No. 26: Prison book bans, race sci-fi, and dementia

Aesop/Du Bois/Foucault/Hemingway/Homer/Sun Tzu/Whitman

Here's some things other people have been writing. My own opinions probably differ.

Du Bois wrote The Comet a science fiction story that dramatized the horrors of racism. Here are some other books that’ll both scare you and make you think. theatlantic

Sun Tzu’s Art of War is banned from US prisons. Prison book bans get less attention, but their scope dwarfs bans in schools and libraries. There’s a cruel irony in denying knowledge to 720k illiterate inmates, undermining their chance to discover, like Malcolm X, new worlds within words. time

Foucault would see the “decolonizing narrative” about Gaza not as history, but as a coercive ideology. Baldwin thought little of what he called an “invented past”, saying “it can never be used…it crumbles under the pressures of life like clay.” theatlantic

Whitman yearned for peace, but humanity’s myths–from Aesop to Homer to the Panchatantra–suggest that peace is rarely free. As I, Salman Rushdie, prepare to receive my peace prize, I reflect on this. newyorker

Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises hold a brief exchange: Bill asks “How did you go bankrupt?” to which Mike responds: “Two ways. Gradually and then suddenly”. So it goes with many things, especially, dementia. Like an insidious fog, its barely noticeable until the familiar world disappears. nytimes

Dostoevsky, Austen, Woolf, Steinbeck, and Plato are all authors that make people pause to think while reading. reddit