Sunday, April 7, 2019

Book review - part 2




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I have been slowly, thoughtfully, chewing my way through The Golden Thread by Kassia St. Clair.

This morning the paragraph beginning "While it is often assumed..." stopped me cold.  What she is saying is that the people who were captured, brutalized, de-humanized, were in large part put to creating the trade goods that would send slave traders to Africa to capture and enslave more people.

Quote is on page 169 of the book.

Ms St Clair provides lots of footnotes and citations for anyone who wants to research further.

There is a myth that Europeans were 'civilizing' the people living on the African and North/South American continents, when in fact all continents had indigenous peoples with highly complex civilizations.

There are many books that expand on those civilizations.  While we don't know what we don't know, there are plenty of resources out there that are available.  Choose books that don't espouse the 'white savior' complex, or attribute ancient artifacts to aliens. 


2 comments:

Jayne in Maine said...

Read the book "Empire of Cotton" next!

Laura Fry said...

I read one called something like King Cotton a long time ago. There was also a tv documentary made but I don’t remember the authors name or the exact title so I haven’t been able to find it again. I will look for this one.