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2.19.2009

Has

Anyone read Eula Biss's new book yet? I'd love to talk about how she deals with race in it if you have. It's the month, after all.
Posted by Alex at 8:52 AM

2 comments:

expatriate said...

I haven't read the book, but I just read "No Man's Land" from The Believer

February 19, 2009 at 3:16 PM
expatriate said...

That's a wonderful essay. If good writing brings forth the previously unsaid, then "No Man's Land" is good writing. I know the concept of "white guilt" is nothing new, but she really does take a hard look at her own in a way that I think is tremendously important (giving her readers both permission and a method to examine their own).

I know that neighborhood, Rogers Park. My brother's first apartment was on Sheridan Road, across the street from the lake, just south of the cemetary between Chicago and Evanston. It was part of that one-block strip that Bliss's white neighbors keep to. I have to admit that I kept to it too when I visited Todd. We would drive back and forth through the larger neighborhood to get to I-94 and the northern suburbs, but we didn't venture west into the neighbor at all, to my recollection. We mostly stayed along the lakefront, up to Northwestern or down to Loyola. At the time, I really thought I was venturing into the city. I hindsight, I was still hanging on the hem of the world I knew better on the Northshore.

February 19, 2009 at 3:30 PM

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