Two Book Recs and the White Gaze

Book recommendation: Heal Your Way Forward: The Co-Conspirators Guide to an Antiracist Future by Myisha T Hill and A Little Devil in America by Hanif Abdurraqib

“What I’m interested in is writing without the gaze, without the white gaze. … In so many earlier books by African-American writers, particularly the men, I felt that they were not writing to me. But what interested me was the African-American experience throughout whichever time I spoke of.” Toni Morrison

To be clear, I am not Black.  If you are interested in an essay about the white gaze (and Toni Morrison’s quote above) by a Black writer, please refer to this essay by Tracy Michae’l Lewis-Giggets. What I am is a writer who has much to learn about writing without the white gaze. I’m recommending two books that I recently read and that taught me about two different ways to deal with the white gaze as a writer. Because sadly, one thing that white is going to do is gaze and it’s something that all people who create (which I believe is all of us) are going to have to deal with at some point. 

I was a little apprehensive about reading Heal Your Way Forward. Clearly. It sat on my shelf for months. This (alongside many other books that had been on my shelves unread) was one of the reasons I started my randomized book selection process. I had my daughter wrap my (almost 60) unread books in newspaper and label each with a number. She also wrote the numbers on small scraps of paper which I keep in a box next to the books. Each time I finish a book, I select a number from the box at random and unwrap and read the corresponding book. 

Without this system, perhaps it would have been several more months until I picked up Heal Your Way Forward. I realize now that my apprehension was based on previous experiences in spaces which claimed to be anti-racist but were scolding and abrasive. Even in these spaces, whiteness was assumed and in those even brief moments of assumptions, anything not white was erased. The same old hierarchies came into play. 

But it is precisely these moments of erasing and of being erased that Myisha T. Hill’s work heals. She does this, in part, by holding a mirror up to the white gaze so that it can see itself for what it truly is. In other words, Heal Your Way Forward invites readers to self reflect. 

One moment from her book that I think about regularly since reading it a few months ago is when she writes about the feeling of having to be the “smartest” (or other superlative) in the room in order to survive. It was a lightbulb moment for me. I realized how much I had often I’ve unwittingly played these games of competition. But Hill’s framing of this also allowed me to to forgive myself for so thoughtlessly engaging in these larger systems and, more importantly, to be able to see that there are more ways to exist in the world than just the ones created by white supremacy. 

My other lightbulb moment came in Hill’s analysis of the fairy tail Snow White. She showed me how the narratives that prop up white supremacy are pervasive and the messages are often hidden in seemingly innocuous places. The white gaze demands that we continually affirm that it is the fairest of them all. Heal Your Way reminded me that, as a writer, my stories and words which affirm me are inherently important and valuable simply because they are. The fact that my stories refuse to tell the white gaze what it begs to read is just the icing on the cake. 

Hanif Abdurraqib’s book was another one that I picked up and read a little bit of some time ago and then, for reasons I cannot clearly remember, I put it down and didn’t pick it up again until it came up on my randomized reading selection system. For a long time, I struggled to read anything at all. My brain was burnt out at least two fronts. The first was, in retrospect, because I had read so much in graduate school. It wasn’t just reading, but it was that I was reading what was chosen by professors. I had little time to read for myself and what I wanted to read. Not only was the book selection dictated by the professors, but I also felt as if I had to read them in a certain, specific way. When we discussed books, more often than not, it was clear that the professors already had some ideas which they felt were correct about the texts. And sometimes we were meant to kind of parrot what they wanted to hear. And, yes, this is all tied up in this whole idea of having to be the “smartest” person in the room in order to survive as Myisha T. Hill discusses in her book. 

Shortly after graduate school, I was working for a small newspaper and part of my job was to read books and write short blurbs about them. The stakes didn’t feel as high as they did when I was in graduate school, but, still, I was reading several books a week sometimes which I did not choose and I had to then write about them in a way that I perhaps would not have written about them had I not had to do it for my job. And so I remember when I finally felt I had the freedom to choose what I wanted to read for myself, I was a little overwhelmed. And a little lost. It was as if I had lost the ability to enjoy or learn from a book on my own terms. At times, even though I was picking what I wanted to read, when I wanted to read it, and even how I wanted to read it, I would get anxious. It was as if at any moment, someone could pop out of a corner demanding a one-page response paper or 150 words on why everyone should read this book immediately. 

And so I suspect that perhaps the first time I picked up A Little Devil in America, I might have been still suffering from reading burn-out. So I’m glad I didn’t push it and read through that anxiety anyway. I’m quite sure I would have missed out on a beautiful experience. I would have missed the forest for the trees. Or maybe the trees for the forest. Either way, I would have missed something. 

The second time I picked up A Little Devil in America, I was dealing with another sort of burn-out. A few weeks before, I’d finally disconnected from the last of social media. But my brain was still over-stimulated and enflamed from all of the rapid scrolling and images and ideas and thoughts coming at it. My attention span was shot. My brain didn’t trust itself. It had relied for so long on the input of fast moving images and ideas that it didn’t know how to rest. And maybe part of me thought that if I returned to social media, maybe that would soothe my over active brain, give it something to focus on, something to consume. Fortunately, I picked up A Little Devil in America instead. 

Because the thing about this book is that Abdurraqib references a good number of still images, movie and video clips, and music, which is a lot of what my brain had burnt out on and was still, in a way, craving. And yet presents all of these in written words (obviously) AND with the historical and human context that my brain-on-social-media had been missing. His words were a balm that soothed my fiery brain. I had no urge to go out and watch the videos he was referencing, so vivid were his descriptions and profound were the information and analysis that he shared. 

I’m thinking in particular of Abdurraqib’s retelling of Ben Vereen’s performance at the 1981 inaugural gala which is number 15 in his list 16 ways of looking at black face.  I could have predicted that the network did Vareen dirty by not airing his entire performance as they had agreed beforehand. What I could not have known or figured out on my own was the content and context of his whole performance. He similarly includes Whitney Houston’s story, humanizing her in ways that the headlines (of which I have vague childhood memories) never did. His description of Merry Clayton’s performance on The Rolling Stone’s Gimme Shelter had me listening to that track over and over just for that one break in her voice on that third “rape murder”. More importantly, it sent me in search of her solo albums. I was not disappointed. Again and again, Abdurraqib gives Black artists their due. One way in which he ignores the white gaze is by assuming Blackness. He does not explain those cultural touchpoint, histories, and language that might need to be explained to a white audience. 

I’m going to be honest. This essay/ post took me a very, very long time to write. Just as with these books, I kept picking it up and putting it down, frittering and fretting about. Every time I sat down to write, something else would come up. Or, actually, I’d let something else come up. I struggled to get into the flow. I worried about “getting it right”. All of these delays and struggles are, of course, ridiculous. But that doesn’t mean that they aren’t real. And I know that this resistance that I feel is in large part because I have allowed the white gaze to haunt me. In part this is because I have experienced little else as both a writer and a reader. That is, until I’ve started to wrest control over both my reading life and writing life away from these ghostly, judging apparitions. Fortunately for me, Works like Heal Your Way Forward and A Little Devil in America are like holy water and a blessed crucifix, scaring away the white gaze like the false shadow that it is. 

**********

If you enjoyed what you’ve read here, please check out other posts. Likes, shares, and reposts help get my writing out to where it needs to be. I’m also grateful for financial support.