Jada's Brain

Just a gal trying to live her life like yellow :)

[jadasbrain]

On Beauty..the research part

So to be honest I have been LACKING in the tumblr network this week. I’m going to be completely honest as to why: we are currently in the research portion and I have been at war with myself, trying to sit down and really read my criticisms. Reading the book was easy. Of course there were parts that were a little hard to read because Smith was speaking in “intellectual language” as I like to call it (which basically means they were using super big words in completely unnecessary circumstances that smaller words could have been used *logical fallacy?*). However, the research is a completely different bull to wrangle. 

LITERALLY ALL OF IT IS INTELLECTUAL LANGUAGE AND MY BRAIN CAN’T TAKE IT!!!! 

I read the first sentence and then I’m like “yep, it’s nap time now”. However, I have really made an effort this weekend to buckle down and read my criticisms fully (with tons of popcorn and Friends breaks in between). Let me tell ya, Zadie Smith really did something with this book. She has addressed so many topics that the conversation doesn’t even have a central argument. All of my criticisms are talking about different things! I’m currently trying to sit down and actually write this seven page introduction section, and boy is it kicking my butt. I guess since there are so many topics I can pick a couple and try to go ham on them, but it’s hard because even though I’m kinda picking up what the criticisms are throwing down, it’s really not coming full circle for me so I can’t write intelligently on anything that I’m reading. This probably sounds like a s*** load of excuses, but before you #eyerollemoji at me, just understand that a gal is doing her darned best. 

This is a cry for help if you didn’t figure that out already.

[jadasbrain]

Just to emphasize the hard core intellectual language my criticisms are using...one of them uses the term fin de sie`cle in the very first sentence! Like why is that necessary?? Just say it's the end of a century *MAJOR eyeroll emoji*

[jadasbrain]

On Beauty..the research part

So to be honest I have been LACKING in the tumblr network this week. I’m going to be completely honest as to why: we are currently in the research portion and I have been at war with myself, trying to sit down and really read my criticisms. Reading the book was easy. Of course there were parts that were a little hard to read because Smith was speaking in “intellectual language” as I like to call it (which basically means they were using super big words in completely unnecessary circumstances that smaller words could have been used *logical fallacy?*). However, the research is a completely different bull to wrangle. 

LITERALLY ALL OF IT IS INTELLECTUAL LANGUAGE AND MY BRAIN CAN’T TAKE IT!!!! 

I read the first sentence and then I’m like “yep, it’s nap time now”. However, I have really made an effort this weekend to buckle down and read my criticisms fully (with tons of popcorn and Friends breaks in between). Let me tell ya, Zadie Smith really did something with this book. She has addressed so many topics that the conversation doesn’t even have a central argument. All of my criticisms are talking about different things! I’m currently trying to sit down and actually write this seven page introduction section, and boy is it kicking my butt. I guess since there are so many topics I can pick a couple and try to go ham on them, but it’s hard because even though I’m kinda picking up what the criticisms are throwing down, it’s really not coming full circle for me so I can’t write intelligently on anything that I’m reading. This probably sounds like a s*** load of excuses, but before you #eyerollemoji at me, just understand that a gal is doing her darned best. 

This is a cry for help if you didn’t figure that out already.

[jadasbrain]

On Beauty #5

So, since I last posted I have finished off the book and it made many of my opinions on the characters completely flip flop. Howard is the character who has made my judgements change the most. At first, I thought that Howard was just an intellectual man who had gotten to his mid-life crisis and finally fudged up. However, Howard proved me wrong and right all at the same time. Howard ended up sleeping with Victoria Kipps (his rival intellectual’s daughter, as well as his son’s first love). When he started to take a more than innocent interest in Victoria (known as Vee), I knew that it was really going to go downhill. He found her sexy, young, new, and enticing. However, when he actually got to the point where they first had sex, he almost loses all sexual admiration for her because of her theatrics in bed. It was very disappointing to me that Howard, after having conversations with his wife and seeing all of her pain, would go ahead and do the same thing again with another woman. He even says that he feels no guilt, he feels nothing. Howard is only truly interested in the “looks” of things. He refuses to see beauty in art, which is why he spends his entire career trying to disprove the argument that Rembrandt was a genius. I think that the reason why he can’t recognize the reality of what his marriage has become is because the reality doesn’t look pretty to him. His own actions don’t look pretty at all to him, truly they look very ugly. Howard is detached from the world in so many ways because he can’t focus on true beauty, like Kiki. He solely focuses on the surface, which is why he doesn’t even find Vee attractive after witnessing something he hadn’t enjoyed. It honestly made me hate Howard by the end of the book, while also making my heart ache a tiny bit. The end of the book shows Howard as he begins to start to really realize that there are other people in the world than just himself. He pays more attention to his children as well as his general surroundings. He has officially lost Kiki, after she finds out about his second affair, and he starts to see all of the beauty inside of her that he had ignored once her outsides changed. 

[jadasbrain]

On Beauty #4

Okay so this book is a bit more complex than I was letting myself believe. It not only looks through a male gaze, but also through a feminist gaze, an african american gaze, and probably a couple more that I haven’t recognized yet. One of the quotes I highlighted was:

 “It’s true that men - they respond to beauty . . . and it doesn’t end for them, this... this concern with beauty as a physical actuality in the world - and that’s clearly imprisoning and it infantilizes. . . but it’s true...”

This portion of the book really highlights to me the title, “On Beauty”. We have this family, and each member is struggling with beauty in some type of way. Howard struggles with the fact that he finds beauty everywhere but in his own wife, even though she is the only place he finds love. Kiki struggles with the fact that she though she no longer sees her beauty in the way that she once did, she can still find it in herself even though her husband can’t. Zora (their daughter) simply struggles to find her own outer beauty so she deflects to simply finding beauty in academics and won’t even think to allow herself to find it anywhere else. Levi finds beauty in the only part of himself that he cannot access: his black side. Jerome struggles with beauty in that he seeks only the highest forms that he cannot attain (in women that are “out of his league”). 

Though we see many other issues brought up in the book, the struggles with beauty is what I have boiled it down to at the simplest level. Each character represents a different gaze, and we can see that through their different struggles regarding beauty. The quote from above is spoken by Howard and obviously represents male gaze. 

[jadasbrain]

On Beauty #3

“You’re gonna get through this. You’re a strong black woman.”  People had been telling Kiki this her whole life. She supposed she was lucky that way - there are worse things to be told. But the fact remained: as a sentence it was really beginning to bore the hell out of her. “Oh I know that. You know me, baby, I cannot be broken. Takes a giant to snap me in half.”

This piece of my book talks exactly about what I last posted: the ideas of “strong black women”. Since I last posted, I have learned that not only did Kiki’s husband cheat on her, he had a full blown affair with another professor at the university that he works at, who is also a friend of the family. I’m upset with myself for passing judgements on Kiki and thinking that the ideal of being a “strong black woman” was a requirement for her existence. The term isn’t used in malice, however, it angered me to read that piece of dialogue between Kiki and her eldest son..and her reply angered me even more. Why is it that we prescribe the term “strong black woman” to women of color as if we expect them to be unbreakable? The color of your skin does not affect the workings of your heart, and this woman has suffered a heartbreak that I personally don’t think that I would have been able to endure. Not only do we expect her to be unbreakable, but it is an expectation that she has of herself! Kiki Belsey is a mule of the world. She carries the weight of her children’s heartbreaks, her husbands discontent in his own life, as well as her own heartbreak upon her back and still won’t allow herself to fall apart. I have a ton of respect for her. It is beautiful, and heartbreaking, to see this woman and so many other women (especially of color) bear the weight of the world and not let it crush them. It makes me want to cry for her, and to be honest I may have shed a tear or two. Women of color know that they are mules of the world. The term “strong black woman” is synonymous with the term “mule of the world”. Because of the color of their skin, the hardships they have endured, and their current place in society, black women have branded themselves unbreakable. Because of that, I believe they will forever be the mules of the world even if society releases them of that burden.

[jadasbrain]

On Beauty #2

Okay so I’m going to be honest here..I’m STRUGGLING to read this book. Normally whenever I have a book that really interests me, I can fly through it in no time. I’m making okay strides with this one but man I really have a hard time connecting to the characters which is a bit of a surprise to me because I thought that I would be able to connect to them more because of the fact that they are biracial. 

As I read through the book, I haven’t found a definitive storyline in any of the characters. The one person that I have really been able to connect to slightly was Levi, the youngest of the Belsey children. His intentions are clear: he doesn’t like living in a neighborhood full of white people and he has attached himself to the false identity of a young black man struggling in the streets of Boston. He wants the struggle more than he wants the life of leisure that he lives. In his chapter, he basically said that he doesn’t like living the life that he lives because he feels as though he doesn’t fit there because he is half black. I can not personally identify with this because though I am biracial, I am not a biracial male and I don’t have the pretenses attached to that identity. Sure, there are times where I wonder if I am viewed differently because of my skin color, but I don’t walk down the street feeling as though people think that I am there to rape/rob them. I have empathy for Levi because I know how badly it sucks to feel out of place in your own life, but I also don’t understand why he craves the struggles that black men have to go through in environments where they are actively profiled and reprimanded because of the color of their skin. It’s honestly really confusing me and stirring up a lot of mixed emotions for his character. 

Another character that I am struggling with is Kiki Belsey, the wife/mother of the Belsey family. It is clear that she isn’t content in her life. She feels constantly underappreciated and even though she justifies her marriage based on how long they have been together, she is harassed by the fact that her husband cheated on her one night in the previous year. I think that she loves her husband to some extent, but it almost feels like she finds more imperfections in him than qualities that she actually admires. Also, in this biracial family, Kiki is black and her husband is white. This is something that I have thought about for a long time. I know that I am being stereotypical when I expect Kiki to be a “strong black woman” and kick her husband to the curb when she found out that he was cheating on her, or when she allows her children to blatantly disrespect her and treat her as though she does nothing for them simply because she is not an intellectual. Honestly the whole dynamic of this family is really messing me up and making it hard for me to read attentively. 

[gatomariting]

The greatest lie ever told about love is that it sets you free.

Zadie Smith, On Beauty (via gatomariting)

[gatomariting]

Most of the cruelty in the world is just misplaced energy.

Zadie Smith, On Beauty (via gatomariting)

[jadasbrain]

On Beauty #1

So far the book that I have been reading by Zadie Smith has been pretty good. I can definitely see that Smith is trying to bring attention to the ideas of family values/functions. So far the family in this book is going through quite a bit of struggles. The oldest kid is pushing the boundaries of his parents very literally. In the house that he has grown up in, his father is white and his mother is black. His dad is from England and his mom is from Florida. Him and his family are currently living in North Eastern America somewhere near Boston. His dad (Howard Belsey) is a professor at Wellington University and he has made an enemy of another intellectual named Monty Kipps. Monty Kipps is very right-winged from what I have observed. He believes that colored people are 100% to blame for their conditions and that they need to stand up and take responsibility for it. (However, from what I’ve gathered I think Monty Kipps is black also, so I’m a little bit confused tbh). The Blesey’s (the family that we are following in the book) have completely different views and view Monty Kipps as a bigot. To make matters worse, Monty Kipps is writing a book about the same thing that Howard Belsey is writing about and Howard feels like anything that he writes will not be sufficient to what Kipps writes. So long story short the oldest son goes and moves in with the Kippses, falls in love with not only the Kipps daughter but also the general dynamic of the Kipps family, and then gets kicked out of their home whenever he tries to marry the Kipps daughter. So I guess right now in my train of thought I’m thinking a lot about how someone of color can demonize their own race. I mean sure there are tons of lazy people but they aren’t all black, or white, or any one color and I don’t think it’s fair to say that certain races haven’t endured situations that have led them to their current circumstances. Take Native Americans for example. They were driven off of their own land, and into reservations where many of them live in poverty and terrible circumstances. Are we going to look at them and say “Hey! Sucks to be you, maybe if you would give up your stupid culture and succumb to western society and culture like the rest of us you wouldn’t be in this situation. Also we didn’t put you here, you got yourself into this by trying to preserve your traditions and ways of life.” I don’t know but this whole thing about African Americans and people of the black race not having it a little bit harder than everyone else seems like BS to me. I’m not saying it’s impossible because there are plenty of successful black people out there who have made their way through hard work and persistence, but I would make a point to say that it is easier for a white man coming from a middle class family to make a life of that nature for himself than it is for a black man. That’s just one train of thought that I’m riding on so far. If I started diving into the part about how the Kipps family is very religious it would take me all year to write this one tumblr post. (I just don’t understand why people use a good thing like the love of Jesus to justify being racist. It’s literally a palm to forehead slap moment, like the one from the V8 commercials where they say “Shoulda had a V8!” and then run away. That’s what I want to do to the people who use Jesus to justify their ignorance. They’re all stupid ninnies). 

[gingerferanne-deactivated201904]

He drifted off into sleep and Janie looked down on him and felt a self-crushing love. So her soul crawled out from it’s hiding place.

Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston, pg 128 (via gingerferanne)

[jadasbrain]

Their Eyes Were Watching God

SPOILER ALERT!!

Okay so y’all! I normally only post things that are assigned to me on this tumblr but OH MY GOODNESS GRACIOUS HOLY LORD ABOVE!!!! Their Eyes Were Watching God is literally giving me more life than the heart that is pumping blood through my body right now. I immediately liked the book when I began to read it because the language brings so much warmth to the voice. Janie and her inner desires are so relatable to me since she’s having that battle that I believe a lot of teenage girls have. She wants love that is sweet and awakens her soul in ways that she didn’t know that it could. She dies and is reborn again through the different relationships that she is in. We don’t really get but a glimpse of her first marriage which was pretty much a scam anyways. I honestly felt a little bad for her first husband because I think that he may have wanted the same things that she did, but he was too old for her to find that desire or passion in order to love him. Her relationship with Starks was literally a shithole. I mean really? This man comes along and basically talks sweet nothings into her ear and then decides to basically say “Sike! You’re just a trophy so do what I say and shut up.” Even though I really disliked Starks throughout their relationship, his death made my heart ache a little bit because I feel like he was smart in all of the ways except for the ones that mattered. Maybe he did love Janie but he couldn’t see past the love of his own pride to really be able to show her what she meant to him. Either way, I’m glad that he is gone and I am so in love with Janie and Tea Cake! Their relationship actually makes my heart speed up a little which is weird considering how they’re just fictional characters. I’m only to the part where they get married and I’m really dreading finding out how Tea Cake is “gone”. If he dies I swear I’ll never read another love story again (not really but I’ll seriously be really mad). Anyways this was kinda just my little book club gossip session with myself and whoever ends up reading this. I’m sorry if I spoiled anything for you! Thanks for reading my love hazed rambles :)

[jadasbrain]

Hey! Yo! Here We Go! (Again)

So for those of you who were not in class the other day when I found out that the book I was planning on reading, was not actually the book I would be reading, here is how that scene played out:

Kreingbring: *something about final project* “emoji eyeroll”

Jada: *realizes that he is referencing her previous tumblr post and actually starts to pay attention for once*

“Hey! At least I found my book!” 

Kreinbring: “No you didn’t.”

Jada: “What? I already spent $15.00 on it so yes I did!”

Kreinbring: “Nope. No you didn’t.”

Jada: *in her mind* “UGH WTF!!!”

So that’s how that went...now on to the good stuff!

After that heartbreaking realization that I had wasted $15.00 on a book that I no longer feel like reading, I went ahead and asked Kreinbring for his suggestions. Or maybe he just gave them to me, I don’t really remember but that’s also not the point. He told me to look up Zadie Smith and Gemma Ward. I took to Google and after searching for books by Gemma Ward and only finding pinterests posts of pictures of some Australian model reading, I looked for Zadie Smith. I immediately recognized her picture and thought “Oh my god this woman is literally gorgeous.” That doesn’t have much to say about her writing but it was enough to make me read every description of every book that she has ever written. Most of her novels are centered in London, England which is a hotspot for my personal interests after watching the show “Skins” on Netflix. I read through reviews, and she is a pretty controversial writer. Seems like people either love her or hate her. I decided to read the book On Beauty. It is centered around a mixed-race British/American family and their clashes in political, ethnic, and many other values. I’m actually pretty psyched to read this since yanno I’m mixed and I question different parts of my values all the time (especially political)! I can’t wait to be able to dive into each of these characters and feel the humor, the anger, the hurt, and all of the other emotions that I’m hoping this book will bring. 

So thanks Kreinbring for actually dragging me out of boring white guy literature world. I owe you one (eye roll emoji). 

[jadasbrain]

To Choose or Not to Choose...

When we were told about our final project, I immediately searched “top ten scholarly fictional books” and of course I was greeted with the usual 1984 by George Orwell and others of its kind. I was tempted to choose A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, but when I talked to Kreinbring about it, he said: “Why do you want to read another book by a boring old white guy?” At first, I was offended because I was like okay that’s rude, I’m just doing what you told me to do and this stupid book sounds interesting (insert eye roll emoji). However, I thought it over and decided that once again he’s probably right (insert another eye roll emoji). I don’t want to read another book by a boring old white guy about boring old dystopian future white guy world. So instead I decided to look for other books that are interesting, scholarly, and have a twist. I really wanted to read A Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy, but of course trusty Barnes and Noble wasn’t so trusty this time and told me that they would have to order it to the store and I could come pick it up later (which really makes no sense because I could just order it to my house probably for cheaper than whatever price they were going to make me pay for it AND save money on gas...but that’s not the point of this post). So instead I asked the girl what she thought was a good scholarly fiction read and she took me to the table of the paperback “Barnes & Noble picks”. A couple drew my attention but ultimately I chose The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. This one is written by a white guy but he’s not old so it doesn’t count. After hearing in class about Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and how the main character had autism, this book sparked my interest because the main character is also with an autism spectrum condition. I’m excited to read the story and maybe get to learn a little more about social disabilities and how those who have high-functioning autism receive the world. I hope that this book meets the academic requirement of the project!  

[jadasbrain]

Holy sh*t I'm a senior #aplit18indie2

[jadasbrain]

#aplit18indie1

[jadasbrain]

Rebel Without A Cause

When I spoke with my parents about what I had watched when I saw Rebel Without A Cause, they didn’t seem to have much to say about the movie. However, my dad loves to nark on me and my generation so the conversation ended up taking a turn and he started to talk about the fact that teenagers simply don’t see the reality of situations these days. Much like Plato, we find situations in our mind and turn them to reality. We look at a girl walking the other way, and if she doesn’t smile at us we decide that she must dislike us. We picture ourselves going to college and coming out with a fresh new shiny job waiting to carry us to boats of money and success.  However, both of these scenarios aren’t exactly true and neither one benefits us. Rebel Without A Cause did a good job of displaying our recklessness and our lack of thought before taking action, but Plato alone describes many teenagers. He has no sense of reality and is battling with many things within himself as I believe many teenagers do as well. 

[jadasbrain]

Transcending movies

My movie that transcends its genre is one that is kind of obvious: Avatar. Avatar goes far beyond Science fiction and action because its talking about something that many people may not have picked up on. Avatar is talking about white colonialism and how it has destroyed worlds of people who are considered “Less advanced of savages”.Its actually quite obvious because they parallel many characteristics of the blue avatars to the black people of Africa even down to their skin color and their clothes.