Hope reviewed The Temple of My Familiar by Alice Walker
Review of 'The Temple of My Familiar' on 'GoodReads'
5 stars
OK SO this is the first book I picked up after having consciously decided to pick up the no (white, cis, straight) men authors for a year book challenge, with a particular focus on reading the works of women of colour, trans people, and queer folks. I picked this book because it was in my roommate's library and bc i know alice walker is a heavyweight author not to be fucked with wrt race and sexuality... I was initially not super engaged with the writing of this book but then all of a sudden BAM I was enthralled with the characters and their stories and their arcs of character development and personal learning... If I could liken this book to an experience it would be for me as a white person who is trying to decolonialize their mind and unlearn their racism, it would be like having a black woman …
OK SO this is the first book I picked up after having consciously decided to pick up the no (white, cis, straight) men authors for a year book challenge, with a particular focus on reading the works of women of colour, trans people, and queer folks. I picked this book because it was in my roommate's library and bc i know alice walker is a heavyweight author not to be fucked with wrt race and sexuality... I was initially not super engaged with the writing of this book but then all of a sudden BAM I was enthralled with the characters and their stories and their arcs of character development and personal learning... If I could liken this book to an experience it would be for me as a white person who is trying to decolonialize their mind and unlearn their racism, it would be like having a black woman who has been through so much sit down with me for three days and just tell me story after story after story of the nuanced experiences of generations of black folks in and being brought to thru slavery to america and ... I think this should be A+ mandatory reading for white people because no black person should have the burden of ACTUALLY sitting with our asses for three days telling us gutwrenching stories so that we can reevaluate our worldviews YET there is so much we can learn from these stories and reading this book is as close as we can get to that... so ... yeah... reading this was an amazing learning and delearning experience for me as a white person. Alice Walker obv. has so much more than just 'stories that can help white poeple unlearn their dickishness' going for her and this novel is a sensitive bulldozer of a thousand things regardless of the reader's race but yeah. I am not the best at writing reviews but I had lots of grateful feelings for this book that I wanted to put down in words! A+++
