“Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” Twain, S

3.5/5 the lack of women in Twain’s stories continues to baffle me. I can see how these stories influenced American lit but it’s less… interesting than I was expecting. So many N words (217)

“Under the Banner of Heaven” Krakauher, J

3/5 The LDS/FLDS history in this story is fascinating, but I really don’t like the way he seems to fawn over the guy whose murders inspired the book. It’s trying to be deep but ends in a puddle (216)

“The Return” Harrison, R

5/5 This was great and super fun. I’m normally a little…leery of using wendigos in stories, bc white authors just love to use them as “stand-in for Indigenous” bogeys, but this book threads the needle by never naming it but being identifiable. GREAT mood & setting (215)

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Perspectives on how Black Women are and have been uniquely demonized since slavery. I think I want to reread “They were Her Property” as chapter 4 of “ain’t i” really speaks to how women enslavers were, and I want to have more concrete examples to refer back to.

Also reading bell hooks’ ‘ain’t i a woman’ so it’s just a lot to have Twain’s clear well-meaning abolitionist senses (though he was vehemently anti-Indigenous) w Jim but also period typical paternalism towards Black ppl but also the clear lack of Black women in the book viewed through hooks’ +

And then I got the audio book. I don’t like wearing headphones at home so there are sections (like Huck talking to the slave catchers) where it’s just N N N N N. It’s a weird tension between the importance of the novel versus how language has changed in the near 150 yrs since it was published

I don’t know the story beyond “Huck and Jim go on a raft upriver because Huck is running from his dad and Jim is running to his freedom” so I wanted the story. And Jesus.

Intellectually I knew that part of the reason we didn’t learn it in HS was because of the use of the N word. +