The Act of Writing

"The American Spirit, the one that called us from the Old World to the New, to conquer and build and civilise. And destroy that what needs to be destroyed. To lift up the lesser races. If not lift up, subjugate. And if not subjugate, exterminate. Our destiny by divine prescription - the American imperative." This quote from Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad is the one that, for me, reveals the heart of the novel. This White American attitude is what the novel seeks to expose, not just in the American's of the 19th century, but which still resides within the White American's of today. The Underground Railroad follows the experience of plantation slave Cora, and her journey on the Underground Railroad towards the North and her freedom. Along the way she see's much of humanity- the best and the worst of what humans have to offer. This novel is very much about the way humans connect to each other, or rather, how they don't. With the author attemp...

I'm going to do something a little different with this post, just because it's a rather more sensitive topic than anything I've posted previously. The other day I saw The Hate U Give film in cinemas and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since. I'd love to review it properly but, honestly I don't think I could do a review any real justice with this film, because I don't think I can talk objectively about its subject matter. Therefore this will be a discussion post, or rather a stream of consciousness if you prefer, just so that I can discuss this film and get my thoughts in a sensible order. The Hate U Give stars Amandla Stenberg, of The Hunger Games and Darkest Minds fame, as Starr, the film's protagonist, a black girl from a poor area who goes to school with rich, white kids in the next town over. I've been captivated by Stenberg since her appearance in The Hunger Games, being of a similar age to her, and resolved then and there to...