Today, 05:54 AM
I never thought it was racist. It wasn't great poetry, because the little brown women were seen, as they typically have been by white writers, as outsiders. There was no attempt to get under the skin, pardon the pun. And so it's just one in a long list of similar poems. In Erthona's defence, he wasn't aiming for the Nobel prize, so there's that.
Take:
sitting in the shade, in the evening,
with their small hungry babes
who fiercely suck and paw their breast.
what do the babes of big white women do? drink Heineken?
again, Erthona wasn't shooting for the stars, so no harm done.
The theme of 'lazy white writer doesn't bother to look under the hood' is pretty standard. Apart from Shakespeare, Kipling, and perhaps George Orwell, few native English writers have tried, and many that tried failed miserably (EM Forster). But it's not really needed now, because the subalterns write. And white writers are better of focusing on themes that they are personally familiar with, as long as it's not another fucking story about a poor family broken by drinking or domestic violence. Nobody cares about them.
Take:
sitting in the shade, in the evening,
with their small hungry babes
who fiercely suck and paw their breast.
what do the babes of big white women do? drink Heineken?
again, Erthona wasn't shooting for the stars, so no harm done.
The theme of 'lazy white writer doesn't bother to look under the hood' is pretty standard. Apart from Shakespeare, Kipling, and perhaps George Orwell, few native English writers have tried, and many that tried failed miserably (EM Forster). But it's not really needed now, because the subalterns write. And white writers are better of focusing on themes that they are personally familiar with, as long as it's not another fucking story about a poor family broken by drinking or domestic violence. Nobody cares about them.