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books_coffees_wines's review against another edition
4.0
“You did not create the inequalities and injustices of this world, daughter. You are neither solely nor uniquely responsible to fix them. If there is anything to learn from the story of our ancestry, it is that you should respect and protect yourself; that you should demand not only justice but joy; that you should see, truly see, the vulnerability and the creativity and the enduring beauty of others.”
Chariandy writes an intimate letter to his teenage daughter, offering his hopes for her future and sharing his personal history – on race and identity. He discusses the racism he experiences and the effects of this “But they take a toll. These indications in both life and culture, that you don’t belong here, not really, that you are distasteful and immediately suspect, that speech and thought are not expected of you.”
Very poignant book and I had tears in my eyes at multiple times while reading. What a powerful book for such a short one. This was beautiful – and a book you could read in one sitting as it is only 88 pages.
“The future I yearn for is not one in which we will all be clothed in sameness, but one in which we will finally learn to both read and respectfully discuss our differences.”
Chariandy writes an intimate letter to his teenage daughter, offering his hopes for her future and sharing his personal history – on race and identity. He discusses the racism he experiences and the effects of this “But they take a toll. These indications in both life and culture, that you don’t belong here, not really, that you are distasteful and immediately suspect, that speech and thought are not expected of you.”
Very poignant book and I had tears in my eyes at multiple times while reading. What a powerful book for such a short one. This was beautiful – and a book you could read in one sitting as it is only 88 pages.
“The future I yearn for is not one in which we will all be clothed in sameness, but one in which we will finally learn to both read and respectfully discuss our differences.”
wineandbooks's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
Beautiful, loving, reflective.
sjklass's review against another edition
3.0
Out for lunch with his young daughter, David Chariady is on the receiving end of a callous, ignorant act of racism. Ten years later, he writes this letter to his daughter to explain to her why he didn’t retaliate or even react in that moment. Canada is known worldwide for its diversity and tolerance but Chariandy reminds us that that’s not everyone’s experience. Born in Canada to Caribbean and South Asian immigrant parents, David shares his own story and prepares his daughter for life in Canada as a visible minority. I wish it were better.
nickfourtimes's review against another edition
4.0
1) "Maybe the differences between our childhoods are but a version of those that exist between many parents and children. My own parents, your beloved grandparents, were not imaginary immigrant parents but real and specific ones, Black and South Asian people who journeyed to this country more than half a century ago, who worked lifelong as a minder of children and a factory labourer. They experienced many indignities and deep body aches, sacrifices and shortages, but they worked hard and they managed to raise a writer who is also a professor of literature, a fact of which they are proud but also, at times, perplexed. They do not understand everything about me, but I’m sure they believe, for good reason, that they have provided a better life for their son, and that many if not all the challenges they once experienced no longer affect me."
2) "You did not create the inequalities and injustices of this world, daughter. You are neither solely nor uniquely responsible to fix them. If there is anything to learn from the story of our ancestry, it is that you should respect and protect yourself; that you should demand not only justice but joy; that you should see, truly see, the vulnerability and the creativity and the enduring beauty of others. Today, many years after indenture and especially slavery, there are many who continue to live painfully in wakes of historical violence. And there are current terrible circumstances whereby others, in the desperate hope for a better life, either migrate or are pushed across the hardened borders of nations and find themselves stranded in unwelcoming lands. We live in a time, dearest daughter, when the callous and ignorant in wealthy nations have made it their business to loudly proclaim who are the deserving 'us' (those really 'us') and who are the alien and undeserving 'them.' But the story of our origins offers us a different insight. The people we imagine most apart from 'us' are, oftentimes, our own forgotten kin."
3) "I have tried to instill in both of you a strong sense of pride regarding your African and South Asian ancestry, knowing that one may very easily be made to feel otherwise. But the fact is that I’ve never actually named you one way or the other, never told you, authoritatively, what you are, racially speaking. I suppose that I have imagined, at times, that you, as such complexly mixed children, might have the opportunity to choose and declare your own identity. I had forgotten that racial identity is so rarely a matter of personal choice. That it is always, in origin, a falsehood and violence, though it can become, all the same, a necessary tool for acknowledging the enduring life and creativity of a persistently maligned people."
4) "That was how you handled the incident. But how did we as parents? Your mother was very angry. It was the anger of someone who had never been named the way your brother was, but who has known, as a woman, other damaging labels. I’m happy both that she revealed her anger and that you saw it. Never let anyone tell you that as a girl, you shouldn’t express how angry you are. I was angry too, but, later that evening, when we gathered as a family, I wanted to speak from something other than that emotion. For some vague and unspoken reason, we had decided, all four of us, to sit on the polished wooden floor of the living room, everyone except the notoriously inflexible me sitting fairly comfortably. In this already awkward position, I wanted to explain something to your brother, but also to you and your mother, something of vital importance, something I’d been meaning to tell you for a long time about the experience of being named. But now, as the opportunity presented itself, I was failing. I tried again and again. I kept swallowing and clearing my throat, noticing both you and your brother glancing at me but trying not to stare."
5) "I understood very well that the hurtful people around me were never monsters of the Hollywood-movie type. The boy who regaled us with [n-word] jokes might also choose me first for his team. The girl who scorned me, laughed about me with her friends, might also tell me during a chance encounter in an empty school stairwell that, actually, it wasn’t true that I was ugly. I glimpsed their contradictions, their inner doubts and vulnerabilities, their brave curiosities and cowardly tribalisms, their sincere desire to be good and also their ability to be casually cruel. The truth is that before I could appreciate my own complex humanity, I was made to understand and appreciate theirs, which I saw confirmed, over and over again, on television, in films, and in books."
2) "You did not create the inequalities and injustices of this world, daughter. You are neither solely nor uniquely responsible to fix them. If there is anything to learn from the story of our ancestry, it is that you should respect and protect yourself; that you should demand not only justice but joy; that you should see, truly see, the vulnerability and the creativity and the enduring beauty of others. Today, many years after indenture and especially slavery, there are many who continue to live painfully in wakes of historical violence. And there are current terrible circumstances whereby others, in the desperate hope for a better life, either migrate or are pushed across the hardened borders of nations and find themselves stranded in unwelcoming lands. We live in a time, dearest daughter, when the callous and ignorant in wealthy nations have made it their business to loudly proclaim who are the deserving 'us' (those really 'us') and who are the alien and undeserving 'them.' But the story of our origins offers us a different insight. The people we imagine most apart from 'us' are, oftentimes, our own forgotten kin."
3) "I have tried to instill in both of you a strong sense of pride regarding your African and South Asian ancestry, knowing that one may very easily be made to feel otherwise. But the fact is that I’ve never actually named you one way or the other, never told you, authoritatively, what you are, racially speaking. I suppose that I have imagined, at times, that you, as such complexly mixed children, might have the opportunity to choose and declare your own identity. I had forgotten that racial identity is so rarely a matter of personal choice. That it is always, in origin, a falsehood and violence, though it can become, all the same, a necessary tool for acknowledging the enduring life and creativity of a persistently maligned people."
4) "That was how you handled the incident. But how did we as parents? Your mother was very angry. It was the anger of someone who had never been named the way your brother was, but who has known, as a woman, other damaging labels. I’m happy both that she revealed her anger and that you saw it. Never let anyone tell you that as a girl, you shouldn’t express how angry you are. I was angry too, but, later that evening, when we gathered as a family, I wanted to speak from something other than that emotion. For some vague and unspoken reason, we had decided, all four of us, to sit on the polished wooden floor of the living room, everyone except the notoriously inflexible me sitting fairly comfortably. In this already awkward position, I wanted to explain something to your brother, but also to you and your mother, something of vital importance, something I’d been meaning to tell you for a long time about the experience of being named. But now, as the opportunity presented itself, I was failing. I tried again and again. I kept swallowing and clearing my throat, noticing both you and your brother glancing at me but trying not to stare."
5) "I understood very well that the hurtful people around me were never monsters of the Hollywood-movie type. The boy who regaled us with [n-word] jokes might also choose me first for his team. The girl who scorned me, laughed about me with her friends, might also tell me during a chance encounter in an empty school stairwell that, actually, it wasn’t true that I was ugly. I glimpsed their contradictions, their inner doubts and vulnerabilities, their brave curiosities and cowardly tribalisms, their sincere desire to be good and also their ability to be casually cruel. The truth is that before I could appreciate my own complex humanity, I was made to understand and appreciate theirs, which I saw confirmed, over and over again, on television, in films, and in books."
crabbygirl's review against another edition
2.0
it was interesting to read a pre-Robin-DiAngelo book where concepts like white women tears and Black bodies were being still being developed and hadn't yet landed on standard phrasing - made it seem more organic, more sincere, certainly not empty the way the the now-rote terminology rings: we've created new ways to speak about the problems we face but to no one's surprise, no real progress has been made. books like this (now four and a half years old) would not still be published. but they are.
using a letter to his daughter as a framing device was a real miss for me: much like The Last Lecture, it's ostensibly about his daughter but is really about him (and lots of him) and like The Last Lecture is more about wanting his daughter to know HIM than the other way around. but I will given him credit at his willingness to admit the unavoidable conflict: his daughter is a product of both the oppressor colonist and the oppressed coolie - her reaction is not only allowed to be more complex than her father, it's very much an experience he can know nothing about. (in the same vein he admits his luxuriating in the beauty of a foreign locale without knowing it's dark history or having his experience marred by it. in all, a very nuanced approach to a subject that tends to be framed today as obvious moral choice)
lastly, this slim book (that really should have been a magazine article if not for his connections to a publisher) is worth it alone for the re-introduction of Countee Cullen's poem Incident. I cannot write it out here as it contains the very word it's trying to illuminate, but the power in that poem demonstrates the need to confront what happens when we outlaw language, and what is lost in the process.
using a letter to his daughter as a framing device was a real miss for me: much like The Last Lecture, it's ostensibly about his daughter but is really about him (and lots of him) and like The Last Lecture is more about wanting his daughter to know HIM than the other way around. but I will given him credit at his willingness to admit the unavoidable conflict: his daughter is a product of both the oppressor colonist and the oppressed coolie - her reaction is not only allowed to be more complex than her father, it's very much an experience he can know nothing about. (in the same vein he admits his luxuriating in the beauty of a foreign locale without knowing it's dark history or having his experience marred by it. in all, a very nuanced approach to a subject that tends to be framed today as obvious moral choice)
lastly, this slim book (that really should have been a magazine article if not for his connections to a publisher) is worth it alone for the re-introduction of Countee Cullen's poem Incident. I cannot write it out here as it contains the very word it's trying to illuminate, but the power in that poem demonstrates the need to confront what happens when we outlaw language, and what is lost in the process.
bookishbrittany's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
informative
fast-paced
5.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Racial slurs and Racism