{"id":77863,"date":"2020-07-22T17:14:28","date_gmt":"2020-07-22T14:14:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=77863"},"modified":"2020-07-22T17:14:28","modified_gmt":"2020-07-22T14:14:28","slug":"no-easy-escape","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/no-easy-escape\/","title":{"rendered":"No Easy Escape"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[],"acf":{"old_id":"77863","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":59587,"related_cahpter":"530","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"Orwell\u2019s Whale in the Days of Black Lives Matter\r\n\r\n","content":"

George Orwell\u2019s 1940 essay \u201cInside the Whale\u201d appropriates Jonah\u2019s deliverance to encourage novelists to stop being so political. He likens the belly of the fish to a womb and insists, <\/span>\u201cGood novels are written by people who are <\/span>not frightened<\/span><\/em>.\u201d It\u2019s a curious take on a lament sung from a place of darkness and bile, but it fits. Gulping him up from the ocean floor, God saves Jonah from the Pit (2.6) and cradles him back to life.<\/span><\/p>\n

Amidst the throes of climate catastrophe, quarantine rage, and Twitter storms, it is tempting to seek the safe space of a cocoon of blubber. Get inside the whale, stop fighting the things you can\u2019t control, etc. But when it comes to the historical novel I am writing, I\u2019ve had to consider whether its premise is not a fiction of post-racial fantasy.<\/span><\/p>\n

Inspired by Manhattan\u2019s Draft Riots of 1863, when an Irish mob murdered over a hundred black citizens, it opens with a quote from the abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher: \u201cNot those who have your blood in their veins, but those who have your disposition in their soul, are your true kindred.\u201d Through parallel voices, I intend to show that the daughter of a Mohawk laborer and the son of a Brooklyn patriarch are alike in spirit.<\/span><\/p>\n

I had written forty thousand words when George Floyd\u2019s death set the world on fire. Twenty marches, countless petitions, and a monthly donation to Bailproject.org later, I was telling a black friend how my ambition to write felt self-serving and my skepticism over identity politics now seemed rooted in privilege. Wasn\u2019t I running away from responsibility if I was essentially attempting to erase difference? She warned me not to temper my novel for the sake of intersectionalist approval: \u201cDon\u2019t disregard your unique experience. Just tell a human story.\u201d\u00a0 Or, as Orwell might have told me, don\u2019t let the storm of battleships drown out my voice; remain myself at all costs.<\/span><\/p>\n

But the story of Jonah says \u201cnot so fast\u201d to some of that. Jonah doesn\u2019t want to get involved. Jonah ultimately thinks it would be better for him to die than to have to preach repentance.<\/span><\/p>\n

And yet what Jonah has vowed, he must perform (2.10).<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe truth is,\u201d Salman Rushdie replied in the March 1984 issue of GRANTA, \u201cthat there is no whale\u2026 [And] in this world without quiet corners, there can be no easy escapes from history, from hullabaloo, from terrible, unquiet fuss.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

As I set out to finish my novel I am mindful that a year after \u201cInside the Whale\u201d Orwell wrote <\/span>Animal Farm<\/span><\/i>. Proof that white people can change. Proof that white people can stop evading the prophetic call and get out of their comfort zones. The blinking cursor on my screen has yet to reveal what all this means for my Mohawk and my Pierrepont, but Angela Davis seems to be calling me back to shore. I think my characters will need to change the things they cannot accept.<\/span><\/p>\n

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