Week 9: The Clothesline Swing, Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People about Race

I’ve decided to give myself a break. I have been struggling to keep up with my goal of three books a week so instead, I’m going to make my goal a bit more achievable and go with only two books. If I’m able to get to a third, it will be a surprise review. If not, oh well. We’ll be back to our regularly scheduled programming next week.

The Clothesline Swing, Ahmad Danny Ramadan: I’ve read the first chapter of this book and so far I’m quite enjoying the writing style.

Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race, Reni Eddo-Lodge: I saw this book on a “books to read in 2018” list and I immediately added it to my TBR pile. It is so critical that people of all marginalized groups have space to speak of their own experience and not have those who do not belong to that group speak for them. I’m looking forward to listening to what this book has to say.

Today, in southern Ontario, we are having beautiful weather! It is 13º Celsius and sunny so I am going to take a blanket and my book onto the balcony and enjoy this little bit of sun before the environment remembers it’s still winter and returns to freezing temperatures!

Review: The Inconvenient Indian, Thomas King

This review is going to be short but please do not correlate lack of comments with quality of book. The Inconvenient Indian was great, and you should definitely read it.

TL; DR, spoiler-free review: a brief history of Native peoples and how they have been treated by Canadian and American governments, bracketed by a bit of social commentary. Thomas King’s humour makes you laugh, even when you’re really angry.

You’re-verbose-and-I-like-it review: I find it difficult to review a book about history because it’s about relaying information and I’m not going to dispute the facts. What I can say is that I had a very broad understanding of Native history in North America and now I am much more well-informed.

King writes with a sense of humour that is sarcastic and dry which made me laugh many times. Not an out loud belly laugh but a smirking, knowing sort of snicker, as if you are part of an inside joke. For example, in the first chapter, he says, “So, am I suggesting that race is a criterion in the creation of North American history? No, it wasn’t a suggestion at all.” Not something you’d find on stage at a comedy show but this sort of dry wit always works for me.

The Inconvenient Indian also made me angry. I knew Native relations with North American governments were still fraught with tension but I did not know how bad it really was. It’s also pretty astounding to read some of the harmful things our politicians have said. For example, Stephen Harper, former Prime Minister of Canada, said at the G20 Summit in Philadelphia, “We [Canada] have no history of colonialism.” This must be proof that alternate dimensions exist because I would love to know what wonky history Harper has studied.

I thought this book would be essential reading, and it is. Joseph Boyden says it best, in a quote on the back of the book: “For those who wish to better understand Native peoples, it is a must-read. For those who don’t wish to understand, it is even more so.”

Review: Precious Cargo, Craig Davidson

It pains me to give a book a bad review. Disliking a book goes against what I know to be good and right with the world. I was so excited to jump into the Canada Reads shortlist but this will be the second book that has left me wondering what the judges are thinking. I’ll be interested to hear the debates for this book because I can’t imagine that this is representative of Canada’s best (non-fiction) writing.

About this book: I find the back cover copy to be overly flowery and misleading now that I’ve read the book. Precious Cargo‘s basic premise is that Craig Davidson, a failed writer, is desperate for a job. A flyer in his mailbox declares “Bus Drivers Wanted” so he applies. When training is complete, he is assigned bus 3077, on which will ride five special needs children. The story is about the year he spent driving these kids to and from school.

TL;DR, spoiler-free review: I thought this book would be about the children and their disabilities. Instead it’s a self-congratulatory retelling of how the bus driver deals with the kids’ disabilities. If you’re looking for literature about disability, look for work written by a disabled person or someone who works in the helping professions, not a writer that moonlighted in the field for five whole minutes.

You’re-verbose-and-I-like-it review: Precious Cargo was more about Craig Davidson than it was about the children on his bus. I figured it would be about him to an extent, but I thought the book would deal more with the kids and their disabilities. Instead, it’s about Craig and how he discovers, as the back of the book tells us, “unexpected reserves of empathy” for the children in his care. This phrasing is so weird to me. Unexpected? What, did you think you wouldn’t like disabled children? Were you going to bully them? Of course I don’t believe that’s how he thought but do you not generally have empathy for those different than you? Or, more likely, did he just never think about their experiences and thus, when he finally did, he found he had empathy for them. And now, what, you want me to congratulate you? Umm.. no.

The Acknowledgements mention that he spoke to various doctors while writing the book and I wish he had included some of that information. Apparently those chapters were removed because they “might take readers out of the on-the-bus narrative”. Strange then, that there was plenty of space to include random chapters from an unpublished novel he wrote where he named his characters after the children on the bus. These chapters are distracting, unnecessary, and they take the reader out of the on-the-bus narrative. *eye roll* Without more information, I find his explanations of the children’s disabilities superficial. To illustrate my point, I don’t even remember what disabilities two of the five children had. Furthermore, he barely mentions the only girl on the bus, and when he does, he just repeats the same anecdote. He seems to tell stories about them so that he can then tell readers how he reacted, rather than recognizing them as individuals and making sure the readers get to know them as well as he apparently did.

Toward the end of the book, Davidson talks about the best day on the job. With all five kids on the bus, everyone is telling stories, making jokes, and laughing. He says, “all noticeable differences melted away and they became kids, same as any other kids.” I find this disingenuous and frankly, ableist. The children are not the same, and they don’t need to be the same as other kids to experience joy. He goes on to say that the children’s disabilities “never should have defined those kids in the first place”, which is true, but even he, with his “unexpected reserves of empathy”, still employs ableist language.

I will give Davidson credit because it takes a measure of bravery to blatantly say how ignorant you are, and there are several occasions in the book when he admits he reacts incorrectly or does the wrong thing. I just can’t get past how self-congratulatory the book can be. Toward the end, he explains how, on a chemical level, we are all the same. We’re all made of the same elements that have been recycled over and over since the creation of the planet. Seeing the Rocky Mountains in the distance, he says, “Every eye on the bus was focused on those peaks because we are naturally drawn to such sights—and in this way, and in almost every other way, everyone on that bus was the same. We are all elementarily human.” I’m glad that year on the bus was transformative for him but the “we’re all the same, man” statement is a little obnoxious, especially since, if you are a person with any amount of empathy, you didn’t need 300 pages to learn a lesson you already knew.