A PORTRAIT OF THE GARBAGE AS A TRASHCAN

ON CATCHING FIRE AND RACISM

I tried to forget, while I was reading the description of District 11 (this is like chapter 4 of Catching Fire), that the actors playing Thresh and Rue are black. Because it’s basically a slavery/prison colony. High fences, brutal guards (wearing white!), people hurting their backs working in the fields.

I started thinking Suzanne Collins never said they were black Suzanne Collins never said they were black like a mantra.

But then Katniss describes Rue’s family as “a flock of small dark birds.” UH OH!

And so it’s hard not to read everything after that as well-meaning but wildly racist. Like, the wise old poor man who touches off the moment of rebellion after Katniss speaks. The old man whistles a tune! And Thresh’s grandmother, and Rue having a big family of people that Katniss sees as “identitical” (ha).

And then Katniss considers their level of brutal treatment and frets that the people of D11 would be more likely to start a rebellion than her own people. This maybe wouldn’t be so fresh in my mind if I weren’t listening to David Blight’s lectures on the Civil War, but Katniss’s phrase about a spark setting them ablaze sounds like something a paranoid member of the slaveholding class would have said in 1830.

Yikes. Am I the only one who felt this way?