Identity dominates conversation these days. And yet when women like Leila Slimani, author of the bestseller Lullaby, and Afua Hirsch, author of Brit(ish), talk about racial prejudice, they are described as encouraging what is called ‘victim status among minorities’. Slimani has inverted the narrative in her book so that the employer is Moroccan and the nanny is white. Hirsch talks about how people of color have to grapple with the idea of acceptance when they live in Europe or predominantly white nations. Reading this conversation is important as the world is post-racial in name only; a person from Morocco or Afghanistan or India could face the question of where he or she is really from. They never truly belong in the only place they know. Will this change? Not very soon. Read ‘People have a cliched way of looking at race’.
Another article I read speaks about abuse. April Ayers Lawson speaks candidly about how she was raped as a child and how it was a book she received called Virginia Woolf: The Impact of Sexual Abuse on Her Life and Work by Louise DeSalvo that changed the way she understood what had really happened to her. She describes how the victims of such tragedies are often blamed and even made to question themselves as Virginia Woolf herself was. Could the rape have been a fantasy?, she must have been asked. Abuse, Silence and the light that Virginia Woolf switched on is a must-read.