{"id":151383671,"date":"2024-11-15T13:31:22","date_gmt":"2024-11-15T13:31:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/?p=151383671"},"modified":"2024-11-15T13:31:22","modified_gmt":"2024-11-15T13:31:22","slug":"friday-links-a-nation-cant-bury-its-sins-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/?p=151383671","title":{"rendered":"Friday Links: A Nation Can't Bury Its Sins Edition"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Everybody talks about genocides around the world, but when the killing is slow and spread over a hundred years, no one notices…American outrage is always for show.” – Percival Everett, ‘The Trees’<\/h2>

You cannot talk about the United States of America\u2014currently the richest, most powerful empire in the history of the world, with nuclear capabilities\u2014without mentioning that the country is only possible thanks to two original sins: race-based chattel slavery and genocide of the indigenous population. When you read the history of these two things, they\u2019re almost too awful to contemplate, until you remember the very least<\/em> you can do is contemplate them. Then you have to think about how the country can and should atone for its sins, and how we can prevent these atrocities from continuing to happen. <\/p>

Y\u2019all, I read such an incredible book this week. <\/p>

What I\u2019ve Been Reading This Week:<\/strong><\/p>

A book that, much like The Relentless City<\/em>, was very good reading in the lead-up to the election (and immediate aftermath). A book that we might as well get the CWs out of the way for: it deals directly with lynching, and has detailed descriptions of What They Did To Emmett Till. Over and over. But never in a way that feels too relentless, and never in a way that doesn\u2019t <\/em>feel like you\u2019re reading a detective novel. In fact, while these murders do have a little extra mustard on them than your standard Dora Lange from True Detective<\/em>, maybe we should spend some time considering how dead bodies work in detective novels. Because this novel certainly wants you to think about how dead bodies function. I\u2019m talking, of course, about The Trees<\/em> by Percival Everett.<\/p>

\"The<\/figure>

To start, I want to describe the opening chapter. You meet a family of (seemingly) goofball old hicks\u2014a mom who talks on a CB radio for fun, so her child call her Hot Mama Yeller. A charmingly useless drunk dad named Junior Junior. The gaggle of barefoot, future-middle-school-dropout children. The crusty old grandma with a sassy mouth. An uncle who wants to empty the above-ground pool and keep hogs in it. It\u2019s The Wild And Wonderful Whites Of West Virginia<\/em> for a few pages\u2014you know I got some redneck in me, everyone\u2019s having fun\u2014except we\u2019re in Mississippi, goddamn<\/em> (hey, don\u2019t look at me, the book did it first). Before the chapter can end, not even five pages in, the n-words start falling like dip juice out of these crackers\u2019 mouths and Grandma reveals that she feels bad for \u201cthe lie I told all them years back on that [n-word] boy\u2026I wronged that little [p-word]. Like it say in the good book, what goes around comes around.\u201d The younger generation tries to reassure her that all that\u2019s in the past, now, but, well\u2014pretty soon, the bodies start piling up. White corpses, mangled and mutilated, always with the body of someone who looks suspiciously like Emmett Till next to them. <\/p>

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