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More Reports From My Favourite Book Genre
Today in a cafe at the British Museum, where I ploughed my way through two and a half chapters of one of my research books, there were two old white Australian men - one identified by the other as a Tory - mansplaining to a black woman with a baby (I later found out that her name was Lucy and that she was Ugandan and moreover holding an art exhibition at the Ugandan embassy and that I can go if I like) about how women have loads of power and totally had power in the fifteenth century because something something "The White Queen" on the BBC, Queen Elizabeth (that would be the 16th century, fuckface) and blah blah.
Astonishingly Lucy did not call them a pair of unbelievable patronising cretins. After a bit of rolling my eyes I put my headphones on to ignore them as she seemed to be holding the fort with considerably more grace than I've ever managed, and took them off when the men were leaving ("You've dressed him in pink? Pink's a girl's colour, blue's a boy's colour," and his mate added, "Yeah, yeah, since the 19th century": Lucy's reply was a composed, cheerful, "I like to do things differently.").
After expressing my general disbelief at the fact that some old white dudes had attempted to mansplain what it's like to be a woman, we settled down and she told me about her art exhibition and how art had made it a lot easier to both deal with the frustration of people like that and find a voice to reply to them without getting angry, and about how you can't separate the narrative of the personal from your political views because your experience of "political" things is through your own life and adjacent experiences. For example, the fact that her father was killed by Idi Amin's regime because of his faith is a factor in her work. She invited me to a private viewing and asked about my book. So that was a pretty nice interlude and kind of took the stressy "wargh what am I even doing" off my day, possibly even leading to me having a few more ideas later while I was wandering around the bookshop.
I do hope it was a pleasant interlude for her as well.
(this is the precise kind of story that Tumblr loves [apart from the bit where Lucy just talked to them politely and clearly at some point gave up on trying to change their minds], and this is precisely why they're not getting this story).
More Reports From My Favourite Book Genre
Today in a cafe at the British Museum, where I ploughed my way through two and a half chapters of one of my research books, there were two old white Australian men - one identified by the other as a Tory - mansplaining to a black woman with a baby (I later found out that her name was Lucy and that she was Ugandan and moreover holding an art exhibition at the Ugandan embassy and that I can go if I like) about how women have loads of power and totally had power in the fifteenth century because something something "The White Queen" on the BBC, Queen Elizabeth (that would be the 16th century, fuckface) and blah blah.
Astonishingly Lucy did not call them a pair of unbelievable patronising cretins. After a bit of rolling my eyes I put my headphones on to ignore them as she seemed to be holding the fort with considerably more grace than I've ever managed, and took them off when the men were leaving ("You've dressed him in pink? Pink's a girl's colour, blue's a boy's colour," and his mate added, "Yeah, yeah, since the 19th century": Lucy's reply was a composed, cheerful, "I like to do things differently.").
After expressing my general disbelief at the fact that some old white dudes had attempted to mansplain what it's like to be a woman, we settled down and she told me about her art exhibition and how art had made it a lot easier to both deal with the frustration of people like that and find a voice to reply to them without getting angry, and about how you can't separate the narrative of the personal from your political views because your experience of "political" things is through your own life and adjacent experiences. For example, the fact that her father was killed by Idi Amin's regime because of his faith is a factor in her work. She invited me to a private viewing and asked about my book. So that was a pretty nice interlude and kind of took the stressy "wargh what am I even doing" off my day, possibly even leading to me having a few more ideas later while I was wandering around the bookshop.
I do hope it was a pleasant interlude for her as well.
(this is the precise kind of story that Tumblr loves [apart from the bit where Lucy just talked to them politely and clearly at some point gave up on trying to change their minds], and this is precisely why they're not getting this story).