Page 5 - Boca ViewPointe - June '22

June 2022 Viewpointe, Page 5
Book Review

Black Matter Matters Amazon, the Kanaka Maoli astronomy from Hawaii, revealing
the wisdom of non-European people in their testimonies and
Chanda Prescod-Weinstein. The Disordered Cosmos, A perceptions of the universe. Much of her narrative is taken up
Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, & Dreams Deferred. with the discrimination that she has faced as a scientist and
New York: Bold Type Books, 2021. her own fraught journey through the halls of academia, which
Margo Jefferson. Constructing a Nervous System, a Memoir. reflects the disordered social environment on our planet.
New York: Pantheon Books, 2022 For her part, Margo Jefferson also embarks on a literary
‘I am Black and Beautiful, O ye daughters of Jerusalem bent to capture an impressionistic, surrealistic template, her
…. “temperamental autobiography.” Covering the same ground
Don’t stare at me because I am Dark/ because the Sun as in her earlier memoir, Negroland, which recounts her life
has scorched me.” Song of Songs growing up in a privileged black family in Chicago. Here the
style is more avant-garde, non-linear, rendered in dramatic
By Dr. Ronald J. Meyers sequences, Letters to the dead, Sidebars, Entr’acte, and finally
BLACKOUT, “decorations” that she terms reassembling her
In the season that Supreme nervous system—showing a link to the styles of Gertrude Stein
Court Justice designate celebrates culture heroes like Josephine Baker, Sammy Davis and Renata Adler. “Ask: What do I want desperately to write
Ketanji Brown Jackson has Jr, and notable women writers like Harriet Beecher Stowe, and how shall I write it? . . . . And so, back to my memory
brought immense grace and Virginia Woolf, Willa Cather. Professor Prescod-Weinstein bank’s relatively low stock of sumptuous sensory data, its
dignity to her nomination found inspiration in Black Historians W.E.B. Dubois, Alex ready stock of tainted data. My sensibility is a structure of
process, I can reference two Haley’s Roots, bi-racial filmmaker Ngozi Onwurah, brilliant recombinant thoughts, memories, feeling, sensations, words.
additional Black women of female scientists like Helen Quinn and Caroline Herschel. Both . . . I’ll decorate the available decorations. I’ll decorate
stature and accomplishment acknowledge their strong competitive spirit. Ms. Jefferson the deprivations.” Ms. Jefferson and Professor Prescod-
in distinct and different fields. competed for attention when she danced for her family at five Weinstein’s bildungsroman, the account of their formation
Theoretical Astro-Physicist years old, was an outstanding student and an accomplished and transformation, does not alleviate the pain that they have
Chanda Prescod-Weinstein and literary critic Margo Jefferson pianist. Professor Prescod-Weinstein was raised by a single suffered while attaining their major accomplishments in
have brought remarkable brilliance and their distinctive mother in East L.A., her father an Ashkenazi Jew; she was science and written art. For neither mathematics nor literary
Black sensibilities to their varied professions. Dr. Chanda driven by her mother’s ambition with a nod to father’s Jewish study can enable one to escape from the earthly curses of
Prescod-Weinstein, self-described as “a queer Black femme,” liturgy and faith in Hebrew metaphysics. racism and sexism.
enjoys familial connections to both Caribbean, Black on Professor Prescod-Weinstein has written an informative,
her mother’s side and Ashkenazic Jewish heritage from her scientific work exploring the particle world of quarks, Planck’s Dr. Ronald J. Meyers, who resides in La Paz, is an Emeritus
father. Her narrative explains the workings of our universe in constant, Higgs Boson, etc. The lay reader is likely to struggle Professor of English. rmeyers@esu.edu. 
relationship to the invisible dark matter in the cosmos that can with the abstruse science of the mathematics of space time,
only be captured and described in mathematics; along with her what she terms the disordered cosmos which is her specialty. Stamp and Coin Club
own discordant struggles as a Black female scientist. Margo The abundance of dark matter invisible but yet crucial to the
Jefferson, a New York Times Book Reviewer and culture critic formation of matter which, in her telling, is denied by many
describes how her struggles to overcome rejection formed her white scientists who look askance at confirming this invisible Boca Raton Stamp & Coin Club asks you to start a
as a theater and literary critic. Both of them emphasize their phenomenon. In a witty metaphor, she argues the wrongs of new hobby.
Visit with us at the Stratford Courts Auditorium

shared struggles as women and as successful professionals. colonialism in relation to the whiteness of the universe having located at 6343 Via Sonrisa del Sur, off S.W. 18th Street,
Ms. Jefferson and Professor Prescod-Weinstein grew succeeded in minimizing the importance of dark matter. She between Powerline Road and Military Trail.
up in mid-twentieth century, at the burgeoning Civil Rights also pays lip service to the contributions of non-Europeans and We meet the second and fourth Thursday each month
movement, from which they benefited and attained success. polemicizes for recognition of the contribution the indigenous at 7 p.m. Please call membership coordinator Harvey
They identified with the cultural icons in mainstream America – peoples: highly regarded Mayan astronomy and cosmology, but Golinger at (561) 752-4922. 
Ms. Jefferson obsessed with Bing Crosby and Margo Fonteyn, also the insights and intuitions of the Palikur people from the

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