i hate school. i hate school. i hate school.
i just needed to say that.
i just started an online class, and i even hate this. it's only one class. and i hate it.
i tend to look at things in the complete context of life. more so, i like to feel and know that something will benefit me or another or be vital to my list of life experiences in order for me to do it. when something's benefit is not completely clear or has some societal norm as its main reasoning, then it hate it even more.
this is my dilemma with school.
i love to learn. i love reading. i love libraries. i love travelling and knowing random, often ignored and sometimes unnecessary facts. i am a voracious reader, 99% of which is non-fiction. i love knowledge to the third power and i actively seek it on a daily basis.
the problem is that, while this is the main goal of school, for me, it often just gets in my way. i could be finishing "The Souls of Black Folk" by W.E.B. DuBois or "Colonize This!", but instead i'm reading some shit by Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost. don't get me wrong, they're good in their own right, but after 13 years of public schooling, and at this point in my life when i've learned enough to realize the high level of euro-centrism in our school system (colleges included), it's about to make me commit suicide i'm so bored and done with it. i'm done with english prose and european standards of literature and writing and formats and poetry.
i want to read some Indian author thats highly acclaimed even in Sri Lanka. i want to read some author from the Phillipines, from Japan, from Brazil (Freire??) and Columbia, from Mexico and Central America, and from Africa! i can't even name 3 works of Literature from Mexico, Japan, or the entire African Continent. WHAT THE FUCK?
i'm about to puke up some nastiness of Dickinson, Whitman and Frost in about 2 seconds. the only thing thats keeping me going is that one unit from the one i'm working on now is the always present black literature section, omnipresent like the token black or "ethnic" person that was probably a requirement of the state to include it in the class. not because the lit teachers of the admins actually read or enjoy or consider these works worthy, but because they know they'd get hell from the infamous Jackson and Sharpton tag team if they failed to include SOME piece of work by someone black. it's almost always from the Harlem Renaissance as if it was the only time in American history that black people wrote anything worth reading.
i also hate school because i personally see no value in a diploma. societally and financially, theres much weight in a diploma, but it personally means nothing to me. knowledge is what i seek, and more often than not that has come from outside the classroom. school is an attempt to put a fence around knowledge and claim it as its child. college, specifically, does that as well as tries to sell it like it's her slave.
i'm done with my rant for now. that is all...
I feel you, sista...BUT (not a conditional "but," rather Born.Universal.Truth) get through it. with your consciousness, reading euro centric bullshit won't hinder your growth. Do it and move the fuck along. Don't put down your readings of choice.... just read more =)
ReplyDeletelove and respect,
Y
i completely agree with what you've written. about two years ago i made a vow to ensure that i read and buy books by non-white and non-Western authors after i discovered that most of the 100 and so books i had accumulated were all written by a certain group of people. i treasure diversity in any aspect of life and people tend to accuse me of racism because of my choices, they couldn't be further from the truth. i've spent most of my childhood and teenage years (i.e. most of my life) reading books by white authors. books that in most cases did not reflect my reality. it's only fair that at this point in my life i focus on gaining all the years i missed out on reading works from authors of other races, nationalities, religions, etc.
ReplyDeletecurrently i'm interested in speculative fiction and i've come across several websites that deal exclusively in speculative fiction by 'other people' such as women of colour, African authors, Asian authors etc. i suggest you venture deep into the internetz on your search for authors from Sri Lanka, Mexico, etc. i know a couple of blogs if you're interested in speculative fiction from all over the world :D
thanks Yvette. definitely a Born.Universal.Truth.
ReplyDelete@Eccentric Yoruba
exactly. i've found that many of the female authors that are included in these Literature classes are usually upper class whites whose pinnacles of unhappiness include an unromantic husband and being bored with too many family vacations. or, like many black feminists have said about white feminist, that their biggest issues were "dishpan hands" and nothing near the realities faced by women of color.
and thats whose writing i want to read. i'm tired of dead, anglo-saxon, protestant, western men.
it is definitely something we owe to ourselves as people of color to designate years (if not decades) in which we spend time learning about the non-western side to our histories; de-colonization.
and please do share. what exactly is speculative fiction?