I used to get confused by Audre Lorde's famous quote, "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house." Being a literal-minded child, I imagined people taking up the tools they use to build things for their masters--hammers, saws, chisels, etc.--it would be quite easy to dismantle a house with those tools.
Then I read "The Half Has Never Been Told" by Edward Baptist. His detailed descriptions of the new technologies invented by slavers to break people and keep the broken made me realize that "the master's tools" were not hammers and saws but rather the whip, the coffle, the police, the laws making aiding escapees a crime, etc.
Loyalty to the state is a master's tool. Punishing "traitors" is a master's tool. Making "sedition" illegal is a master's tool.
May 2023 is now behind us, and it is the meterological start of summer. May was a busy listening month and I managed to listened to 24 titles, of which only one was a new title.
Finally finished reading Because Internet by @gretchenmcc - it was so entertaining, especially as an Old Internet Person! Will definitely be getting a copy for the budding linguist in our family.
Next up is The Plant Thieves by Prudence Gibson, which I'm pretty sure J and his mum will end up reading too. Loving it so far.
Just like in previous months I have compiled the list of books that I have read during October, and it was less than a dozen books. Read the list of the items that I did read.
Taylor Swift "invites identification, but as her monocultural presence grows, this identification becomes ever more challenging, unless we project our own selves onto her. Swift’s artistic output is now entirely separable from Taylor Studies." Jill Spivey Caddell casts her gaze on the phenomenon that is Taylor Swift Studies in our latest reading list.