"Caste" "The Feast of the Goat"

큰딸 지인 70대 흑인 여성은 "Caste" 를 읽고 나서 너무 마음이 상해서

Isabel Wilkerson 의 또 다른 비소설 (이 블로그에도 포스팅한)

"The Warmth of Other Suns" 읽어보기를 단념했다고 들었다.

나도 "The Warmth" 한 권이면 됐다고 생각했었는데,

결국 "Caste"도 읽게 되고 그러길 잘했다는 생각이다.

 

"And yet, somehow, there are the rare people, like Einstein,

who seem immune to the toxins of caste"라는 Wilkerson 의

말에는 나는 동의하지 않는다. Einstein 같지 않은 사람들이

그리 많다는 데에 오히려 놀라는 사람들도 많다. 

 

책을 마지막 장 "The Heart Is the Last Frontier"로 맺은 게 좋았다.

 

 

Isabel Wilkerson, "Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents" (2020)

 

 

아래는 이 책으로부터의 발췌다.

 

"내 노예들  중에 누가 천국에 간다는 게 가능할까요?"

한 사우스 캐롤라이나의 지배-계급 부인이 그녀의 목사님에게

물었다, "그래서 거기서 그들을 만나야만 할까요?" (p. 164)

 

"The separation of the races is not a disease of the colored

people," Einstein told the graduates at commencement

[at Lincoln University], "but a dosease of the white people.

I do not intend to be quiet about it." (p. 379)

 

Nazi Germany and the American South devised shockingly

similar punishment to instill terror in the subordinate cast....

Across the ocean, in the same era, lynchings, preceded by

mutilation, were a feature of the southern landscape. (p. 154)

 

African-Americans were mutilated and hanged from

poplars and sycamores and burned at the courthouse

square, a lynching every three or four days in th

first four decades of the twentieth century.

A slaveholder in North Carolina seemed to speak

for the enforcers of caste throughout the world.

"Make them stand in fear," she said. (p. 155)

 

With the resurgence of caste after the 2016 election,

people in the dominant caste have been calling the police

on ordinary black citizens under a wide range of ordinary

circumstances, with videos cropping up almost daily at

one point. (p. 216) [Also, the episode, pp. 219-223]

 

In hiring black teachers for segregated schools during Jim Crow,

a leading southern official, Hoke Smith, made a deliverate

decision: "When tow Negro teachers applied to a school, to 'take

the less competent.'" It was a nakedly creative way to cripple

black prospects for achievement. (p. 233)

 

"Trump was ushered into office by whites concerned about

their status," Jardina writes. (p. 328)

 

 

뉴욕타임즈 서평

 

npr 기사: Isabel Wilkerson Explains America's Caste System

 

 

Isabel Wilkerson (사진: 위 기사에서)

 

 

 

Mario Vargas Llosa, "The Feast of the Goat" (2000, 영역판 2001) 

 

도미니카 공화국 독재자 라파엘 트루히요 시대 말기,

권력자와 그 주변을 다룬 소설. 상당히 재밌다.