More specifically, I learned that a book by a black author can be quiet. Brooks said that she wrote Maud Martha in response to Native Son. She was worried that for a book to be considered "black" it had to be about racism in an overt way, that the characters needed to struggle with some huge and dramatic crisis. She believed that writing about Maud Martha's life was a revolutionary act, that committing ordinary people's lives to the page was a kind of resistance. (On a related note: Asali Solomon, has just won my heart with this appreciation of Maud Martha.)

  • Fourth book: Annotations by John Keene. Experimental and brilliant. I owe John Keene big time. After I read Annotations I started writing the middle section of Leaving Atlanta.

  • Fifth: Beloved.

    Last Book Read: Beloved. Again.

    Last Book Bought: Throw Like A Girl by Jean Thompson.


    I'm not passing this meme on. I feel like I have tapped out all my sources. But if you want to do it on your own, by all means, do and just let me know so I can link.

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    There are 3 comments on "By The Book". If you'd like to leave a comment, click here to jump down to the comments entry form.

    Comment #1, by minaj [TypeKey Profile Page]

    I was so thrilled when Pearl Cleage included the Gloria Wade Gayles analysis of Native Son in one of her novels. I had been complaining about the cavalier disposal of a Black woman's life for years - my dear, patient daughter gets to hear all of my rants over and over again. I found Native Son literally unbearable because of this and I was so happy to know that I wasn't the only one to be upset by it.

    October 1, 2007 12:30 AM

    Comment #2, by Sarah Schulman [TypeKey Profile Page]

    John Keene is an amazing writer. What is he doing now?

    October 1, 2007 08:02 AM

    Comment #3, by Jstheater [TypeKey Profile Page]

    Tayari, thanks so much for the kind words. I'm a great fan of yours, as you know. And of course, Sarah is one of the writers whose work and example I long ago took to heart. Courage, vision, talent, she's got it all!

    October 8, 2007 05:36 PM

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