I hope I am missing something about that paragraph and it just means something that's going way over my head.Īlso, Matthews uses footnotes pretty frequently. Normal or even close to normal people do not have such thoughts (not that he claims to be normal). WHAT? I seriously do not understand that part at all. He takes like a paragraph to explain how he wanted to rape the poor child in front of her whole family, first gently then rough. My biggest gripe with this book is the part where he fantasizes about raping a little white girl because she called him a n*gger. The narrative voice in this book is very engaging and Matthews has a knack for finding the little things in a scene that really put the reader in the moment. His memoir lets readers peek into his insane journey from hater of all things black to uber militant black man to something somewhere in the middle. His appearance would lead one to believe he is just another nice Jewish boy or perhaps someone with a little Middle Eastern flavor in there somewhere. David Matthews has a black father and a Jewish mother. The idea of "passing" is so Harlem Renaissance (and earlier) era to me that it is just mind-boggling to read about a man in his early forties who spent the first 20 or so years of his life passing as a Jewish man. This memoir by David Matthews is fascinating. Regardless of my feelings on Matthews own language surrounding Judaism, he has openly admitted to committing rape in his memoir and we do not support rapists or people who commit sexual assault in this house. Which is then followed up on page 258 by imaging raping a child You always remember your first."įun fact! Purposefully putting a hole in a condom is rape! Why would you write that in a fucking book? □□□Īdditionally, I do understand the inclusion of "you always remember your first" is a nod to remembering the first person you ever have sex with, but following Matthews' previous statements, it sounds more like he has raped multiple sexual partners. ".I fuck her with a condom, whose wrapper center, moments before, and unseen by her, I have pierced with a fine sewing needle. However, it is my place to comment on the rape!! Because that's what he confesses to on page 254!!! I also think it's a great time to once again plug what I personally believe to be a life-changing Zine "The Past Didn't Go Anywhere". Matthews does, though, espouse some particularly antisemitic language on pages 269 through 272. I don't think it's my place, as a mostly Ashkenazi, raised Jewish person, to police how a biracial person talks about their disconnect and struggle from Judaism, but I did not enjoy the experience of this book. In Reagan-era America, there was no box marked "Other," no multiculturalism or self-serving political correctness, only a young boy's need to make it in a clearly segregated world where white meant "have" and black meant "have not." Without particular allegiance to either, David careened in and out of community college, dead-end jobs, his father's life, and girls' pants.Ī bracing yet hilarious reinvention of the American story of passing, Ace of Spades marks the debut of an irresistible and fiercely original new voice.ĬW: racism, racial slurs, antisemitism, classism, parental abandonment, rape, child abuse, child death, gun violenceĪdditional CW about this review: Contains direct quotes about instances of sexual violence committed/fantasized about by the author! Read at your discretion. While his father, a black activist who counted Malcolm X among his friends, worked long hours as managing editor at the Baltimore Afro-American, David spent his early years escaping wicked-stepmother types and nursing an eleven-hour-a-day TV habit alongside his grandmother in her old-folks-home apartment. For the next twenty years, he would be torn between his actual life as a black boy in the ghetto of 1980s Baltimore and a largely imagined world of white privilege. When David Matthews's mother abandoned him as an infant, she left him with white skin and the rumor that he might be half Jewish. A take-no-prisoners tale of growing up without knowing who you are
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