It is important to recognize the politics of books because the art cannot be separated from the artist when it comes to literature
As with many other bookworms, I read to escape my own stressful reality by stepping into the world of someone else. People who read for fun have inspired imaginations and creative thinking skills. Plus, readers tend to have more positive outlooks on life compared to non-readers.
But, reading is much more than simply a form of entertainment. Reading is a great way to gain knowledge about the real world, making it a political act because politics are the intricate relationships between people within society, usually regarding people who have and don't have power.
Historically, reading has been linked to upward social mobility, freedom, and radical change. Reading and education coexist because the organization of political movements cannot happen unless people are educated on the issue.
Historically, reading has been linked to upward social mobility, freedom, and radical change. Reading and education coexist because the organization of political movements cannot happen unless people are educated on the issue. Many independent bookstores and libraries put out reading lists to support movements and to educate their consumers. For example, the Hamilton Public Library has a reading list for Black Lives Matter.
Reading and education are so powerful that many attempts have been made throughout time to censor or ban books. Book bans have been sweeping across the United States, but the removal of books is also happening in our own neighbourhoods in Canada. In September of 2023, the Peel District School Board (PDSB) was accused of weeding out 50 per cent of its library books simply because they were published pre-2008.
PDSB defended its actions by claiming that weeding out old books promoted inclusivity and diversity. However, by following the sole criteria of publishing date, the school board was erasing important history. The loss of certain books sparked anger because many of them were used to educate students on real-world events that should not be forgotten.
Reading influences the outcome of politics, but the creation of books is also influenced by politics. A book cannot be separated from an author just as politics cannot be separated from everyday life. Authors write what they know, embedding little parts of themselves and their beliefs throughout their work. Books reflect reality, both good and bad, and expose readers to a vast range of human experiences and world views.
Although reading can serve as a positive political tool to educate the masses, there are times when books do more harm than good. Unfortunately, readers can sometimes also be exposed to extremely problematic and offensive literature. Where books are hypothetical and imaginative for some, they are triggering for others when they mishandle or glorify topics such as homophobia, racism, sexual assault, and more.
I spend a lot of time in the online book communities of BookTok, Bookstagram, and BookTube where I often encounter the rhetoric of "keep politics out of books." But, for the reasons explained above, it is virtually impossible to remove the politics from books. As a content creator in these spaces who openly criticizes harmful authors, I get frustrated when I'm told I'm "making a big deal out of nothing" because "it's just fiction."
Many comments made along these lines have been in relation to my attempts at exposing authors who romanticize and erase the violent nature of sexual assault. For survivors, these books are never "just fictional" because reading them can easily trigger past or ongoing trauma. In addition, it can teach young readers that certain acts of violence are okay and prevent them from speaking up if they become a victim.
The art cannot be separated from the artist. When not held accountable for their actions, authors continue to profit from their harmful remarks and glorification of violence. For example, J. K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series, has never apologized for her transphobic, homophobic, and racist behaviour, yet she remains a multi-millionaire.
To ignore the ways reading and writing are political acts is to remain in a state of ignorance. Being university students we are taught to use our critical thinking skills and we can extend this ability to reading. Yes, it is a fun hobby, but as readers, we are always in communication with society. We decipher what is true and what is not based on what we know about the political world.
It's no secret that Canada has a long history of systemic racism and injustice. However, much of that history has been buried deep, locked away in old filing cabinets in disused archives. Deanna Bowen's exhibit, A Harlem Nocturne, seeks to break open those cabinets and reveal that history to the world.
Deanna Bowen is an interdisciplinary artist based out of Toronto. Her work explores race, migration, historical writing and authorship. In creating A Harlem Nocturne, she spent three years combing through public and personal archives to uncover the truths of institutionalized racism that have been long forgotten or ignored.
A Harlem Nocturne takes its name from the nightclub that Bowen’s family owned and operated in Vancouver in the 1950s and 60s. It was the only Black-owned nightclub in Vancouver at the time and was subjected to repeated police raids and violence. The exhibit explores the institutionalized racism of the Canadian entertainment industry — and the country as a whole — through the stories of her family members, and others in the industry, from the 1940s through to the 1970s.
Kimberly Phillips, a curator at the Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver, where A Harlem Nocturne was first exhibited, curated the exhibition for the McMaster Museum of Art. Phillips describes Bowen’s work as an effort to expose the past by transforming it into something that’s impossible to ignore or overlook.
“[Bowen] starts with the archival material itself, and so each [artwork] will find its own form, a new form in the world that’s very much through a process of extraction from the archive, a kind of translation, often an enlargement and kind of bringing it forward in a different form than you would’ve encountered it originally,” said Phillips.
One of the more literal ways that this is done is through the physical enlargement of a newspaper ad for the nightclub, Harlem Nocturne. The ad was originally the size of a postage stamp, but is now larger-than-life, taking up much of the gallery wall. By sizing up the ad, Bowen is calling attention to the club, inviting the audience to interact with the document and the history behind it that might have otherwise been overlooked.
“[T]here's no point in having these documents around unless you do something with them … the document existing in and of itself is not is not meaningful. It's like we have to take them up, and in order to take them up, we need to make them visible,” said Phillips.
Several of the pieces in the exhibit are hidden or obscured by black fabric, or are set up to be viewed at a distance. Phillips says that these varying levels of visibility reflect the difficulties that Bowen experienced while compiling her research.
“Deanna and I talked a little bit about how those registers of blackness does a number of things. One, which is speaking towards a kind of sense of opacity, or the kind of difficulty in … actually reaching some of this material, not because it doesn't exist or it's hard to find, but because of the blockages that [Bowen] experienced in the form of archivists and trauma, and other things that you know, different members of the community gatekeeping who gets to tell what story. But it's also a measure of protection as well of not over exposing bodies who have been subjected to discrimination and hyper visibility in certain ways,” said Phillips.
Each aspect of the show is intentional and purposeful, even choosing where to exhibit the show. When choosing where A Harlem Nocturne would be shown, both Phillips and Bowen emphasized the importance of working with other women curators. The McMaster Museum of Art’s Senior Curator is Pamela Edmonds, which is part of the reason why the show is being exhibited there.
[pjc_slideshow slide_type="harlem-nocturne"]
“The word that I used to define all the people that we're working with is that they're all co-conspirators, feminist co-conspirators. And that's something that I think is super important. I liked the idea that we could generate something, a project that could span over many years and many institutions and all of it being done with women. It maybe speaks to an unspoken reality that more often than not, it is women doing this hard labour,” said Bowen.
A Harlem Nocturne blends the personal with the public. One of the pieces is a transcription of an interview between Bowen and her mother, and the exhibit itself is named after a building that was integral to her family. She says that A Harlem Nocturne is a homecoming for her, and in some ways a form of healing.
“[G]rowing up in Vancouver, my family was not always well regarded. And so if anything, I hope that people come away and feel the compassion and love that I have for these people, my family, especially for the hard edges that they have and the rough and tumble-ness of their story. These are beautiful people that have persevered over generations of resistance and discrimination and I hope that people really come to see and value their strength and importance,” said Bowen.
Bowen’s work also applies more broadly, underscoring the realities of life for Black Canadians and the injustices they continue to face today. She emphasizes the idea of perseverance in the face of adversity, and the refusal to be silenced.
“The project also helps to push against... Vancouver's old narrative about [how] 'they used to have a Black community and now it's gone.' This show for me is about affirming 'there used to be a Black community, and we're still here,' and really trying to undermine this notion of again, the demise of a Black community, locally, and then of course, nationally,” said Bowen.
Bowen hopes that viewers will leave the exhibit with new curiosity, and a desire to explore their own family history.
“I would encourage people to see themselves in what I'm doing. There's so much rich history in our own family histories. And I think it's important to emphasize that everybody's family story has some impact on the making of a nation … You know, it's about recognizing that the power to create our history and our personal and our national narrative really does kind of boil down to people like you and I,” said Bowen.
A Harlem Nocturne will be exhibiting for free at the McMaster Museum of Art from Jan.16 - May 9, 2020.
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