{"id":56297,"date":"2018-04-25T21:38:02","date_gmt":"2018-04-25T21:38:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=56297"},"modified":"2018-04-25T21:44:06","modified_gmt":"2018-04-25T21:44:06","slug":"a-furious-voice-forged-in-the-fire-of-prejudice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=56297","title":{"rendered":"A Furious Voice, Forged In The ‘Fire’ Of Prejudice"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Furious Voice, Forged In The ‘Fire’ Of Prejudice<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Book Review<\/a>
\nNational Public Radio<\/a>
\n2008-10-10<\/p>\n

Jessa Crispin<\/strong><\/a>, Founder and Editor
\nBookslut.com<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

If I Could Write This in Fire<\/strong><\/em><\/a>
\n By Michelle Cliff<\/a><\/strong>
\n Hardcover, 104 pages<\/strong>
\n University of Minnesota Press<\/strong>
\n List price: $21.95<\/strong><\/p>\n

While on a tour of the University of Virginia<\/a>, Jamaican-American novelist and short-story writer Michelle Cliff<\/a> is informed by a doctoral student that Thomas Jefferson<\/a> never owned slaves. “‘Villagers,’ as they’re affectionately known,” says the student, “built [this] university, Monticello<\/a>, every rotunda, column and finial the great man dreamed of. They liked him so much they just pitched in, after their own chores are done.”<\/p>\n

It’s one of many unsettling moments in If I Could Write This in Fire<\/em><\/a>, a collection of essays that is Cliff’s first nonfiction book. Everywhere Cliff goes, she sees people treating history as if it were a story they could rewrite at will: women at cocktail parties uttering, “Pinochet<\/a> was not so bad”; guests at a dinner party disbelieving that the blacks in Birth of a Nation<\/em><\/a> were white actors in blackface<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Cliff, 61, has always been an outsider \u2014 a lesbian born on a homophobic Caribbean<\/a> island, an immigrant in the U.K.<\/a> (where she studied) and the U.S.<\/a> (where she settled), a mixed-race intellectual trying to make sense of a black and white world…<\/p>\n

Read the entire review here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cliff, 61, has always been an outsider \u2014 a lesbian born on a homophobic Caribbean island, an immigrant in the U.K. (where she studied) and the U.S. (where she settled), a mixed-race intellectual trying to make sense of a black and white world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[395,5,21,459,8,10,20],"tags":[81,80,28568,2755,2309,2833],"class_list":["post-56297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-autobiography","category-book-reviews","category-latincarib","category-history","category-media-archive","category-uk","category-usa","tag-england","tag-jamaica","tag-jessa-crispin","tag-michelle-cliff","tag-national-public-radio","tag-npr"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56297"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56297\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56300,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56297\/revisions\/56300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}