Follow up on "J" is for Jonson

I was never able to track this down at the UWM or Milwaukee Public Library (at least not the one on the East side) but I WAS able to get it for free on Kindle, woot@ woot!

This one did take me a bit to get through, even though it actually read quite quickly. I finished it on the Caribbean cruise I went on with Justin's family - I just took an afternoon to sit on the deck of our room and read, one of my favorite vacation activities. And in honor of the challenge, WHICH I AM APPARENTLY THE ONLY ONE STILL BLOGGING ABOUT, but I digress, I decided to plough through and finish it up.

Again, I will excerpt from my goodreads.com review:

"I realized at the end I had been misconceptualizing the purpose/point of this book. The title says it all: by the end of the book, he is an ex-colored man, aka, he is living as a white man.

On the whole I don't feel like its a terribly interesting book, its fair. I did enjoy the end, when he sums of his life experience and his decision to "pass" as white, I found it interesting how cognizant he was of the many and multiple implications of his choice, but how the practical consequences outweighed those (for him, in this instance)"

I don't have a whole lot more to add to this. He lived in an interesting time period, but I didn't feel like he gave you much info on his context he often noted to the reader with the gist of, "I won't bore you with the details" which is often the part of the book I enjoy the most. Especially for a book like this, in which the character's actions are so much dependent on his context - I wanted more of it!

Another interesting note, what to make of use of the word "colored" nowadays? I had a friend refer to herself as "colored" the other day (she actually is...at least according to how the word used to be) and it didn't seem offensive to me at all, nor was she trying to be, or really even trying to be joking, it was more descriptive. Im NOT into re-claiming words, though Im not sure this one is one meant for or destined for reclaiming, it seems more to have gone out of Vogue (because YES, it was associated with many awful experiences for people of color, which seems to be the replacement phrase). Little of topic, and not going to get the space it deserves in this post, but some thoughts I had while reading this book.