Lenaya Fallin
A
thread 1/9
So. I’m rereading Charlie Adhara’s Big Bad Wolf series. I love it. She’s a great writer, and these are her first books. Phenomenally strong debut.
But.
I can’t remember the last time I was so activated while reading romance.
09:36 AM - Jun 25, 2023
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Lenaya Fallin
A
thread 2/9
Whatever the original symbolism, Adhara seems to explore race and interracial relationships through her stories. In The Wolf at the Door, the narrator works for an offshoot of the FBI that investigates ‘wolf crimes’. By which they really mean, crimes against humans by wolves
09:50 AM - Jun 25, 2023
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Lenaya Fallin
A
thread 3/9
She does *such* a good job of getting into the head of someone who ‘means well’ but is still a bigot, that my body started reacting the way it does when I’m navigating someone’s bigoted thinking. Whew. It was rough
09:53 AM - Jun 25, 2023
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Lenaya Fallin
A
thread 4/9
What’s wild, is that I kept reading reviews, hoping to find someone else struggling as much as I. I mean this guy was *such* a bigot, right? Very few readers mentioned, or seemed to struggle with that. Although more talked of how unlikeable the narrator was.
09:55 AM - Jun 25, 2023
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Lenaya Fallin
A
thread 5/9
I couldn’t understand, how I was barely able to get through it, in spite of loving the romance between the guys, being interested in the story and fascinated by the world-building; but most people were fine. Unabashedly fangirling
And then…I realized…
10:00 AM - Jun 25, 2023
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Lenaya Fallin
A
thread 6/9
I’m not white.
I have no callouses built up when it comes to bigotry. There is no uncle, grandmother, cousin, brother or husband in my life where I have to accommodate their bigotry. I’m late in articulating this…
10:03 AM - Jun 25, 2023
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Lenaya Fallin
A
thread 7/9
Whiteness includes bigotry as a part of its social structure. It isn’t that black folks aren’t bigots. It’s that we’re not expected to leave each other’s bigotry alone. I lose no social capital for challenging the cousin who says that thing about Asians. In fact, I’m respected for ‘keeping it 100’.
10:08 AM - Jun 25, 2023
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Lenaya Fallin
A
thread 8/9
But I’ve noticed in a lot of situations among white people, calling out someone’s bigotry is the faux pas. I keep forgetting that. Often times they are expected to shrug and accept, ‘that’s just Uncle Marvin Uncle Marvin-ing’, and say no more about it. They have calluses I have not built up.
10:12 AM - Jun 25, 2023
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Lenaya Fallin
A
thread 9/9
So as a black woman, inhabiting the brain of a bigot for hundreds of pages…it makes sense that I find it so uncomfortable at times, I have to stop and do deep knee bends, while my less melanated fellow readers squee over the lurve
10:14 AM - Jun 25, 2023
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