White Tears review

White Tears

By Hari Kunzru

Published in The Kitchener Citizen, October 2018

White Tears is the latest offering from author Hari Kunzru, who specializes
in “translit” -- a literary genre that seeks to collapse space and time while
maintaining narrative traction in the reader’s mind. Kunzru accomplishes
this so masterfully in White Tears that you will gladly surrender to his
ever-shifting reality.

Seth, our protagonist, is average in every way and therefore serves as a blank

screen on which other characters are crisply projected. The achingly cool (and

ultra rich) Carter Wallace is the focus of his attention, and takes him on the

coat-tail ride of his life to New York, where they become music producers.

Through Carter, we enter a world of record collectors: mostly white men who

are alienated by the present, and obsessively collect the past. The rarest and

most prized treasures are early blues records made by black slaves, ex-slaves

or descendants of slaves. It is not enough for Carter to listen to the music -- he

wants to own it, by any means necessary. He becomes increasingly unhinged

as he hunts down one record, the extremely rare and groundbreaking Graveyard

Blues by mythologized figure Charlie Shaw -- one we are not sure even exists.

When he at last gets his hands on it, the universe of the novel is flipped upside

down. Reality disintegrates and space, time, and sanity become fluid and shifting.

The book gains dizzying momentum, and you’ll find yourself devouring pages to

find what happens next. Kunzru shows how seemingly innocent acts of appropriation

are echoes of the total forms of violence they descend from. The collector’s desire to

own black music springs from the same well that fueled slavery. In the world of White

Tears, however, the would-be possessors come to be possessed themselves by the

ghosts of retribution. Dark secrets materialise, and the final pages sew everything

together neatly like an intricate quilt, as interlocking and systematic as oppression itself.

White Tears is an entrancing, fast-paced mystery full of twists and turns that feel at once revelatory and inevitable. But it is so much more than a great read -- it is a metaphysical examination of white privilege, cultural appropriation, and selfhood that in the end will leave you with the satisfying sense that justice has been served.

Our Ink, Our Stories for KPL

In September I started my dream job at the Kitchener Public Library, as a Library Assistant (helping people sign up for library cards, check in and check out books, DVDs, CDs, audiobooks, helping people use the internet, the printer, access classes and resources) at the main branch of the library, which is like a beautiful art gallery as well as being a breathtaking work of architecture, as well as a place that houses a lot of very happy personal memories of reading, learning, art and community, but also at the four community library branches (Forest Heights, Country Hills, Pioneer Park and Grand River) which each have their own distinct personality and populations they serve.

In addition to loving the work, I also love the organization and what they stand for. I also work with and for some of the nicest, coolest, smartest people in the area. I honestly enjoy going to work every day and actually believe in what we do. It's so unusual! Unlike some libraries, the KPL is super progressive and forward thinking in it's vision, and in the last year enrolment has increased by 20%! The library is so much more than a place to get any book, movie, or piece of music for free, but it's kind of the true manifestation of democracy - a non-capitalist town hall - where anyone is welcome regardless of where they are at in life, where people can come when they come as refugees to Canada, when they get out of jail after twenty years, when they don't know how to use the internet, when they have five kids and are about to have a nervous breakdown, when they can't read, when they have a disability, when they want to make art or use technology or make music but can't afford the supplies, and they are all welcomed as our customers. Or you can come use the library if you have everything you could want and need in life, and you'll get more than you could ever imagine out of it. You can borrow musical instruments, toys, try virtual reality, make a 3D print, make a podcast, make a video on our green screen.

As if the job couldn't get any better, one of the people I work with - Meg Harder, is an amazing artist and person, and asked me to help her with a really cool project that the CEO Mary Chevreau asked her to take on, and I've been loving to contribute to it. The project is Our Ink, Our Stories, and it is a blog telling stories of the residents of Waterloo Region through their tattoos (or other uses of ink/paint on their bodies).