Third Estate Sunday Review: KINDLE UNLIMITED (Betty, Ava and C.I.)

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In 2018, community sites took turns covering a book every week. You can see "In 2018, we read books" to review that coverage. We didn't want to repeat ourselves in 2019 or 2020. So when Marcia came up with a way to cover books but with a twist, we were all for it. Marcia's idea was for us to digital books -- we're largely a printed text crowd -- and to use AMAZON's KINDLE UNLIMITED. So for 2021, we'll be trying to do a book a week and trying to just use KINDLE UNLIMITED. This week, we're speaking with Betty about her "WHO IS THE GREAT EARTHA KITT? (and thank you, Diana Ross!)"

Betty, this was the second book you read this year about Eartha Kitt, you covered the other book in ""John L. Williams' AMERICA'S MISTRESS: EARTHA KITT, HER LIFE AND TIMES." You found this book to be a marked improvement over Williams' book.

Betty: I really did. It offended me that Williams took the approach of "Eartha said but the reality is . . ." over and over. Like Eartha was too stupid to know anything. The British man had a very low opinion of Eartha's intelligence for example. He thought she was an embarrassment at the White House. How so? This is a woman who spoke multiple languages, who had traveled around the world, who was active in social work with the youth of America at the time she had her encounter with Lady Bird Johnson. But for Williams, she was just some dumb Black woman, apparently. And I was glad to see that America Selby, in her book WHO IS THE GREAT EARTHA KITT?, was also bothered by this attitude. She notes that Williams thinks Eartha's too stupid to know who her own mother was. And this from a man who tries to pretend he's figured out who Eartha's White father was. No, he didn't. It was decades later, there were no records and he's just guessing. But let Eartha offer something different and Williams is attacking her memory, her comprehension and her truthfulness. Reading America Selby's book was great because it restored my faith in Eartha and made me feel I wasn't alone for wondering over the way Williams' portrayed Eartha in the book he wrote.

It really offended you.

Betty: It did. I just didn't like the attitude and, sorry, but, for me, it touched on the way the British treated people during the British Empire, people of color. For me, Williams was writing as though he was superior and better and the final judgment and that he was all of these things because he was a White man. I thought Eartha Kitt deserved better than a biographer who was so dismissive of her.

In terms of KINDLE, any thoughts?

Betty: I'd say this goes to the strength of AMAZON online books. If you read one book on a topic or subject and don't care for it, you're likely to be able to find another one on the same topic or subject -- one that hopefully speaks to you.

Good. Before we wind down, Betty, you had wanted to bring in something else regarding reading.

Betty: Yep. I want to quote from last Tuesday's "Iraq snapshot:"

That's reality. It's in short supply at JACOBIN this week. They're also promoting Liza Featherstone's deeply misguided defense of the 'canon.' And, Liza, I don't know that I'd called young right-wingers "little s**ts" in the same article where I went on about how the books of Aristotle and Shakespeare must be read. No, we're not just talking personal taste here (I've never had the Eurocentric devotion to William Shakespeare), we're also talking about the fact that neither wrote books. Shakespeare wrote plays, dear, and Aristotle delivered lectures. It's a quibble but so is dismissing some young people as "sh**ts."

Betty (Con't): I'm sorry, but this notion that we need the so-called canon is repulsive. The canon left out too many people. It left out the experiences of people of color, it left out the experiences of women. At this late date for Liza Featherstone to be lamenting that people don't like George Orwell. I say, "F**k you, Liza." No one has to read Orwell and no one's life suffers because they don't. Orwell was a homophobic bastard. Liza may be willing to go back those times and embrace that but I'm not. My brother is gay, my brother-in-law is gay and their child is being raised by two wonderful parents who happen to be gay. That's reality today. Orwell has no place in it. He was also a little snitch. Times change, people grow. A canon that was exclusionary should fall to the wayside. Liza wants to restore it when, in fact, it never should have existed. If books have merit, they will always be read. Regardless of being in the canon or not. I don't need Liza promoting homophobes in the 21 century and if that's what she and JACOBIN have to offer, f**k them both.

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"Remembering Mort Sahl (Ava and C.I.)"

"KINDLE UNLIMITED (Kat, Ava and C.I.)"

"KINDLE UNLIMITED (Betty, Ava and C.I.)"

"KINDLE UNLIMITED (Ann, Ava and C.I.)"

"KINDLE UNLIMITED (Jim, Ava and C.I.)"

"KINDLE UNLIMITED (Isaiah, Ava and C.I.)"

"KINDLE UNLIMITED (Kat, Ava and C.I.)"

" KINDLE UNLIMITED (Trina, Ava and C.I.)"

"KINDLE UNLIMITED (Marcia, Ava and C.I.)"

"KINDLE UNLIMITED (Ruth, Ava and C.I.)"

"KINDLE UNLIMITED (Jess, Ava and C.I.)"