I know it doesn’t look like it because I’m not very present these days(and this is going to be a filler post to prevent you from forgetting me because I do miss you, friends!) but yes, I AM co-hosting a buddy read with @sarahs89reads, @vapoursofthoughts and @_penandpapers. The book is Middlemarch, the hashtag, #middlemarch2019. 🕵🏼♀️ (really feel like a secret agent disclosing the nuclear codes now)
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There are a lot of us reading along but it seems that we do need to be many to support each other through this massive chunk! What personally keeps me going are @but_i_thought_’s thoughtful review when she read it last year, and @well.read.redhead‘s ecstatic order to “read it read it read it!”. So far, it is a slow beginning, one of those books you know you can’t fully understand without the political and religious context of the time. But I’m confident that, like most huge books from the XIX° century, there will be a moment when I won’t be able to put the book down.
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So far, I’m accepting the slow setting-up, getting to know the characters and I’m marvelling at how surprisingly resembling it is to both Jane Austen and Edith Wharton. A very intriguing blend, if you ask me. .
That being said, I’m off again to grading some exams (does this ever end?). Oh, and my position as a temporary lecturer at Sorbonne Nouvelle has been renewed, I’m over the moon!
What’s new with you, dear friends? Any good news to share, bookish or non bookish? (I could do with some positivity after losing my grandmother. The flower on the picture comes from a plant she offered me three years ago, and it had not given any flower in 18 months... I hold on to it like a last goodbye kiss).
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“We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us; so long as he resists us we never destroy him. We convert him. (...) We shall squeeze you empty, and then we shall fill you with ourselves.”
If I was acquainted with Orwellian terms such as Newspeak and Big Brother, I didn’t expect so much despair to inhabit the dystopian and upsetting novel that is 1984.
In a post-revolution world, the date of which remains unclear because the Party keeps altering the past and denying changes, Winston, a Party member, tries to make sense of his deeply incrusted instinct that life oughtn’t be like this, that constant surveillance shouldn’t be the norm, that being always unemotional and uncompromisingly devoted to the Party is inhuman. Winston longs to be a human, to hope, to love, to live, but Spies and traitors are everywhere, condemning everybody to an utter solitude.
1984 explores what happens when the few are intoxicated with power, when the mass is carefully kept in an uneducated and economically weak state (sounds familiar?), and when a party controls everything, from your emotions to your daily chores to the past. Winston is a cog in this huge machine and his job, precisely, consists in altering the past according to the Party’s often contradictory’s orders. When history is modified & commodified on a daily basis, truth is diluted. Events don’t mean anything, only what’s left of it on written documents do, and these documents are constantly being re-written. Therefore, only the Party knows, so the Party becomes the truth.
Human landmarks disappear with each piece of historical truth, and Orwell’s obsessive question as to whether we can remain human in such circumstances leads us to the most chilling conclusion. A book that is more relevant today than ever.
Read more on the blog, #linkinbio.
Oh and #zoyarayne is the same colour as BB’s eye. Coincidence? .
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Dear friends I’m back!
The last 2 weeks have been epic, what with my iPhone being stolen (and me thinking I’m above such mundane things as backups, I lost all my pictures), my classes to prep, exams to mark, round-trips to Paris, and the daily chores in-between.... here you are: little time to read, even less to post. But for #ourdaughtersdaughterssociety, @sarahs89reads and @paperbacking invite us to talk about #WOC in honour of #BlackHistoryMonth and I thought I could make a post about my #PhDresearch.
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The stack you are gazing at, friends, is composed of my research books. My tentative title is: “towards transculturalism: the representation of alterity in the works of Adichie, Ali, Lahiri & Smith.” My very basic question at first was: how do we meet, genuinely meet, one another, when despite sharing the same language, we don’t have the same culture, hence the same frame informing the way we see the world? From this starting point, I wandered, and I am now trying to untangle a contradiction I see in the beautiful, humanistic but also optimistic definition of transculturalism by a Russian literary theorist and the representations of alterity and of transculturalism in the novels & short stories of these female writers.
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Because I only study female writers (I don’t know how this happened because I wasn’t consciously AGAINST including male writers), I will get to explore issues of intersectionality: how is society doubly punishing you when you’ve been, as Trevor Noah would say, “born a crime”, that is: woman and coloured.
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I’m exploring different cultures, from the Caribbeans to Nigeria to India and Bangladesh, different religions, and focusing on the migration to the US or the UK, and on the troubles it causes in one’s sense of belonging.
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All these ideas fascinate and passionate me. Now, writing an insightful, structured, well-developed dissertation will be another matter but... I shall not be defeated!
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#zoyairis is in the background for you to keep on admiring!
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This picture was initially taken for #ourdaughtersdaughterssociety, hosted by @sarahs89reads and @paperbacking, in which we were to talk about our anticipated feminist reads, and I thought I would pay a tribute to the women I read, here, on bookstagram.
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Today was my special day, and I received lots of messages from friends, old and new, and from my family. One of these messages, this morning, upset me so much that I cried, crushed by an immense sadness, for a long while. I saved myself from drowning in tears like every workaholic does: I worked. The sadness was washed away and I had the loveliest evening with my brother.
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But what happened here, on this virtual platform, this space that doesn’t exist but on my screen yet brings me so much joy, is yet another thing. Love pouring from all over the world, messages, wishes, recommendations, shoutouts, kindness, support. You, fellow book readers, amazing, smart, courageous women (for mostly you are women), you who illuminate my days and shorten my nights (😂), THANK YOU. I can’t name all of you, you know who you are. Thank you for being such special friends, for opening me up to the world. Alliances of women from all races and origins are the strongest ones, and I’m not saying this to be “marketable”, I truly believe it.
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New followers: hello and thank you for trusting me! I hope you are here to stay!
I will most certainly host a birthday-thank-you-giveaway soon. Is there a special book you would like to see?
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Too busy watching the snow fall, I couldn’t post earlier my #booksandhotdrinkstuesday post: @katha_logisch asks us today if we read theatre.
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Now let me tell you an absolute secret. I adore acting. I actually wanted to be an actress, back in the time when these dreams were allowed. But as much as I love acting, I hate reading plays. As @kemysbookshelf put it, the texts seem dry, empty, like clothes waiting to be filled by bodies and voices.
And as much as I love acting, I don’t like going to the theatre much. I’m more fascinated by the illusion of reality better, represented in movies, than the obvious acting techniques developed on stage. So I’m a picky spectator. However, and that’s very unoriginal, I do appreciate the classical staging of la Comédie Française, especially in comedies. Their antics will always make me laugh.
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There are very few playwrights whose texts I enjoy. One of them is Beckett. How not to admire Beckett’s volubility, Beckett’s poetry, Beckett’s philosophy, Beckett’s humour, Beckett’s despair, condensed in his plays? How not to want to read, pause, ponder, re-read and savour each sentence? .
Finally, one of the rare plays that I truly enjoyed reading (not Racine, not Molière, not Corneille, Marivaux only on a good day) is Isaac de Benserade. This forgotten playwright rewrote Iphis and Iante in the most sassy & hilarious manner. Reading it filled me with delight — a delight of which I was remembered when I read Ali Smith’s rewriting of this fascinating myth, Girl Meets Boy (see further down my feed for review).
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And you? Do you, can you read theatre?
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