I feel like so many people do not....understand that there's a difference between character and author
yeaaaah. or, they understand that in theory, but in practice they don't understand it until the author makes it breathtakingly mind-numbingly obvious and spoon-feeds the reader, maybe? like, there's narratives that set up a character with Obviously Bad Takes, and the structure of the plot makes it very obvious These Takes Are Bad and This Character Is Bad, and people usually handle those okay. but in Americanah it's more like "here's a character with lots of takes, v often she has really good points, but sometimes she's being a bit myopic or self-centered, let's set these takes alongside her own complicated whole-person life so that you can understand Her Deal." which i thought was very cool! but uh, may be too much for some readers, lol
(...and yeah, unfoooorunately i think a lot of the issue in this particular case is, some people are too sensitive to anything of the form "black character gets angry about racism" >___> and they get all defensive about it, "waaah Ifemelu isn't being fair," and it's like, my dude! she's writing an angry blog post about (1) a real actual problem and (2) also she literally just had a breakup, if you can't see how this is serving the pretty nifty dual-narrative of function of "adding an additional perspective on an issue the novel addresses from many interesting, humanistic angles" and also "tells us interesting things about how Ifemelu processes her experiences & who she is as a character," like, idk what to tell you, lol)
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Date: 2020-09-30 11:52 pm (UTC)yeaaaah. or, they understand that in theory, but in practice they don't understand it until the author makes it breathtakingly mind-numbingly obvious and spoon-feeds the reader, maybe? like, there's narratives that set up a character with Obviously Bad Takes, and the structure of the plot makes it very obvious These Takes Are Bad and This Character Is Bad, and people usually handle those okay. but in Americanah it's more like "here's a character with lots of takes, v often she has really good points, but sometimes she's being a bit myopic or self-centered, let's set these takes alongside her own complicated whole-person life so that you can understand Her Deal." which i thought was very cool! but uh, may be too much for some readers, lol
(...and yeah, unfoooorunately i think a lot of the issue in this particular case is, some people are too sensitive to anything of the form "black character gets angry about racism" >___> and they get all defensive about it, "waaah Ifemelu isn't being fair," and it's like, my dude! she's writing an angry blog post about (1) a real actual problem and (2) also she literally just had a breakup, if you can't see how this is serving the pretty nifty dual-narrative of function of "adding an additional perspective on an issue the novel addresses from many interesting, humanistic angles" and also "tells us interesting things about how Ifemelu processes her experiences & who she is as a character," like, idk what to tell you, lol)