Tag: racism

The Fraud: Floridly Hybrid

Here are the comments from our book group about Zadie Smith’s The Fraud.

  • Why the mini-chapters? Zadie Smith is a smart writer so there must be a purpose. 
  • Regardless of purpose, the book was very irritating—too many characters and historical references, too episodic, too many stories, too much detail and too many temporal shifts—additional related comments included fragmented, utter disregard for chronology, complicated and tiresome, and a skimming satire. 
  • The shards of narrative conform to the literary technique of hybridity— the technique of weaving different narrative styles, genres, or perspectives within a single text to create complex layers of meaning, challenge conventional storytelling, and explore multifaceted themes like identity and culture.  
  • Many of the characters were real people but Eliza and Sarah were fictional.  
  • A good book for English major third year, fourth year, to read it over the Christmas holidays, just after they read all those authors mentioned in this book. And then, they could just have a taste of what it was like.  
  • The audio version was unintelligible.  
  • Disappointed as had really enjoyed White Teeth!
  • Found nothing positive to say about this book!  
  • And there was some humor. 
  • One member reported she had found a reviewer that summed up the book for her, “this book feels like a jigsaw puzzle that I hadn’t successfully put together. In fact, I think I’m missing several pieces.”  
  • The book provided opportunities for learning—self learning. Most members had a limited knowledge of slavery in the British West Indies.
  • Not a book recommended for “personal reading nor book clubs” 

Homeland Elegies: the demise of the American dream

Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar received a very high rating from our Book Group. The prose was dense yet highly engaging, employing a conversational style. The author lamented the demise of the “American Dream” in eight “elegies” covering subjects ranging from racism including how it feels to be its target; how the country became one shaped by debt and money and how the pervasiveness of capitalism transformed many things including college into a customer experience, hero worship into money worship; how assimilation threatens the immigrant family; and the nuances of cultural identity. One member drew our attention to a book with a comparable view of the dark side of America, i.e., Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century by Jessica Bruder which was made into an Oscar winning movie.

A question raised was “Is this book autofiction?” To which the answer appears to be “Yes”. However, it could be sub classified as “autofiction” with a twist—the author has explained the “auto” part as a device for sidestepping satire in his portray of society rather than related to his seeking personal truth.

“I learned a lot”. “Reading this book resulted in my appreciation of myself as a “white unaware”. “Wonderful scene painting, almost too much—too intellectual, too many ideas, too many references. There were mixed reactions to the sexually explicit sections; “gratuitous”, “went too far”, “for commercial reasons”, “part of the scene”, and “didn’t both me”.

Rating