New Year Resolution?

Finished reading Anna Burns' Milkman today. I liked it very much. Henry Abelove gave me the book when he came to our holiday party. My Goodreads review: A revelation. How does one convey the emotional numbness that the unlikely heroine, Middle Sister, puts up to protect against the various invasive forms of violence in her Belfast community in the 1970s? By showing the constant struggle to maintain the shield, always in danger of slipping because of one's curiosity, anger, fear, and love, if not battered down by communal conflict. The language, repetitive, idiosyncratic, in one word, paranoid, immerses the reader in Middle Sister's consciousness. The immersion is complete with the voices of other members of the community, filtered through Middle Sister's consciousness in such a way that they are always at least potentially echoes of her own dilemma, figures of her own splitting.

Today I also got to page 95 of Asad Haider's Mistaken Identity: Race and Class in the Age of Trump. Omar Qureshi recommended the book when we met for dinner on Monday. It was good to see him again. Last Thursday, had lunch with Dorothy Wang, and felt again an inability to articulate my ideas and concerns to her. Then, met Winston to see the Matthew Wong show at the Karma gallery, and was delighted by the paintings. At night Kim, Jade and I met for dinner at Uncle Chop Chop. It was not much of a celebration since the three other members of the Gaudy Boy team could not make it, but we did discuss a number of important issues, including the possibility of publishing an edition of Tania De Rozario's memoir And the Walls Come Crumbling Down. Friday night was a New Year party at Valerie and JF's place, where it was a pleasure to talk again with Jean, her husband Will, and the artist Hilda Shen.

New Year Resolution? Again I resolve to keep a better diary.

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