spoiler visualizarHet_roodborstje 01/04/2024
It's a sin to kill a mockingbird
This is a book that was on my to be read list for years and despite of being one of the favorite for many people, I have to admit that I found it disturbing. Racist with a touch of the white savior complex.
I understand the why this book is so popular, because harper Lee's writing is very fluid and you get quite attached with the kids and with the father figure. The father is very reasonable and takes care of the kids (but who really takes care of them is Calpurnia, a black woman that works for the family and does all the household). A "true role model" . He's an older man and the mother is no longer among them.
The story is narrated by a child, Stout, and she tells about what is happening in her village and what happens to the people around her. Stout has an older brother, Jem, and a close friend of them, Dill, that comes to maycomb every summer.
The first part of the book is about the kids finding how to get entertained and what to play. One of the main games was to bother a neighbor, Boo Radley. He is very recluse and never goes outside. They'd make many assumptions, saying that Boo was a crazy person, a maniac and so on. The kids want Boo to come out of the house and they make a bet to see who would go to Raley's house and touch the wall. At some point, one of them ends up doing it and and someone shoots from the window. No one got hurt.
The second part a rape happens in Maycomb and a black guy is falsely accused of it. Atticus, the father of Jem and South, is a lawyer and he is the defendant of Tom Robinson.
Why this book is racist with a white complex savior, you may ask? There are many passages where they say things like "once you have a drop of N** blood, that makes you all black" Jem (page 178)
or during the trial "all N** lie, all N** are imoral beings,..."
Lots of N word.
Including this unfortunate one:
"maybe rape shouldn't be a capital offence" - jem (page 242).
The white savior complex comes with Atticus, that is there to save the black ones. And if you don't read it with the "glasses of racism" to analyze it, you'll miss it.
This book was also banned from the school system in the United States of America. In my opinion, this book should still be taught at school with the condition of having another book written by a black person with their point of view on what they go through, to make the students debate and think. Specially to make the white ones to realize a tiny bit of the reality that they (we) don't live on.
In general it was a positive reading. It gave me reactions of madness and happiness at the same time. And it also made me think that everything we consume is written and made from the white perspective. I want in the future consume more things made by black people to be able to see through their eyes.