I didn’t have much of a beauty regime before the lockdown and it’s also the case that I’ve not increased my attention to my appearance since. My disregard for my appearance has always irritated some of the people around me, who believed I could advance myself further in the world if I would just comb my hair. But I’ve always felt that, like men who are not interested in televised sports, women who are not interested in beauty regimes have more time to do interesting things, right?
It is such a relief, my friend told me on the phone, as neither of us had been leaving the house during the lockdown, to not have to wash your hair, or put on makeup. I agreed. To not have an appearance is so relaxing! To appear is mostly to be conscious of appearing. And oftentimes you aren’t even aware that you are appearing at all, until someone interrupts your peaceful and pleasant obliviousness by making you appear, just to point out that you appear differently, or badly, or not how they would prefer you to appear.
This is what many of us experience as Americans (though I am sure it is near universal), and, reading Jaswinder Bolina’s collection of essays, Of Color, it is this rude jolt into another’s conception of us, their questioning of you, and their implicit judgement that is so exhausting, debilitating and wrong. The endless justifications required. The endless appearing. Why are the black kids sitting together in the cafeteria? indeed. Sometimes you just want to relieve yourself of the burden of thinking about your race, and eat your Salisbury steak with those people. As delineated in Bolina’s essay, “Writing like a White Guy.”
I’m guessing more white people are reading books like this, given where we are as a culture, how 2020 went, George Floyd. Most books about race should be read by white people, more so than those who are designated red, yellow, brown and black, who live it and can only nod in recognition. But the white folks? They–we!– might be surprised, learn something new. Like, I wish every book on feminism was read by men. Even ONLY men. How will change happen if men are not on board? So this is one of those books, that I often suspect are read mostly by the POC, nodding.
Bolina is mostly known as a poet, and it was in this context he was accused of “writing like a white guy”, that is, not adding any “Indian” color to his poems. Not representing. Not appearing, as it were, as he was being subtly or not so subtly pressured to appear. You don’t know how relaxing it is to not appear, like white people don’t appear, until you’ve had a chance to be seen-with-expectations.
Caterina.net 