Recently in culture & politics Category
Is THE HELP Helping?
That's the name of the panel that UNL faculty members have put together for next week:
"Is The Help Helping? A Roundtable Discussion on Race, Gender, and History as Fiction," with
I'm really excited. I can't wait to see what they say.
"Is The Help Helping? A Roundtable Discussion on Race, Gender, and History as Fiction," with
It will take place on Wednesday, September 14, 3:30-5:00 p.m. in the Bailey Library, on the second floor of Andrews Hall, City Campus, UNL.Prof. Anna Williams Shavers, Cline Williams Professor of Citizenship Law, UNL Law College
Dr. Kwakiutl Dreher, Ethnic Studies & English, UNL
Dr. Jeannette Eileen Jones, Ethnic Studies & History, UNL
Dr. Patrick Jones, Ethnic Studies & History, UNL.
I'm really excited. I can't wait to see what they say.
Categories:
Thanks for Your Help with THE HELP, and a Panel in Lincoln
Many thanks to those of you who've sent (via Twitter & Facebook) these links to other pieces about the book and film The Help. I'm grateful for the chance to expand my initial compilation of key online commentaries.
From Emily Hammerl, these links:
Multiple takes on the problematic aspects of The Help, including the difference between the UK and US versions, plus an announcement of a Twitter discussion on August 28th, #100voicesrespondtothehelp.
"Reading the Help," by Susannah Bartlow, a white feminist whose "goal is to step into necessary solidarity with black feminists."
Claire Potter's "For Colored Only? Understanding The Help Through the Lens of White Womanhood" in the Chronicle of Higher Ed.
Jezebel.com's critique of the way popular magazines' takes on The Help have appealed to readers' taste buds/nostalgia, "Recipes for Shit Pie as Inspired by The Help."
From Julie Holden, these two: David Denby's review in the New Yorker, and Helena Andrews' piece, "I Was 'The Help,' or Why Cicely Tyson Freaks Me the Hell Out."
From Ashley Lawson, "Eudora Welty's Jackson: 'The Help' in Context" by W. Ralph Edwards on NPR Books.
And from Christin Geall, "On 'The Help,'" at Feministe, about the disturbing "nostalgia for ugly times."
Thanks to Ada Vilageliu Diaz for linking to a piece by Marybeth Gasman, a professor of higher ed at Penn, in The Chronicle of Higher Ed yesterday, "The Strength of African-American Women and American Racism," in which Gasman writes,
Or maybe, by provoking discussion, it is. We'll see.
Mark your calendar for Wednesday, September 14th, 3:30 to 5:00 p.m. in the Bailey Library in Andrews Hall at UNL, where Professors Jeannette Eileen Jones (History & African American Studies), Kwakiutl Dreher (English & African American Studies), Patrick Jones (History & African American Studies), and Anna Williams Shavers, the Cline Williams Professor of Citizenship Law at UNL's Law College, will speak.
More later on that.
For the moment, I'm done--so done--with The Help. Off to see Colombiana.
From Emily Hammerl, these links:
Multiple takes on the problematic aspects of The Help, including the difference between the UK and US versions, plus an announcement of a Twitter discussion on August 28th, #100voicesrespondtothehelp.
"Reading the Help," by Susannah Bartlow, a white feminist whose "goal is to step into necessary solidarity with black feminists."
Claire Potter's "For Colored Only? Understanding The Help Through the Lens of White Womanhood" in the Chronicle of Higher Ed.
Jezebel.com's critique of the way popular magazines' takes on The Help have appealed to readers' taste buds/nostalgia, "Recipes for Shit Pie as Inspired by The Help."
From Julie Holden, these two: David Denby's review in the New Yorker, and Helena Andrews' piece, "I Was 'The Help,' or Why Cicely Tyson Freaks Me the Hell Out."
From Ashley Lawson, "Eudora Welty's Jackson: 'The Help' in Context" by W. Ralph Edwards on NPR Books.
And from Christin Geall, "On 'The Help,'" at Feministe, about the disturbing "nostalgia for ugly times."
Thanks to Ada Vilageliu Diaz for linking to a piece by Marybeth Gasman, a professor of higher ed at Penn, in The Chronicle of Higher Ed yesterday, "The Strength of African-American Women and American Racism," in which Gasman writes,
Thanks, everyone! The "foster interesting discussions" part is what we're hoping to work with here in Lincoln, where the Ethnic Studies faculty is planning a panel. Something like, "Why The Help Isn't Helping."We both enjoyed the film in spite of how difficult it was to watch at times. Although it wasn't entirely historically accurate, many of the the themes in the movie were important and could be used to foster interesting discussions among people of different racial or ethnic backgrounds.
Or maybe, by provoking discussion, it is. We'll see.
Mark your calendar for Wednesday, September 14th, 3:30 to 5:00 p.m. in the Bailey Library in Andrews Hall at UNL, where Professors Jeannette Eileen Jones (History & African American Studies), Kwakiutl Dreher (English & African American Studies), Patrick Jones (History & African American Studies), and Anna Williams Shavers, the Cline Williams Professor of Citizenship Law at UNL's Law College, will speak.
More later on that.
For the moment, I'm done--so done--with The Help. Off to see Colombiana.
Categories:
Help Yourself.
You may have already read Entertainment Weekly's piece by Martha Southgate on The Help, in which she calls out the publishing industry and Hollywood for their "continued impulse to reduce the black women and men of the civil rights movement to bit players in the most extraordinary step toward justice that this nation has ever known."
You may have read Jennifer Williams' piece in Ms., which reminds readers that The Help's so-called "untold story" of black domestic workers' difficultie in a racist society has actually been amply explored by such black women writers as Ann Petry, Lorraine Hansberry, Alice Childress, Toni Morrison, and Jamaica Kincaid. Williams calls The Help
And apparently there's nostalgia aplenty, which has not hurt author Kathryn Stockett. She's just become "the first debut novelist to join the Million Club," selling over a million paid copies of her book on Kindle, and I think I heard that it's already sold upward of 3 million copies in hardcover and paperback.
You may have read Matt Zoller Seitz's piece, "Why Hollywood Keeps Whitewashing the Past," which calls The Help
You may have seen how Latina magazine jumped on The Help's bandwagon with its little featurette about "our favorite Latina 'help' roles of all-time!"--and the response by Latina Fatale, "Shame on Latina Magazine!"
But my very favorite so far might be what Roxane Gay says in her piece "The Solace of Preparing Fried Foods and Other Quaint Remembrances from 1960s Mississippi: Thoughts on The Help." Gay sees The Help as "science fiction, creating an alternate universe to the one we live in."
Sigh. Science fiction. An alternate universe. Cowboys & Aliens. Why are mass audiences loving these visions right now?
Several of my women's studies and ethnic studies professor-friends have seen the film lately, and I'm hoping they're going to weigh in about all of this here on the blog at some point. (At UNL, there are also tentative plans to host a panel about the issues the book/film raises. More on that later for local readers.)
In the meantime, to well-meaning nostalgic sci-fi fans of a postracial fantasy world: You is kind, you is smart, you is important. But have you ever read The Bluest Eye?
You may have read Jennifer Williams' piece in Ms., which reminds readers that The Help's so-called "untold story" of black domestic workers' difficultie in a racist society has actually been amply explored by such black women writers as Ann Petry, Lorraine Hansberry, Alice Childress, Toni Morrison, and Jamaica Kincaid. Williams calls The Help
You may have even read the open statement by the Association of Black Women Historians: "We do not recognize the black community described in The Help. . . .":the perfect summer escape for viewers who embrace the fantasy of a postracial America. Those filmgoers can tuck the history of race and class inequality safely in the past, even as the recession deepens already profound racial gaps in wealth and employment.
My favorite line from their statement calls the book/film "troubling because it reveals a contemporary nostalgia for the days when a black woman could only hope to clean the White House rather than reside in it.". . . The Help distorts, ignores, and trivializes the experiences of black domestic workers. We are specifically concerned about the representations of black life and the lack of attention given to sexual harassment and civil rights activism. . . . The Help is not a story about the millions of hardworking and dignified black women who labored in white homes to support their families and communities. Rather, it is the coming-of-age story of a white protagonist, who uses myths about the lives of black women to make sense of her own.
And apparently there's nostalgia aplenty, which has not hurt author Kathryn Stockett. She's just become "the first debut novelist to join the Million Club," selling over a million paid copies of her book on Kindle, and I think I heard that it's already sold upward of 3 million copies in hardcover and paperback.
You may have read Matt Zoller Seitz's piece, "Why Hollywood Keeps Whitewashing the Past," which calls The Help
And you might already know about Nelson George's criticism of The Help for its "false sense of authenticity" and its "candy-coated cinematography," which "buffers viewers from the era's violence."a college-educated white liberal's wish-fulfillment fantasy of how she would have conducted herself had she been time-warped back to the civil rights era. I wouldn't have just stood by and let it happen. I would have done something! Something brave!
You may have seen how Latina magazine jumped on The Help's bandwagon with its little featurette about "our favorite Latina 'help' roles of all-time!"--and the response by Latina Fatale, "Shame on Latina Magazine!"
But my very favorite so far might be what Roxane Gay says in her piece "The Solace of Preparing Fried Foods and Other Quaint Remembrances from 1960s Mississippi: Thoughts on The Help." Gay sees The Help as "science fiction, creating an alternate universe to the one we live in."
Sigh. Science fiction. An alternate universe. Cowboys & Aliens. Why are mass audiences loving these visions right now?
Several of my women's studies and ethnic studies professor-friends have seen the film lately, and I'm hoping they're going to weigh in about all of this here on the blog at some point. (At UNL, there are also tentative plans to host a panel about the issues the book/film raises. More on that later for local readers.)
In the meantime, to well-meaning nostalgic sci-fi fans of a postracial fantasy world: You is kind, you is smart, you is important. But have you ever read The Bluest Eye?
Categories:
A New Book I Can't Wait to Read
I first met the fascinating, gutsy, and apparently indefatigable Wendy Call at the Macondo Writers' Workshop, where we spent a great week together writing memoir. But I'd encountered her work before that, and probably so have you: in her terrific co-edited volume Telling True Stories: A Nonfiction Writers' Guide from the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University, which is full of practical, useful advice from nonfiction writers at the top of their game.
Now Wendy has a new book out that I can't wait to read: No Word for Welcome: The Mexican Village Faces the Global Economy.
No Word for Welcome explores the impact of global industrial development on the people, culture, and natural environment of Mexico's Isthmus of Tehuantepec, offering fully rounded portraits of the teachers, fishers, activists, and farmers who are working to prevent the destruction of their world. No Word for Welcome inserts individual human stories into the macro-story of economic globalization and opens a window for U.S. readers onto a beautiful, fragile part of Mexico.
Critics seem helplessly unable to stop loving this book. Sven Birkerts calls it "an engaged documentary account that is at once informative and stirring," and the Iowa Review praises Wendy's "graceful movement between cultures."
Sandra Cisneros calls No Word for Welcome, “Fascinating. Beautifully written. Deeply researched," and Phillip Lopate offers an unqualified endorsement: "On every level, the work succeeds. She has merged an enormous amount of investigation with a graceful belletristic tone, ferreting out the subject’s contradictions and complexities. It's a beautiful job."
What's more, No Word for Welcome has been published by one of my favorite presses, the University of Nebraska Press, which seems to be racking up Nobel Prize winners right and left lately. For me, their imprimatur has become practically a guarantee of smart, complicated, beautiful, and provocative reads. You can read a short excerpt here.
As Sandra Cisneros points out, the story of corporate industrialization, environmental and cultural destruction, and resistance by la gente is "a story happening everywhere, including our own backyard." This book is relevant to us all.
Bonus for Star City locals: rumor has it that Wendy will be here in Lincoln near the end of October. I'm hoping she'll give a reading somewhere in town (hint, hint, Indigo Bridge Books).
If she does, I intend to bribe my new crop of graduate students into attending. (Talented young people, consider yourselves warned.)
Categories:
May 2, 2011
Well, I have absolutely no wisdom about the killing of Osama Bin Laden.
I can only say that it felt strange, roughly into a decade that has, sadly, defined life (and death) for so many young people, for the goal of all these efforts to suddenly, unexpectedly, be reached.
I'm grateful that I was not--like many of the people up in trees last night, wrapped in flags and whooping and hollering--a child in middle school when 9/11 happened, when we turned our whole focus as a nation toward war. I'm glad I had a chance to grow up with other, smaller national problems, without that convulsion of national horror and grief, without watching the adults around me terrified and silenced (if only temporarily), without the bitter ideological substitute for the Cold War that the so-called War on Terror became. I'm glad that the attacks and their ruinous aftermath have occupied only a quarter of my life, after I'd already reached adulthood, and not a full half of it, while my mind and my views were still developing. I'm sorry that the case has been otherwise for so many.
Regarding the killing itself, I continue to think it's so deeply strange that we come to associate a person's ideas and ideology so much with his or her body. Do we think that by destroying the body, we destroy the idea? Ideas, good and ill, can't be expunged from the earth so easily. (On that note, go here to sign a petition to urge the Chinese government to free artist Ai Weiwei, who has been "disappeared" by security forces.)
Do we hope to frighten others away from a similar course by demonstrating what their likely ends will be? Or is it the urge to punish? The urge for revenge?
All these, I suppose.
It left me feeling hollow and disturbed. Not euphoric. Impressed with Obama, sure. But only up to a point.
In the Dhammapada, it says, "For hatred can never put an end to hatred. Love alone can. This is unalterable law." Encountering that text quite early in life has probably ruined me for triumphant violence.
It goes on: "People forget that their lives will end soon. For those who remember, quarrels come to an end." I like that part, too.
Shifting gears entirely: if all goes well, one year from today--on May 2, 2012--I'll be teaching my first class at the University of Seville! I'll teach creative writing for five weeks. I'm excited! They want someone who will teach in English; I want a place redolent with new scents and sights where I can be a flâneur and improve my Spanish. Perfect exchange. Many thanks to colleagues Ariana, Amelia, and James, who encouraged me to apply, and to future colleague María Luisa, whom I can't wait to meet.
Many happy returns of the day to these lovely students and former students who've recently published their work or had pieces accepted:
I'm excited to report that the University of Nebraska Press has acquired paperback rights to my memoir The Truth Book. Thank you, Tom Swanson! They're deciding now about when to release it. I'm happy, because it will have a redesigned cover--no more tabloidesque red, white, and black--and will get to shed, at long last, its rather sensationalistic subtitle, which was imposed by Arcade, the original press, and which always embarrassed me and seemed to point readers down a prematurely narrowed road.
Ah, the power of marketing departments. Sigh.
Anyway, I'm happy about the new incarnation The Truth Book will get to have, and I look forward to seeing what the University of Nebraska Press, with its wonderful book designers, will do with it.
But most of all, I love the fact that it will finally be available in a less expensive version for readers and especially for students.
I started reading War and Peace this morning, and finished Jennifer Egan's The Keep over the weekend, which I can't recommend highly enough (especially if you have a weakness for the Gothic). It's self-reflexive postmodernism, yes, but with a heart and a point, and it's just a lovely, wholly intelligent work of art. So clever and haunted and well wrought. (White privilege alert, though: no characters of color to be found.)
In other book news, the editor who acquired THE DESIRE PROJECTS emailed today to say that she'll have her edits on the first 200 pages sent to me by the end of this week! I'm so excited. I'm finishing grading final papers right now, and just about the time I turn in final grades, her edits should be here. She's also putting together the announcement for Publishers Marketplace, so that's exciting, too. More soon . . .
I can only say that it felt strange, roughly into a decade that has, sadly, defined life (and death) for so many young people, for the goal of all these efforts to suddenly, unexpectedly, be reached.
I'm grateful that I was not--like many of the people up in trees last night, wrapped in flags and whooping and hollering--a child in middle school when 9/11 happened, when we turned our whole focus as a nation toward war. I'm glad I had a chance to grow up with other, smaller national problems, without that convulsion of national horror and grief, without watching the adults around me terrified and silenced (if only temporarily), without the bitter ideological substitute for the Cold War that the so-called War on Terror became. I'm glad that the attacks and their ruinous aftermath have occupied only a quarter of my life, after I'd already reached adulthood, and not a full half of it, while my mind and my views were still developing. I'm sorry that the case has been otherwise for so many.
Regarding the killing itself, I continue to think it's so deeply strange that we come to associate a person's ideas and ideology so much with his or her body. Do we think that by destroying the body, we destroy the idea? Ideas, good and ill, can't be expunged from the earth so easily. (On that note, go here to sign a petition to urge the Chinese government to free artist Ai Weiwei, who has been "disappeared" by security forces.)
Do we hope to frighten others away from a similar course by demonstrating what their likely ends will be? Or is it the urge to punish? The urge for revenge?
All these, I suppose.
It left me feeling hollow and disturbed. Not euphoric. Impressed with Obama, sure. But only up to a point.
In the Dhammapada, it says, "For hatred can never put an end to hatred. Love alone can. This is unalterable law." Encountering that text quite early in life has probably ruined me for triumphant violence.
It goes on: "People forget that their lives will end soon. For those who remember, quarrels come to an end." I like that part, too.
~
Shifting gears entirely: if all goes well, one year from today--on May 2, 2012--I'll be teaching my first class at the University of Seville! I'll teach creative writing for five weeks. I'm excited! They want someone who will teach in English; I want a place redolent with new scents and sights where I can be a flâneur and improve my Spanish. Perfect exchange. Many thanks to colleagues Ariana, Amelia, and James, who encouraged me to apply, and to future colleague María Luisa, whom I can't wait to meet.
Many happy returns of the day to these lovely students and former students who've recently published their work or had pieces accepted:
¡Felicidades! Wow! Enjoy the glow, and be sure to let it last.Faye Snider, whose creative nonfiction "Goldie's Gold" will appear in Alimentum this June
DeMisty Bellinger, whose short story "what plums would do" appears online in SpringGun
Sindu Sathiyaseelan (who has also been moonlighting as my fantastic and indispensable research assistant; lucky me) who's had creative nonfiction accepted by both Brevity and Water~Stone Review
I'm excited to report that the University of Nebraska Press has acquired paperback rights to my memoir The Truth Book. Thank you, Tom Swanson! They're deciding now about when to release it. I'm happy, because it will have a redesigned cover--no more tabloidesque red, white, and black--and will get to shed, at long last, its rather sensationalistic subtitle, which was imposed by Arcade, the original press, and which always embarrassed me and seemed to point readers down a prematurely narrowed road.
Ah, the power of marketing departments. Sigh.
Anyway, I'm happy about the new incarnation The Truth Book will get to have, and I look forward to seeing what the University of Nebraska Press, with its wonderful book designers, will do with it.
But most of all, I love the fact that it will finally be available in a less expensive version for readers and especially for students.
I started reading War and Peace this morning, and finished Jennifer Egan's The Keep over the weekend, which I can't recommend highly enough (especially if you have a weakness for the Gothic). It's self-reflexive postmodernism, yes, but with a heart and a point, and it's just a lovely, wholly intelligent work of art. So clever and haunted and well wrought. (White privilege alert, though: no characters of color to be found.)
In other book news, the editor who acquired THE DESIRE PROJECTS emailed today to say that she'll have her edits on the first 200 pages sent to me by the end of this week! I'm so excited. I'm finishing grading final papers right now, and just about the time I turn in final grades, her edits should be here. She's also putting together the announcement for Publishers Marketplace, so that's exciting, too. More soon . . .
Categories:
Strength, Service, Vision
"Your Body, Your Voice: Human Rights Now" went beautifully! I have long been interested in (okay: obsessed with) structural similarities among violence at the macro level (the political space of the nation-state), the mid-level (the realm of the street: of crime, law enforcement, and prisons), and the micro level (the domestic space of the family home). How do the dynamics of these three levels of violence differ, and where do they coincide?
Being invited to give a lecture at Indiana State University's tenth annual Human Rights Day conference was a great opportunity to pull my thoughts together into a coherent argument about how illegitimate regimes use traumatizing violence upon the bodies of resisters to shatter the self, thus silencing opposition--and how narrative can function to heal trauma and resist oppression. It was a great chance to share the insights of these wonderful books, which have long been favorites, and others, like Ari Kohen's In Defense of Human Rights: A Non-Religious Grounding in a Pluralistic World, with a big, interested audience.
The talk got a huge turnout of students, staff, faculty, and community folks--it was SRO, w/people lined up in the hallway to hear. Awesome. Afterwards, a lot of people came up to pick up copies of the little "For Further Reading" handout I'd prepared. Great!
I was nervous, naturalmente, when I looked out at the crowd, because you know public speaking makes me shake, but I kept thinking of that great Audre Lorde line that always motivates me:
And she doesn't say, When I dare to use my strength in the service of my ego, or my bank account. No. When I use it in the service of my vision. Then fear ceases to matter.
Hats off to ISU for sponsoring such an important conference every year! Human rights discourse itself is a fragile narrative, one to which we need to give as much attention as possible as often as possible.
I loved getting to read my creative work, too, to a lively and generous audience, and to visit classes in social work and counseling psychology.
A highlight of the visit was meeting novelist Aaron Morales, who's on the faculty there. I'm reading his book Drowning Tucson now, and I like this interview that Rigoberto González did with him last summer.
Many thanks to my host Dr. Keith Byerman and everyone else who worked so hard to bring me to ISU. You spoiled me rotten, and I had an awesome time. Human rights now! ¡Órale!
Being invited to give a lecture at Indiana State University's tenth annual Human Rights Day conference was a great opportunity to pull my thoughts together into a coherent argument about how illegitimate regimes use traumatizing violence upon the bodies of resisters to shatter the self, thus silencing opposition--and how narrative can function to heal trauma and resist oppression. It was a great chance to share the insights of these wonderful books, which have long been favorites, and others, like Ari Kohen's In Defense of Human Rights: A Non-Religious Grounding in a Pluralistic World, with a big, interested audience.
The talk got a huge turnout of students, staff, faculty, and community folks--it was SRO, w/people lined up in the hallway to hear. Awesome. Afterwards, a lot of people came up to pick up copies of the little "For Further Reading" handout I'd prepared. Great!
I was nervous, naturalmente, when I looked out at the crowd, because you know public speaking makes me shake, but I kept thinking of that great Audre Lorde line that always motivates me:
I love that. Notice: she doesn't say, I become less and less afraid. No. You're still afraid. It just becomes less and less significant that you are. You're afraid, but you cease to care about that. You care about others. You care about justice."When I dare to be powerful--to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid."
And she doesn't say, When I dare to use my strength in the service of my ego, or my bank account. No. When I use it in the service of my vision. Then fear ceases to matter.
Hats off to ISU for sponsoring such an important conference every year! Human rights discourse itself is a fragile narrative, one to which we need to give as much attention as possible as often as possible.
I loved getting to read my creative work, too, to a lively and generous audience, and to visit classes in social work and counseling psychology.
A highlight of the visit was meeting novelist Aaron Morales, who's on the faculty there. I'm reading his book Drowning Tucson now, and I like this interview that Rigoberto González did with him last summer.
Many thanks to my host Dr. Keith Byerman and everyone else who worked so hard to bring me to ISU. You spoiled me rotten, and I had an awesome time. Human rights now! ¡Órale!
Categories:
After the Day's Work
Like many of you, I've been following the news about Japan with pain, sorrow, and concern. Such misery and grief--and anxiety, as we continue to watch and wait. I'm glad that other countries are using this moment as a chance to question the wisdom of building new nuclear facilities, but I'm not sure glad is even the word to use. Peace on Japan.
Here's some much more local news about friends, colleagues, and happenings.
First, a shout-out to my friend and colleague Rhonda Garelick, whose recent op-ed piece in the New York Times leaps from Galliano's recent bout of verbal cruelty and anti-Semitism to link fashion's and fascism's "cult of physical perfection." Bravo, and pass the chips.
Next, though it might seem ironic on the heels of Rhonda's piece, file this little splat of fashion limelight under Reasons To Be Terrance. All this, and writes dazzlingly, too--and he's one of the nicest colleagues I've ever had (at Pine Manor). We should all be so blessed with gifts and grace.
Me, I'm finishing up my manuscript of personal essays, ISLAND OF BONES, for delivery to the University of Nebraska Press on April first--very exciting, nerve-wracking, panic-inducing, etc.--while packing for a week at the University of Iowa, where I'll be spending my spring break teaching a memoir workshop to graduate students in the creative nonfiction program.
And I get to read at Prairie Lights, people! Prairie Lights is a sort of heaven, an icon, a wee paradise for book-lovers traversing the Midwest. James and I have spent many happy hours there on various trips, and now it'll be a thrill to get to read there. I may not return to campus with quite the tan that my students will be sporting after spring break, but I'll get to see friends Stephanie Elizondo Griest, Daisy Hernández, and who knows who else?
I'm also receiving the final batch of essays for FAMILY TROUBLE: MEMOIRISTS ON THE HAZARDS AND REWARDS OF REVEALING FAMILY, an editing project that some of you saw flopping about in its inchoate beginnings back at AWP in 2008. Some great pieces from Dinty Moore and Faith Adiele recently arrived, with just a few more left to come. It's going to be an amazing book--a book I wish I'd had as a graduate student, and a book I'll definitely teach with.
My research assistant Sindu, a meticulous copyeditor and insightful reader, is helping me tremendously on both of these collections. Thank you, Sindu! Thank you, UNL!
And my new editor for THE DESIRE PROJECTS sent me a copy of Denise Mina's Field of Blood, which is why I'm now using wee as a modifier about everything. (Read it and you'll see; it's addictive. Wee bastard. Wee lassie. And what does bint mean?)
Nothing like having a young, poor, ambitious Glaswegian girl who's worried about her fat tummy all the time as the protagonist of a novel. She's a "copyboy" (ah, the casual sexism of the 1980s) who wants to be a journalist, and the guy who asks, "Who's that fat lassie?" when he first sees her is the one she ends up in bed with (after quitting her solid, dull fiancé). Very happily, I might add.
I have to say I loved it. Very well written crime fiction, if you're in the mood for that.
And wasn't it nice of my editor to send it?
Lastly, my friend Barbara DiBernard has just been awarded the Louise Pound-George Howard Distinguished Career Award here at UNL for a lifetime of stellar teaching, research, public service, and administration. She started here as a James Joyce scholar but moved her teaching and research into LGBT and disability issues and is beloved by generations of grateful students and colleagues; my friend Kim (who owns Indigo Bridge Books, which I'm told I rattle on about incessantly) still vividly remembers the class she took from Barbara long ago. I visited Barbara's women's lit class this morning to talk with her students about The Truth Book, which they'd been reading, and had a wonderful time.
Barbara, you'll be so missed when you retire this spring.
Here's some much more local news about friends, colleagues, and happenings.
First, a shout-out to my friend and colleague Rhonda Garelick, whose recent op-ed piece in the New York Times leaps from Galliano's recent bout of verbal cruelty and anti-Semitism to link fashion's and fascism's "cult of physical perfection." Bravo, and pass the chips.
Next, though it might seem ironic on the heels of Rhonda's piece, file this little splat of fashion limelight under Reasons To Be Terrance. All this, and writes dazzlingly, too--and he's one of the nicest colleagues I've ever had (at Pine Manor). We should all be so blessed with gifts and grace.
Me, I'm finishing up my manuscript of personal essays, ISLAND OF BONES, for delivery to the University of Nebraska Press on April first--very exciting, nerve-wracking, panic-inducing, etc.--while packing for a week at the University of Iowa, where I'll be spending my spring break teaching a memoir workshop to graduate students in the creative nonfiction program.
And I get to read at Prairie Lights, people! Prairie Lights is a sort of heaven, an icon, a wee paradise for book-lovers traversing the Midwest. James and I have spent many happy hours there on various trips, and now it'll be a thrill to get to read there. I may not return to campus with quite the tan that my students will be sporting after spring break, but I'll get to see friends Stephanie Elizondo Griest, Daisy Hernández, and who knows who else?
I'm also receiving the final batch of essays for FAMILY TROUBLE: MEMOIRISTS ON THE HAZARDS AND REWARDS OF REVEALING FAMILY, an editing project that some of you saw flopping about in its inchoate beginnings back at AWP in 2008. Some great pieces from Dinty Moore and Faith Adiele recently arrived, with just a few more left to come. It's going to be an amazing book--a book I wish I'd had as a graduate student, and a book I'll definitely teach with.
My research assistant Sindu, a meticulous copyeditor and insightful reader, is helping me tremendously on both of these collections. Thank you, Sindu! Thank you, UNL!
And my new editor for THE DESIRE PROJECTS sent me a copy of Denise Mina's Field of Blood, which is why I'm now using wee as a modifier about everything. (Read it and you'll see; it's addictive. Wee bastard. Wee lassie. And what does bint mean?) Nothing like having a young, poor, ambitious Glaswegian girl who's worried about her fat tummy all the time as the protagonist of a novel. She's a "copyboy" (ah, the casual sexism of the 1980s) who wants to be a journalist, and the guy who asks, "Who's that fat lassie?" when he first sees her is the one she ends up in bed with (after quitting her solid, dull fiancé). Very happily, I might add.
I have to say I loved it. Very well written crime fiction, if you're in the mood for that.
And wasn't it nice of my editor to send it?
Lastly, my friend Barbara DiBernard has just been awarded the Louise Pound-George Howard Distinguished Career Award here at UNL for a lifetime of stellar teaching, research, public service, and administration. She started here as a James Joyce scholar but moved her teaching and research into LGBT and disability issues and is beloved by generations of grateful students and colleagues; my friend Kim (who owns Indigo Bridge Books, which I'm told I rattle on about incessantly) still vividly remembers the class she took from Barbara long ago. I visited Barbara's women's lit class this morning to talk with her students about The Truth Book, which they'd been reading, and had a wonderful time.
Barbara, you'll be so missed when you retire this spring.
Categories:
Mujeres, Start Your Engines
VIDA: Women in Literary Arts recently released the results of its count. If you haven't seen these handy pie graphs of the ratios of men to women published in major publications, check them out. As Amy King writes, "We know women write. We know women read. It’s time to begin asking
why the 2010 numbers don’t reflect those facts with any equity." Always suffer a mild bout of gender depression after reading Harper's or The New Yorker, no matter how good the issue is? VIDA offers you the stats to support your queasy feeling. Peruse.
Got theories? VIDA offers a forum where you can send in your own thoughts about the gender disparity in publishing and reviewing.
Of course, the editors of these featured journals haven't accepted this critique of their gender politics lying down. Carolyn Zaikowski deftly takes on the rebuttals.
In local news, the big immigration symposium, Diverse Faces, Shared Histories, is all set for this Friday at the Great Plains Art Museum. Major folks like Nicole Guidotti-Hernández and Mary Pipher will be speaking. The evening reading at the Sheldon will feature readings by yours truly, together with Amelia Montes, Ricardo García, and Fran Kaye. Fun to read with a group! More like a party.
Another cool campus event will be on Wednesday, March 16, when my friend Jeannette Jones will be reading and signing her terrific scholarly book In Search of Brightest Africa. The reading's at 7:00 p.m. at the UNL Bookstore in the student union. Jeannette's great, and so is the book.
In other very local news, I'm super-happy to have won this year's UNL Sorensen Award for outstanding teaching in the humanities. They only give out one a year (and it's kinda ka-ching, when most teaching awards are little more than a handshake and a certificate), so I'm popping the champagne. Many, many, many thanks to Gerry Shapiro, who nominated me, and all the faculty and students who wrote letters on my behalf.
If you're interested in poetry and latinidad--or just questions of ethnicity, identity, and writing--then check out this amazing new project by Francisco Aragón, the Latino/a Poets Roundtable, featuring Maria Melendez, Blas Falconer, and nine other great poets. I'm looking forward to reading it slowly. There's a lot to take in.
Lastly, faithful readers, my contract for THE DESIRE PROJECTS is being negotiated as I type. (Love you, Mitchell the miraculous agent!)
Does this excitement make me nervous, scatterbrained, unable to focus, unable to eat? It does.
Am I dying to tell you? I am.
Am I prudent enough to wait until the ink is dry?
Just barely, lovely people. Just barely.
Got theories? VIDA offers a forum where you can send in your own thoughts about the gender disparity in publishing and reviewing.
Of course, the editors of these featured journals haven't accepted this critique of their gender politics lying down. Carolyn Zaikowski deftly takes on the rebuttals.
In local news, the big immigration symposium, Diverse Faces, Shared Histories, is all set for this Friday at the Great Plains Art Museum. Major folks like Nicole Guidotti-Hernández and Mary Pipher will be speaking. The evening reading at the Sheldon will feature readings by yours truly, together with Amelia Montes, Ricardo García, and Fran Kaye. Fun to read with a group! More like a party.
Another cool campus event will be on Wednesday, March 16, when my friend Jeannette Jones will be reading and signing her terrific scholarly book In Search of Brightest Africa. The reading's at 7:00 p.m. at the UNL Bookstore in the student union. Jeannette's great, and so is the book.
In other very local news, I'm super-happy to have won this year's UNL Sorensen Award for outstanding teaching in the humanities. They only give out one a year (and it's kinda ka-ching, when most teaching awards are little more than a handshake and a certificate), so I'm popping the champagne. Many, many, many thanks to Gerry Shapiro, who nominated me, and all the faculty and students who wrote letters on my behalf.
If you're interested in poetry and latinidad--or just questions of ethnicity, identity, and writing--then check out this amazing new project by Francisco Aragón, the Latino/a Poets Roundtable, featuring Maria Melendez, Blas Falconer, and nine other great poets. I'm looking forward to reading it slowly. There's a lot to take in.
Lastly, faithful readers, my contract for THE DESIRE PROJECTS is being negotiated as I type. (Love you, Mitchell the miraculous agent!)
Does this excitement make me nervous, scatterbrained, unable to focus, unable to eat? It does.
Am I dying to tell you? I am.
Am I prudent enough to wait until the ink is dry?
Just barely, lovely people. Just barely.
Nebraska = The New Arizona?
Seriously? Really? Were some Nebraskans not awake during the shootings?
Not only has anti-immigrant legislation comparable to Arizona's been introduced this session (Governor Dave Heineman ran on that promise), but so has legislation eliminating multicultural education in the schools--again, similar to Arizona's, but tucked inconspicuously in among a bunch of educational budget issues (clever: using the budget woes to fight the culture wars). My rockin' boss Amelia Montes, the Director of the Institute for Ethnic Studies, will be testifying on Monday down at the Capitol against LB333.
Banning such education makes a sinister kind of sense, though. Education has always gone hand in hand with power. Strip away people's chance to gain knowledge of their history, struggles, and the hands-on specifics of how change got accomplished, and they'll be rendered conveniently mute, subservient. They won't know the successful strategies of their predecessors or have the chance to be inspired by their courage and perseverance. They'll internalize the racism that's thrown at them every day, and they'll feel shame. They'll work hard, keep their heads down, feel fearful.
But only for a while. Oppression never lasts. Truth always wins out in the end, and people always, always rise up, driven by a deep sense of worth, justice, and equality.
But it takes work and struggle. If you're in Nebraska and want to protest the imposition of Arizona-style laws onto our lives, you can attend the Rally for the Good Life on January 27th. Meet on the west side of the Capitol, by the statue of Lincoln, at noon. If you want to learn more about immigration, my favorite local bookstore is hosting a film & discussion series this spring. Indigo Bridge is one of the coziest places in downtown Lincoln, so come drink coffee, bring a friend, and talk with strangers about a situation that affects us all. The series is called Beyond Rhetoric: An Open Discussion on Immigration, and four documentaries will be screened, starting next Thursday, the 27th, and ending in March.
As I teach Chicana & Chicano Literature to my lovely, bright undergraduate students this semester, I feel weirdly aware of being in the middle of history: history being made, contested, hammered out. We're reading the speeches of César Chávez right now, and his words from the 1960s (!) couldn't be more timely and pertinent.
These are strange days, people. Interesting times (as in the classic curse). In way too many ways.
It's curious. I teach with the awareness that some of my fellow Nebraskans feel hostile toward what I do every day in the classroom. Sometimes this awareness of teaching at the center of a storm energizes and invigorates me, giving my work a strengthened sense of urgency and purpose. Sometimes it's just an ordinary day. Sometimes I feel sad, or weary, or vulnerable.
But no matter how vulnerable I feel, I will not--despite the new legislation State Senator Mark Christensen has introduced, LB516--be toting a gun. Híjole. Sometimes you gotta laugh to keep from crying.
I'll end with some words from César Chávez himself: "When people are involved in something constructive, trying to bring about change, they tend to be less violent than those who are not engaged in rebuilding or in anything creative." Published in 1969; still ringing true.
Chávez called violence "the shortcut." In contrast, positive change-makers are patient. We're in it for the long haul.
Not only has anti-immigrant legislation comparable to Arizona's been introduced this session (Governor Dave Heineman ran on that promise), but so has legislation eliminating multicultural education in the schools--again, similar to Arizona's, but tucked inconspicuously in among a bunch of educational budget issues (clever: using the budget woes to fight the culture wars). My rockin' boss Amelia Montes, the Director of the Institute for Ethnic Studies, will be testifying on Monday down at the Capitol against LB333.
Banning such education makes a sinister kind of sense, though. Education has always gone hand in hand with power. Strip away people's chance to gain knowledge of their history, struggles, and the hands-on specifics of how change got accomplished, and they'll be rendered conveniently mute, subservient. They won't know the successful strategies of their predecessors or have the chance to be inspired by their courage and perseverance. They'll internalize the racism that's thrown at them every day, and they'll feel shame. They'll work hard, keep their heads down, feel fearful.
But only for a while. Oppression never lasts. Truth always wins out in the end, and people always, always rise up, driven by a deep sense of worth, justice, and equality.
But it takes work and struggle. If you're in Nebraska and want to protest the imposition of Arizona-style laws onto our lives, you can attend the Rally for the Good Life on January 27th. Meet on the west side of the Capitol, by the statue of Lincoln, at noon. If you want to learn more about immigration, my favorite local bookstore is hosting a film & discussion series this spring. Indigo Bridge is one of the coziest places in downtown Lincoln, so come drink coffee, bring a friend, and talk with strangers about a situation that affects us all. The series is called Beyond Rhetoric: An Open Discussion on Immigration, and four documentaries will be screened, starting next Thursday, the 27th, and ending in March.
As I teach Chicana & Chicano Literature to my lovely, bright undergraduate students this semester, I feel weirdly aware of being in the middle of history: history being made, contested, hammered out. We're reading the speeches of César Chávez right now, and his words from the 1960s (!) couldn't be more timely and pertinent.
These are strange days, people. Interesting times (as in the classic curse). In way too many ways. It's curious. I teach with the awareness that some of my fellow Nebraskans feel hostile toward what I do every day in the classroom. Sometimes this awareness of teaching at the center of a storm energizes and invigorates me, giving my work a strengthened sense of urgency and purpose. Sometimes it's just an ordinary day. Sometimes I feel sad, or weary, or vulnerable.
But no matter how vulnerable I feel, I will not--despite the new legislation State Senator Mark Christensen has introduced, LB516--be toting a gun. Híjole. Sometimes you gotta laugh to keep from crying.
I'll end with some words from César Chávez himself: "When people are involved in something constructive, trying to bring about change, they tend to be less violent than those who are not engaged in rebuilding or in anything creative." Published in 1969; still ringing true.
Chávez called violence "the shortcut." In contrast, positive change-makers are patient. We're in it for the long haul.
Categories:
Shopping My Values This Season
First, a caveat: Thus spake Suze Orman.The right amount to give is what you can spend today without compromising your own needs. The bottom line: Under no circumstances should you incur debt you can't immediately pay off in order to give a gift. That means no credit card balances rolling into January. I understand the tug of holiday tradition--you always get every niece and nephew a Hanukkah gift. But in this rough economy, you may need to rethink your approach.
For the last few years, the HH and I were in such straitened circumstances PGT (putting Grey through) that we instituted a no-gift-exchange policy with our friends and family. It was embarrassing--and it ran against our grain--but it was necessary. The holidays felt small and pinched, and we felt Scroogey.
This year, Grey's a graduate, and we're grateful and relieved to say that our belts are a little looser. We determined a budget (post-groceries) and decided to invest it at three local places with a global vision:
It was tons of fun supporting publishing, too--a hurting industry--by giving favorite works of literature to our beloved ones: Franny & Zooey and Native Guard to a new sister-in-law, The Professor's House to my bio-mom's husband, The Secret Garden to a niece, Holes and Jackie Woodson's terrific Locomotion to a nephew . . . and we found the cutest, warmest little hat for our nephew Indigo and a scarf for my sister Lisa, both from Tiny Hands International. (Don't worry; none of my family reads this blog. I'm assuming my secrets are safe with you.) Handmade neem soap from India, vegan dark chocolate from Honduras and Ecuador, delicious Six Bean Soup Mix from the Women's Bean Project in Denver . . .Ten Thousand Villages, a fair-trade nonprofit that features handmade gifts from India, Haiti, Ecuador, and around the world--all profits go back to the individual craftspeople
Indigo Bridge Books, an independent bookstore/coffeeshop that specializes in social-justice issues
Licorice International, which is carrying not just licorice but caramels, chocolates, and more for the holidays--their shiny wrappers are going to glitz up our packages.
Okay, so they're not iPods or cashmere sweaters or gift cards to Williams-Sonoma. But it sure was fun. And I'd rather encourage someone to curl up with hot soup or a great book than blast our budget buying electronica and battery-operated toys that are only destined for the landfill anyway. And we didn't have to battle any crazy crowds at Target or Best Buy or the mall. We walked to all three shops and lugged our choices home with human-muscle power (very green).
One year, before Grey was in college and before the recession, we gave our relatives Heifer International "gifts," thinking they'd be thrilled to step off the cycle of overconsumption and give something to someone else. Alas! They were all sort of like, "Um, thanks so much," in this flat, pained way. Oops. A little overzealous with imposing your ethics, young Joy?
I'm hoping that this year will be a happy compromise--that each person will feel thought of, each person cherished. And we can give ourselves the pleasure of helping Heifer, if that's our choice. (Maybe your family's already ready for that!)
How are you shopping your values this season? How do you balance your ethics, your generosity, and your loved ones' desires? I would love to hear your story. If you don't feel like posting publicly, send me an email, because I'd really like to know.
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