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A review by sarahglen
Thick: And Other Essays by Tressie McMillan Cottom
4.0
Tressie's writing makes up at least 10% of my NC pride. Thank god she is prolific (and one of the reasons I find Twitter worth opening).
A few lines worth noting:
— "On one of my first forays into publishing anything, an editor told me that I was too readable to be academic, too deep to be popular, too country black to be literary, and too naive to show the rigor of my thinking in the complexity of my prose. I had wanted to create something meaningful that sounded not only like me, but like all of me. It was too thick. ... In a modern society, who is allowed to speak with authority is a political act."
— "That is because beauty actually isn't what you look like; beauty is the preferences that reproduce the existing social order."
— "Indeed, any system of oppression must allow exceptions to validate itself as meritorious. How else will those who are oppressed by the system internalize their own oppression?"
— "What is commodified is always, always stratified."
— "Those of us who know our whites know one thing above all else: whiteness defends itself. Against change, against progress, against hope, against black dignity, against black lives, against reason, against truth, against facts, against native claims, against its own laws and customs.
— "If economic anxiety shapes one's political attitudes, would not a group of voters who have always lived with near-recessionary rates of unemployment and stagnant wages for generations have illuminating thoughts on labor, on the economy?"
A few lines worth noting:
— "On one of my first forays into publishing anything, an editor told me that I was too readable to be academic, too deep to be popular, too country black to be literary, and too naive to show the rigor of my thinking in the complexity of my prose. I had wanted to create something meaningful that sounded not only like me, but like all of me. It was too thick. ... In a modern society, who is allowed to speak with authority is a political act."
— "That is because beauty actually isn't what you look like; beauty is the preferences that reproduce the existing social order."
— "Indeed, any system of oppression must allow exceptions to validate itself as meritorious. How else will those who are oppressed by the system internalize their own oppression?"
— "What is commodified is always, always stratified."
— "Those of us who know our whites know one thing above all else: whiteness defends itself. Against change, against progress, against hope, against black dignity, against black lives, against reason, against truth, against facts, against native claims, against its own laws and customs.
— "If economic anxiety shapes one's political attitudes, would not a group of voters who have always lived with near-recessionary rates of unemployment and stagnant wages for generations have illuminating thoughts on labor, on the economy?"