The N Word by Jabari Asim: Chapter One

Having already been enticed into reading Mr. Asim's book The N Word: Who can say it, who shouldn't and why from a CSPAN interview, I was ready for a frank history and cultural analysis of America's most reviled epitaph.

The first chapter begins by recounting a part of the great American drama the OJ Simpson trail. The prosecution believed that such a word would affend the jury, half being African-American. The defense believed it would only characterize the atomsphere of the debate. From there it goes to say the history of the N word goes back far beyond America to the 1500's. The N word originated from teh latin word Niger. It's use was used as a neutral term only to be used as an insult later on.

Notes on my Mother

Hilton Als and Daryl Turner. Photo by Valda Zalga

Hilton Als identifies with his mother. The Barbados-American writer of The New Yorker writes in a 1997 New Yorker article "Notes on my Mother" about growing up black and gay.
Als uses the experience of his mother to identify his own struggle. He notes how his mother had a dislike of gay barbados boys, as he was one, calling them"auntie men." Which must be hard, since growing up without a father and four sisters he lacks any type of father in his life.


Noticing how he constructed the first paragraph, he opens by saying, "Until the end, my mother never discussed her way of being." A very open ended way to start. He continues by going through everything he never knew, and covers most of it in the body. He ends by talking about his siblings and how that distance he felt affect them. I must now know why that "bond" that was so "deep and mysterious" between his parents affected him.

I feel a shift in the next paragraph when he adds how she also never knew about homosexuality. He would cross-dress in her clothes in admiration.

He feels admiration, but distance?
How did his relationship with his mother affect his homosexualty?

Als wore his sister's clothes to relieve pressure he felt from being different from them. And yet this was a problematic situation because it brought pride and anger. Acutully for the same reason, that he identified with women, and with a Negress.

His mother obviously did not like other gay men from Barabados, yet why was it different with her son. Was it because he was her son?

There is more talk about his mother identity. She called herself a negress not to reconcile with her British colonial roots but felt herself as an American, even dropping her accent.

Along with her wish to become an American, she is defined by her ill-health. She is always suicidal, but polite. Her health defines her as her only accomplishment. She realized that the day she felt replaced by a younger, stronger girlfriend to her husband.

This is really an ode to his mother, and yet it is filled with her struggles; her health, her jobs, and her tragic love to his father.

It is through a weakness, or curiosity, of Als identity, that he becomes more of who he is. He is not a jew, but a writer. His mother nursed his writer, listening to him lie. He was inspired by her love of reading.

As he realtes to his sisters, he is enamered by the intelligence, style, and education of his sister. But his closeness is futile, because it was what he was not, a black man, that they wanted to identify themselves with.