Dalton Conley’s Honky is something quite different from the other books because of the effect of a personal narrative; it gives us the knowledge of race and class from another personal perspective, and describes how it is to grow up as a white minority in the midst of a poor black and Latino neighborhood. Dalton sets up his memoir beautifully with the revealing stories of his innocence, about his race as a three year old when he thinks that color and race are mutable, but with time, reality soon enters the picture and shows him how different he really is from everyone else in his neighborhood.
Conley’s narrative shows us the blurred lines of race and class as he tells is own story that despite being poor, his whiteness still stands out. The truthful nature of the narrative strikes the reader about the tough life that people in the projects have to live, the fight that they make everyday for life, for survival. Conley’s writing is suspenseful, told as a story of encounters that one wants to read as the reader becomes engaged in the world of race issues, poverty and segregation. Conley grows up in the times of increasing tensions between whites and blacks, which he shows us in the very first chapter with his baby snatching incident. It is definitely easy to tell how difficult it gets for Conley from the beginning because of his skin color, which can never be hidden even though as a child he believes that he can blend in with the Latino spectrum of skin color.
The story is a haunting tale that teaches that many times being white, you have certain privileges, which would never be given to blacks. That the skin color white has such a historically powerful worth, which is still the case today, is something that young Conley demonstrates through the use of corporal punishment, that teachers in his neighborhood school used to discipline students of color but not him, because he is white. Conley makes his case that the best in this world can be granted to you just because of your skin pigmentation, or rather lack thereof.
for volunteers to write book reviews. I think it is for the Between The Lines section. Maybe you should consider it.
"Consistency is not a human trait" - Maude, from Harold and Maude
and I can not make commitments on certain books, my bias might leak through.
It is really hard being objective...I want people to read a book if it is good but then I don't often do that, some books just bore me.
"No, not rich. I am a poor man with money, which is not the same thing." - Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera Fudge "It's the hard-knock life..."
I hate racist people, and most of the racist people I have encountered in my short life have been white
I don't want to say that means I hate white people.
Some of them are really good but almost all white people over the age of 40 that I have come across or met, have treated me like a second class citizen, gave me looks and just treated me as inhuman.
"No, not rich. I am a poor man with money, which is not the same thing." - Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera Fudge "It's the hard-knock life..."
and I hate racists too. I am not offended by your statement. If it looks like a duck, acts like a duck and walks like a duck, it's a duck.
"but almost all white people over the age of 40 that I have come across or met, have treated me like a second class citizen, gave me looks and just treated me as inhuman."
I have found that most white people over the age 50 hold some kind of racial bias. That is partly why it brings a little bit of hope to see the baby boomers dying off.
I don't mean to be insensitive, it's just part of life. I am hoping that racism dies with them.
"Consistency is not a human trait" - Maude, from Harold and Maude