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A review by cjvenable
Feeling White: Whiteness, Emotionality, and Education by Cheryl E. Matias
3.0
I think this book is very important, but was a mixed bag for me personally. Some of the analysis was extremely powerful and valuable to challenge me as a White person to consider more deeply my complicity in Whiteness and colonization. Some of the connections, however, did not work for me. In particular, some of the author's personal narratives about motherhood fell flat for me as a nonbinary trans person. Perhaps it was my own discomfort at personal sharing in scholarly work (or the tone that was used to do so) that threw me off. I've been wrestling with whether or not my Whiteness is causing me to be overly critical of some of these moments. I'm still unsure.
One thing I would have liked more of was deep engagement with the literature and theorizing about Whiteness. Some of the chapters felt repetitive and much of the literature in each chapter was used in subsequent chapters. While it's certainly not a bad idea to reinforce concepts, having essentially the same point and the same quote from a text used repeatedly felt unhelpful and could have had a greater impact if there was a greater variety of literature used and argument made. Sometimes I felt like just as some deep engagement was established and a source (like Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks or Memmi's The Colonizer and the Colonized), a chapter ended and a new topic was introduced. Perhaps this book's intended audience is someone for whom these concepts are new, but I was hoping for a deeper dive into this theorization.
I'm excited to see what comes next as more complex theorization and analysis of Whiteness develops from/alongside this work.
One thing I would have liked more of was deep engagement with the literature and theorizing about Whiteness. Some of the chapters felt repetitive and much of the literature in each chapter was used in subsequent chapters. While it's certainly not a bad idea to reinforce concepts, having essentially the same point and the same quote from a text used repeatedly felt unhelpful and could have had a greater impact if there was a greater variety of literature used and argument made. Sometimes I felt like just as some deep engagement was established and a source (like Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks or Memmi's The Colonizer and the Colonized), a chapter ended and a new topic was introduced. Perhaps this book's intended audience is someone for whom these concepts are new, but I was hoping for a deeper dive into this theorization.
I'm excited to see what comes next as more complex theorization and analysis of Whiteness develops from/alongside this work.