Nothing Said
Photo by Oladimeji Odunsi @oladimeg
Nothing Said is the title of one of my favorite children’s books. Its quiet beauty is magical. The characters exemplify female strength, loving acceptance, and accountability to each other and to the earth. The message of author L. M. Boston is at once gentle, and strong. The underlying theme – as the title suggests – is speaking with the heart, vocalizing only what is needed and nothing more.
I chose the title, and chose to delay my regular Saturday post, because yesterday was Juneteenth, and nothing that I, a white woman, have to say about Juneteenth is necessary; Nothing Said seems an appropriate exhortation to myself.
Juneteenth is a day to hear the voices of the descendants of slaves. The voices of those who continue to be marginalized, harassed, and discriminated against because they are (or because they simply look like) the descendants of slaves. The voices of those speaking for the dead who lost their lives because of the color of their skin. And most importantly, the voices of those who are alive and thriving and sharing their insights and gifts with the world, often in spite of the obstacles thrown up by white people.
For me to remain silent, to say nothing and make room for those voices, seemed right to me.
And yet the phrase “nothing said”
can have another meaning:
remaining quiet in the face of injustice.
Standing by out of fear for the consequences to myself if I speak up. Failing to take a stand against injustice because the injustice doesn’t affect me, or, worse still, because I benefit from the injustice.
In attempting to navigate these conflicting moral mandates, I delayed my normal Saturday post, and limited this post to sharing a Juneteenth reading list curated by Author Kiese Laymon (#ReadABook):
· Bird Uncaged, by Marlon Peterson
· Thick, by Tressie McMillian Cottam
· The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, by Deesha Philyaw
· The Prophets, by Robert Jones, Jr.
· Sing, Unburied, Sing, by Jesmyn Ward
In Laymon’s words: “You know, you get talking a lot about what people deserve, what folks of color deserve, what Black folks deserve. And I think sometimes we don’t necessarily like to state that Black people deserve, among other things,
beautiful sentences and innovative art.”
Check out the whole interview by Audie Cornish at https://www.npr.org/2021/06/18/1007744912/social-justice-juneteeth-book-recommendations
Kiese Laymon is “the author of the genre-bending novel, Long Division and the essay collection, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America. Laymon’s bestselling memoir, Heavy: An American Memoir, won the 2019 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, the 2018 Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose, the Austen Riggs Erikson Prize for Excellence in Mental Health Media, and was named one of the 50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years by The New York Times.” https://www.kieselaymon.com/
‘nough said.
