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jstimmins 's review for:
Thick: And Other Essays
by Tressie McMillan Cottom
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
I screen-capped a lot of citations and highlighted quite a few passages in some essays, not very many in others. I would like to read a longer version with more analytical detail of “Know your white people.” I’m pretty sure the last seven years have given Cottom plenty to work with.
“The personal essay had become the way that black women writers claim legitimacy in a public discourse that defines itself, in part, by how well it excludes black women. In a modern society, who is allowed to speak with authority is a political act.”
““I just like what I like” is always a capitalist lie. Beauty would be a useless concept for capital if it were only a preference in the purest sense. Capital demands that beauty be coercive. If beauty matters at all to how people perceive you, how institutions treat you, which rules are applied to you, and what choices you can make, then beauty must also be a structure of patterns, institutions, and exchanges that eats your preferences for lunch.”
“There is not a single global, national, or local condition to which black women’s intellectual, spiritual, and emotional intelligences cannot be trusted to bring greater clarity. The 2016 election of Donald Trump joins the rise of nationalist, xenophobic, racist, sexist, and classist demagogues ascending to and consolidating power across the world. If not now, when?”
“The personal essay had become the way that black women writers claim legitimacy in a public discourse that defines itself, in part, by how well it excludes black women. In a modern society, who is allowed to speak with authority is a political act.”
““I just like what I like” is always a capitalist lie. Beauty would be a useless concept for capital if it were only a preference in the purest sense. Capital demands that beauty be coercive. If beauty matters at all to how people perceive you, how institutions treat you, which rules are applied to you, and what choices you can make, then beauty must also be a structure of patterns, institutions, and exchanges that eats your preferences for lunch.”
“There is not a single global, national, or local condition to which black women’s intellectual, spiritual, and emotional intelligences cannot be trusted to bring greater clarity. The 2016 election of Donald Trump joins the rise of nationalist, xenophobic, racist, sexist, and classist demagogues ascending to and consolidating power across the world. If not now, when?”