achebe, housing, out on the town

to be fair, although i said in the last post we had no hot water in our building, i should add that the building itself and the little studio apartments we are living in are very nice, way nicer than what we expecting and probably way nicer than we actually need. example: we have free laundry because it is a pretty small building. bonus!

here's the windows in the notkitchen part. there are a lot of shelves and the desk you see there actually spans the width of the whole room. overall, a very good design.


headed to doors on marshall street tonight to listen to (probably) nineties music because culture is a bit behind here in terms of things coming out, especially music. example: i'd be shocked if they played something from in rainbows, but not at all surprised to hear the bends. ratz in melville is apparently even worse for old music, but they have good food there and half price stella on monday nights. to future visitors and tourists: melville is a deal, but never walk down those alleys and always pay someone to keep an eye on your car.

read an interview with chinua achebe this morning where he verbally smites people who won't take the time to understand the cultural and historical context of african literature and then presume to criticize or comment on it. it's their responsibility to do so, he argues, because he was forced to learn the context of western writers--like most kids (white and black, east and west) are expected to do at some point in formal schooling. a self-proclaimed protest writer, revolutionary and teacher, he nevertheless is branded as resentful for making comments like that. it never ceases to amaze me when white people get offended by having their own expectations suddenly applied to them by the Other. especially with something as trivial as saying you don't understand a book. we expect a lot of people, but can't expect the same of ourselves?

i'm not going to even start about the other article arguing that conrad's heart of darkness and achebe's things fall apart are making similar commentaries on colonialism, geez. we took that one down in class pretty quickly.