Granted

I just finished listening to "The Poisonwood Bible" this week by Barbara Kingsolver. It never ceases to amaze me how little I read as a paid writer.

The two seem inextricably connected, but I rarely make time to sit down and enjoy a good book. Sure, I devour news, blogs, and scriptures, but I seldom enjoy a good work of fiction. And this was a great one.

For me, the measuring stick of good writing is the degree of emotional reaction that it elicits in me. In other words, Does it stir my insides? Do I experience a paradigm shift? Do I find myself chewing on the themes and messages for days afterwards?

Since this book is the only thing that's prompted me to write a blog entry in the last 100 days, I'd say the answers to those questions are a resounding yes.

I was particularly struck by the theme of white privilege throughout the narrative. Not only white privilege, but male privilege and American privilege.

Consider the following excerpt from the novel:

"White and black lives are different kinds of currencies. When 30 foreigners were killed in Stanleyville, each one was tied, somehow, to a solid exchange—a gold standard like the hard Belgian Frank. But a Congolese life is like the useless Congolese bill, which you can pile by the fistful or the bucketful into a merchant’s hand and still not purchase a single banana. It’s dawning on me that I live among men and women who simply always understood their whole existence is worth less than a banana to most white people. I see it in their eyes when they glance up at me. "

How poetic. How condemning.

I was never even exposed to the concept of white privilege until I was at school in New York City. I read an article by Peggy MacIntosh entitled "Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack." (you can read it here: MacIntosh") I reflected on it for weeks. I read other writings on white privilege and attended conferences. I joined with a handful of other students to form Columbia University's Coalition Confronting Racism. But it all seemed to fade when we returned to Utah.

While reading this book, all of those feelings again resurfaced and I found myself confronting my own prejudices, stereotypes, and willful ignorance when it comes to Black Africa and even Black America.

The other big theme, which is too big to get into in this post, was on the balance of piety and Christianity—which has always been a tough theme to sort out in my own life.

Unfortunately, finishing the book brought no resolution to either of those themes for me. On the up side, I now have a lot more to stew over than the writings at macrumors or msnbc.