I read Christina Sharpe’s Ordinary Notes during the summer. I borrowed it from the library and was done multiple days before the 21 day borrowinv limit. I could have renewed, I’m unclear, but I was complete and I wanted to return it to the library stacks so another card-carrying member could get it within days of requesting it.
I relished the format and presentation of the notes, which were some part journal entry in a book that could be understood as a memoir. (I do not recall if it has been described as such in the laudatory press coverage of this newer book of Sharpe’s). I celebrated the variety and breadth of what Sharpe wrote about ranging from inspiring conversations with Black artists at house parties to thorough review and cross-referencing of public speeches by Barack Obama and Claudia Rankine and others. I nerded out as this type of note-taking reminds me of how I’ve jotted notes on post it notes, the back of envelopes, bookmarks, junk mail, grocery lists, event flyers and many other paper forms over the last 25 years. I’ve been tracking and noting and rarely remembering wise words, phrases, sentences and paragraphs just as I saw Sharpe amass and compile the 200-plus notes in this book.
And, this book is significant for me because Sharpe is unsparing in criticisms of Black people, Black institutions and Black events even though there are plenty of white people reading her book. In fact, I compelled three friends to go get copies of Ordinary Notes so we could read the book together, on our own pace, as I trust that the four of us will exchange excerpts and interpretations along with emotions and inspiration when we are so moved. I mention them because two of the bookworms are White. I chose them not because of their race and whiteness but because I am eager to learn with and learn from them through (or in spite of) their Whiteness.
And, Sharpe cuts on Obama in Columbia South Carolina and dissects the many feelings and absurdities of the spectacle that the Equal Justice Initiative’s museum (according to Wikipedia, commonly known as the National Lynching Memorial but officially sanitized as the National Memorial to Peace and Justice) has become by the way that people — Black and White and all other races, US citizens and from all over te globe — act at the museum. Soon after EJI opened the place in 2018, I was intrigued by what they sought to accomplish and do by building the monument in Montgomery but it has become blemished beyond in these first five years of how people act foolishly and with disregard if not disdain. The dominant culture norms of selfies and attesting to where we go by putting jpegs or png files on social media has made the EJI museum a fraught destination. A stupid way to mark such a heavy occasion. Having read Sharpe’s descriptions of the multiple days she spends in Montgomery, gave me pause about using my feet to visit as there is opportunity cost to go to Montgomery and I am not yet ready or capable of going and feeling dignified and triple-dignifying: dignifying the people lynched, dignifying the other people visiting, and dignifying the people who contributed to building that site.
After Montgomery, Sharpe transported me to Canada for another spectacle at it on by another Black public intellectual: Claudia Rankine. Like Sharpe, I have watched almost no snuff videos over the last decade. I would have been outraged to be at a public conversation or author talk where a video compiling many snuff videos was edited and compiled. Writing this, I wonder if I would have been moved to tears or to vomit, and if I was so upchurned then would I have quietly exited the theater or would I have expressed for the rest of the audience and the event organizers my visceral body reactions to the video being blasted with the lights likely turned down and the volume turned up. I feel bewildered and disgusted by some artist believing that such a craft is fitting or appropriate.
And the third spectacle of a Black public intellectual that Sharpe incisively dissects is the political-speech-fronting-as-sermon performed by Barack Obama after being written by his many speechwriters.
Sharpe offered me some soothing respite from the tomfoolery of Blacks in the United States and North America that results in these ugly to grotesque presentations of people, places and things. There is an absence of reverence for the dead and dying in this culture and Sharpe cuts and dissects with clarity of voice, purpose and tremendous skill.
washing dishes: a father’s glimpses 