Rosaleen McDonagh (2021) Unsettled.

Who are you and what are you? Rosaleen McDonagh’s collection of essays attempts to answer that question. ‘Unsettled’ is the title. The paradox: those she tries to unsettle don’t read books much and certainly don’t read books about ingrained prejudices with words like ‘intersectionality’, racism, ableism, and institutional abuse.

Can you be made to care?

The answer is no as McDonagh shows again and again.

The shame is not hers but ours. But if we don’t care there is no sense of shame.

‘Shame’.

‘Shame lives in you. Shame that you let your family down by not entering the world with a perfect body. Shame that you let your family down by not entering the world with a perfect mind. Shame that you don’t have a different, more manageable impairment. Shame that you left your family at a very young age. Shame that you went to a special school. Shame that you cannot hold a pencil or a crayon. Shame that you struggle to read. Shame that you are girl rather than a boy. Shame that you allowed yourself to be violated and beaten. Shame that you were not able to run away. Shame that you were contaminated by settled people.’

Her hero, James Baldwin couldn’t separate black oppression from class oppression from oppression of a gay, black man. Hate gets twisted into many strands that are knotted together. The cost and cult of respectability and being settled was beyond him.

Unsettled speaks to the better you. Read on.     

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0CVBVVGD6