Her first book was required reading in high school for a lot of my peers. I didn't read it in High School because the small, independent school district I attended wasn't actually integrated until the 1990s. The black students that didn't go there didn't miss anything.
After college, which was a desert in which good fiction books were water, I read a lot. After I went through all of Shakespeare and all of Bradbury and had stayed current with Stephen King, I was down to the books I found the mockingbird book in a stack in the back of a relatives book closet. They told me it was ok and that it had been made into a movie. I didn't watch the movie until videos came out. It was also ok.
In my first job, working nights, where coffee and off-topic conversations kept us alert till while working in a hospital and waiting for the next patient need, the mockingbird book came up. There were 3 of us, a blonde a year or two younger than me that probably hadn't read anything since high school (not a blonde joke, it was from a bottle, but she kept it yellow as straw) and a big, black man a year older than me. He and I had been discussing the latest King book, and she asked us if we had ever read "To Kill a Mockingbird". I said "yes", he said, "everybody had to in high school, I hated that book"
She said "why? it was great? It was about black people?" The man, looked ready to pop a vein. Considering he was one of those comedic men that everyone loved, it was an unexpected reaction. I gave it minute, he was not answering, other than some colorful words not in actual sentences. Then I told her, "It wasn't about black people, it was about a stereotypical black man, a unsophisticated, and helpless and the amazing, brilliant white lawyer that saved him"
It was her turn to stammer for a while, and she left. His response was simple, He was amazed I had noticed that.
After 2 reviews about the new book coming out today, the first by a person that considered "To kill a Mockingbird" a literary classic and the second a biracial poet raised in the south, I have a good idea that there is going to be a lot more said about the new book.
To me, Harper Lee just gained a little perspective. What she saw as "a good white man" is now less concrete. She pulled down the glasses of white privilege, at least a little before she wrote. I believe that just maybe she has grown a little, has seen things from more views, has tried to bring a fairer truth to her writing. The author was born in 1926 and won a Pulitzer for the first book in 1960 at age 34. I think it is possible she was already writing this new book when she won that prize. I would like to think she is publishing it now because she sees what is happening in the country right now. I could be wrong. I don't know her. She is my parents' age.
My father told me, over a decade ago (but while he was still alive--no ghost stories here) that the world would be a better place when his generation was gone. We were discussing racism when that came up. I recently heard the same comment from a Millennial where we were discussing race. She might be right, but I think that the people that taught racism when my father was a child, also taught the teaching of it. While a lot of us have thought about it enough to know right from wrong, others accept what they learned as small children and never examine those teachings for truth, rightness, justice. Self-awareness is much less common than common sense.
We are living--again--in racially troubled times. I like to think that every couple of generations, when it all boils up again, we actually make a little progress as we stir it back down.
I would love to think that those sweet, cute, babies born since the start of a new age will never see race be the topic of discussion again. No one needs to die for that to happen. But we do need to use a little empathy. Every toddler can tell you that when the candy bar is cut in half unevenly, and one get the bigger half and the other gets the smaller, it isn't fair.
It's time to play fair.
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