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jnchnbyreads's review
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
tense
medium-paced
5.0
Drawing inspiration from the GOAT again, and my thoughts are all over the place.
This book, as any non-fiction that I've read of Baldwin, has again given me the space to reflect upon myself.
This book, as any non-fiction that I've read of Baldwin, has again given me the space to reflect upon myself.
Growing up is the process of seeing, understanding, and resisting what lies the society has said and is still saying about you. It is realizing that the world does not live by the standards (either for success or beauty or intimate relationships) that has victimized you for the longest time.
It took being in solitude during college to make me realize how the popular kids at high school do not define ‘cool’ or ‘lame’. It took standing on my own two feet and away from my parents to make me fully comprehend how I am not the unambitious, simple-minded, obedient and selfish child that my parents made me believe. It took three years of pulling through an intimate relationship with a person for me to thoroughly understand what works out for you is entirely between you and that significant other, and not whatever the society thinks is the norm. It took bearing a witness to friends who struggle with depression and coping in their own time and pace, to make me realize that life is not a race towards ‘graduating before 22’, or ‘getting married at 25’, or ‘having children at 30’.
And though Baldwin was debating on matters relating to racial injustice in America when he said that we all eventually have to ‘pay our dues’, its truthfulness rings close to my heart when I deal with, or try to deal with my personal issues of growing up.
Perhaps what I really want to figure out is the mighty question of “Who am I”. And this question is so hard to answer that most of us resign to answer instead: “Who I am certainly not”, or “Who I hate to be”. The reason I think this is dangerous, is that when I turn to answering them, I am denying the possibility of the coward in me that would very likely surface when I am driven to the edge of despair. I cannot say ‘I am certainly not a thief/bully/oppressor’, because I could most definitely be that person someday, if I’m ignorant enough to deny my cowardice and all the other vices of human nature, what happens when I’m forced to make ends meet? It is the same logic as when Baldwin wrote “I do not become better by making another worse”. It is not right to justify oneself by condescending others. Creating yourself does not necessarily require creating an enemy.
Now back to the question of “Who am I”. I am an individual who is seeking for happiness in life. I want to have real human connections, I seek out to love and be loved, hear and be heard, see and be seen, forgive and be forgiven. I hope to survive out of this life, to have my theories eternally tested against all the possibilities in life, and however painful it is – to make an effort and change my ways when I am proved wrong.
blundershelf's review
challenging
hopeful
informative
5.0
Never has anyone done it quite like Baldwin. This was my introduction to his work and it took me years to finish because of the depth and power of his words. It's truly startling to read essays that wouldn't be out of place in a 2023 release that he wrote over sixty years ago.
musaup's review against another edition
5.0
"Was he free? We he happy? The question is absurd: Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard." - W.H. Auden
"Memory, especially as one grows older, can do strange and disquieting things. Though we would like to live without regrets, and sometimes proudly insist that we have none, this is not really possible, if only because we are mortal. When more stretched behind than stretches before one, some assessments have to be made. Between what one wished to become and what has become there is a momentous gap, which will now never be closed. And this gap seems to operate as one's final margin, one's last opportunity for creation. And between the self as it is, and the self as one sees it, there's also a distance, even harder to gauge. Some of us are compelled, around the middle of our lives, to make study of this baffling geography, less in the hope of conquering these distances than in the determination that the distances shall not become any greater. Chasms are necessary, but they can also notoriously, be fatal. At this point, one is attempting nothing less than the recreation of oneself out of the rubble which has become one's life."
This book was incredible.
"Memory, especially as one grows older, can do strange and disquieting things. Though we would like to live without regrets, and sometimes proudly insist that we have none, this is not really possible, if only because we are mortal. When more stretched behind than stretches before one, some assessments have to be made. Between what one wished to become and what has become there is a momentous gap, which will now never be closed. And this gap seems to operate as one's final margin, one's last opportunity for creation. And between the self as it is, and the self as one sees it, there's also a distance, even harder to gauge. Some of us are compelled, around the middle of our lives, to make study of this baffling geography, less in the hope of conquering these distances than in the determination that the distances shall not become any greater. Chasms are necessary, but they can also notoriously, be fatal. At this point, one is attempting nothing less than the recreation of oneself out of the rubble which has become one's life."
This book was incredible.