Sonia Nazario, author of Enrique's Journey (the March pick for the Social Justice Book Club) answered a few club questions for us to add on to the discussion of her book (see my recap of the month here).
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Social Justice Book Club: Q&A with Sonia Nazario
04 April 2017
Sonia Nazario, author of Enrique's Journey (the March pick for the Social Justice Book Club) answered a few club questions for us to add on to the discussion of her book (see my recap of the month here).
Social Justice Book Club: Enrique's Journey, by Sonia Nazario
Another month gone, another Social Justice Book Club book under our belts. In March, the group read Enrique's Journey: The Story of a Boy's Dangerous Odyssey to Reunite With His Mother, by Sonia Nazario. The book, originally published in 2006, was revised and updated in 2014 to reflect the ever-changing story of immigration in the United States from Central America. The story began as a series in the Los Angeles Times (for which Nazario received a Pulitzer Prize for feature writing), and offers an in-depth account of one boy's journey from Honduras to reunite with his mother in the United States, often atop dangerous freight trains surging through Mexico.
#SJBookClub: Exciting Announcements & the January Book Pick
16 November 2016
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| not sorry that i can only use parks & recs gifs to express my emotions this week |
We're putting our heads together on ways to make the club more robust as we move forward, but in the meantime, wanted to share January's book selection: Rebecca Solnit's Hope in the Dark.
Week in Reading: A Birthday, a Burden, and a Stack of Books
14 November 2016
It's been a week. It's been what feels like the longest week possible. It's been a dark week. It's been a hard week. It's been a trying week. It's been a crying week.
It seems almost trivial to sit here and write about books in a week when far more important things are happening in our world, but I believe that books are, now more than ever, crucial to our existence. They are the means by which we can understand this crazy, fucked up, upside-down world of ours, learn from the mistakes of the past, and try to apply reason to the insanity of the present, and the means by which we can escape it. They are a way of leaning into the horrors, of seeking comfort from the same, and a means of hiding from reality when need be.
It seems almost trivial to sit here and write about books in a week when far more important things are happening in our world, but I believe that books are, now more than ever, crucial to our existence. They are the means by which we can understand this crazy, fucked up, upside-down world of ours, learn from the mistakes of the past, and try to apply reason to the insanity of the present, and the means by which we can escape it. They are a way of leaning into the horrors, of seeking comfort from the same, and a means of hiding from reality when need be.
Book Review: I Am Not a Slut, by Leora Tanenbaum
28 March 2015
This review originally ran in Shelf Awareness for Readers.
The information that fuels I Am Not a Slut is based as much on the dozens of interviews that Tanenbaum conducted with women and girls across the country--ranging in age and race and sexuality--as it is on quantitative data and scientific studies. The resulting arguments are all the stronger for the anecdotal evidence that accompanies them. In many instances, however, Tanenbaum uses absolutes, making claims about "every woman," "all men" or things that happen "always," which weaken her otherwise thoughtful arguments. She is at her strongest when dealing with double standards of sex and sexuality (how, for example, men are expected to have many sexual partners while women are criticized for exactly the same thing) and how the prevalence of slut-shaming amplifies a culture of victim-blaming.
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A copy of this title was provided by the publisher for review.
I Am Not a Slut | Leora Tanenbaum | Harper Perennial | Trade Paperback | February 2015
Book Review: Our Kids, by Robert Putnam
25 March 2015
This review originally ran in Shelf Awareness for Readers.
In Bowling Alone, political scientist and Harvard professor Robert Putnam took a close look at the evolving landscape of community in the United States. With Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis, he turns to a distinct but inherently related topic: the dissolution of the American Dream and the many ways that class mobility in the U.S. has stagnated in the 50 years since Putnam himself was a child. Putnam explores the "myths and realities" of the American Dream before analyzing the various factors that he claims are preventing young people today from achieving upward class mobility, which involve family structure, parenting, schooling and community.
In Bowling Alone, political scientist and Harvard professor Robert Putnam took a close look at the evolving landscape of community in the United States. With Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis, he turns to a distinct but inherently related topic: the dissolution of the American Dream and the many ways that class mobility in the U.S. has stagnated in the 50 years since Putnam himself was a child. Putnam explores the "myths and realities" of the American Dream before analyzing the various factors that he claims are preventing young people today from achieving upward class mobility, which involve family structure, parenting, schooling and community.
Book Review: Chasing the Scream, by Johann Hari
29 January 2015
This review originally ran in Shelf Awareness for Readers. Reprinted here with permission.
British journalist Johann Hari spent three years traveling around the world to understand the war on drugs, culminating in Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs. His book spans the start of the war in the U.S. nearly a century ago in the small office of Harry Anslinger, an assistant prohibition commissioner and, later, the first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, to the more recent beginnings of its end in Canada, Colorado, Portugal and Sweden. Hari lays out heartbreaking, often gruesome and unbelievable stories of prohibition and legalization to illustrate how historical battles to eliminate drugs have succeeded and failed, how they have shaped--and been shaped by--race and racial tensions in the United States and beyond and how they have influenced so much of our contemporary cultural thinking.
In 2011, Hari was the subject of a journalistic scandal involving, among other things, sourcing and citing quotations. This experience seems to have made the research in Chasing the Scream all the more thorough; each chapter is introduced with an explanation of how and why Hari came to interview people on a given topic. This approach results in book that is more than the sum of its parts; Hari does not just present information for readers to interpret, but invites readers along on his process of discovery. Though not all readers will agree with Hari's conclusions, it's likely that Chasing the Scream will invite a careful reevaluation of what we thought we knew about drugs and why we fight so hard against them.
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Chasing the Scream | Johann Hari | Bloomsbury USA | Hardcover | January 2015 | Buy from an independent bookstore near you
British journalist Johann Hari spent three years traveling around the world to understand the war on drugs, culminating in Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs. His book spans the start of the war in the U.S. nearly a century ago in the small office of Harry Anslinger, an assistant prohibition commissioner and, later, the first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, to the more recent beginnings of its end in Canada, Colorado, Portugal and Sweden. Hari lays out heartbreaking, often gruesome and unbelievable stories of prohibition and legalization to illustrate how historical battles to eliminate drugs have succeeded and failed, how they have shaped--and been shaped by--race and racial tensions in the United States and beyond and how they have influenced so much of our contemporary cultural thinking.
In 2011, Hari was the subject of a journalistic scandal involving, among other things, sourcing and citing quotations. This experience seems to have made the research in Chasing the Scream all the more thorough; each chapter is introduced with an explanation of how and why Hari came to interview people on a given topic. This approach results in book that is more than the sum of its parts; Hari does not just present information for readers to interpret, but invites readers along on his process of discovery. Though not all readers will agree with Hari's conclusions, it's likely that Chasing the Scream will invite a careful reevaluation of what we thought we knew about drugs and why we fight so hard against them.
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A copy of this title was provided by the publisher for review.
Book Review: God'll Cut You Down, by John Safran
13 January 2015
This review originally ran in Shelf Awareness for Readers. Reprinted here with permission.
The account of the author's yearlong investigation can be hard to follow: short sections with strange titles track Safran's moves through time, from one interview to the next, which presents the story in the order Safran uncovered it rather than the order in which the events happened. His journalistic approach can be brusque and perhaps misguided at times, as when he can't pay the convicted murderer for an interview outright, but gets around that law by giving McGee prepaid charge cards from Walmart. But his candid, informal style is endearing, revealing that God'll Cut You Down is as much the story of how Safran learned to write about crime as it is the story of why Barrett was murdered. Despite Safran's best noodling and puzzling and nagging of the police, lawyers, witnesses, family and friends of both the convicted murderer and the victim, the story of that murder is never made entirely clear; the entertainment comes from reading about Safran's experiences as an outsider snooping around an insular community.
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God'll Cut You Down | John Safran | Riverhead | Hardcover | 368 pages | Buy from an independent bookstore near you
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A copy of this title was provided by the publisher for review.
Nonfiction November: Focus on Poverty in the United States
14 November 2014
We've all heard it, or some variation of it: "I don't give homeless people money because they should just get a job." What statements like this fail to acknowledge, however, is eternally complex question of the root causes of poverty; it is, unfortunately, no guarantee that a job will prevent you from being homeless, any more than it is a guarantee that being homeless means you have no job.
Though we have stopped the Dickensian tradition of jailing debtors, the stigma that accompanies poverty doesn't appear to be going anywhere anytime fast. But there are authors out there who are doing their damnedest to at least shed a light on some of the actualities of life in poverty, peeking beyond the myths and the stories and the stereotypes to see the people of poverty, the system of poverty, and the cycle of poverty:
The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace, by Jeffrey Hobbs: Hobbs wrote this biography of his college roommate, Robert Peace, after Peace was murdered in the basement of a house in Newark, New Jersey, where he was working as a drug dealer after graduating from Yale with honors. Hobbs exploration of his friend's life is at once an attempt to understand how this young man, so seemingly poised for success despite overwhelming odds, ended up back where he started, as well as a study of the power of poverty in the United States today. Seriously, incredibly eye-opening. Full review.
Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich: Ehrenreich went "undercover" in 1998 to see what life was really like for those American workers putting in full-time hours (often more-than) in the "unskilled" jobs of our country. She worked at Walmart, she cleaned hotel rooms, she waited tables. She made readers reconsider how their everyday amenities--big box stores, hotel stays, the food on their tables--came to be, and nearly 20 years later, the book is just as important as it was in 1998. Which is saying something about how far--or not--the world of American poverty has come in the last 16 years, isn't it?
The Working Poor, by David K. Shipler: Shipler's book is similar to Ehrenreich's in that it explores not the most destitute, but those hovering just around the poverty line while working as hard as possible to make ends meet. I'm halfway through this one, and while some of the facts seem like they should be obvious, Shipler's support of assumptions with numbers and data and anecdotal evidence really brings things home.
Fire in the Ashes, by Jonathan Kozol: Subtitled "Twenty-Five Years Among the Poorest Children in America", Kozol's newest book returns to the children he wrote about in Rachel and Her Children and Amazing Grace to share their "journeys and unexpected victories as they grow into adulthood."
Hand to Mouth: Living in Boostrap America, by Linda Tirado: I'm not even going to try to summarize this one, I'm just going to give you the jacket copy: "We in America have certain fixed ideas of what it means to be poor. Poor people live in shelters. They are on welfare. They go to soup kitchens. To some, poor people are lazy. And even the most enlightened of liberals have wondered aloud, 'Why do poor people make such bad choices?' Linda Tirado, in her signature frank yet personable voice, takes these preconceived notions of what it's like to be poor and smashes them to bits."
Rosa Lee: A Mother and Her Family in Urban America, by Leon Dash: The story of Rosa Lee, a woman falling deeper and deeper into poverty in Washington, D.C. The book is based on a series of Washington Post articles that ran beginning in September of 1994, and though the title is less well-known today than others (Nickel and Dimed) of the same decade, I'm very much intrigued.
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Interestingly, most of the books about poverty that have come across my radar are a) written by white people (even though poverty disproportionately impacts non-white people in the United States (in 2012, the overall poverty rate in the US was 15%; for Whites, 9.7%; for Blacks, 27.2%; for Asians, 11.7%; for Hispanics (of any race), 25.6%))*, and b) are written from an outsider's perspective (even when said outsider is embedded deep within a group, as in Ehrenreich's case).
If anyone has suggestions for books that address the potential one-sidedness of this list, I'd love to hear them! In the meantime, rest assured that I'll be a-Googling this.
* Source: www.povertyusa.org
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Though we have stopped the Dickensian tradition of jailing debtors, the stigma that accompanies poverty doesn't appear to be going anywhere anytime fast. But there are authors out there who are doing their damnedest to at least shed a light on some of the actualities of life in poverty, peeking beyond the myths and the stories and the stereotypes to see the people of poverty, the system of poverty, and the cycle of poverty:
The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace, by Jeffrey Hobbs: Hobbs wrote this biography of his college roommate, Robert Peace, after Peace was murdered in the basement of a house in Newark, New Jersey, where he was working as a drug dealer after graduating from Yale with honors. Hobbs exploration of his friend's life is at once an attempt to understand how this young man, so seemingly poised for success despite overwhelming odds, ended up back where he started, as well as a study of the power of poverty in the United States today. Seriously, incredibly eye-opening. Full review.
Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich: Ehrenreich went "undercover" in 1998 to see what life was really like for those American workers putting in full-time hours (often more-than) in the "unskilled" jobs of our country. She worked at Walmart, she cleaned hotel rooms, she waited tables. She made readers reconsider how their everyday amenities--big box stores, hotel stays, the food on their tables--came to be, and nearly 20 years later, the book is just as important as it was in 1998. Which is saying something about how far--or not--the world of American poverty has come in the last 16 years, isn't it?
The Working Poor, by David K. Shipler: Shipler's book is similar to Ehrenreich's in that it explores not the most destitute, but those hovering just around the poverty line while working as hard as possible to make ends meet. I'm halfway through this one, and while some of the facts seem like they should be obvious, Shipler's support of assumptions with numbers and data and anecdotal evidence really brings things home.
Fire in the Ashes, by Jonathan Kozol: Subtitled "Twenty-Five Years Among the Poorest Children in America", Kozol's newest book returns to the children he wrote about in Rachel and Her Children and Amazing Grace to share their "journeys and unexpected victories as they grow into adulthood."
Hand to Mouth: Living in Boostrap America, by Linda Tirado: I'm not even going to try to summarize this one, I'm just going to give you the jacket copy: "We in America have certain fixed ideas of what it means to be poor. Poor people live in shelters. They are on welfare. They go to soup kitchens. To some, poor people are lazy. And even the most enlightened of liberals have wondered aloud, 'Why do poor people make such bad choices?' Linda Tirado, in her signature frank yet personable voice, takes these preconceived notions of what it's like to be poor and smashes them to bits."
Rosa Lee: A Mother and Her Family in Urban America, by Leon Dash: The story of Rosa Lee, a woman falling deeper and deeper into poverty in Washington, D.C. The book is based on a series of Washington Post articles that ran beginning in September of 1994, and though the title is less well-known today than others (Nickel and Dimed) of the same decade, I'm very much intrigued.
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Interestingly, most of the books about poverty that have come across my radar are a) written by white people (even though poverty disproportionately impacts non-white people in the United States (in 2012, the overall poverty rate in the US was 15%; for Whites, 9.7%; for Blacks, 27.2%; for Asians, 11.7%; for Hispanics (of any race), 25.6%))*, and b) are written from an outsider's perspective (even when said outsider is embedded deep within a group, as in Ehrenreich's case).
If anyone has suggestions for books that address the potential one-sidedness of this list, I'd love to hear them! In the meantime, rest assured that I'll be a-Googling this.
* Source: www.povertyusa.org
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This post is part of Nonfiction November's week 2 theme: Be/Become/Ask the Expert on a subject.
Book Review: The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace, by Jeff Hobbs
27 October 2014
This post originally ran in Shelf Awareness for Readers. Reprinted here with permission.
Robert Peace was born in 1980 in a Newark, N.J., ghetto. His parents had high hopes for him, pushing him to receive the best education possible, though his father ultimately ended up in jail and his mother struggled to make ends meet. Still, their efforts paid off: despite growing up in a city riddled with drugs and gangs, Peace succeeded in high school and earned a place at Yale, where he graduated with distinction with degrees in molecular biochemistry and biophysics. At age 30, he was shot to death in a marijuana den in the basement of a Newark home. Jeff Hobbs (The Tourists), Peace's college roommate, asks the obvious questions in The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: How could this happen, and why?
Hobbs captures Peace's life with great detail, assembling observations and thoughts from those who knew the promising man before, during and after his Yale years, and makes it clear when assumptions have been made in place of records or hard facts. One part biography and one part study of poverty in the United States, Hobbs's account of his friend's life and death highlights how our pasts shape us, and how our eternal search for a place of safety and belonging can prove to be dangerous. Peace's life was indeed short and tragic, but Hobbs aims to guarantee that it will not go unmarked; this affecting story is a tribute to the many people that Peace touched while he lived, and a lens through which we can better understand poverty and opportunity after his death.
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The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace | Jeff Hobbs | Scribner | September 2014 | Hardcover
Robert Peace was born in 1980 in a Newark, N.J., ghetto. His parents had high hopes for him, pushing him to receive the best education possible, though his father ultimately ended up in jail and his mother struggled to make ends meet. Still, their efforts paid off: despite growing up in a city riddled with drugs and gangs, Peace succeeded in high school and earned a place at Yale, where he graduated with distinction with degrees in molecular biochemistry and biophysics. At age 30, he was shot to death in a marijuana den in the basement of a Newark home. Jeff Hobbs (The Tourists), Peace's college roommate, asks the obvious questions in The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: How could this happen, and why?
Hobbs captures Peace's life with great detail, assembling observations and thoughts from those who knew the promising man before, during and after his Yale years, and makes it clear when assumptions have been made in place of records or hard facts. One part biography and one part study of poverty in the United States, Hobbs's account of his friend's life and death highlights how our pasts shape us, and how our eternal search for a place of safety and belonging can prove to be dangerous. Peace's life was indeed short and tragic, but Hobbs aims to guarantee that it will not go unmarked; this affecting story is a tribute to the many people that Peace touched while he lived, and a lens through which we can better understand poverty and opportunity after his death.
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A copy of this title was provided by the publisher for review.
Book Review: A Deadly Wandering, by Matt Richtel
20 October 2014
This post originally ran in Shelf Awareness for Readers. Reprinted here with permission.
In 2006, 19-year-old Reggie Shaw was headed to work when he veered over the double line in the center of the road and skimmed the side of an oncoming car, sending it spiraling out of control; the crash took the lives of both of that car's occupants. Investigators subpoenaed Shaw's cell phone records and found that he had been sending and receiving text messages in the minutes--and seconds--leading up to the accident.
What followed was a years-long legal battle as the state of Utah struggled with the issues involving texting while driving, and how much control the state could exert over drivers' actions behind the wheel. Ultimately, Shaw's own testimony proved indispensable in pushing through legislation that would limit drivers' use of cell phones and make more people aware of the dangers of texting and driving.
Matt Richtel won a Pulitzer Prize for his New York Times series on the subject of distracted driving; A Deadly Wandering is his account of Shaw's accident and the ensuing legal battles. Not content with simple reportage, Richtel weaves in accounts from neuroscientists who are studying distraction, technology and how we can become addicted to our devices. Though Richtel sometimes offers too much detail, presenting more biographies of the players in the court case than might be necessary, his book ultimately serves as a testament to the power of journalism to retell a story with added layers for maximum impact. In a world where 89% of American adults believe it's dangerous to text and drive (though 64% still admit that they do it), that impact is clearly needed.
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In 2006, 19-year-old Reggie Shaw was headed to work when he veered over the double line in the center of the road and skimmed the side of an oncoming car, sending it spiraling out of control; the crash took the lives of both of that car's occupants. Investigators subpoenaed Shaw's cell phone records and found that he had been sending and receiving text messages in the minutes--and seconds--leading up to the accident.
What followed was a years-long legal battle as the state of Utah struggled with the issues involving texting while driving, and how much control the state could exert over drivers' actions behind the wheel. Ultimately, Shaw's own testimony proved indispensable in pushing through legislation that would limit drivers' use of cell phones and make more people aware of the dangers of texting and driving.
Matt Richtel won a Pulitzer Prize for his New York Times series on the subject of distracted driving; A Deadly Wandering is his account of Shaw's accident and the ensuing legal battles. Not content with simple reportage, Richtel weaves in accounts from neuroscientists who are studying distraction, technology and how we can become addicted to our devices. Though Richtel sometimes offers too much detail, presenting more biographies of the players in the court case than might be necessary, his book ultimately serves as a testament to the power of journalism to retell a story with added layers for maximum impact. In a world where 89% of American adults believe it's dangerous to text and drive (though 64% still admit that they do it), that impact is clearly needed.
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A copy of this title was provided by the publisher for review.
Book Review: Bad Feminist, by Roxane Gay
07 August 2014
It took me a few weeks to finish Bad Feminist, a new collection of essays from author Roxane Gay (An Untamed State). Not because it was difficult reading, but because the essays in Bad Feminist proved so thought-provoking as to require time between sections for reflection and thought.Bad Feminist spans a surprising range of subjects for a book of its title; topics include everything from fat camp to why The Help (book and
movie) was awful, competitive Scrabble to loving the color pink, rape to reproductive rights. But regardless of subject, Gay brings a solid mix of sociology, political commentary, and self-reflection to her essays, making each topic shine in a way that may not have happened had the essays been limited to either sociology, political commentary, or memoir.
Gay does not hesitate to put herself on the pages of Bad Feminist. She recounts her experiences at fat camp as a child and her struggles with weight; the horrible rape she suffered in high school; her experiences participating in competitive Scrabble; her search for love and romance; her continued search to find people like her on television and in movies with little success. This sense of self is ultimately what made Gay's collection so powerful to me--in her writing, she manages to tell a story and ask big questions, but by putting herself in the context of her opinions, she forced me--and hopefully will force others--to think differently about how we all fit together in this crazy, mixed-up world.
As a white woman of relative means, I have never wondered where my next meal will come from or wished that I could see more characters similar to myself on television. If I hadn't married young, I'd probably be just like the girls in Girls (though, having never actually seen the television show, I guess I'm not entirely sure I can or should claim that). I have not suffered sexual assault, nor have I struggled with my weight or my race. And for all of that, I am eternally, unspeakably, grateful.
Bad Feminist, though, is a reminder that who I am is not as standard or as normal as I would like to believe. It is a reminder to step back and try to see the world through different eyes. It is a collection that will long live on my shelves, and to which I will return, time and time again, to remember to think about my place in the world, and others' places, how they intersect, and how they don't.
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Note: Thanks to the publisher for providing a digital copy of this title to review.
Bad Feminist | Roxane Gay | Harper Perennial | August 2014 | 336 pages
The Absurdity of Standardized Reading Guidelines
15 November 2013
This article on ranking books based on complexity for various grade levels in New Republic popped up in Book Riot's Critical Linking yesterday, and got me all kinds of twitchy. And not in a good way.
Rather than summarizing the absurdity of ranking books by complexity and using the rankings to decide what books should be assigned to each grade level, I'll let you read the original article. Go on, I'll wait.
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In theory, sure. Ranking books based on complexity seems like a perfectly reasonable way to make sure that students in various grade levels are reading texts appropriate to their age and language skills. We wouldn't want to assign Tolstoy in 3rd grade and Dr. Seuss in 12th, I suppose.
But when you break down the actual "Lexile" scores, which the author of the New Republic article did, the results are dumbfounding:
A close look at the scores, which even the creators of Common Core and the Lexile rankings admit can't be the final measure of complexity, reveals that The Sun Also Rises is deemed appropriate reading for a 3rd grader, while Mr. Popper's Penguins is more appropriate for 5th graders. The Hunger Games is more complex, in theory, than The Grapes of Wrath.
For one thing, I strongly believe that complexity--or its inverse, simplicity--of language is an active choice. No one will argue that Hemingway wrote simple, staccato sentences because he was incapable of writing long, flowery, complicated ones; his short, straightforward language--with here and there a winding, complex line or two--is part of what makes his style his own, and is study-worthy in and of itself.
Blaine Greteman, author of the New Republic article, says it better than I ever could:
They’ve long been rewarded for getting “the point” of language that makes “a parade of its complexity,” and they’ve not been shown that our capacity to manage ambiguity without reducing it enables us to be thinkers rather than mere ideologues.But I would also argue that there is to complexity than language alone. I'm no expert in Lexile rankings, but they seem to overlook important things like themes, subject matter, and how these texts fit into the bigger context of life and history and growing up. The Hunger Games may have more complex language in it than The Grapes of Wrath (even that I find hard to believe, unless it's because The Hunger Games has some sentences of questionable grammar which make them ), but Collins' world is one that is capable of being understood in its entirety without any contextual knowledge.
The Grapes of Wrath is an interesting story on its own, but in the context of greater world history--the suffering and poverty of the Depression, the mistreatment of migrant workers in history and today, the difficulties of finding an economic system that works for everyone--it becomes so much more powerful than simply the sum of its parts. It challenges readers to think about history and modern times, about big things like poverty and hunger and workers rights, family loyalty and friendship and the naivete of the young, in a way that The Hunger Games just doesn't.
At the end of the day, that is what makes literature great is all about: the ambiguities of language, as Greteman points out, but also how they help us illuminate the eternally complex, complicated, messy world we live in.
I've been reading more news lately...
16 March 2011
... and I think the world is falling apart around us. First Egypt, now Libya. The earthquake, then the tsunami. The nuclear power plants failing, and Californians stocking up on anti-radiation medication. Gay marriage protests. Healthcare reform. Unions up in arms. Crazies with guns. Budget crises, again and again. And even more than that, we still can't seem to speak to each other like civilized human beings; instead, it's one biting comment after the next, one rant fired back at another.
I'm feeling a little overwhelmed by it all. Maybe things will look up by the end of the day - it is Hump Day, after all - but I'm not convinced. I'm looking for reading suggestions to help put things in perspective. Any thoughts?
I'm feeling a little overwhelmed by it all. Maybe things will look up by the end of the day - it is Hump Day, after all - but I'm not convinced. I'm looking for reading suggestions to help put things in perspective. Any thoughts?
Huckleberry Finn, Censor-style: Removing the N-word from Huck Finn
06 January 2011
The following post could also be retitled "In Which I Hop on the Bandwagon and Defend the Original Huck Finn." But I can't help voicing my opinion, which is why I have my own blog, in which I play writer, editor and publisher.
In case you all have completely missed it, after years and years of fighting on and off the banned books list, an editor has actually succeeded in publishing a version of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn with the n-word replaced with "slave" throughout the text. A bit shockingly, the editor of the text is a professor and Mark Twain scholar - two groups notoriously against censorship in literature. In the introduction to the new edition, published by New South Books, Dr. Alan Gribben defends his decision:
Quite honestly, I don't even know where to begin. Ultimately, the new "edition" of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn seems to amount to little more than censorship. If censorship is defined as the "suppression or deletion of anything considered to be objectionable," and Dr. Gribben has removed the n-word because it is repulsive to modern-day readers, I fail to see how this is not censorship. If the word was objectionable during the time of writing - which historians as well as Dr. Gribben argue - and the word is still objectionable now, I fail to see how we can assume that Mark Twain would now choose to write a different, less-offensive version.
I have not read any of Twain's work since high school - though I hope to remedy that soon - but the main takeaway that I recall from his work was precisely that in a very pro-slavery time, in a pro-slavery area, Twain himself was remarkably anti-slavery - and not afraid to discuss it. His incorporation of the derisive word falls in with his use of a whole host of inappropriate or objectionable slang (both then and now), and this, we are taught, was precisely the point. To feel the need to remove the objectionable bits is to fail to understand the text. That, and as readers, it is never our place to assume what the now-dead author would prefer now. That is overstepping our boundaries.
Or so my high-school English teacher would say. What about you? Is this censorship, or a reasonable way to make a dated text more acceptable to a modern audience? Is this a one-off incident, or the starting slide down a slippery slope?
For more information (and some solid entertainment), check out the following:
In case you all have completely missed it, after years and years of fighting on and off the banned books list, an editor has actually succeeded in publishing a version of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn with the n-word replaced with "slave" throughout the text. A bit shockingly, the editor of the text is a professor and Mark Twain scholar - two groups notoriously against censorship in literature. In the introduction to the new edition, published by New South Books, Dr. Alan Gribben defends his decision:
"We may applaud Twain’s ability as a prominent American literary realist to record the speech of a particular region during a specific historical era, but abusive racial insults that bear distinct connotations of permanent inferiority nonetheless repulse modern-day readers."He goes on to assume that Mark Twain "presumably would have been quick to adapt his language if he could have foreseen how today’s audiences recoil at racial slurs in a culturally altered country." The only solid "evidence" he has that this version is, in fact, better than the original is an anecdote about teaching a class in which both he and his students were uncomfortable when discussing the word.
Quite honestly, I don't even know where to begin. Ultimately, the new "edition" of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn seems to amount to little more than censorship. If censorship is defined as the "suppression or deletion of anything considered to be objectionable," and Dr. Gribben has removed the n-word because it is repulsive to modern-day readers, I fail to see how this is not censorship. If the word was objectionable during the time of writing - which historians as well as Dr. Gribben argue - and the word is still objectionable now, I fail to see how we can assume that Mark Twain would now choose to write a different, less-offensive version.
I have not read any of Twain's work since high school - though I hope to remedy that soon - but the main takeaway that I recall from his work was precisely that in a very pro-slavery time, in a pro-slavery area, Twain himself was remarkably anti-slavery - and not afraid to discuss it. His incorporation of the derisive word falls in with his use of a whole host of inappropriate or objectionable slang (both then and now), and this, we are taught, was precisely the point. To feel the need to remove the objectionable bits is to fail to understand the text. That, and as readers, it is never our place to assume what the now-dead author would prefer now. That is overstepping our boundaries.
Or so my high-school English teacher would say. What about you? Is this censorship, or a reasonable way to make a dated text more acceptable to a modern audience? Is this a one-off incident, or the starting slide down a slippery slope?
For more information (and some solid entertainment), check out the following:
- Amanda defends Twain - and rants against the new edition - in her excellent and well-articulated post on Dead White Guys (a blog worth following any day of the week, I should add).
- Huckleberry Finn is a trending topic on Twitter (Is this the first time this has happened for a literary topic? And no, "literary" does not include Twilight, Harry Potter, or Snooki.
- Colbert offers his opinion on the new Huck Finn. He's absolutely pro-censoring the book. Hysterical, as all Colbert clips tend to be.
- A bookseller at Boswell and Books takes a different stance: the edited Huck Finn may not be great, but the book is public domain and therefore the original text is still available.
- The Guardian has an excellent article by Peter Messent (author of the Cambridge Introduction to Mark Twain) on Twain's very explicit choice of words, even bringing to light this quote from Twain himself: "The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter – it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning."
Yann Martel is a Genius of Sorts...
11 March 2010
... and now I really must read Life of Pi. Just ask President Obama:
This note was posted on Yann Martel's blog after he received it directly from the White House. But as cool as the note is (and as much as it inspires me to read Life of Pi - yes, I am that easily swayed in my reading choices, which change on a daily basis), the blog is actually completely unrelated to President Obama.
Instead, Martel's blog focuses on Prime Minister Stephen Harper (Martel is a Canadian author). He explains the mission of the blog:
I have to admit, I've only read some of the selections, and of those, several were books I absolutely hated (Larry McMurtry's Books: A Memoir, for one), but there is nothing to suggest that all of the books are perfect, just that all of the books encourage stillness, and therefore contemplation. Isn't that something we could all do with a bit more of?
This note was posted on Yann Martel's blog after he received it directly from the White House. But as cool as the note is (and as much as it inspires me to read Life of Pi - yes, I am that easily swayed in my reading choices, which change on a daily basis), the blog is actually completely unrelated to President Obama.Instead, Martel's blog focuses on Prime Minister Stephen Harper (Martel is a Canadian author). He explains the mission of the blog:
“The Prime Minister did not speak during our brief tribute, certainly not. I don’t think he even looked up. The snarling business of Question Period having just ended, he was shuffling papers. I tried to bring him close to me with my eyes.Who is this man? What makes him tick? No doubt he is busy. No doubt he is deluded by that busyness. No doubt being Prime Minister fills his entire consideration and froths his sense of busied importance to the very brim. And no doubt he sounds and governs like one who cares little for the arts.But he must have moments of stillness. And so this is what I propose to do: not to educate—that would be arrogant, less than that—to make suggestions to his stillness.It's a pretty interesting project, and I've enjoyed flipping through the books chosen thus far (Martel is on book selection #76). Each selection is posted on the blog, along with the inscription in the book and the letter to the PM written by Martel for each title. Those responses received by Martel (totaling a mere 5, all written by assistants and secretaries of some office or another) are also listed.For as long as Stephen Harper is Prime Minister of Canada, I vow to send him every two weeks, mailed on a Monday, a book that has been known to expand stillness. That book will be inscribed and will be accompanied by a letter I will have written. I will faithfully report on every new book, every inscription, every letter, and any response I might get from the Prime Minister, on this website.”
I have to admit, I've only read some of the selections, and of those, several were books I absolutely hated (Larry McMurtry's Books: A Memoir, for one), but there is nothing to suggest that all of the books are perfect, just that all of the books encourage stillness, and therefore contemplation. Isn't that something we could all do with a bit more of?
Harry Potter vs Willie the Wizard
22 February 2010
It seems that the world just can't be happy for J.K. Rowling these days. After all, she's not only famous, she's also fabulously wealthy, happily married and mother of two. Or is it three now?
And now that she isn't putting out any more Harry Potter books, what have we to look forward to? Plus, she wrote that pesky little epilogue at the end of Book 7 (something for which I will never forgive her, because it was just downright bad writing and bad storywriting), but that means that no one else (save Warner Brothers, of course) will be able to make money off of her fantastic story creation.
...Or will they? I guess the mysterious "they" are going to try, this time in the form of the estate of deceased British author Adrian Jacobs. The claim is that Rowling stole huge chunks of text from Jacobs' own wizard book, The Adventures of Willy the Wizard, No.1 - Livid Land. It turns out this is actually related to a previous lawsuit drawn up by the same estate; they have now added No. 1 to the suit as they were unclear on whether or not it would be eligible before (copyright law is fickle, I take it).
Rowling denies the claims, arguing that she has never read Jacobs' books and had not even heard of them until the initial lawsuit was filed in 2004.
And now that she isn't putting out any more Harry Potter books, what have we to look forward to? Plus, she wrote that pesky little epilogue at the end of Book 7 (something for which I will never forgive her, because it was just downright bad writing and bad storywriting), but that means that no one else (save Warner Brothers, of course) will be able to make money off of her fantastic story creation.
...Or will they? I guess the mysterious "they" are going to try, this time in the form of the estate of deceased British author Adrian Jacobs. The claim is that Rowling stole huge chunks of text from Jacobs' own wizard book, The Adventures of Willy the Wizard, No.1 - Livid Land. It turns out this is actually related to a previous lawsuit drawn up by the same estate; they have now added No. 1 to the suit as they were unclear on whether or not it would be eligible before (copyright law is fickle, I take it).
Rowling denies the claims, arguing that she has never read Jacobs' books and had not even heard of them until the initial lawsuit was filed in 2004.
Presidential Reading
15 February 2010
In honor of Presidents' Day today (happy day off, for those of you that have one!), Huffington Post created a list of appropriate presidential reading. The list includes such well-known titles as Team of Rivals (the one that Obama made popular during the last campaign), John Adams (by the now-famous author of 1776, David McCullough) and The First Hundred Days (which focuses on FDR and the Depression, but came back into the spotlight around Obama's 100th day in office).
Haiti Photography Raffle
22 January 2010
Ok, this isn't strictly books-related, but a friend of mine is auctioning/raffling off one of her -amazing- photographs from Prague to support the relief efforts in Haiti. Rules and details are available on her flickr page, where you can also place your bid. If you aren't a flickr member, you can email your bid - information available in the rules.
Here's the image... I told you it was amazing.
Here's the image... I told you it was amazing.
Books and Haiti
19 January 2010
It's been a week since the earthquake in Haiti, believe it or not. The country is now estimating a death toll of 100,000-200,000 people, over twice the original forecast by the Red Cross. According to an ABC article yesterday, the Haitian Prime Minister announced that over 70,000 people had been buried in mass graves. Slowly but surely, the search for survivors is being given up as we pass out of the window in which survival is even a possibility.
With over 1,000,000 homeless, and with little to no food, water or medicine available to those who have survived, the world has rushed to help. Governments, aid workers, charities, etc. Here's a quick round-up of the publishing industry's reactions, and what you can do to help:
Not sure how to help? Charity Navigator will help guide your donation to the right place for you, and can prevent your money from going to a scam, which, sadly, tend to pop up left and right during times of need like this. You can also donate $10 to the Red Cross by texting "HAITI" to 90999. As a side note, this text campaign has been hands-down the most successful campaign of its kind, perhaps ushering in a new era of philanthropic giving. Read the full Washington Post article on the subject for more details.
With over 1,000,000 homeless, and with little to no food, water or medicine available to those who have survived, the world has rushed to help. Governments, aid workers, charities, etc. Here's a quick round-up of the publishing industry's reactions, and what you can do to help:
- Booksellers R. J. Julia (the same store that runs the Just the Right Book! program) and Northshire Bookstore have donated profits from signups and renewals for store club memberships to Doctors Without Borders (from today's Shelf Awareness).
- Random House has donated $100,000 to the relief effort, and its parent company, Bertelsman, has donated 100,000 Euro. (from today's Shelf Awareness)
- Partners in Health has provided extensive medical support to the region. Founded by Dr. Palmer, who is the subject of Tracy Kidder's bestselling title Mountains Beyond Mountains.
Not sure how to help? Charity Navigator will help guide your donation to the right place for you, and can prevent your money from going to a scam, which, sadly, tend to pop up left and right during times of need like this. You can also donate $10 to the Red Cross by texting "HAITI" to 90999. As a side note, this text campaign has been hands-down the most successful campaign of its kind, perhaps ushering in a new era of philanthropic giving. Read the full Washington Post article on the subject for more details.
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