black / white

just had to take this picture: Fireflies arrived here. and Grease Stains. such a good counterpart match of words and covers.

following the black/white theme, there's an article in The Millions i came across this weekend: "Reading and Race: On Slavery in Fiction". there were 2 other lit links that impressed me, one a video podcast of a bilingual author, and the other an indie book making the Chicago Tribune. together, those newsbits brought the impulse to start a weekly "recommended links" feature in Daily s-press: "Tuesday Shout Outs - recommended lit links"

all links are included there, yet i wanted to add a personal note / memory to the "Reading and Race" essay. the essay starts with this line: "In my eighth-grade U.S. History class, each student read a novel written by an African-American writer, about African-Americans."

reading the essay, i tried to remember the first book i read that refered to the theme of race and ethnicity - and had to smile: Michael Ende's "Jim Knopf und Lukas der Lokomotivführer" (book cover) was the first book with a black child in it: Jim Knopf, who arrived at the shore of this little island, and gets adopted by Lukas, the locomotive man. it also included a girl from China. and a dragon. in this book, the color of skin didn't mean any difference. later, in school, we read Anne Frank's Diary.

the first "real" ethnic-political book, though, probably was "Die rote Zora und ihre Bande" (book cover), set in former Yugoslavia. Zora has no parents, belonged to the Roma, like most of the other kids of her gang, and together they formed a small community. Zora is a girl. maybe that's why i liked this book so much. i don't think either of the books was translated into english.

(and here, the essay link, so that this post is complete, too: Reading and Race)