Hard book to write, harder book to read...

Kudos to you, Asim... I can't imagine how it must have felt, being black himself, for Asim to research and write this book; the edits, reviews, rewrites, and especially going to bed every night with the N word running free in his head. I've only read two chapters and I feel like I need to brush my teeth, wash my mouth with soap, and spit that word out. Toward the last few pages, I skipped reading the word "nigger" entirely; fully aware it was there but not resting my eyes on it long enough, like being at one end of a long hallway when someone you don't want to acknowledge is moving toward you from the opposite end. You know that passing one another is inevitable, yet when it comes time, you suddenly discover a loose string hanging from your sleeve, or start looking for some imaginary thing in your bag. That's how I felt about the N word in every paragraph. I just couldn't look it in the eye anymore.

Now, I realize that I'm reading and writing these things from a very Anglo perspective. Any right, spoken or implied, that blacks have given themselves and each other to use the term remains out of my grasp, and comfortably so. I don't want to understand the rules, quite frankly. I am one who wishes the word, in all its varieties, would just go away. But then I re-read the text I've highlighted from Asim's chapter, and I know that I'm not letting its impact sink in all the way on my Anglo brain full of Anglo experiences. I'm suddenly fiddling with the lid on my Chapstick or messing with my cell phone while the N word is approaching me in the hallway, so to speak. I guess I've aptly demonstrated the complexities of Wittengenstein's labyrinth... I only know my way about from one side. I either don't know how to find my way, I'm not sure if I want to find my way, or in Raye Richardson's words, until I'm willing to look the N word in the eye, "[I] have not earned the right" to do so.