Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Blackamazon thinks too much: Why I am always proud to be one of " those" people

 
 

Sent to you by moya via Google Reader:

 
 

via maia medicine on 5/12/10

Blackamazon thinks too much: Why I am always proud to be one of " those" people:

amberlrhea:

isabelthespy:

ilykadamen:

frozenheads:

novazembla:

So my mother is a church going born again.

She is immigrant under educated blah blah blee.

She came home to tell me about a woman at her church who was sobbing becuase she no longer had money for food.

My mother has no ExTRA money , we barely have extra food.

My mother made sure that NEXT…

Read this too.

I don't understand half these posts.  Someone needs more punctuation and transitions. 

No.  Someone needs to learn some hard lessons on how to evaluate writing in ways that ensure you get the most out of it.  Make no mistake:  You're depriving yourself with this.

Despite what you were likely taught and I was too, it ain't about what marks go where or whether a paragraph is 20 sentences or five or one.  And you know this already if you ever read mr. no-capitalization poetry or any one of a hundred writers who play fast and loose with punctuation and grammar.

You can read the stuff that's written so-called properly, but if it gets you no further than Strunk & White, you have no one to blame but yourself.  "Omit needless words" gets old after a time.

A better thing to do is to read writing for the ideas and the visions and the dreams and the thoughts and the pictures.  And for that, punctuation is at best secondary.  At best.

There have been things I've been sorry I took the time to read—magazine articles, mostly.  Jezebel posts, usually.  7,639-word posts about this or that pop culture phenomenon, DEFINITELY.  But Blackamazon's posts have never been among those damn-i-wish-i-had-my-time-back bits of writing for me, and I'd like to bet you'd come around to that way of thinking yourself, if you'd only get over your 101ishness and look at the content, not the red-pen details.

And yes, you should talk to the lady herself.  Goddamn.  You want to be about manners in writing—other people's writing—but of manners yourself, you got none.

what ilyka said, seriously.

People need to be reeeeeally careful w/ that shit, because hello, some people have disabilities such that it's actually VERY DIFFICULT to discern the meaning of writing if it is not punctuated, structured a certain way, spelled correctly, etc.

Your zeal to defend may end up isolating.

oh god. listen i am so sick of the 'some people have disabilities that make xyz difficult' as a way to shame others rather than dealing with the actual issues in the conversation. let me make this clear, i am like the alphabet soup of mental disabilities, and i too have a right to write.  i have a right to express myself.  my brain doesnt work 'normally' and i am GRATEFUL for ba's style of writing because it segues much closer to how my brain works than 'official grammer' or whateva.  this whole meme of 'some pwd cant deal with this', when its not *you* that  you are talking about, can really come across as the 'invisible black friend' excuse that gets trotted out in convos about racism. 

as a pwd i am grateful that ba writes in her style, bc it gives me permission in this world to write in mine.  and if that means that i have to read her posts more slowly than others in order for me to catch the nuances, and i am willing to do it, year after year, that is because she is a damn fucking good writer and thinker. 

your zeal to defend 'some' pwd, unnamed, feels a lot more isolating to me, mai'a, lady with disabilities, than anything ba has ever written.  feel me?

you dont like her work. dont read it.  she ain't asking you to.  but dont pretend like you are being an ally. 

you dont understand something she wrote.  ask her about it. its a fucking blog, with a comments section. when i didnt understand something she wrote. i asked for clarity.  easy.

and if you dont understand what i just wrote.  cause i dont use capital letters. and put periods where i fucking feel like it.  and dont use proper grammer.  ask me about it. 

and hey me and the girls i grew up with, all of us suffering from add and ptsd and social anxiety and a whole host of issues that come from shit you dont want to read about, we each write in our own way.  and none of it is strunk and white.  and we would love it, if the rest of the world would get on board, and stop making it so difficult for us to understand your english textbook way of expressing yourself.  but i guess that it isnt going to happen anytime soon, right?

ok then.

lets just call it a truce. 

and if not.

then go fuck you and your atom bomb. 


 
 

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