{"id":1426,"date":"2020-07-10T16:09:15","date_gmt":"2020-07-10T23:09:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/digitalmanticore.com\/?p=1426"},"modified":"2020-07-10T16:09:15","modified_gmt":"2020-07-10T23:09:15","slug":"some-amount-of-time-in-the-life-july-10-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/digitalmanticore.com\/?p=1426","title":{"rendered":"Some Amount of Time in the Life: July 10, 2020"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It’s been a little difficult to convince myself to write lately because it doesn’t feel like I’ve done anything noteworthy. Days are running together. My only outing in the last week was a trip to the grocery store. I’ve been reading a lot, trying to stay cool indoors, and baking when it’s not too hot to turn on the oven.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Consuming<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Here are some things I read, watched, or bought recently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reading<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

I’ve spent a lot of time reading in part because I love to read and part because I put a ton of library books on hold and, predictably, they all rolled in at once. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Children of Time<\/a> by Adrian Tchaikovsky is a fascinating sci-fi novel. It’s a post-apocalyptic space opera with humans orphaned on a generation ship and a planet of sentient spiders. The spider civilization really put me in mind of A Fire Upon the Deep<\/a> (spoilers?) even though they were totally different spider societies. I liked Children of Time because it showed a civilization built on totally different principles, arachnocentric rather than androcentric. It was very interesting and well done. I’m looking forward to reading the next book in the series. Yes, I already have it in my hold list.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Vanishing Half<\/a> by Britt Bennett was a different kind of story altogether. Set in the recent past, Bennett tells the story of twins who grow up in a southern town full of nearly white Black people. Their story diverges when one of the twins discovers she can pass as white and disappears into the world of whiteness. This is an emotional novel exploring the fact that race is a complete fiction. What separates white and Black people other than made-up rules?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South<\/a> by Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers chronicles white women’s slave ownership in the South before the Civil War. This book was a lot to take in and it really made me think. The narrative we hear about antebellum southern women is that they were delicate and not involved in anything so terrible as slavery, but Jones-Rogers demonstrates that this is totally false. Women exist in the historical record buying and selling slaves, going to court over issues of slave ownership, and even “disciplining” their own slaves. One of the parts that really stuck out to me was the discussion of the end of slavery. Enslaved people were liberated but that’s it. The government didn’t have any job programs, no grants to help the formerly enslaved establish their lives, no program to help families reunite. They had literally nothing. Although that wasn’t what this book was about, it made me think a lot about the case for reparations. Black people were forced to come here, live and work as slaves, and when they were finally free, it was like, well, fuck you, bye. I don’t think it’s crazy to say that Black people deserve some compensation after all they’ve survived.<\/p>\n\n\n\n