Cooking up a Hot Mess with Paula Deen and Anne Rice

The recent allegations levelled at Paula Deen, self-proclaimed Queen of Southern cooking, have brought with them a slurry of debate on social media networks. The level of emotive commentary has highlighted just how far the world has yet to go in race relations (and I use the term "race" in its most socially understood form here). It seems that everybody has an opinion and nobody's scared to voice it.

Today, while meandering through my Facebook newsfeed, I spotted a new blogpost from a site I regularly read. The bulk of that post was on a young author who had scored herself a publishing deal at the tender age of 15. A wonderfully positive post about a clever young writer who is being recognised for her talent. Lurking at the bottom of the post, however, was a link to author Anne Rice's Facebook post, posing a question about the social vilification of Paula Deen.

Did I ignore the link? Did I allow my fingers to hover momentarily over the link then brush them quickly away to another page? No. I clicked the link. I read the initially apparently innocent question. Then I read the many many polarised responses to the question, to Paula Deen herself and to a plethora of other social issues, some of which appeared unrelated to the issue. People don't hold back on social media. Sometimes people loose all sense that they are a member of humanity and should perhaps exercise a little humanity in their responses to others. And having worked myself into a lather, shaking my head at the state of affairs, and losing heart in people's capacity to conduct a debate or even an argument without a rapid slide into vulgarity, accusations and name-calling, I decided to post my own response to both the question Ms Rice posed and to some of the responses it elicited.

It's an issue I feel quite strongly about, so … well, I got a little carried away. So here, in its 980 word entirety, is what I posted. Don't say I didn't warn you...

Completely agree with Sarah ^^ (this is a long post and I apologise in advance). Ms Deen is not in danger of losing her life. She's really not in any danger of losing even her livelihood (her empire spans more than just the one Food Network show, and they haven't cancelled either of her sons' shows). This isn't a "lynch mob" as you so colourfully put it (nothing like emotive language to whip up a mob). She's not being pursued with a noose or burning torches and pitchforks. Nobody here appears to be wearing white pointy hats. I think the scrutiny she's being subjected to is perfectly human, and frankly justifiable given her frequent claims to Southern manners. It's unfortunate for her that social media happens to be the church meeting or town gathering of our times and allows for the airing of many more opinions than would previously have been possible. It's also unfortunate that people use the relative anonymity of social media to express their views in a less than tactful or considerate way, but if we cut through the bluster and filibuster, it seems to me that there are three positions here. Firstly, there are those who are outraged by the revelations from the allegations (and let's remember that at this point they are still allegations - her tearful video admissions aside), there are those who are mindful that she has not yet been convicted of any wrong-doing other than in the court of public appeal (tearful video admissions aside again) and so should not be condemned on the basis of allegations, and finally there are those that seem to have missed the point of the debate. Paula Deen may well be a charming archetype of a Southern white lady, but that doesn't mean she has any right to racist views. Claiming a defence of "everyone's at least a little bit racist" serves only to detract from the significance of her utterances (and it appears she's a recidivist on this count) - she is a Southern white lady and all the history of subjugation that that entails. I agree that it is shocking to hear African Americans call each other the N-word in jest or affection. It appears like double standards. It doesn't sit well with me, but does confirm how entrenched the generations of discrimination and disenfranchisement are. There is a minor case to be made about the taking back of power by using the word, but I think that's a furphy - some words are just too vile. Calling for people to "move on from what happened in the past" is a position of luxury adopted often by those who have never been oppressed or had generations of their family oppressed by anyone, or by those who are apologists for such colonialism. We're not talking about a bit of name calling and a sticking out of tongues like you did at age 5. This is generations of being subjugated, having your futures determined for you by others purely because of the colour of your skin, this is being told who you can marry, where you can live, where you can shop, when you can go out on the streets, where or whether you can educate your children and for how long and in what courses, for generations. It is the assumption that one group of people is innately superior to another by virtue of a little less melanin. And it's the fact that there is still not equity (not talking about equality here - I'm not sure real equality is ever achievable) between African Americans, Native Americans and others (white, brown, brindle, whatever you choose to call the colour of your skin - and the same applies in other countries too, so don't feel you are being persecuted because you're from the US, it's not much different in Britain or in Australia). I'm not talking about an individual, case-by-case analysis. I'm talking about the entirety of African America or Native America compared to how everyone else fares in health, education and employment (severely under-represented) and the criminal justice system (severely over-represented). It's not that easy to "just get over it". This is generations of mental health issues, generations of general health issues (have you seen the diabetes and heart health statistics for African Americans and Native Americans compared to the rest of the population? Have you seen the morbidity rates?), generations of fighting overt and covert discrimination in education, workplaces and life in general. For many African Americans, waking up and deciding not to let the past determine how you react to the world can be stymied the very second they walk into a store and the clerk behind the counter ignores them in favour of the white lady who walked in after them. They may brush it off as one ignorant clerk being a jerk, leave the store and walk down the street, only to have a mother pull her child protectively out of the way. They go home, walk in the door, and notice a car speeding past, that slows in front of their house, just enough for the young teenager in the front to lean half-way out the window and scream, red-faced and ugly, the N-word before racing off again. Anne Rice, do you not think it's a valid response that people are still polarised by her words? Are you surprised? Do you truly believe she's in danger of having her front door bashed down in the middle of the night, of being dragged half naked and half asleep into the yard, and of being strung up from the nearest tree by people who don't even have the courage of their convictions to show their face? I understand that you were trying to draw an analogy with the comparative anonymity of social media, but your inflammatory language was perhaps a little ill-thought-out.

The Light Between Oceans, M. L. Stedman

My review of this novel follows...

The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This debut novel by expat Australian M. L. Stedman introduces the intriguing moral dilemma facing lighthouse keeper Tom Sherbourne and wife Isabel who find a dead man and his live baby washed ashore on their very remote patch of land off the remote (yes that repetition was intentional…it was really remote) West Australian coast. Having experienced the pain and loss of miscarriage and still birth, Tom and Isabel need to make a decision about whether to report the find (not an easy or quick process), or say nothing and raise the child as their own (both emotionally and logistically appealing).

As an expat West Australian, who knows this part of the coast reasonably well, and who is missing home terribly, I was really excited to pick up this book (actually it was my recommendation for book club). Now that I've completed it, I've gone on to read some of the reviews floating around about it.

Let me begin by saying that in the main, I enjoyed the writing. The shifting tenses didn't trouble me and it seemed to me that Stedman employed this particular device to enhance the moral ambiguity within the plot. The language was mostly in keeping with the era (with a few exceptions of turn of phrase that were a little jarring) and the dialogue, while stilted, felt appropriate to the buttoned-up, tight-laced social milieu of 1920s, small-town, remote Western Australia.

I thought the characterisation of Tom Sherbourne was pretty much in keeping with men from Australia of that era. Actually his stoicism, devotion to his wife and moral ambivalence reminded me remarkably of my father-in-law (a West Australian, born at the end of WWII who grew up commuting between remote Western Australia and the city, and who spent time in the Defence forces). However, I found it immensely difficult to even empathise with the other characters in the novel and did at times become frustrated with Tom's spinelessness also.

While Tom's deep flaws could be explained by his back story (a troubled childhood full of secrets and lies, followed by unreconciled traumatic experiences through WWI and combined with the machismo expected of good, strong Australian men of the time), similar excuses could not be made for Isabel or some of the other characters. Isabel's poor luck with producing a child (something that would have been duly expected of a married woman of that time, and the lack of which would be viewed socially with a mix of pity and mistrust) clearly led to her becoming unhinged. This is the only way I can explain both her behaviours throughout the rest of the novel and Tom's acceptance of her behaviours. Much was made of the erratic and socially unacceptable behaviour of Hannah, the biological mother of the child, but nobody seemed to question Isabel's state of mind.

Though it was in keeping with his character that Tom bore the brunt of the consequences of their decision with a stiff upper lip, it didn't make sense that he didn't stand up to Isabel more. He had ample opportunity to right the wrongs once he'd learned who the biological mother was, and that she was still alive. I had, in fact, expected him to return the child largely because of his own childhood experiences, and it baffled me that this man, who had seen the horrors of death and injury through the Great War, did not appear to have the moral fortitude to deny his wife her whim and support her through her grief.

Although the anomalies in the characters' behaviours excited and engaged me as a reader, I found the place names troubling. While Janus Rock exists, it's not off the coast of Western Australia, but I do understand why Stedman used the name - two faced Roman god Janus, god of beginnings and transitions, of doors, gates, passages, endings and time, looking both to the future and to the past, encapsulates the main theme of this novel. The descriptions of the lighthouse (which were lyrical and clearly well researched) felt like they were based on the lighthouse at Cape Leeuwin (though Cape Leeuwin lighthouse is on a headland and not a separate island). However, the tiny town on the coast named Partaguese doesn't sit well. While the descriptions of the town (probably based on Augusta), the claustrophobia of small communities, the bigotry and the community support are all well written, the name itself doesn't roll easily off the tongue. Again, Stedman's choice of name because of its linguistic significance (to share, to be divided into or to be divided between) took precedence over the ease of readability - really I found myself being distracted by exactly how to pronounce this cumbersome name, instead of it being a natural part of the story.

The postscript was a nice touch. It rounded off the story without making a judgement about the decisions made by the characters or their outcomes. And as far as the plot is concerned, there are stranger stories in my own and in my husband's family histories

This novel covered a lot of territory; moral ambiguities, small-town small-mindedness, racism and bigotry, the issues of childlessness and social expectations, motherhood and what makes a good mother, the complexity of marriages, the keeping of secrets, greed and the yawning chasm between wealth and poverty, the lack of psychological support for veterans of that war, isolation, loneliness, mental health and acceptance (I'm sure there are some I've missed). And they were all meaty, well-covered issues. They kept me turning the page and made what could easily have been a too-soppy, overly-emotional novel truly intriguing.

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