MAKING MOONSHINE

I've already spoken in my first blog post about this book how Randy Newman's NSFW album Good Ol' Boys inspired this album, particularly the first track Rednecks. This song takes the perspective of a Southern racist, a big fan of Georgia Governor Lester Maddox, who boasts that he is proud to "keep the n***ers down".

Notice I starred out the word here in this blog. That's because it's a vile word. White people shouldn't say it. Can I write it? I avoided writing it in the book and used it only when absolutely necessary. I didn't want this to be a Tarantino movie (though I love Quentin, big up my man) where the N-word is used an excessive, sickening number of times. I use it less than ten in the whole book, derivatives as well. To be honest, it's simply ridiculous to think Klan members wouldn't use this word -- this is a racist word, those were racists, and I depicted them as such.

I've long been fascinated by American history. Especially American Twentieth Century History. The Civil Rights period in many ways birthed the country we have today staring at us over on the other side of the Atlantic. I've already gone into detail how I dislike British writers writing American stories so I'll keep this brief, but I didn't want the book to give the impression that I was wagging my finger at our American cousins. Our country's shit, too. So I made sure that the book didn't preach.

Of course I condemn the racism of the Civil Rights period. It's pretty black and white (pun intended). Martin Luther King and Malcolm X were the good guys. Sherriff Bull Connor and Lester Maddox and George Wallace were the bad ones.

I love Martin Luther King and quote him a lot. My favourite quote of his is "the arc of the universe is long but it bends towards justice". Because it happens to be true. I didn't used to believe this but I do now. Think about two-hundred years ago; things were way worse than they are now. People strip our Transgender friends of rights today but in two-hundred years time, everyone will have accepted this and be embarrassed by TERFS the way eugenics embarrasses us today.

My love for Malcolm X though is even greater than MLK. He was genuinely confrontational and challenging in a way that went even beyond MLK.

I didn't want this book to confront controversy. God knows I went through that with In Bloom.

At the same time I didn't want to sugarcoat this book and have it depict the modern standards of racism. I recently recoiled at the portrayal of the Nazi in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and how you tell he's a racist because he asks an African-American butler, "where are you REALLY from?" as if this is the worst thing the Nazis did. I didn't want to sugarcoat things.

In my book, the Klan members don't use just micro-aggressions (although history would have been a lot better if they did). The racist state Governor is compared to Hitler.