maggie loves baby-talk

[bossymarmalade]

Here is what I learned in my first Hindi class yesterday: आपका नाम क्या है? Our professor has warned us that we are not to use Roman letters "on pain of public humiliation", so only Devanagari script. So far I only know those letters, heh. To be quite honest, I'm terrified of this entire thing; I've been taking classes that used the social-analysis bit of my brain for so long that trying to crank up the rote-learning bit is tough going. However, my dad seems delighted by this development and has now started talking to me in his gentle Trinidad-accented Hinglish, which is kind of ... new. And weird. He has also started writing his autobiography, or something, possibly in ruler-straight draftsman all-caps. But then my dad has always been a little wacky.

Also! This is but one of the reasons I love ciderpress so very much. My favourite part:

It is a mistake, a common one, to believe that the status quo, that 'normal thinking' is not a highly political ideology. It's a mistake to think that white-as-default views, male-as-default views, middle-class+ default views, economically privileged views, heteronormative views, able-bodied views, cisgendered views and opinions are pan-human rather than a particular politicised ideology about society and the people in it.

I foolishly volunteered to help put together a Diversity Workshop at work (the other three people in the group designing the workshop are white, ahahahah) and I might just steal this wholesale. I suspect there are folks to whom "Your POV as a White Woman is not Objective or Neutral" might be revolutionary.