Book Club Log #10
This month's book was By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land by Rebecca Nagle. I really enjoyed this book, so I made an effort to go to book club even though I was still coughing a bit from the cold I caught in Japan. (As usual, I was masked the whole time.)
I figured I actually wanted to have a substantial conversation with someone who had read the book, so I sat right next to Bookstore Employee even when basically all seats were open.
Multiple Names Guy's friend came again, so I guess I will have to come up with a pseudonym for him eventually. Not sure he actually read this book, though.
Old Guy also ended up sitting next to me because he was asking me about my pronouns and the like and he had written an essay that he wanted me to read. Of which he had also given a copy to Chill Lady weeks ago, but she hasn't finished reading it. I briefly looked it over and it mentioned my name in one of the first few sentences, so I guess this really did come from my conversations with him about The Wretched of the Earth. Chill Lady said later that it was also partly because she had been complaining that the introduction to that book was written in a very non-accessible way (which wasn't even written by Fanon himself). Apparently it has something to do with the concept of the colonized intellectual. I have no idea if I will understand any of this, but I will give it a good try. Purple Corn also wanted a copy of this essay, so either Chill Lady or I will have to scan and DM her a copy since he didn't remember to print out another.
As for the actual book club discussion, they tried a new tactic this time where they asked if anyone wanted to talk about a specific question rather than going from the top as we don't ever get to everything. Honestly, I felt like everything I wanted to say I managed to say to Bookstore Employee (since we ended up in pair share, as I had hoped), and it wasn't really anything different than what I've emailed my friend for now. So I just watched what they chose, and since we have a newish member (has come 3 times) who is also a teacher (bringing the was-or-is teacher count up to 3), they started talking about how Native American history is taught poorly. But Cool Earrings (not dragonflies today but swallowtails) is of the opinion that her school is doing it better since they don't have the CA Mission Project anymore and she gets to teach her 5th graders about genocide.
A big theme here was just how kids learn from a young age to value individual achievement over collaborative or team work, and this seems to be something they've already picked up in elementary school. I think this has been touched on before, but people mentioned that it's really hard to hold the "I like living in this country that says it will give me stability" and "But we shouldn't be here as settlers." It is indeed something that all settlers who become aware of the true history of Indigenous peoples in the USA have to grapple with and hold in its true complexity. That, and the United States of America has never had to actually grapple with decolonization, unlike some European empires (though that process isn't quite complete either).
I mostly kept quiet until the final call for questions, when I suggested #6 but was drowned out by the sound of other people talking. I was fine with just letting it go as it didn't fit the flow, but Old Guy had heard me and ended up calling it back to me.
So I said some stuff that I had already expressed to Bookstore Employee about how this book really made me understand that there's no good way to survive a genocide and that in cases like that you really need an outside force to interfere. Purple Corn piped up and was like, like Deus Ex Machina? and I was like, uhh, not quite like that (because that's a fictional literary device and I'm talking about real people?? but maybe I should've just ran with it). No one really had a related thought to that besides Bookstore Employee bringing it back to Palestine, which is again, already what they had said in response to me in our pair shares and why I had chosen them to sit with.
I'm noticing that you really have to guide the convo if you want to steer it to what you want to talk about... but again, don't feel like doing that. I think as someone who leans more into academic it probably helps to also know what the more general impressions are, as long as I can also talk to my one book friend about the ideas in depth later.
Other random notes are that Bookstore Employee #2, who occasionally joins, seems to know a lot about how Indigenous nations are currently faring since they studied anthropology in grad school and seem to have taken it upon themself to learn more. Which is cool.
I think I'm developing a sense of who I like to talk to for pair or group shares that goes like: text is dense or hard nonfiction = sit with Bookstore Employee or Old Guy; text is fiction = sit with Chill Lady if I can catch her; any type of text = Teacher Lady is also OK.
After the discussion, I ended up in a group conversation centering Old Guy with Chill Lady, Chill Lady's partner, Purple Corn, and Multiple Names Guy. As usual, Old Guy was talking about a lot of random things that were apparently connected in his brain, but Purple Corn was also trying to actively respond to him. I noticed that she seemed more genuine rather than just entertaining him, which I thought was interesting. She's a pretty good conversation partner for him, even though she doesn't seem to really understand everything he's going on about either. I asked them after Old Guy was gone if they understood him and they were basically like "sometimes," but they all seem pretty good natured about it. I think I'll adopt this attitude rather than trying to actually get in deep, because the semantic gap between us is really big and makes me a bit frustrated when I can't really voice everything I think about his ideas because I can't tell how he's going to take them or in what direction he's gonna run. It's just so counter to how I work through things.
Purple Corn and Multiple Names Guy browsed some books, and I saw the dragon bakery picture book that was from that post on Tumblr so I picked it up and skimmed through it. Cute concept. I asked Purple Corn about what romance stuff she reads, but it seems like it's mostly books so I didn't really comment further. Probably should have mentioned that I read comics just to share something to match, but I didn't manage to in the moment. Who knows if I'll get my chance or if that's really an important detail anyway. Chill Lady's partner seems pretty quiet, but talking with her was fine as always.
I think Purple Corn is nice but I feel like I either keep whiffing our chances to have a fun conversation or we're just not on the same wavelength and that's that. I guess time will tell.