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Fear of Beauty
….when I write, if I keep thinking, oh I’m a woman and I must address feminine issues rather than human issues, then that is a kind of stopping and self-destruction. Because what matters, is to cultivate and nourish one’s own positive characteristics until one reaches a level worthy of being a human….
— Forugh Farrokhzad (Persian: 28 December 1934–13 February 1967)
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…Reading Nadine Gordimer is like swimming alone in the ocean on a beautiful day. Where is everyone, I ask. Why aren’t there people here enjoying this beauty? I hope they are ok, I say to myself. I mean, what keeps them from this refreshment of body and soul?
Gordimer won the Nobel Prize in Literature. She continued writing and producing some of the most insightful stories about her country and its people. Her gift, in my opinion, was her completely unsentimental and surgical parings away of the pretenses we live with. She understood how we delude ourselves and what that leads to both individually and in society.
Her depth of perception of the ills of her country did not focus on the racists but those fighting that horrible disease. She wrote and I am so grateful to read a truth we rarely witness these days.
When I think of others who wrote from that depth of perception, I think of James Baldwin. I could say more here but I just…
