Book Reports

I’ve got a problem. I desperately don’t want to be a human piece-of-shit. I put in a lot of effort to be thoughtful; to think before I speak, to ask myself how I would feel if I were in a different position, to consider the consequences of looking away because something isn’t a problem for me. What worries me is that I suspect I’m not that deep. Things don’t necessarily occur to me, and so I believe I turn a blind eye to major societal problems because I don’t see them. Please don’t take that as an excuse for bad behavior. I recognize this shortcoming in me, so I invest a lot of time and energy into educating myself. I read a lot and watch topical movies and listen to podcasts. I intentionally seek out creators who are in the community that I need to learn about to avoid the sanitized version designed to make white people feel comfortable. I don’t care about comfort. I also make sure I’m not a burden on those people. I don’t ask questions about things I can Google, and I don’t expect someone to educate me because I woke up today wanting to be educated. I look for people that are providing the education and then I learn from them and I support them by sharing their work, purchasing their products, or donating to a cause in support of them. Nobody should work for free, and nobody owes me anything.

So, I'm learning, and I’m actively applying what I learned. I started this blog to talk about my perspective on all these problems, but honestly, who cares what my perspective is? I worry that my white voice isn’t a necessary voice in this discussion. Of course, allies are important, and I can use my whiteness to be heard when a BIPOC can’t. Okay, so small win. That doesn’t assuage my guilt for what I believe is actually me stealing the work of another person and putting it back out into the world as my own contribution. Even if I very clearly state that the ideas came from another person, I am just regurgitating them. I will get credit for the thoughts and words. I don’t want credit. I want equity and equality and fairness. I want to get rid of the tiers of humanity, where some of us are valued more than others.

I thought this blog would provide me a space to work toward those things, but it won’t. I don’t have earth-shattering thoughts that will turn these problems on their heads and make people rethink their beliefs. If I manage to say something important, it's because I’m rephrasing something another person said. That’s just theft, and do we need more white thieves?

So, where do I go from here? How do I use this blog for good? Even if I’m literally the only person in the world who will ever read it, I enjoy the process of blogging. I built this website from the ground up. I didn’t use a template or a website builder. I draw all of the pictures that I use. It’s absolutely a labor of love. But the weakest aspect is my writing, because I have nothing new to say.

But I came up with a solution. Going forward, I plan to write book reports!

“Your instructor may occasionally assign a book report. A book report is to be sharply distinguished from a research paper, for it deals with one book in its entirety—not with certain aspects of several books and documents . . .. The book report is also to be clearly distinguished from a book review or a critical essay, for it merely reports on a book without undertaking to compare it with other books or to pass judgment on its value.” ~ Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren, Modern Rhetoric

Why do I think book reports are the solution to my problem? First of all, I’m a nerd, and I love a good school project. Second, a book report gives me the chance to mull over the contents of the book and express what I think it all meant. That way, I'm expressing my own original thoughts about someone else’s original work in an accepted and academic format that gives credit to the original source. Third, sometimes I want to discuss the thing I just read/saw/listened to, and no one around me wants to talk about it, or at least not to the degree that I would like. A book report allows me to have that discussion with myself and any potential Ancient Ingenue readers that may stumble across the blog.

Please join me on this journey back to elementary school! Who knew that back then the book reports I dreaded would one day be the key to my real-world education?