a magnificent distraction

Juliet, Naked (Nick Hornby)

2010-06-10T18:25:00.000-04:00

Fresh out of my candidacy exams, I couldn't really get into any books. Call it burnout or relief or just plain time for a break, but I kept getting 10-15 pages into books and realizing I wasn't taking in a single word. Well, I checked Nick Hornby's book out from the Buellton public library and to my delight, I was 100 pages into it before I knew what hit me. As usual, Hornby's style is humorous and captivating, and the story was entertaining throughout. I think one of my favorite things about Hornby's stories is that he always writes about things with a brand of verisimilitude that I can relate to. Hearing his characters' thoughts makes me think about the same issues in my own life (although I tend to be somewhat relieved to discover that I'm significantly happier with how I've lived my life to this point than most of his characters are), and they always become "round" characters more quickly than I would think possible.

Juliet, Naked has perhaps one of the most successful happy endings (at least, I read it as a happy ending, although I think that could be a point of contention for some) I've encountered in a long while. Since he denies the reader the typical happy-ending-montage offered by the genre of contemporary "chick flicks," he avoids the sort of heavy cheese-factor that kind of ending creates. Instead, his sort of guided open-ending offers the satisfaction of a choose-your-own-adventure story without waking the reader from the dream of the text.

I really enjoyed Hornby's book, and I'm glad I happened to see it sitting on the shelf in the library. While the title made it mildly embarrassing to check out from the librarian -- a lovely and sweet woman whose daughter was a high school chum of mine -- it was certainly worth the two-second blush, and read like a light 200-page novel rather than a thought-provoking 406-page novel.

Through the Arc of the Rainforest (Karen Tei Yamashita)

2010-05-09T19:58:00.000-04:00

This is one of my all-time favorite books! It's not at all diminished on the second read, after years of building it up in my mind. I was doing a lot more thinking when I read it this time, and I was really quite impressed by the sheer number of ideas Yamashita took on with this novel.

Where to begin.... There's Chico Paco, the human angel who inspires people around the world, whose barefoot pilgrimage of 1500 miles secured his friend Gilberto's triumph over paralysis...the religious symbol who also happens to be gay as well as pure of heart and soul. There's Lourdes (the impoverished maid who has two children by a husband who abandoned her long ago) and Kazumasa (the extraordinary Japanese man with his own personal satellite in front of his forehead who makes a fortune overnight and does his very best to give it all away) -- and their love story that transcends class, nationality, assassins, and kidnappers. And what do we do with Mané Pena, the Father of Featherology who has "authored" innumerable books and delivered countless lectures and been awarded an honorary PhD...and who can't read, is extremely poor, and insists on going barefoot throughout his life? Of course, we can't forget J.B. Tweep, the three-armed American man obsessed with paperclips and increasing profit margins at any cost, who favors the artificial over the natural...and who marries Michelle Mabelle, the three-breasted French ornithologist who makes their home an indoor rainforest populated by all manner of birds (and of course the fact that they marry, have triplets, and split up). Finally, there's Batista Djapan and his wife Tania Aparecida with their pigeon business, their overwhelming love, and Batista's prophetic weekly messages.

It seems like, in many ways, Yamashita's characters achieve their greatest happiness when they form meaningful and honest relationships with the people in their lives. When, like J.B. Tweep, they choose profit and artificiality over all that is "real" in their lives, they cannot be happy. They cannot survive. The hitch in this argument, of course, is Chico Paco and Gilberto. They love each other, and they have a beautiful relationship, but Gilberto's obsession with crazy stunts and dangerous escapades ends up resulting in his death. However, he and Chico Paco die at approximately the same time, and they both die before the destruction of the Matacão which was so important to and so beloved by them. So perhaps there's something more to that, although they are also the only gay pair in the novel so perhaps Yamashita is making a comment on that as well.

Perhaps my favorite character in the entire novel is Kazumasa's ball. I love the ball, and I love that the ball is the narrator of the entire novel. I think everyone should read this novel!!

Salt Fish Girl (Larissa Lai)

2010-05-02T21:25:00.000-04:00

What a refreshing read! I've been reading a lot of stuff that's sort of out of my "for pleasure" reading zone, and while a lot of those works have been really interesting and worthwhile, not all of them have been quite as enjoyable. Larissa Lai's novel was so...well, fresh.

Okay, so part of what makes this novel so interesting to me is the "magical" aspect of it. It does "magic" in a very different way than some of the works I've been reading. For one thing (and this is not one of the "very different" aspects of it), the magic in this novel is very firmly grounded in folklore -- in a creation story, as a matter of fact. But another significant aspect of it is the prominence given to lesbian relationships. Not only is the creator in the creation story a female, but she becomes human only to fall in love with another girl. And of course, the present-day main character version of the creator finds herself reinserted into that same romance (with a woman named "Evie" of all things). In a similar vein, by the end of the novel the women have found a way to reproduce through produce that renders men 100% unnecessary. There's a lot of really interesting stuff happening at the level of gender and sexuality.

And of course, there're some interesting things going on with regards to genetics and cloning. The whole idea of making people -- carelessly, recklessly creating disposable people on a whim -- is a dominant theme throughout Lai's novel. What do we do with people once we've created them? Are we responsible for them? If they're cloned, if their blood contains non-human DNA, if they're just different enough, can we call them something other than human? And once they're no longer classified as "real people," can we take away their rights and use them as we please? The novel's publication date (2002) should be a good indication of how much the global cloning debates influenced the storyline and inspired Lai's imagination.

I'm also really interested in the politics of this novel. Lai tackles feminism, discrimination, socioeconomic standing, etc. There's so much to talk about, and I'm trying to decide if there's room for this novel in my dissertation.

Angels in America (Tony Kushner)

2010-04-26T22:28:00.000-04:00

I read both parts of the play (although I'm not entirely sure why it's broken into two separate books, since when you finish the first one you really don't have a choice but to read the second one if you want to find out what happens with all the characters). The first part is called Millennium Approaches, and the second part is called Perestroika.

Wow. I mean, where do I begin? Kushner is addressing so many different HUGE issues. He's dealing with AIDS in the 1980's, racism, homosexuality, politics, Zionism, religion (Judaism and Mormonism, with a little bit of Catholocism sprinkled throughout), and more. I feel somewhat overwhelmed as I try to construct some sort of coherent blog post. I'll start somewhere easy: the characters. Kushner's merciless. His characters either seem to be saintly (as in the case of Prior Walter and Belize) or sinnerly (as in the case of Joe Pitt and Roy Cohn). I'll admit that one of my favorite characters was actually Harper Pitt, Joe's wife, because of her perceived insanity (when she's actually one of the most sane characters in the play). Despite some pretty severe flaws, most of these characters are surprisingly likable. I think Kushner isn't interested in villainizing anyone -- I think he's more interested in exposing some of the tangled and complex aspects of human beings, and digging into some of the issues that arise from those complexities.

The central focus of the play really becomes AIDS, not because of the disease itself, but because of the way it plays out in the characters' lives. The idea that it's some sort of shameful disease that one should cover up arises in Roy Cohn's character...but he's also the most reprehensible character there is in this play, so when we see him trying to pass AIDS off as cancer it comes off as a negative action. And of course, through his interactions with Belize (especially regarding his stash of mega-elite drugs) we get more of an idea about how widely AIDS is really affecting people. Of course, we get this from the several direct comparisons between AIDS and the Black Plague (most blatantly when Prior Walter's ancestors visit him).

Man, I'm at a total loss as to how to tackle this play. Suffice it to say it's a really powerful, intelligent, and scathing work that tackles some huge issues and forces the reader to confront issues that are not always openly addressed. Also, Kushner's use of "split" scenes (in which some characters are in one location interacting with each other while other characters are located elsewhere on the stage, but are also interacting with each other -- both groups oblivious to the other) is a really interesting technique that allows him to create interaction between different characters and different situations, but through staging and line alternation a whole new message emerges out of the side-by-side action.

Zoot Suit (Luiz Valdez)

2010-04-24T11:54:00.001-04:00

I'd heard of the Zoot Suit Riots before reading this play, but I didn't know a whole lot about them. To be honest, I didn't even know where they happened (which is quite appalling, considering I'm from Southern California and all)...which makes me wonder about the aims of American education. But shifting my focus a bit...

Formally, I really enjoyed this play. It was interesting and thought-provoking, and I thought Valdez employed some very fresh strategies throughout. Plays that are based on historical events run the risk of being kind of flat -- sort of reporting the facts without really thoroughly developing the characters. This play found a nice balance between the political and the aesthetic, and it really worked to convey the messages. I thought Valdez's point was really interesting. I mean, of course there's the aspect of the play that concerns historical events (hence the newspaper headlines that various characters spout off at different points in the play), but there's also the aspect of the play that connects those historical events to contemporary Chican@ life. Pachuco almost ends the play at a falsely happy Hollywood moment, but brings the lights back up and says:

But life ain't that way, Hank.
The barrio's still out there, waiting and wanting.
The cops are still tracking us down like dogs.
The gangs are still killing each other,
Families are barely surviving,
And there in your own backyard...life goes on. (88)

The idea that "gangs are still killing each other" is one that has powerful resonance in today's America (especially in highly urbanized cities like LA). Zoot Suit makes this connection explicit for the reader to highlight the relevance of what happened ~70 years ago (egad, was it that long ago?) to life today. Injustice is still alive and thriving, but the message that Henry learns through these events -- that there is hope, and that family is ever-important -- is still relevant. The play's ending, a sort of choose-your-own-adventure ending with three different life endings for Henry -- a return to prison and a drug-induced death, a trip overseas with the military and a soldier's death, and a more ordinary life lived happily-ever-after with wife and kids -- presents a series of options for young people who are involved in gangs. Valdez's play hinges on the idea that there is a choice to be made. It sort of asks the reader what they want their life to look like, how they want their story to be remembered. Burn out? Hero? Family (wo)man? And inherent in that choice is an invitation to change the direction that one's life is currently headed.

The Republic of East L.A. (Luis J Rodriguez)

2010-04-23T17:07:00.037-04:00

I read three stories from this collection: "My Ride, My Revolution," "Mechanics," and "Chain-Link Lover." All three focused on male protagonists who were struggling to succeed in some aspect of their lives -- mostly in love. Rodriguez's stories (at least, these three) took a closer look at the pressures and stressing factors at work on romantic relationships for these men; while this theme was fairly central to these stories, other ideas were at play as well.

"My Ride, My Revolution" dealt heavily with the idea of purpose -- the main character constantly questioned his purpose, his goals, the work he might do with his life instead of ending up beaten by the system and forced into low-paying dead-end jobs as he has been doing for his entire adult life. Compared to Chacon's stories in which the drive to break out of societal constraints and move life in a direction that's actually desired (oftentimes with the added element of anger), Rodriguez's stories feel much more trapped, cornered, and not-quite-but-nearly defeated. I'm not saying that he's presenting a hopeless portrayal of Chican@ life in the US; nope, I'm saying that his characters are struggling to stay afloat in a much more desperate way than Chacon's because, for the most part, they've lost their anger.

In "Chain-Link Lover" we see a counter-example for this trend. When the main character is confronted by a road-raging white truck driver threatening him with a tire iron, he remembers the mentally handicapped girl who loves him unconditionally and begins to feel real anger toward the man. He thinks of all the injustices or frustrations he's faced at the hands of others and draws them together to form a sort of fighting rage. However, while he is able to talk back to the driver and give him the "You want me? Come get me!" line, he also knows (and admits quite openly to the reader) that if the man decides to go through with his violence, it's a lost cause. In his big moment of bravery/bravado, this is how the narrative runs:

"'You want me? Come get me!' I prodded again, much braver now since I figured he didn't have the huevos. I knew most people didn't. It was something I counted on (but the day will come when I meet the vato who has what it takes to do exactly what he intends to do)." (157)

In other words, he is able to put on a brave face and make a hollow stand, but he's also very aware that he cannot follow through on his threats. I feel that there's a deeper political significance here, but I haven't figured out exactly where to go with that yet.

Finally, "Mechanics" presents a strangely optimistic/pessimistic outlook on love. The protagonist's entire life revolves around his wife and children until the day his wife leaves him. Then what? Well, then he realizes (over time) that her departure has actually freed him...but that he still loves his children immensely. I have no idea where to go with this, but it felt almost utterly hopeless.

Chicano Chicanery (Daniel Chacon)

2010-04-23T14:01:00.000-04:00

I read three stories from this collection: "The Biggest City in the World," "Aztlán, Oregon," and "Too White." While all three were about different characters and had very different premises, there were some common themes running through them.

In "Aztlán, Oregon," the idea of institutionalized racism is really highlighted. The main character, a reporter named Ben who was once a gang member in Fresno but has since moved and become an anchorman, decides that he's going to do a radical political report on Chicano gangs. However, when he tries to talk to the gang members about the political conditions that may have contributed to their involvement in the gang, they shrug him off and continue talking about their own versions of the American Dream (wanting a decent house, a nice wife, etc.). Chacon focuses on the relationship between gang activity and contemporary American society, taking a critical look at the different ways kids (well-meaning kids, at that) end up involved in gangs. The issue comes up again in "Too White" when the main character, Joey, is forced to end his friendship with a white boy named Kenny in order to save his life. As Kenny rides away on his bike, Joey takes the beating that was originally meant for his ex-friend, only for Joey the beating takes on an entirely different meaning as evidenced by the last lines of the story:

"Through blurry eyes, I saw three figures standing over me. Then I felt the kicks all over my body, and I heard laughter. Then a sire. The cops were coming. They were all beating me, David, Johnny, Gilbert. I was the first to be jumped in." (134)

For Joey and his friends, there doesn't appear to be a way to bridge the racial divide between characters. The only solution is a violent reconciliation. Of course, in "Aztlán, Oregon" the violence that ends the story is of an entirely different nature: Ben beats up his supervisor (Brad) in a sort of cathartic outpouring of all of the emotions he's been keeping down in this city where he feels lost.

What, then, am I to do with "The Biggest City in the World" in light of these other two stories? In a similar manner, this story ends with the protagonist -- a timid college student named Harvey Gomez -- taking a cab ride to various locations in Mexico City when he knows he is flat broke. He makes a decision that will simultaneously allow him to experience his cultural heritage and also mean becoming a thief/cheat. Well, in many ways this is related to the other stories in a very significant way. Like Ben (who feels that he's lost his Chicano-ness) and Joey (who tries to navigate the gap between whites and Chicanos), Gomez begins to figure out what it means to him to be truly Mexican. After losing his wad of scholarship money -- a symbolic event that translates to a disconnection between Gomez and the Western institution -- he ends up being recognized by the cab driver (an "authentic" Mexican) as a "real" Mexican (this after Gomez's statement that he likes mariachi music).

Chacon's collection, from the three stories I read, seems to have a very specific political mission. The prevalence of gang issues and conflicting ideas of what it means to be Mexican, Chicano, or American are also critical, and Chacon seems to be writing for an audience who is struggling to work through these issues themselves.

Drown (Junot Díaz)

2010-04-23T10:52:00.000-04:00

Well, this collection is certainly very different from The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. I guess that means it wasn't what I was expecting (meaning in part that it lacked any of the more supernatural or folkloric elements that Díaz's novel was so full of). In a way, yes, this was disappointing. However, the stories themselves were quite good.

I think the last story, "Negocios," was my favorite. It's not that it was that different from the others, it's just that it was longer and really dug into the complexities of immigration in a way that I haven't seen very often before. While the primary plot follows a man as he leaves his wife and children in the Dominican Republic and travels to the US (starting in Miami, then moving again to New York), it's a very internal journey. By this I mean that he experienced a lot of things that could be considered part of the archetypal US-immigrant narrative, but his thoughts and emotions regarding these experiences were what really made this story unique. On one level, he's fairly reprehensible (not really concerned with his familia in the DR, marrying a woman solely for the purpose of using her to attain citizenship, abandoning her and the son he has with her, etc.); on another level, his struggles and his journey illustrate the considerable strength of his character. I think this is where Díaz has really struck deeply into the idea of what it means to be an immigrant to this country -- of what it means to deal with racism and injustice and low wages and substandard living conditions and ridiculously long shifts...the list goes on.

The other stories were also good. I think Díaz covered an extraordinary amount of ground here. I mean, he has stories about teenagers in the US, children in the DR, laborers, students, etc. The story "Edison, New Jersey" for instance is about two men who assemble pool tables, and it's a fairly humorous story that doesn't deal with any huge, life-altering moments but does deal with the everyday issues that, when accumulated over time, can feel like life-altering moments. It also ends on a hopeful note.

Many of his stories deal with relationships between men -- friendships, but friendships that seem to run deeper than romantic relationships. I'll admit that the final lines of "Negocios" left me wondering about the father's relationship with his buddy, Chuito -- I think there are implications of their relationship being something more than friendship. After all, the narrative is given over to the son at the end, and he's talking about how he visited his father's second wife after his father had left his family as well. Then he goes on to describe the day his father came to get his familia from the DR and bring them back to NY, and he says:

"He bought a carton [of cigarettes] at a stand, knowing how expensive they would be abroad. The first subway station on Bond would have taken him to the airport and I like to think that he grabbed that first train, instead of what was more likely true, that he had gone out to Chuito's first, before flying south to get us." (208)

There's nothing major or scandalous here, but I think there is a subtle hint that Chuito was more important to his father than the familia was, and that his father ultimately chose Chuito over everyone else. It's small, but it's something that stood out to me -- by ending the story this way, Díaz left me wondering....

"Stupid America" and "The Chicano Manifesto" (Abelardo "Lalo" Delgado)

2010-04-22T22:02:00.031-04:00

I found these two poems in an anthology called Hecho en Tejas: An Anthology of Texas Mexican Literature (pictured left).

I absolutely loved "Stupid America" because of the vehemence of the poetic voice and the personification of America as this sort of violent ignoramus who has to have pointed out to him the struggles of the Chican@ in America. It may be a short poem, but it has a big message to send. My favorite part is the ending:

remember that chicanito
flunking math and english
he is the picasso
of your western states
but he will die
with one thousand masterpieces
hanging only from his mind (176)

It just captures the profound sadness of this entire situation, where one person's genius could fail to be recognized simply because the system they live in refuses to recognize what they have to offer. Instead. that system buries it under grades and other measures that all culminate in one thing: the message that this person is worthless and has nothing to offer.

As for "The Chicano Manifesto" is also groundshaking. It touches on so many flaws in the system that I really became aware of when I was teaching at the high school level. I wish I could have my students read this poem now, because regardless of their racial composition, I think this poem is really important (especially in a place like California where there is such a large Chican@ population). The series of questions near the beginning of the poem are questions I've heard people say in various forms so many times:

what is it you chicanos want?
[...]
is it understanding?
is it that you want us to tolerate you?
is it admittance? (177)

When Delgado goes on to refute these questions, he makes so many excellent points. Understanding? Well, there's a huge difference between understanding and comprehending. It won't help. Tolerance? That just means you're putting up with someone -- tolerance does nothing to stop bigotry or racism or any of the problems from which discrimination arises. And admittance? Just asking that question situates one group on the "inside" and the other group (in this case, Chican@s) on the "outside." That's no good either. Delgado's poem really digs into the issue of race relations and points to some major flaws in the way mainstream (white) America tries to address the issue. It's a really worthwhile poem to read -- let me know what you think if you get the chance to read it.

Yo Soy Joaquín/I Am Joaquín (Rudolfo "Corky" Gonzales)

2010-04-22T21:57:00.011-04:00

Okay, I have to start by admitting that I thought this poem was going to be a book-length work, so I was really surprised when I discovered that it was really only a few pages long.

That being said, this poem blew me away. I feel like I need to go out and do some research on it, because it's really dense and complex, and I know I'm missing a large percentage of the references being made. However, I also know that the poem is extremely powerful. It's got a strong message to deliver about what it means to be Chican@, and what it means to really embrace one's past and bring it to bear on one's present.

I feel like anything I say is going to be inadequate. What I will say is that you should read this poem -- it's short, but it's really powerful. Give it a whirl and let me know what you think.

The Heirs of Columbus (Gerald Vizenor)

2010-04-16T15:55:00.000-04:00

This is one of my favorite books of all time. I'll admit that I see Vizenor doing something very similar to what Ishmael Reed is doing in Mumbo Jumbo, but I already wrote about that when I read that book (so check out that review if you're curious).

In any case, I am really interested by what Vizenor is doing with regards to technology (specifically genetic engineering) in this novel. He's got all these ideas about stories in the blood -- something akin to racial memory, as he says -- and the healing power of survivance that can be passed on through this genetic signature the heirs of Columbus carry in their blood. Just as Howe's character Ezol explains her theories on Choctaw language and time travel (and the scientific nature of her claims becomes obvious), so Vizenor's characters are well-versed in scientific theories and processes and eventually use them to reclaim control over their blood. Since blood quantum legislation has had such a profound effect on Native Americans, Vizenor's method of subverting those laws is really interesting and not only contradicts stereotypes about the incompatibility of Native American culture and Western scientific knowledge, but also creates a loophole with regards to blood quantum.

I have so much more to say about this novel, but if you want to hear it I guess you'll just have to come to the NAISA conference in Tuscon next month where I'll be presenting a paper on The Heirs of Columbus and Miko Kings. :)

How the García Girls Lost Their Accents (Julia Alvarez)

2010-04-16T14:32:00.000-04:00

I was pleasantly surprised by this novel. I guess I always sort of thought it was about young girls, not women (as much of it is), and when I realized that these "girls" were not, in fact, little girls, I was glad. Not that I don't enjoy stories that are about children, but I found this very interesting.

I have to admit that one of the most interesting things about this novel is the format. Alvarez not only tells the story in reverse, but she puts the time periods in sections (1989-1972, 1970-1960, and 1960-1956) and proceeds through them all in reverse-chronological order. Unlike Fae Myenne Ng's novel Bone, Alvarez' story seems to be going in reverse as a means by which to trace the girls' development back to the time during which they still had accents (or the time during which they didn't have accents because they lived in the Dominican Republic and spoke Spanish like everybody else). By beginning with their adult selves living the States with families and friends, having overcome many major obstacles in their lives, Alvarez starts the reader with a look at how the girls will all turn out; this way, as we read backwards into their pasts, we can see the events that shaped them into the women we already know they will become. In Ng's novel, the backwards chronology seems to work as a lens through which to focus the reader's attention on a major trauma at the center of the characters' lives (Ona's suicide), but in Alvarez' novel the backwards chronology serves the purpose of filling us in on the complicated events of four women's histories so we can understand their complexities.

The three sections the novel is broken up into (each one consisting of 5 different parts) visits a significant period in the girls' lives. Part I is their adult lives, Part II is their teenage/college lives, and Part III is their childhood lives. Each part is haunted in its own way by their family's flight from the Dominican Republic -- I by the distant past that still casts its shadow over their lives, II by the not-so-distant past that continues to feel like a tangible threat to their happiness and safety, and III by the soon-to-occur future that looms ahead of all of them just waiting to force their displacement from home/family/friends when they flee the DR for NY. In a similar way, each part is haunted by who the girls were in previous parts. I contains echoes of the women's childhoods; issues and events that developed earlier in their lives are shown to continue playing significant roles in their happiness. II contains echoes from the past and the future, as the reader realizes what some of the events in this section will lead to while continuing to feel traces of the girls' pasts that are coming out in their adolescent lives. And of course, III takes place at the earliest point in their lives, but (just as the black mama cat continues to haunt Yoyo well into her adult life) key events take place here that the reader understands will lead to certain nuances in the García girls' adult personalities and lives. The way each part speaks to the other parts is really interesting, and was one of my favorite things about this novel.

A Small Place (Jamaica Kincaid)

2010-04-13T12:15:00.000-04:00

I don't know what I was expecting from this text, but it wasn't what I got! I think I was assuming it was a novel, or at least a more traditional work of fiction, but what it really was was...uh...creative nonfiction? Perhaps.... I have a friend who says she considers it a work of theory, but I felt it was closer to political memoir or even political rant than that. In any case, it's an interesting work.

Since the entire "novel" (I hesitate to call it that since there is no consistent plot, and there are not really any characters besides the narrator) is narrated in the second person, Kincaid's writing takes on a mildly antagonistic tone that keeps the reader in the position of the antagonist. The reader is lumped together with ignorant and rude tourists, prejudiced colonists, and other such unsavory characters. While it's not an overtly hostile work, Kincaid definitely puts the reader in an uncomfortable position where they're forced to look at the situation from a specific angle and to realize the damage that some seemingly-harmless viewpoints (seemingly-harmless from the perspective of those doing them) have caused to Antigua already.

Here's a brief snippet from the book's opening to give you an idea of the kind of mesmerizing narrative Kincaid creates -- while it has no plot, per say, it definitely holds your attention in a strange sort of way:

If you go to Antigua as a tourist, this is what you will see. If you come by aeroplane, you will land at the V.C. Bird International Airport. Vere Cornwall (V.C.) Bird is the Prime Minister of Antigua. You may be the sort of tourist who would wonder why a Prime Minister would want an airport named after him--why not a school, why not a hospital, why not some great public monument? You are a tourist and you have not yet seen a school in Antigua, you have not yet seen the hospital in Antigua, you have not yet seen a public monument in Antigua. (3)

The Kingdom of This World (Alejo Carpentier)

2010-04-12T23:32:00.000-04:00

When reading this novel, I had to wonder how much of the character of the novel got lost in translation. It's an interesting enough story, but the language in which it's told kept me distanced from the characters and the events. I felt like Ti Noël, the protagonist, was a nice guy, but I didn't really find myself really feeling for him when he was on the run or when he was taken as an involuntary worker to help build the Citadel. It's unfortunate, because it really is the language that gets in the way, and since this is a translated work, I just keep thinking it's probably the translation that ends up losing some of the story.

In any case, the novel is a really interesting look at the Haitian Revolution (18th century, I think) and at some of the issues that have been coming up in other works on my reading list (civil liberties, personal beliefs, etc.) but without the same context of being set in America. In some ways, it is similar because this novel is also dealing with slavery...so just because that slavery isn't taking place on US soil doesn't mean it's entirely different. However, removed from the southern states in America, the situation does change in interesting ways.

I'm noticing how vague my entry is this time around. I think it's really because I felt a profound disconnect with this novel. Okay, so I'll talk about form. The novel is divided into four different parts, and each one begins with an epigraph. Perhaps more interesting are the chapter titles within each part. Several titles are allusions to other texts (such as "The Daughter of Minos and Pasiphaë" and "The Metamorphoses"), while many others are actually in what appears to be Latin (such as "De Profundis" and "Ultima Ratio Regum" and "Agnus Dei"), and still others actually deal with the events that will take place in the novel (such as "The Amputation" and "The Sacrifice of the Bulls"). Carpentier's novel does seem very referential in this way -- and within each chapter, there are often snatches of other texts (many of them religious in nature) which frequently appear in their original languages, and sometimes without a translation for dolts like myself.

All in all, this novel was interesting, but disappointing.

Miko Kings: An Indian Baseball Story (LeAnne Howe)

2010-04-10T23:36:00.039-04:00

This is the second time I've read Miko Kings, and this time I was reading it with a specific focus in mind. I'm presenting a paper on this book at the NAISA conference this May, and was thinking about two main ideas as I read the book this time: the way Howe addresses history and the way she incorporates ideas of science into her story. I'll elaborate.

Okay, so with regards to history, I was thinking of two things. First, I was thinking about how she reappropriates baseball -- America's so-called pastime -- and grounds its origins in Native American culture. She explains how baseball was a cultural game played as a way to welcome one tribe to have transactions with another tribe. She also talks about stickball and how it served many purposes -- training young men to be warriors by bringing them endurance, etc. -- and looks at how certain elements of baseball are not coherent with western traditions or ways of thought. For instance, she focuses on how baseball is a game without limits; she also talks about how the pitcher stands on a mound (making him the connection between the earth and the heavens) and how the players move counterclockwise. There's more, but this is the basic stuff. Well, this reclamation of the sport is one way of addressing history -- the way that it has been told by one culture at the expense of another. She also brings up another idea that is really important, and will likely feature prominently in my paper later this spring: written history (legal documents, newspaper clippings, etc.) cannot be trusted. Histories that are put onto paper can lie, but in Howe's novel the histories that are told are not only much different than the ones that are written, but they're more honest, more accurate. The value placed on written histories is misplaced, while oral histories are increasingly important but also overlooked. There's more, but for now that'll have to do.

Okay, on to science. So Ezol and Hope Little Leader are able to transcend the limitations of time, shifting back and forth between the past, present, and future. Ezol has elaborate theories about time, and often has to deal with Lena's ideas of how Native Americans aren't using science or math when in fact, as Ezol points out, they have a long history with these technologies that western science fails to recognize as valid (an idea that has clearly permeated Lena's mind). She explains her theories at times, and Lena also reads about them in Ezol's papers. She discusses the connections between Choctaw language and the movement of bodies in time and space, articulating ideas about how the language one speaks opens up possibilities that other languages may not allow for. She also talks about the incompatibility between English and Choctaw, and explains that the verb tenses in English shut down temporal possibilities. In many ways, Ezol is far more advanced than western scientists and mathemeticians (after all, she has mastered the art of time travel) and has developed greater insights into complicated theories of time and space than western theoreticians and philosophers.

For more detailed analysis, you'll have to attend this May's NAISA conference in Tuscon. ;)

Malcolm X (Spike Lee)

2010-04-09T17:47:00.018-04:00

Sadly, this is only the second or third time I've seen this movie (despite the fact that I own it). However, it was really good, as usual. So, the first time I saw this film was during a summer film class in my MA program where we focused on auteurship and Spike Lee films. That means that when I watch it, I'm always remembering those issues of shot-type, camera angles and lenses, film stock, and general composition. This time around, with a little bit of distance between me and the film, I was struck by the artistry of many of the shots. There's a particular sequence that occurs when Malcolm X is first gaining serious popularity. In this sequence, we're hearing a voice over of one of his more famous speeches, and we're seeing images of him sitting on a bed in a hotel room watching actual footage from the Civil Rights Movement (and the events leading up to it). In this sequence, every time we see Malcolm the camera is slowly zooming closer and closer on his eyes so that by the end we've moved from a full body shot to an extreme closeup of his eyes (and those iconic glasses). I never paid much attention to this sequence before -- most likely because I was busy watching the newsreels and trying to figure out the context of those events (which I'm much more familiar with now that I've just finished all the readings on the African American literature portion of my reading list, and since I've taken a couple of classes that touched on the historical and cultural context of that era) and wasn't able to really look at what Lee was doing with it. I think it's a really nicely done sequence that helps to help the viewer understand the complexity of the situation Malcolm X was in -- preaching the ideals of one belief system while watching the real-world occurrences he was trying so hard to help people overcome.

Okay, so on a far less serious note, I enjoyed the use of wide-angle lenses throughout the film, and the colors and stylization of the entire opening portion (with its bright colors, choreographed movements, and elaborate wardrobes). Great film -- I'll have to revisit it more often.

A Raisin in the Sun (Lorraine Hansberry)

2010-04-09T10:35:00.000-04:00

I haven't read this book since I taught it the last time -- which was about 3 years ago, I believe. It's a powerful story, and one that never ceases to frustrate me throughout the reading. Walter Lee just drives me crazy...until the end, that is. But this time around I found him a lot more bearable. I'm not sure what's changed in me to find more understanding for me, but it was a different reading experience this time. Mama seems to be the only character who sees what's happening to him, and while I still get annoyed with him when he keeps cutting Ruth off and not letter her share the news of her pregnancy with him, I also found myself much more sympathetic to his plight than I have been before. While I still think he's quite a selfish character in some ways (most obviously, when he uses not only his own portion of the insurance money, but Beneatha's as well), this time around I also realized he's quite a generous character -- in his own way. He doesn't see his actions as being potentially harmful or cruel -- he honestly believes that his plan can succeed, that he might be able to help his family, to improve their situation. When he explains himself at one of his low points, he tells Mama:

Sometimes it's like I can see the future stretched out in front of me -- just plain as day. The future, Mama. Hanging over there at the edge of my days. Just waiting for me -- a big, looming blank space -- full of nothing. Just waiting for me. But it don't have to be. (73-74)

His hopefulness comes through here. His potential despair -- the ability to see this huge and empty future just waiting to swallow him up -- isn't able to squash his hope. He still sees the possibility for happiness, for success, for something other than nothingness. I think this is why later on, when he hits his lowest point, it's so painful to watch him wallow in his hopelessness. After Asagai's last visit, Walter Lee's pride is gone and he tells Beneatha:

You and that boy that was here today. You all want everybody to carry a flag and a spear and sing some marching songs, huh? You wanna spend your life looking into things and trying to find the right and the wrong part, huh? Yeah. You know what's going to happen to that boy someday -- he'll find himself locked in a dungeon, locked in forever -- and the takers will have the key! Forget it, baby! There ain't no causes -- there ain't nothing but taking in this world, and he who takes most is smartest -- and it don't make a damn bit of difference how. (142-143)

This is the low point, and what I failed to see in previous readings was just how utterly defeated Walter Lee was. I don't think I fully appreciated what it was he lost in this scene -- what it was that had to die inside of him before he could speak these words. But this time around, I realized why Mama was so profoundly saddened by this speech, and why Beneatha wanted to sever any links connecting her to the man who spoke these lines: Walter Lee lost his moral compass, his pride, his integrity -- everything that made him a decent and honorable person; he lost his humanity. This time around, I think I finally got Hansberry's message.

Mumbo Jumbo (Ishmael Reed)

2010-04-08T23:40:00.000-04:00

First impression: Reed's novel reminds me of Gerald Vizenor's writing. It's incredibly complex, dense, and crazy -- and he makes up his own language. Just as Vizenor talks about Postindian survivance and trickster tales, Reed talks about mumbo jumbo and HooDoo culture. I loved it. I can't wait to read more Reed -- he's amazing. A new favorite!

Okay, so my more intelligent-sounding thoughts? Yikes, where do I even begin. I hate to say it, but I feel like I was just skimming the surface with my understanding of what was happening in this book. I mean, I got the basic storyline, but there was so much going on all at once that I felt like I was in a little over my head. But I'll do my best. I think the end of the novel was really the crucial part, as far as what Reed wanted to accomplish here. I mean, the idea that the Jes Grew pandemic was sweeping the nation, making everyone sing and dance and have a good ol' time (and that these longstanding white-based organizations wanted so desperately to stop it that they [plot spoiler!!] enacted the Great Depression just to shut it down) was entertaining and an interesting thought experiment (I don't mean that in a demeaning way). But it was really the end when Papa LaBas and Black Herman went to arrest/apprehend Hinkle Von Vampton and Hubert "Safecracker" Gould that we get the full backstory of Jes Grew and the deeper historical implications of the fight against this "disease." And of course, you know I'm always a fan of this kind of historical rewriting -- Reed takes all these ideas and cultural elements traditionally attributed to European (read: white) progress and turns them on their heads by illustrating how they all stem from African (Egypt, in most cases). This is another move that made me think of Vizenor, just because I think both authors are doing something similar here: the move to claim credit for the invention of these things (and to discredit other things, like Jesus...who I believe they referred to as a charlatan) and to expose the theft of African culture by Europeans is a way of decentering the West and pointing out that western ideas of "civilization" have in fact led to widespread barbarity throughout history, and that there's something wrong with the histories we tell ourselves about the past.

In any case, you have to read this one! It's really quite incredible, and while it's dense and took me a few days to read, it was well worth it! I may end up an IR junkie, adding him to my list of greats like Gerald Vizenor, Karen Tei Yamashita, and JK Rowling (yes, I just lumped all those authors together).

Dutchman (Amiri Baraka, formerly known as LeRoi Jones)

2010-04-07T15:00:00.001-04:00

When the blurb on the back cover said Dutchman was "designed to shock--its basic idea, its language and its murderous rage," I suppose I still wasn't really expecting what happened. I mistook Clay's impassioned rant as the shocking event, only to discover that (plot spoiler!!) the truly shocking event was Lula's murder and her complete lack of affect during and following this act. During Clay's rant, though, I think the politics of Baraka's work really comes through. This is not to say that I think Baraka actually believes that murder is the ultimately solution to the problems of African Americans, but I do think this rant is intended to snap the audience out of any sort of comfortable place they may have allowed themselves to fall into and to confront them -- violently, in a way -- with one side of this situation and a very powerful statement that race relations are not what some people would like to say they are, and that there is still a very present and deeply felt problem in modern-day America (especially give the play's original performance date of March 24, 1964). For me, the point at which Baraka's drama really hit me over the head with its vehemence was toward the middle/end of Clay's speech when he says:

If Bessie Smith had killed some white people she wouldn't have needed that music. She could have talked very straight and plain about the world. No metaphors. No grunts. No wiggles in the dark of her soul. Just straight two and two are four. Money. Power. Luxury. Like that. All of them. Crazy niggers turning their backs on sanity. When all it needs is that simple act. Murder. Just murder! Would make us all sane. (35)

While I don't believe Baraka meant these words literally, the idea itself is extremely powerful: all one group of people needs to cure them of their forced insanity is to eliminate the other group. The two cannot coexist -- not in the way they have been, anyway. I think what makes this play all the more gripping is the fact that the problem is clearly nowhere near being solved. Clay's body is dumped off the train -- by the other passengers, not by Lula! And when the play ends, she's at it again with the Young Man who walked onto the train right after everyone else made their mass exodus. Haunting is about the only word I can think of to describe it, but it doesn't come close to being a strong enough word for that label.

Montage of a Dream Deferred (Langston Hughes)

2010-04-05T20:58:00.000-04:00

This collection isn't my favorite by Hughes, but it's still high quality poetry...by which I mean it gets me thinking about Hughes' themes and characters (yes, characters, despite the fact that it's not a narrative poetry collection). The repeated idea of a dream deferred crops up throughout this short collection; my favorite of these instances is the poem "Deferred" (413-4) in which a hodgepodge of voices come together to voice their little wishes, their everyday dreams that have had to be put off. The sometimes grand but mostly simple wishes (owning a television set, buying a white enamel stove that has been desired for decades, passing an exam, etc.) are so poignant, perhaps because of their juxtaposition with each other. Nobody's asking for a million dollars or a tropical island -- they're asking for things that many people consider creature comforts (things taken for granted by those who aren't struggling to get by). This poem, more than the others about hopes and dreams that have been put off out of necessity and survival, really brought home the point about what can happen when we put these things -- large and small -- on hold in order to attend to the day-to-day realities of living.

I also particularly enjoyed the poem "Mellow." This poem struck me not because of its subject matter, but because of the imagery and the beauty of the language itself:

Into the laps
of black celebrities
white girls fall
like pale plums from a tree
beyond a high tension wall
wired for killing
which makes it
more thrilling. (405)

It definitely embodies some of the underlying tensions running throughout the collection -- tensions surrounding race and sexuality. However, it isn't one of the poems that focuses on Harlem (as so many of these poems do) or on what it means to be an average Joe living in Harlem in the post-WWII era of financial strain, racial discrimination, and everyday dangers.

Corregidora (Gayl Jones)

2010-04-04T23:17:00.063-04:00

This novel made an interesting statement about history. Ursa's position in life is compressed by the collective histories of her Great Gram, her Grandmama, and her mother and their relationships with men (most significantly, the Portuguese slave owner, Corregidora). Instead of being able to live her own life, Ursa's life is driven by the women in her family and their instructions to her to produce "generations" and pass their histories down to those generations. However, because of this history that is constantly bearing down upon her, she's unable to truly give herself over to love. Granted, I wouldn't really deem the men in her life as being worthy of her love, but it seems like she's unable to love fully even when she thinks she wants to. Jones' decision to (plot spoiler!!) put Ursa in the situation where she is physically incapable of bearing her generations complicates her life by bringing into question not only her purpose in life, but also the way she lived her life up to the point at which Mutt's abuse caused the loss of her womb. By putting this particular character into a situation that prohibits her from passing on her history, her origins, Jones' novel interrogates the significance of history in the lives of contemporary African American people. Ursa's character has been damaged by her history; she lives her life simultaneously attached to the man who enslaved her great-grandmother and her grandmother (Corregidora, whose name she retains even in marriage and whose photograph is one of her few possessions) and also hating him (spreading word of his misdeeds and evil ways to those in her life). However, when Mutt's jealousy results in the loss of her womb (and her unborn baby), she is forced to reevaluate her life and the relationships she's had. She eventually seeks out her mother's history, which has also been buried beneath the Corregidora history, as a means by which to find a way to live her life outside of Corregidora-history. I guess what I'm trying to say is that Ursa's life is a testament to the need to move forward, even though her family history is important and shouldn't necessarily be forgotten or erased.

On another note, I must admit that Ursa's character was a bit difficult to get along with. She reminded me of Alice Walker's character, Celie, in The Color Purple in that both Ursa and Celie often fail to react visibly to the people around them. However, where Celie gave the reader an indication of her emotions, Ursa's character is far more distant and often remains frustratingly impenetrable even to the reader, leaving us as much in the dark about her emotions as the other characters are. While this was somewhat unpleasant to endure (especially as a reader who likes to have a close relationship with the protagonist), it did seem to serve a purpose: the reader had no more insight into Ursa's interior than Mutt or Tadpole or Cat. In fact, while Ursa was relatively likable, she was also somewhat irritating (in a manner similar to Arvay in Zora Neale Hurston's Seraph on the Suwanee) in that she seemed to have some closed-minded views (especially regarding Cat and her sexuality) that were in such stark contradiction to what the other characters deserved that it was sometimes difficult to follow her through her life. Overall, though, I think Ursa's lack of transparency further illustrates the way she was raised to fulfill a singular purpose: make generations, pass on the history of Corregidora. Her emotionless style of living reflects the history she's supposed to rail against, but has actually allowed to become part of her. Just as her Great Gram was forced into prostitution by Corregidora and her Grandmama was forced into concubinage by the same man, so Ursa has -- like her mother before her -- given up the part of her that can allow her to freely give her love and resigned herself to a life of sexual captivity. The men in her life use her sexuality against her, and eventually she comes to realize that she'll have to play their game. This makes me uncertain of what to do with the ending. I'll admit that it seemed...out of place. I didn't think she'd ever (mega plot spoiler!!) go back to Mutt, and I certainly didn't think she'd do it in the way she did. I'm not sure if I should be happy because I think she might have regained control of her own sexuality, or if I should be unhappy because Mutt's still getting her to do what he wants her to, and she's still stuck trying to figure out what it is that will please him. I want to say it's the former, but I think it might actually be the latter.

Whose Song? and Other Stories (Thomas Glave)

2010-04-04T15:14:00.000-04:00

I read two stories from this collection: "The Final Inning" and "Whose Song?" Both stories deal with the issue of homosexuality within African American culture (here, they're specifically situated in the Bronx) -- but they go about it very differently.

In "The Final Inning," the formal aspects of Glave's writing are especially interesting. He uses a lot of parentheticals and colons and dashes in unusual ways as Greg examines his own thoughts, emotions, and sexuality. For example, when Greg reacts against the word "faggots" his thoughts are interrupted by other thoughts (also his), which Glave writes as "couldn't you keep it downtown with all them downtown faggots ( -- :don't call them that: -- ) that came up to the funeral?" (166). Because Greg's character is in a state of mental and emotional distress throughout this story, these unusual punctuations serve to highlight that distress and his continual mental interruption is expressed through parentheticals and sentence fragments isolated by dashes and the nontraditional use of colons. Greg also makes up words, or combines them (as you will). For instance, his son is of extreme importance to him, and he is described several times throughout the story as holding onto Greg Jr. "tight tighttight" -- a repetition and combination of words that focuses down on the action.

In "Whose Song?" the idea of song comes up constantly: a nightbird's song, a sorrow song, a blue song, a homie's song, a song unheard, a shadowrain song...the list goes on. Mixed in with all the kinds of songs are all kinds of musical ideas -- melodylessness, screaming, singing, etc. The juxtaposition of this musicality with the utterly depressing and dark plot events makes the idea of song -- of rising above, of drowning beneath, of bringing the soul out into the air in song -- seem fleeting and ungraspable. It also makes the happy moments seem really far away (especially since their songs are described with tender and nostalgic language) and feel like they're being crushed beneath the weight of the dark moments of the present (which are described with violent and harsh language). It's a troubling story, a deeply disturbing look at the ways people are damaged and how their pain can be used to damage those who have not been hurt in the same ways...yet.

Humid Pitch: Narrative Poetry (Cheryl Clarke)

2010-04-01T16:58:00.007-04:00

This collection was, as you can imagine, easier for me to follow (since it's "narrative poetry" and therefore each poem or group of poems revolves around a defined plot with specific characters). I really enjoyed this collection, actually -- especially the longest poem in it: "Epic of Song" (which is actually composed of 23 shorter poetic segments). I thought the characters in this poem were actually really complex, and that Star's exploration of her sexuality was made all the more interesting because of the many factors playing into it -- her relationship with Candy, who is at once her first female lover and her boss; her relationship with Evalena, who is her coworker and lover, but also her friend; her desire to succeed as a musician, which becomes more complicated once Candy dies -- that illustrated the complexities of any relationship. I'm not sure I like how that is phrased, but I can't think of a better way to say it, so there it is. Anyhow, I enjoyed the rest of the collection as well -- not just the one poetic sequence. Clarke's poetry seems most interested in exploring female relationships (sexual or otherwise). Her poems are not formatted according to any highly formal poetic style, but they flow smoothly and with a rhythm of their own. Well, since I'm so "bad" at reading poetry, I can't think of much more to say about this collection despite the immense enjoyment it gave me and the interest I have in how Clarke is approaching her larger themes within this body of work.

The Bluest Eye (Toni Morrison)

2010-04-01T13:40:00.035-04:00

I can't remember the last time I read this novel, but I know it was nearly a decade ago. It's funny, but I remembered where the title came from (an African American girl who wished for blue eyes) but not the rest of the plot. I found myself very interested in the way Morrison employed the sort of revised Dick-and-Jane narrative throughout the novel. The first two pages of the novel are a brief Dick-and-Jane story that is repeated three times -- the first in its normal format, the second without punctuation, and the third without punctuation or spaces between words. This reading, I realized that when she opens certain chapters with sections from these first two pages, the snatches of Dick-and-Jane narrative she opens the chapters with actually bring something to bear on the plot events of those chapters. In other words, she takes this seemingly-innocent child's story and brings it to bear on the rest of the novel. When she uses an excerpt from it to start a chapter, it highlights one aspect of that chapter and brings the reader's attention into focus around that aspect of the chapter. For example, she includes the following snippet at the beginning of a chapter in which we meet a woman whose relationship with her cat is more important to her and more intimate than her relationship with her husband and that with her son:

SEETHECATITGOESMEOWMEOWCOM
EANDPLAYCOMEPLAYWITHJANETHE
KITTENWILLNOTPLAYPLAYPLAYPLA (81)

Interestingly, she often uses these passages ironically. For instance, the chapter where we learn that (plot spoilers ahead!!) Pecola's mother doesn't really like her children, and that she prefers the little white girl whose family she works for, we get an excerpt that reads:

SEETHEMOTHERMOTHERISVERYNICEMO
THERWILLYOUPLAYWITHJANEMOTH
ERLAUGHSLAUGHMOTHERLAUGHLA (110)

By situating this passage at the beginning of the chapter, Morrison foregrounds the mother-daughter relationship that will become so crucial in this chapter. The fact that Pecola's mother doesn't like her children and resents Pecola for her ugliness from the day she is born becomes extremely ironic in light of this passage that includes a laughing and playful mother. The irony is stronger and harder to deal with in the chapter about Pecola's father, Cholly. The opening excerpt (132) includes a big, strong, smiling father. This portrait of familial happiness is grossly distorted as the chapter leads up to Cholly's rape(s) of his own daughter. The way Morrison writes the passages so that they're bleeding together also lends a certain creepiness to them. The repeated lines, such as "laugh, Mother, laugh" turn into zombie-like commands that make the passages erie instead of cheerful. This mood permeates the entire novel, and really makes the reader see just how wrong things have gone in Pecola's life. The twisting of the Dick-and-Jane narrative underlines the twisting of "normal" family roles (parents as loving protectors of their children) so that the world these children live in becomes distorted -- a minefield of dangers where dangers should not exist.

Go Tell It On the Mountain (James Baldwin)

2010-03-29T23:23:00.000-04:00

I struggled my way through this book, to be perfectly honest. That's not to say that it wasn't a good read, but that it was difficult after finishing Seraph on the Suwanee (which was a much more absorptive read) and dealt with subject matter that I'm less interested in (i.e. religion). However, there's a lot that I gained by reading this novel. Tying it in with the other African American novels I've read recently, it seems to be part of a larger body of work that's interested in interrogating the religious values that are so much at the heart of the culture by focusing in on different characters. Baldwin seems most interested in religious hypocrisy, which becomes most apparent in John's father, Gabriel. Gabriel is a kind of preacher, but he's not really living a life that would be considered in accordance with the teachings of the Bible. His sister, John's Aunt Florence, says it the most directly at the end of the novel when she reveals her knowledge of Gabriel's unclaimed (and now dead) son; she chastises Gabriel and tells him how his life is really working as she sees it:

"Yes," said Florence, watching his face, "you didn't give her no bed of roses to sleep on, did you?--poor, simple, ugly, black girl. And you didn't treat that other one no better. Who is you met, Gabriel, all your holy life long, you ain't made to drink a cup of sorrow? And you doing it still--you going to be doing it till the Lord puts you in your grave." (243)

These sentiments are at the heart of the novel, and crop up throughout it (although this is the place where they become the most explicit). There is a wide variety of characters - in both the past and the present -- who have vowed to live a good life according to the Bible only to find themselves in situations where doing what their hearts want and doing what Christianity dictates are completely at odds with one another. The fact that Baldwin situates the most vile character of the novel (Gabriel) as a man of the cloth while simultaneously situating decent, good characters (Deborah, Elizabeth, Florence) as perceived sinners and fallen women highlights the hypocrisy he's so interested in exposing.

It's also interesting that Balwin chooses to explore these issues through a boy who's just turned 14. John's story begins and ends the narrative, with his (foster)father's, mother's, and aunt's stories coming in the middle of his story. The entirety of Part Two is actually analepsis taking place during the evening worship where John will eventually endure his own struggle with his faith. I think part of what this accomplishes is that we're seeing a boy whose entire family -- the good and the bad -- has essentially failed at merging their own happiness with their faith, and here's John who is struggling with his own inner turmoil and trying to decide which direction his own life will take. In the aftermath of Part Two, it becomes clear that John's struggle is somewhat unrealistic. Each of his role models has been through the same struggle, and each has fallen (in their own eyes). How can John possibly succeed? And I think this is the question Baldwin wants the reader to leave with. If he wanted the reader to be more optimistic, why would he include that final exchange between Elisha and John, during which John implores Elisha:

John looked at his father an dmoved from his path, stepping down into the street again. He put his hand on Elisha's arm, feeling himself trembling, and his father at his back. "Elisha," he said, "no matter what happens to me, where I go, what folks say about me, no matter what anybody says, you remember--please remember--I was saved. I was there." (252)

Despite the apparent attainment of salvation, John's words speak of uncertainty, or even of a kind of conviction that it will not last. He has no choice but to enter his house again -- the same house where he lives with his mother and his (foster)father, and where he is beaten and his mother is beaten and his brother is beaten. And it doesn't look hopeful. It doesn't seem like it's going to last, and John's own words indicate his awareness of this.

Seraph on the Suwanee (Zora Neale Hurston)

2010-03-27T23:51:00.001-04:00

Honestly, I haven't read Hurston for over ten years...and even then, it was Their Eyes Were Watching God that I read (not that I actually remember anything of that novel, unfortunately...perhaps after I finish my exams I'll give it another go). I must admit that it wasn't what I thought it would be. I suppose I've gotten too used to movies and TV and the way they kill off, traumatize, and generally destroy their characters at the drop of a hat. I spent half the novel worried that something was going to happen to Arvay and/or Jim (something horrible and criminal), and can only admit my extreme relief upon reaching page 352 and finding that they made it out alive. And, what's more, happy! Okay, okay, enough of my emotional reactions to this novel. I was really intrigued by the way Arvay's prejudices and preconceptions were confronted for the entire novel. At first, her unusual notions seemed to be simply naive reactions to her own happiness. However, as the novel progresses and Arvay is forced to deal with people from all different walks of life and cultural and racial backgrounds, her stubborn ignorance becomes obvious (and aggravating) to the reader. Because we have no choice but to experience Arvay's thoughts and emotions, we have no choice but to at least tolerate (if not accept or understand) where she comes from and try to consider what it means to be so used to your own way of thinking that you can't see the flaws of the thing.

While that's interesting, and I certainly think Arvay is a sympathetic enough character to allow most readers to be on her side (even if she frustrates them to no end), there was another aspect of the novel that was...troubling: Jim's treatment of Arvay (this could be broadened to a more general discussion of male/female relations, but I'll stick to Jim and Arvay). From the beginning, he seems to know more about her than she does about herself, as evidenced by his little stunt with the turpentine in her eye. This is okay, even if it does rub me the wrong way just a little bit, but where it started getting flat out weird for me was on the day of their marriage. When Jim rapes Arvay, she comes back for more and realizes her love for him. Years later, Angelina's beau tells her that she'd better be careful or he'll rape her, and she tells him that she's going to help him rape her. But that's not Arvay and Jim. There are many smaller instances -- moments where he patiently (and patronizingly) tolerates her ignorance and intolerance -- but the next major instance occurs shortly before he leaves her when he makes her strip and stand before him, naked, scrutinizing her (and humiliating her) and never giving any explanation or justification for his cruelty. I don't really know what to make of all these little problematic moments sprinkled throughout the text, but I know that there's something going on with gender and relationships that's problematic. For now, that's about as far as I can puzzle out about it.

Finally, Hurston's sending some strong messages about religion. It's not my favorite topic to discuss, so I'll keep it short, but basically Arvay's clinging to her Bible (and her gross misinterpretations of its contents) is shown in an almost entirely negative light. Jim comments on this several times, and Carl Middleton (her brother-in-law) illustrates the same principle. I'm not sure whether the overall message is a kind of religion-is-bad sentiment, if it's more focused around religious hypocrisy, or if it's more about the inadequacy of religion in some respects. It's strange. It's interesting. That's all.

And Still I Rise (Maya Angelou)

2010-03-26T13:47:00.001-04:00

Angelou's poetry is a lot easier for me to follow than other kinds of poetry (ahem, lyric poetry, ahem) because each poem tells a story. I know, I've said this before. I think I might have said it for each and every last one of the poetry collections I've written about in this blog. Well, there it is -- the bare truth. I like narrative poetry. So, back to Maya Angelou.... Of course, her poems are also different in that the stories they tell are not always of a specific individual, but of a somewhat abstract, more general individual. Oftentimes, the poems appear to be about African Americans in general (as opposed to a specific person), which is of course highlighted by Angelou's interest in the African American experience, history, and culture. Take the title poem, "Still I Rise." It's a good example of a lot of the things I've been talking about here. While the narrative "I" appears to be an individual, the poem is general enough that there are no specifics about this person other than their race (African American). The last two stanzas provide a good example of what I'm talking about:

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling adn swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously cear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

This poem also brings up the unique rhythms Angelou uses. Okay, so maybe I can't call them "unique" so much as I can say they're not conforming to any rigid forms of poetry (sonnets, ballads, etc.) but instead have a rhythm all their own. She uses a lot of rhyming in her poems, but she seems to like to play with how she uses rhyme. It's not always coming in the form of rhyming couplets or rigid internal rhyme scheme. Instead, it's (again) a very rhythmic rhyming that is tailored to each specific poem. Within one poem, she might switch up the rhyme scheme from stanza to stanza. She does this in "Life Doesn't Frighten Me" -- some of the end rhymes (the -all sound, for instance) occur throughout the entire poem rather than just one stanza, while other end rhymes come in and out for single instances. The first stanza reads:

Shadows on the wall
Noises down the hall
Life doesn't frighten me at all
Bad dogs barking loud
Big ghosts in a cloud
Life doesn't frighten me at all

Obviously, here the rhyme scheme is fairly simple. However, the third stanza is different:

I go boo
Make them shoo
I make fun
Way they run
I won't cry
So they fly
I just smile
They go wild
Life doesn't frighten me at all.

Here, not only is the rhyme scheme different (rhyming couplets, essentially), but the structure is different enough that it could appear to be from a different poem entirely. The 3-words-per-line format is interesting, and reminds me of Gwendolyn Brooks' "We Real Cool" in the way it truncates language and makes its own kind of linguistic sense. Suffice it to say, I enjoyed this collection immensely (a true feat for a poetically intimidated reader like myself).

The Color Purple (Alice Walker)

2010-03-26T11:24:00.000-04:00

The last time I read this book, I was a senior in high school. I figured I wouldn't really remember the story, despite the fact that I remember liking it, but I was wrong. As I read, I continued to recall characters' names before they were introduced (most especially Shug Avery), and to have an inkling of what direction the events were headed in. However, my pseudo-vivid memories of the novel also made me realize just how much of it went over my head when I read it way-back-when.

I think what made the novel stick so firmly is the depth of the characters. They're so vivid, more so than even Ellison's characters (who had nearly 600 pages to develop). This is especially true with Celie, of course, since she's the one writing most of the letters and we get her inner perspective much more than the other characters. But the character dynamics are probably the most interesting thing to me in this novel. The way their relationships continue to shift and grow in new directions is fascinating, and the way their lives become increasingly connected is also really interesting. I know, I know..."fascinating" and "interesting" are such vague terms. Let me see if I can clarify. The way Walker weaves together her characters' lives and their always-changing romantic ties to one another seems to be a great feat of verisimilitude on the one hand (because in real life, this constant shifting is always occurring) and idealistic on the other (because all the characters find happiness in their relationships by the end of the novel, which entails a great deal of open-mindedness and acceptance on a level that not all characters actually seem capable of). But the way that the characters change and mellow with age is certainly what keeps the story interesting to read.

To be frank, I love a story with a happy ending, and so this tale appeals to me on that level. However, I think it's really difficult to write a believable happy ending (much more so than to craft a believable unhappy ending), and Walker has mostly succeeded on that front. It's not a conventional happy ending, as Disney would most likely want to have; instead, it's a complicated ending with lots of twists and turns, lots of history, and lots of personal growth for each character. In this sense, I think Walker did an admirable job with it because the ways different characters changed and grew over time was quite believable in most ways.

As for the novel's form, well, someone told me that it's the first epistolary novel in the African American tradition. As such, I find it interesting to look at exactly who Celie is addressing her letters to. For the first half of the novel, all the letters are addressed to God. Ordinarily, this would be quite straightforward...except that Walker complicates even this in the second letter of the novel. Celie writes that when her mother asked her where her first baby came from, she replied that it was God's. Of course, it was her stepfather's, so this calls the "God" of the letters' addresses into question. Lending further suspicion to this idea is the fact that when she refers to her stepfather in these early letters, she calls him only "He" -- with a capital H just like in the Bible when God is referred to with the same capitalized pronoun. Is Celie, in fact, writing these letters to her stepfather? It's a question I have no answer to, especially when Celie and Shug have their discussion on religion and the reader is privy to Celie's ideas of what God looks like (a very large and very old white man with lots of hair).

Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison)

2010-03-25T22:41:00.001-04:00

A veritable tome of a book, but what a story. From the very beginning, I couldn't put it down. Ellison's unnamed narrator tells a compelling story, even though he's not particularly lovable. His various flaws generally serve to make him more human, and to make the reader wish he would have his eyes opened sooner rather than later so he can get on with his life.

One thread that caught my attention was the one having to do with fighters. From the very beginning, the narrator illustrates his ability to fight. Whether you want to consider his example from the introduction (where he talks about beating up a man only to realize the man can't see him because he's invisible) or the instance where he goes to give his graduation speech and becomes entangled in a physical fight with the other boys who were brought there for that purpose, fighting is a crucial part of his life. It's through his first fight (the latter instance mentioned above) that the narrator gets his precious briefcase -- that symbol of so many things. When he takes Mr. Norton to the Golden Day -- the decision that ends his formal education -- the entire bar becomes a roiling fight (even though he stays out of it this time). When he gets his first job, he fights Lucius Brockway the same day he is injured and has to be hospitalized. When he gives his first planned speech, it's at an old arena where years ago a prizefighter "had been beaten blind in a crooked fight, [a] scandal that had been suppressed, and [...] the fighter had died in a home for the blind" (334). When he comes up against Ras the Destroyer, it's in a fistfight in the dark streets. And finally, when he becomes invisible (or really realizes his invisibility) it's as he runs from a fight, flees from Ras' men, falls into the coal pit, and is shut out from the world. I'm not sure exactly what to make of all the fighting imagery except at the most obvious level: the narrator has to fight for every important step in his life. He has to fight for his very life at times, and he continues to struggle rather than to give up. It's only when he truly flees from a fight that he sinks into invisibility...falls into that near-lifeless state his life is in when the novel ends.

Perhaps the most intriguing thread of this novel was what the unnamed narrator's grandfather said on his death bed, which continues to haunt the narrator throughout the story. He said,

"I never told you, but our life is a war and I have been a traitor all my born days, a spy in the enemy's country ever since I give up my gun back in the Reconstruction. Live with your head in the lion's mouth. I want you to overcome 'em with yeses, undermine 'em with grins, agree 'em to death and destruction, let 'em swoller you till they vomit or bust wide open." (16)

This, of course, leaves an impression on the narrator, but he continues to think that the whites are going to think he's a traitor when in fact it's his own people he's treacherous to all along...it just takes him some time to figure it out. His struggle with this cryptic bit of advice from an old and dying man serves as a kind of marker of his progress as he works his way through his own life. The various ways he considers his grandfather's words indicate his mindset and his guiding principles each time he ponders this outburst.

Middle Passage (Charles Johnson)

2010-03-22T23:57:00.041-04:00

This novel reminded me a lot of the kind of sea tales that were popular in the 1800's (like Melville's Benito Cereno) as well as of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. In other words, I liked it a lot even though it read like a story from a different time...which is appropriate, I suppose, since Johnson set it in the 1830's.

One of the things the novel really asks the reader to think about is the transformative nature of the Middle Passage. Throughout Rutherford's journal entries, it becomes increasingly clear that he is not the same person. At times, he mentions this explicitly, but at other times he observes it in others or simply says things that he wouldn't have when he was in New Orleans. While the cruelty of the slavers and the suffering of the Africans is obvious, Johnson doesn't choose to focus on it as much as he focuses on the ways that suffering alters the core of everyone's being. When we see the way that (plot spoiler!!) Rutherford has changed at the end of the novel, when he's with Isadora and aboard a gambling ship, Johnson's message becomes clear: the Middle Passage altered the world. Everyone was changed by it. Everyone was affected, nobody walked away without feeling at least some of its impact. I think Johnson's working really hard to make a huge statement about humanity with regards to slavery.

Throughout the entire novel, different characters are in bondage to other characters in a variety of ways, and this is part of how Johnson approaches the issue of slavery -- by showing the many ways people keep others under their power. There's Papa and his underworld of crime (and Rutherford is indebted to him with his life), there's Isadora and her money (Rutherford is also indebted to her), there's Falcon and his ship (he's bound to Papa while his crew is bound to him), Santos and Jackson (both of whom have bound themselves to their masters -- Falcon and Reverend Chandler, respectively), there's Belaka (whose mother has bound her to Rutherford, and who Rutherford has bound himself to), and of course there's the Allmuseri (who are literally enslaved by Falcon and his crew). By creating a world in which everyone is connected to everyone else, and (more importantly) everyone is somehow indebted to, bound to, or held captive by someone else, Johnson complicates the historical outlook on slavery. There's a moment that reminds me of what Butler was doing in Kindred in this novel:

"During a storm, you could never relax, be overconfident, or let fear show upon your face. You developed what Cringle called a 'flood mentality'--that is, you were always prepared to have water high as your waist. During each crisis, every action had to be aimed at helping your fellow crewmen. You cold not afford to tire. Your duty was always to insinew your ship; if you hoped to see shore, you must devote yourself to the welfare of everyone, and never complain, and constantly guard against showing weakness. Looking back at the asceticism of the Middle Passage, I saw how the frame of mind I had adopted left me unattached, like the slaves who, not knowing what awaited them in the New World, put a high premium on living from moment to moment, and this, I realized, was why they did not commit suicide." (186-7)

Just as Butler used her strong female protagonist to address the question of why there weren't more uprisings during slavery (not that there weren't any, or weren't many), Johnson uses his African American protagonist to explore a similar issue with newly enslaved Africans traveling to America under horrible conditions. In many ways, Johnson's work is preoccupied with issues like this, most of them relating back to moral codes...but that's for another day.

Kindred (Octavia E. Butler)

2010-03-18T18:14:00.000-04:00

What an interesting premise -- I'm really interested in the conflation of past and present, the active role required by the protagonist to ensure her own existence, the interaction between contemporary life and history. I had a concern that Butler's novel had the potential to turn into a thought experiment with little depth or serious consideration of the matter. However, it definitely was much more than a simple thought experiment. Instead of just asking what might happen if a modern African American woman suddenly found herself in the antebellum South, Butler pushes the novel to get at some much deeper issues. For instance, she interrogates the idea that African Americans accepted their slavery when they could have fought harder and gotten out of it by showing how her characters (even a modern American woman) are coerced into their roles on top of the physical threats and dangers as well as the legal and vigilante repercussions surrounding any "disobedience." By giving Dana a white husband, Butler further complicates the situation by forcing the reader to consider the situation from both sides of the color line. It would have been interesting if she had made her protagonist an African American man who happened to be married to a white woman, but it also would have changed the entire plot (obviously). I did find myself wishing for this at some points just because Kevin's race lent itself so easily and simply to the master/slave structure, and because Dana's role as caretaker sometimes rubbed me the wrong way (to be fair, these are my own anti-domestic issues coming out, not anything Butler did).

I remain fascinated by Butler's decision to have the time shifts come about in moments of near-death. I'm still a bit puzzled by it, but find it interesting that she chose to focus in on these dangerous moments -- these times when the characters feel that they are in mortal peril. It's interesting that Rufus finds himself in these situations as often as (or more often than) Dana (if she were allowed to live her own life without being pulled back into her past). I was also curious about her decision for Dana to never reveal her ancestry to Rufus, even when (plot spoiler!!) he was about to try to rape her. Perhaps it's unreasonable to expect that to have made a difference for him, but it's also something that felt like a loose thread.

One last thing: Butler selected Rufus and Dana with great care, and the results are this complex novel filled with moral gray moments. By beginning with Rufus as a boy -- a boy who clearly has the potential to be kind and treat people fairly -- Butler emphasizes the deep structural racism of American culture in the antebellum South and the ways that even kind-hearted white people might ultimately be nurtured out of their natures (if that makes sense). Also, but thrusting a strong contemporary African American woman back into the past and gradually forcing her into slavery, she confronts certain notions (as discussed above) that attempt to justify slavery (to an extent). Also, by illustrating the many physical and emotional forms of coercion placed upon each slave (as recognized by the increasingly helpless Dana -- made more and more helpless as she comes to care deeply for the other African Americans on the plantation), she brings the reader to an understanding of the many pressures and dangers facing all of them.

The Bean Eaters (Gwendolyn Brooks)

2010-03-18T17:39:00.000-04:00

This collection is definitely haunting. At first, I was kind of enjoying the content, since each of the poems is quite narrative (always a plus for me, since I struggle with poetry, especially of the lyric variety)...but then I reached "A Bronzeville Mother Loiters in Mississippi, Meanwhile, a Mississippi Mother Burns Bacom" and realized that it was about Emmett Till. From that point out, the poems veered toward the serious and solemn, and the violent and dark. Not a good collection for me to read at night...in the dark...because I'm a total wuss.

Anyway, Emmett Till and the ensuing events continued to haunt the collection every few poems as Brooks touches on the legal aspects of the trial and the verdict, the impact of his death on his mother as well as on the family of the man who murdered him, etc. Given the book's publication date (1960) and the date of Emmett Till's murder and the trial's conclusion (1955), it seems reasonable to assume that the dark undercurrents woven throughout the entire collection were strongly influenced by the young boy's murder. The subject matter of the poems is oddly highlighted by the almost sing-song rhythm and rhymes of Brooks' poems. This rhythm doesn't mock or undermine the content, but instead adds to the melancholy mood.

Slave Moth (Thylias Moss)

2010-03-17T16:28:00.000-04:00

I've read novels in verse before, but none quite like this. The poetry of Moss' novel really comes from the language (as opposed to the form, although that's there as well). The image of a young slave woman stitching her words onto cloth and wearing them like petticoats is beautiful, but Moss has created so many layers of meaning around these layers of fabric. On one level, there's the idea that this is a woman writing her way to freedom. On another level, she's practicing an act that is forbidden, and is going about it in a poignant and deliberate manner. On yet another level, she's defying Peter Perry by taking something he wanted her to see (the luna moth) and transforming it into her own idea (the cloth diary). Then, on top of all of that, there's the luna moth itself: a creature that has an extremely short life span, that transforms itself via cocoon, and that cannot be contained for very long. This final layer has so many implicit meanings -- Varl-as-moth, novel as bildungsroman of sorts, slavery as a possession of the body but not the mind/will, etc. Suffice it to say, the novel is accomplishing many things and tackling many different issues through this one title image.

On a completely different note, the novel has a definite preoccupation with deformity -- what Varl classifies as not only physical difference (because it's not always a "deformity" despite her continued use of that word) but also emotionally twisted situations. There are several characters who might be classified as "abject" (as Kristeva use the term) -- including Albino Pearl and Dwarf Sully, who have natural differences; Jessper, who inflicts her own difference with the iron (thereby making her suddenly "interesting" to Peter Perry); and Mamalee and Varl themselves, who are intellectually different in their intelligence and their level of education. But more important to the core of the novel is the emotional deformity (depravity?) that surrounds Peter Perry. Varl describes him as a "collector" of unusual slaves, which is why he continues to search for these abject figures to bring to his homestead. Then again, he also thrives off of his mother-in-law's death, charging people to see the hive that honeybees have made of her rotting corpse. And most significantly, there are his relationships with the women in his life: his scholarly relationship (which Varl sometimes speculates goes beyond exchanges of words) with Mamalee, his neglectful/disdainful relationship with Ralls Janet, and his oddly desirous yet abstinent (for the time being) relationship with Varl. In other words, throughout the novel, Peter Perry is depicted as the one who has the deformity (rather than those around him) because of his twisted approach to life. Even at the end, when he (plot spoiler!!) renames Perryville "Varlton" it becomes clear that the entire thing is a kind of experiment he's performing to observe what happens with the three main women in his life (Mamalee, Varl, and Ralls Janet). In other words, he's sick. Or, to use Varl's word, he suffers from "extreme deviancy."

Ceremony (Leslie Marmon Silko)

2010-03-16T23:56:00.035-04:00

It's been almost a decade since I first read this book, and I remember it being a lot more confusing than it was this time around (it's really weird to read something that you know confused and eluded you at one point in time, but to enjoy it and find it a doable read). Guess that means I've picked up some knowledge and maybe even some skills over the years. :)

Okay, so what I was really intrigued by in this book was the symbolism. Josiah's cattle -- a tough, smart breed of animal that will survive the toughest conditions; a breed native to the land and adaptable to boot -- have so many ties to the Native Americans in the novel that the connection is impossible not to make. Silko presents a very specific perspective on the situation: Native Americans must be willing and able to adapt, and must not forget their culture (which also must remain adaptable) if they are going to find a way to survive in this nightmare world created by the white people. In other words, she maintains the point of view that the culture is essential, but that the world has changed and the culture must change to survive in that world. She's not assimilationist by any means, but she's not preservationist either. The characters, especially Tayo, have to come to terms with the way things have changed, and to find ways to make the culture continue to be relevant to their lives.

Okay, so there's also this odd thing with blue going on here. I feel like I'm missing something after having recently read Vizenor (whose two novels I've read are saturated with blue) and now coming across these female characters in blue dresses with blue shawls and blue shoes and blue doors and blue blankets. Is there any kind of cultural significance with regards to this color, or is this just a coincidence? I mean, Vizenor and Silko are not affiliated with the same tribes, so this seems a bit of a stretch. Well, it's something for me to look into in the future, and to puzzle over in the present.

Finally, this novel (like Momaday's House Made of Dawn) focuses on a Native American man who has just returned from fighting in World War II, and is struggling to find a way to live again. While Momaday's Abel, like Silko's Tayo, is initially unable to find a niche and turns to alcohol as a quick fix, both characters find some degree of hope for their futures -- Tayo more so than Abel. Silko's novel is much more openly critical of the social and historical role American colonizers played (and continue to play) with regards to Native American life and culture. In fact, there are moments in Ceremony where the narrative becomes almost hostile toward white people, explaining their existence as the result of witchery and likening them to a destructive plague or force that is running its course but will ultimately be forced to recede once again.

House Made of Dawn (N. Scott Momaday)

2010-03-14T23:09:00.031-04:00

Finally! I've been meaning to read this book for about...oh, half a decade. I have to admit that the narrative style of this novel was really anti-absorptive (to borrow a term from Charles Bernstein). Momaday's technique of shifting the focalization of the narrative several times throughout each chapter and employing italicized sections of narrative that branch off into even more directions kept me distanced from the story and its characters until around page 110 (and my copy of the novel was only 185 pages long). In fact, it took me about a quarter of the novel to determine with any degree of certainty that the novel was in fact Abel's story, not Francisco's or Father Olguin's.

Anti-absorptivity aside, the novel did some interesting things with form. I'm hesitant to call it a pastiche because although it did contain a wide variety of different kinds of writing (letters, journal entries, songs, stories, questionnaires, announcements, and more) in addition to the standard prose narrative, it's not done in the same style as many of the works we talk about as pastiches today. I guess I don't have any solid basis for making that claim, and really most people would probably be more than comfortable calling this work a pastiche. I suppose I'm trying to say something like this: Momaday's use of different written media to tell Abel's story seems equally interested in commenting on the importance of alternative forms of storytelling/documentation/history. Rather than coming off as a whimsical or complicated formal experiment, House Made of Dawn reads like the history of one man's life as pieced together by memories, other people's encounters with him, documents (personal or otherwise), and other snatches of recollection. Instead of flowing in a more conventional prose-narrative manner (chronological, yes, but also straightforward and to the point, touching on all the important moments and people), the novel moves in and out of different perspectives, weaving together Abel's stories from the outside (which is part of why I had such a hard time getting into it and deemed it "anti-absorptive").

Griever: An American Monkey King in China (Gerald Vizenor)

2010-03-11T23:11:00.049-05:00

Oh how I love Gerald Vizenor's writing! The first work I ever read by him was The Heirs of Columbus, and this novel has completely lived up to my expectations. The way he uses language is so incredibly complex and playful. But let's see, what do I actually have to say about the story itself....

Well, so I have this burning interest in cross-cultural US ethnic literature, specifically in authors who write about connections between and across cultures in certain ways. Griever is interesting in this regard because of the comparisons between the Native American trickster figure and the Chinese monkey figure. Both figures are culturally known for their troublemaking, their mischief, and Griever happens to be both -- a Native American trickster who goes to China to teach English and of course starts all sorts of trouble there (political, personal, you name it, he started it). The Chinese people he comes into contact with often recognize him as a "mind monkey" and completely accept him as such. At one point he tells a guard that he is an American monkey and the guard laughs but accepts it as the truth. The ease with which Griever crosses cultural boundaries and finds his niche within the Chinese culture (a niche parallel to the one he occupied on the reservation) makes a bold statement about the way different cultures mix and about cultural translation in general.

Also, I am in love with Vizenor's obsession with mixedbloods in this novel. Perhaps this goes back to my own life and my personal experiences (haha), but I really enjoyed it. I think that ultimately the novel makes the point that being a mixedblood is a positive thing. The characters who have a problem with mixedbloods are not characters we're encouraged to like. For instance, Hanah Dustan (not one of the novel's completely reprehensible characters, but certainly not one of its exulted heroes either) says the following of mixedbloods:

"Mix oil and water and you end up with neither. [...] Chinese, now take these people here, victims of the world over, but not so much as their mixedblood children. [...] Even so, when people can be recognized for what they are, then they do better in the world. Jews, like the Chinese and other races, achieve more and earn more in those countries where there is discrimination, but not mixedbloods because no one knows who they are. Mixedbloods are neither here nor there, not like real bloods." (77-8)

While Hannah's speech illustrates her attempts to make sense of various races, the point she's really arguing at the core of the matter is that racism can sometimes work in one's favor, but that mixedbloods are going to be completely discriminated against because of their racial ambiguity -- since they could be anything and are unclassifyable, they get all the bad treatment instead of only some of it. On the other hand, Griever's comments are quite different. (Plot spoiler ahead!!) When he takes Kangmei with him in his ultralight at the end of the novel, he discusses the positive aspects of her mixed racial heritage:

"You can imagine what the peasants must think when we come down out of the air, a mixedblood barbarian trickster in an opera coat, a mixedblood blonde who speaks Chinese, wears a cape with bundles of silk seeds under her arms, and a cock tied behind the ultralight seat. [...] Kangmei was born here but her father was an American, he died in a labor camp during the earthquake at Tangshan. She inherited small bones from her mother and blond hair from her father, which was necessary for her flight to freedom, because, if she weighed ten pounds more we might have crashed in the moat, and if she had black hair she might have been arrested." (234)

Griever's comments highlight the positive aspects of mixedbloods -- that they inherit characteristics from both of their parents, and that they are more adaptable because of it. There's also the implication that they are hardier, better at surviving, well-equipped for life in a crazy cross-cultural world.

All in all, I love Gerald Vizenor. I have nothing academic or professional to add to that statement -- I refuse to quantify it. His writing makes me so happy, and is so crazy and elusive that I just can't get enough!

New Native American Drama (Hanay Geiogamah)

2010-03-10T20:49:00.057-05:00

This collection consists of three of Geiogamah's plays: The Body Indian, Foghorn, and 49. This was my second reading of the collection, and it was a very different experience.

The first time I read The Body Indian, I had a really strong reaction against it. I remember being quite horrified at the way Bobby was repeatedly "rolled" by these people who claim to be his friends and/or kin...so horrified that I'm not sure I picked up on some of the other aspects of the play. This time around, I was a lot more interested by Geiogamah's stage directions, and his focus on the hodgepodge of relationships between the characters...as well as what these relationships mean with regards to the characters' actions. The strongest example of this is Howard's order (plot spoiler!!) that Bobby's leg be removed and pawned for money to buy wine with. The action is abhorrent...but the words are tender. Howard reminds everyone else that Bobby gets the DTs when he goes without drink for too long, and actually quotes Bobby's words from a previous incident where he talked about how horrible he felt during that process. The first time I read it, I was full of incriminating anger against Howard...but this time, I wasn't so sure. James is the only one who expresses disgust at Howard's actions, but he goes along with it anyway -- not to mention, James is a pretty despicable character himself, and unlike the others who seem unaware of what they've done, James is very conscious of having robbed Bobby so he could go out for a night on the town. There was much more "gray" in my reading this time around, and Geiogamah's plays left me with a lot more to ponder.

When it comes to Foghorn, Geiogamah was undeniably heavy-handed in his politicking. Of course, the first time I read it I was upset by The Body Indian and Foghorn gave me the perfect way to vent my anger. This time, I was a little disappointed by the aggression of Geiogamah's critique because I thought his message was weakened a bit by scenes such as the one where the bull is wiping his butt with the broken treaties. Interesting, certainly, but so over-the-top mildly-tasteless in its comedy that it's hard to take it seriously (this without having seen it in person, to be fair). At the same time, I still enjoyed most of the scenes, and found it an interesting and important play for what it has to say about the history of Native American relations in the good ol' US of A.

Finally, there's 49. Similar to the first time I read this, I struggled to figure out what Geiogamah was trying to say. This time around, however, I was really struck by the contradictions inherent in the policemen's actions: they're working really hard to surround these kids and set up a flawless sting-style operation, but when a group of teenagers gets in an accident on one of the country roads very close to the 49, there's no response from law enforcement. Of course, it could be argued that nobody called it in, these were the days before cell phones, etc., but since the police had the location completely surrounded from all directions it opens up some questions about whether or not they knew, why they didn't respond, and what their true purposes are (they continue to let on that they're doing this for the good of the kids and the public, but they simultaneously rattle off numbers of jailed Indians like a sleezeball counting up the notches on his bed). In other words, I left with a lot more to think about this time around.

*Note: While the book that includes these three plays was published in 1980, I've categorized the text under the 1970's because of the original performance dates of the plays. The Body Indian was first performed in 1972, Foghorn was performed in 1973, and 49 in 1975.

Waterlily (Ella Cara Deloria)

2010-03-09T15:10:00.000-05:00

Today at lunch, I was talking with a friend who has read Waterlily, and I was struck by something she said. At this point in time, I was about 2/3 of the way through the novel and was saying how I'm not sure I would have realized that Waterlily was the main character until a good way into the text if not for the title. My friend agreed, and then said that the story is, at its core, a love story. I hadn't thought of it that way before, most likely because (plot spoiler coming!!) I had just finished the part where Sacred Horse "bought" Waterlily.

While that's all very interesting (to me, anyhow), there was another thing that came up in our conversation that is much more interesting. When I said that I was just past the part where Waterlily was "bought" our other friend (who was also sitting with us at the time) asked exactly what that meant -- and was visibly surprised and somewhat disturbed at the idea of a human being being "sold" (which of course is not the case in the novel, but was the impression he got from our conversation). This sparked a larger discussion about how the novel really forces the reader to reexamine their own beliefs and take a close look at just how it is that they're looking at the world. For example, at one point Waterlily and her family visit her father's friend, and while they're there they talk about the white people at the nearby fort. When Waterlily's mother asks another woman about white children, the woman responds,

"Listen! those people actually detest their children! You should see them---slapping their little ones' faces and lashing their poor little buttocks to make them cry! Why, almost any time of day if you walk near the stockade you can hear the soldiers' wives screaming at their children. Yes, they thoroughly scold them. I have never seen children treated so... Only if a woman is crazy might she turn on her own child, not knowing what she did. [...] I suppose," the woman said, "when the children are naughty, that is the quaint way of training them to be good. By talking loudly and fast and by striking them, the people doubtless hope to scare them into good behavior. I know it sounds queer." (103-4)

When Waterlily's mother, Blue Bird, hears this, she wonders whether or not physical beauty can "compensate for so horrible a lot" (104). This is just one of the passages that made me think twice about the way I think. While I have never particularly given much thought to comparative child rearing techniques, I must admit that when confronted with that perspective I found myself agreeing with Blue Bird and thinking that the way the Dakotas raise and train their children (through quiet and consistent indirect instruction, as well as through example) in the novel is far superior to the way of life described in the passage above. Likewise with the idea of Waterlily's being "bought." While the word initially rubbed me the wrong way (vague notions of arranged marriage, child prostitution, and western feminist ideals were beginning to take shape in my mind), Deloria's descriptions of the kind of honor and gesture this is ultimately reversed my initial (mis)conceptions of it. It's things like these passages and words that draw the reader's attention and ask them to reevaluate their way of thinking and the preconceptions they're subscribing to that cause the initial reaction to or against the text.

*Note: I've indicated that this novel is from the 1940's despite its 1988 first publication date. My reason for categorizing it in this manner is that Deloria wrote and completed the novel in the 1940's, but it wasn't published until approximately 40 years later. My categorization reflects the period during which it was originally written rather than published.

She Had Some Horses (Joy Harjo)

2010-03-07T14:18:00.031-05:00

I read this collection for the first time last spring for one of my classes. When we read it, we also had to listen to a recording of Harjo delivering some of the poems from this book, and I found that the second time around (having heard Harjo speak her work) I had her voice and her rhythms in my mind as I read. Both times, I found Harjo's poetry to be beautiful, if somewhat elusive (not an unusual reaction of mine when it comes to poetry, which you know if you've read any of my posts about poetry collections). Like many, I found myself wondering what the horses meant...but I didn't get caught up on that because I was interested in some other things that were happening in the poems.

First, I was intrigued by the way Harjo chose to break up her collection into 4 different parts: Survivors, What I Should Have Said, She Had Some Horses, and I Give You Back. This makes me think of the significance of the number 4 to most Native American cultures -- 4 is a sacred number, often used in ceremonies, tied to the 4 directions (for one thing). Aside from that, the first section is the only one not named after one of the poems (or in the case of I Give You Back, the only poem) it contains. At first, I tried to force all the poems in this section to somehow fit under the theme of survival, but obviously that was far too simplistic a technique and I abandoned it quickly. Instead, I read the poems as stories of different eras, different people, and (perhaps most importantly) an enduring spirit that is rising up against the hand that attempts to squash it.

Many of Harjo's poems are somewhat cryptic, and while I struggle to realize the deeper meanings of each poem, I often feel inadequate upon leaving one poem for the next. Even though I sometimes doubt the depth of my understanding of these poems, the playfulness inherent in many of Harjo's poems comes through loud and clear. One of my favorite poems in the collection, and also one of the most cryptic (possibly because of just how very short it is), exemplifies many of the aspects of her poetry that I've just discussed:

The Poem I Just Wrote
The poem I just wrote is not real.
And neither is the black horse
who is grazing on my belly.
And neither are the ghosts
of old lovers who smile at me
from the jukebox.

Smoke Signals (Sherman Alexie)

2010-03-06T23:41:00.001-05:00

I'm so glad I read The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven before watching this movie. I didn't realize that the film came out of the collection of short stories (most especially the story "This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona"), and it added a significant amount of depth to the movie having read those stories. The way all the stories kind of came together to form the world the film takes place in (I'm thinking specifically of the community on the reservation) makes me reconsider the written collection and wonder if it couldn't be considered a novel written in a non-linear and disjointed form. I mean, the stories are all interrelated, containing the same characters in the same location -- why isn't this classified as a kind of fragmented or fractured narrative, a novel that (similar to Edwidge Danticat's Dewbreaker) is focalized through different characters in each chapter and touches on different events in the past and/or present of each of their lives.

Okay, but to consider the movie on its own terms, I first must admit that I really loved the fellows broadcasting from K-REZ radio (especially Lester Falls-Apart, who sits on top of his broken down van at the intersection and reports on the traffic that has or has not passed). They reminded me of the characters in "The Only Traffic Signal on the Reservation Doesn't Flash Red Anymore" in their observation of the life that happens around them. And the two women who drive their car in reverse have to have come out of the character Simon from "The Approximate Size of My Favorite Tumor" who "always obeyed posted speed limits, traffic signals and signs, even minute suggestions. But he drove in reverse, using his rearview mirror as his guide" (156). Well, needless to say, characters from the short story collection are sprinkled throughout the film -- not always in a readily-recognizable manner.

That being said, I think one of the most significant differences between the collection and the film is the general tone. The collection is, well...somewhat less-than-optimistic. On the contrary, the film is quite optimistic. While at the end of "This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona" Victor and Thomas realize their relationship ultimately will not change, at the end of the film they appear to be buddies -- friends who have put the past behind them and may perhaps develop a deeper friendship now that they've shared such profound experiences. In the collection, the many seemingly-unchangeable aspects of life on the reservation that cause pain or unhappiness to the people who live there accumulate and leave the reader with a sense of the weight of these matters. However, in the film these issues are buried beneath the comedy of the events. For example, Thomas Builds-the-Fire is not shunned for his stories, but rewarded for them time after time. Furthermore, Victor's family does not continue to drink, but instead his mother stops drinking when she sees how it's affecting him and his father leaves and eventually overcomes his alcoholism. All in all, the film is far more optimistic and positive than the collection of short stories.

from Sand Creek (Simon J. Ortiz)

2010-03-05T21:05:00.044-05:00

This poetry collection, unlike Tapahonso's, is tightly focused around one historical event and the way it has continued to play out for the people involved (and their descendants). In this case, it's the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864. Like I said, it's focused around that event and its aftermath, but it continues through history to look additionally at the repercussions of the event as they play out in today's world -- which is where Native American veterans of the Vietnam war, for one example, come in. It's a different approach to history than I've seen before -- more of a collective approach in its interest in successive generations.

The unusual form of the collection -- with a few spare lines of prose on the left-hand page and an entire poem on the right-hand page -- focuses the reader's attention rather successfully on individual aspects leading up to, during, and following the Sand Creek Massacre. By prefacing each poem with a few lines of almost-explanatory prose, Ortiz guides the reader, priming them to look for specific things in his poems. As I've admitted in previous posts, I'm not the most at-ease with poetry, and often feel as though I'm missing the point. However, these prose introductions to each poem helped me figure out what the general topic of the following poem was going to be, and because I went into each poem with a basic understanding of the subject matter, I was able to appreciate the form much more and enjoy the act of poetry on its own terms. Additionally, the visual appearance of the words on the page (with the few lines of prose at the very top of the left-hand page, leaving the rest of it blank...and the poem on the right-hand page in a bolder and larger font) lent a certain solemnity to the lonely words on the left side and a certain emphasis to the poetry on the right side.

This collection presents the reader with a specific take on history: the idea that there are histories in our nation's past that have been swept under the rug, and that continue to inform and influence our present-day existence in ways that we are unaware of when we're ignorant of the past. For someone who knew nothing of the Sand Creek Massacre or of the various Indian Removal processes that swept the continent from east to west, the subject matter itself would undoubtedly be enough to leave the reader pondering the grim and bloody past. For someone already familiar with these events, the poetry memorializes those who were murdered and condemns those who did the murdering. Perhaps most interestingly, it illuminates the ways the past continues to haunt the present in different and unanticipated ways.

Sáanii Dahataał (Luci Tapahonso)

2010-03-05T16:40:00.000-05:00

This collection is a mixture of poetry and short stories, and they're not put in any specific order (like poems first, stories second -- or anything like that). The collection focuses on intimate relationships (although not often intimate romantic relationships) between family, friends, pets, etc. Tapahonso takes a close look at the connections that unite a community, and through her words she explores the unique dynamics of her own family and community. Many of her poems and stories explore different Navajo traditions and practices -- such as the mourning process during the four days after someone's death -- and seem to work hard at illustrating the history of such traditions and the importance of continuing them. Most of her poems could be considered narrative poetry, as they tell stories of their own in a manner that is different from the more familiar (to me, anyhow) prose of the short stories. She includes Navajo words and phrases in most of her pieces, oftentimes without translation -- I wish I knew what they meant (this is different from wishing she had provided translations; I simply wish I knew the language so I could understand these works more fully), or at least how they are supposed to sound. See, in her preface, Tapahonso explains that each of these stories and poems really has a song that accompanies it, and without that song they are rendered incomplete (xi). Since they are in many ways meant to be spoken/performed orally, the pronunciation seems almost more important here than in other texts where finding a translation will suffice -- in this case, even if I were able to find a translation or the means of translating it myself (doubtful), without the sound the pieces seem like they're missing even more than their author already thinks they are.

With this in mind, I have to wonder what it would be like to attend a reading, because if these poems and short stories are what Tapahonso considers incomplete then I can only imagine how beautiful they would be in their entirety. Usually I really struggle with reading poetry -- it's hard for me to follow because poems are typically so short, and because it's fairly rare for all the poems in a collection to have a clear narrative as they do here -- but Tapahonso's poetry was a lot more accessible to me. I feel like they were little stories in and of themselves, and like they shared strong bonds with the other poems and stories in the collection. While they're not as explicitly linked as the short stories in Sherman Alexie's The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven are, they are certainly connected by their shared themes and their roots that lie in Navajo family, culture, and tradition.

The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (Sherman Alexie)

2010-03-05T14:49:00.000-05:00

I've read a few of Alexie's more recent works (Flight, Ten Little Indians, and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian), but I have to admit that this might be my favorite thus far. I think part of the reason for that is that, as a collection of related short stories, it has many messages to send. Of course, as Alexie admits in his new introduction, some of those messages can be misconstrued (he tells the reader that he received a lot of criticism for the abundance of alcoholic Indians populating the pages of this book, but that it was largely autobiographical and not something he intended as a message about alcoholism on Indian reservations). One such message that I think could be taken away from this book, mistakenly or not, is that in order for an Indian to succeed, s/he has to leave the reservation. In fact, most of the Indians who stay on the reservation are portrayed as people who are going nowhere, or who have nowhere to go. At the same time, most of the people who leave the reservation either (1) return defeated and hopeless, coming home to nurse their wounds after realizing they don't belong "out there," or (2) simply disappear, never to be heard from again. Several characters throughout the collection talk about how it's a good thing when the kids leave the reservation, because at least they're taking a chance instead of ending up young drunks. This is, obviously, problematic (and it's something that's present in different ways in all three of Alexie's other works that I've read).

That's not to say that the stories are all bad, and the collection is rife with negative messages and stereotypical portrayals of Native American life on the reservation. Like I said before, this is my favorite Alexie work that I've read so far. That's because of some of the other messages embedded in these pages, perhaps most significantly the message about community. The characters in this collection care deeply about one another. They show their feelings in a variety of ways, and when you read story after story about people who know each other, who help each other, who give what little they have to give and hold back their judgment, it starts to sink in. Perhaps this does something to counteract the previous leave-the-reservation message. Can we read this as the reason all these people eventually return to the reservation? Do they disappear when they leave because the world outside the reservation not only doesn't care about them, but actually hates them? When I think of it that way -- that the reservation is the space filled with familiar faces and kind hearts -- it starts to make sense in a whole other way. Instead of returning to the reservation because they have to, because the world kicked their asses and they've given up, maybe they're returning because they tasted the world and it was rotten. These characters would rather live on the reservation, with its poverty and other issues, than stay in a city that doesn't have anything to offer them.

Now that I've wildly contradicted myself and argued over my own words, I have one more thing to think about: the two stories at the end of the collection. I read the 2005 version of this collection, which has two new stories tacked on at the end. They definitely felt like add-ons (the different font didn't help). Interestingly, neither one featured an alcoholic Indian (was Alexie, perhaps, trying to desaturate his collection here?), and both focused on immediate family -- one on a brother captured in war, and one on a father who plays only a small role in his son's life. I always feel weird about authors adding to their works after many years have passed (in this case, 12 years passed between publications), and wish that more was said about these additional stories to give some context (Were they written along with the other ones, but failed to make the final cut? Were they written in the time between the two publications? Were they a reaction to the criticism Alexie received for the original collection? Were they stories he always wished he had included, but for whatever reason didn't or couldn't?). And since I have no answers for these questions, this post is over.

The Book of Salt (Monique Truong)

2010-03-04T23:57:00.001-05:00

I read this book for a class I took last summer, but it was even better the second time around. Truong's language is really beautiful, and in many ways it just feels fresh. Just as the Miss Toklas and GertrudeStein characters take joy in Binh's use of French -- the way he defines things by what they are not, and uses this second language in creative and insightful ways -- so I took joy in Truong's use of English. She tells Binh's story in a delicate and touching manner...but stays away from oversentimentalizing it or making it trite. It's the language of this novel that really hooked me and brought the story itself to life.

Even just the title -- The Book of Salt -- reflects this in the way she continues to return to the idea of salt in all its different forms. When Binh learns what GertrudeStein has called the words she wrote about him, he has questions. "Salt, I thought. GertrudeStein, what kind? Kitchen, sweat, tears, or the sea. Madame, they are not all teh same. Their stings, their smarts, their strengths, the distinctions among them are fine. Do you know, GertrudeStein, which ones I have tasted on my tongue? A story is a gift, Madame, and you are welcome" (260-1). Throughout the novel, different encounters with salt occur at key moments of the text. The last time Binh sees his oldest brother, Anh Minh and his kitchen staff are outside in the heat of a Vietnamese evening bodily whipping egg whites into meringue; they are sweating, and the salt from their bodies mixes with the whites of the eggs they beat to add to the recipe (45-6). Later on, when Binh dines with the Man on the Bridge, he encounters the delights of a rare kind of sea salt called fleur de sel: "A gradual revelation of its true self, as I was beginning to learn, is the quality that sets fleur de sel apart from the common sea salt that waits for me in most French kitchens. There is a development, a rise and fall, upon which its salinity becomes apparent, deepens, and then disappears. Think of it as a kiss in the mouth" (98). These are just two of the moments, but they're examples of the beautiful language Truong writes with -- the beautiful language she gives to this man who has so much to say, but nobody to say it to.

One of my favorite passages from the novel: "I, yes, lost the French word for 'pineapple' the moment I opened my mouth. Departing at their will, the words of this language mock me with their impromptu absences. When I am alone, they offer themselves to me, loose change in a shallow pocket, but as soon as I reach for one I spill the others. This has happened to me many times before. At least now I know what to do, I thought. I repeated my question, but this time I had my hands on top of my head, with only the bottom of my palms touching my hair. My fingers were spread like two erect, partially opened fans. Complete with my crown, I stood in front of my new Madame and Madame the embodiment of 'a-pear-not-a-pear'" (35). Moments like these are peppered throughout the novel, and I enjoy them for the commentary they make about language. Here is Binh, who speaks just enough French to get by, but who finds these poetic and fresh ways to say things (partly out of necessity, but partly because of his personality). He refuses to be defeated by this foreign language, and instead forces it to do his bidding. He makes it work for him, giving his words to others in a selective and intimate gesture. He is a man who has renamed himself without telling anybody, and who renames everyone around him without telling them about it. He nicknames everybody and everything from Sweet Sunday Man to The Man on the Bridge, from his Mesdames' dogs to the food he cooks with. While his French language skills may be limited, his ownership of the language (and of his own internal language) is not.

M. Butterfly (David Henry Hwang)

2010-02-28T10:08:00.000-05:00

The first time I read this book was less than a year ago, and it was a very different read the second time around. First off, it wasn't nearly as difficult to figure out what was going on -- and this includes Hwang's summary of the Madam Butterfly opera. Second, and more importantly, I knew Butterfly's secret from the beginning, which changed everything. Instead of having thoughts about Hwang's problematic representation of women, I was thinking a lot more about representations of race. In the class I took last summer (which is when I first read the play) we spent a lot of time talking about the problematic representation of gay men in this play -- the way that (plot spoiler!!) Gallimard laughs at Song after he strips...the way Gallimard "becomes" Butterfly at the end...the way the only solution to homosexuality that Hwang presents us with is suicide/death. All of that is still really problematic (it's not like Hwang's play changed at all since the last time I read it), but this time around since i knew where that was going, I was thinking about how race was portrayed.

I think Song's ironic use of the word "Oriental" and the way Gallimard is played the fool because of his presuppositions regarding Asians (men and women alike) is interesting, and the connection between Puccini's opera and the plot of this play creates a kind of tension between (mis)conceptions about Asians. Since Gallimard is working for the French government during the Vietnam War, and since people generally have an awareness of the US' disastrous involvement in that war, all of his suggestions seem immediately preposterous and he looks like a huge fool for believing what he says. Also, Song's sarcastic remarks about what Asians really want (that being forceful domination by the West) are ludicrous, but Gallimard buys into them wholeheartedly...there are so many moments like this where Gallimard looks like an idiot and Song comes off looking really intelligent and clever. However, Song's cleverness is also really closely tied to his deception, which detracts from it a bit. Also, the ending (the scene in which Song strips for Gallimard) detracts from this in general because of Gallimard's laughter (that annoying, problematic laughter again!) and Song's dismissal. In some ways, I guess this is my attempt to find some sort of redemptive aspect of the play because I was so disappointed by the ending the first time I read it, but I actually enjoyed the rest of the play.

China Men (Maxine Hong Kingston)

2010-02-26T23:39:00.054-05:00

The structure of this novel is really interesting -- it's divided into six chapters (kind of), but each "chapter" also has one or two shorter sections attached to it that are more abstract and often tell the stories of fabled and/or historical Chinese figures. These shorter sections aside, the six main chapters revolve around the story of different male relations in the narrator's life, and each of those men lives through some of the historically famous events of Chinese American men and of Chinese men in America. Through them, we experience the planting and farming of the sugar cane fields in Hawai'i, the building of the transcontintental railroad, the process of immigration and Angel Island, the Vietnam War, and the experience of trying to get by in America while family members who remained in China continue to ask for help (especially during the Cultural Revolution). It's interesting that Kingston doesn't give us these chapters in order, but instead begins with the story of the narrator's father when he first came to America and ends with her brother upon his return from the Vietnam War. In between these two narratives, she also gives us a second narrative about the narrator's father -- one that picks up after the first one left off -- as well as the stories of several of the narrator's male ancestors. But it's the shorter pieces that are more interesting. These shorter pieces present the reader with folk heroes, but also with the history of Chinese immigration to America ("The Laws") and a rewriting of Robinson Crusoe (in "The Adventures of Lo Bun Sun") with a Chinese man as the main character. While there's a possibility that Kingston's use of myths could have gone awry and exoticized or mysticized Chinese people as "others," I don't think she did. I think she successfully used these in-between stories as a means by which to rethink the history of Chinese immigrants and Chinese Americans.

Another aspect of the novel that I thought was really interesting is evident in the title: China Men. That is, this novel's focus revolves around men, even though the narrator appears to be a woman. It takes a close look at the narrator's father (twice), grandfather, great-grandfather, brother, and (in the chapter called "The Making of More Americans") several different men in her life (another uncle, a non-blood uncle, etc.). Women, therefore, are portrayed as obligations most of the time -- someone the men have to return to, report to, send money to -- but are rarely heard from. Even the in-between chapters, the main characters are men. This is not to say that Kingston is failing to represent women, or that she's portraying them negatively -- it's simply to say that she's not interested in them for the purposes of this novel, and so we only see/hear them through the men. I'll have to reread The Woman Warrior before I can comment further on this.

A Gesture Life (Chang-rae Lee)

2010-02-18T20:23:00.001-05:00

I've had this book sitting on my shelf since I picked it up at a discount book sale during my undergrad years. Now that I've read it, I wish I'd read it sooner -- it's really moving. At the foundation of Lee's novel is a huge question about what it means to be "related." Most obviously, this manifests itself through the main character, Doc Hata, and his strained relationship with his adopted daughter, Sunny. But it's there in other ways as well -- Sunny's son (Tommy) and his use of clowning to get others to like him, even to the point of almost dying; K and the relationship she forges with Hata based on their mutual "Koreanness;" Mary Burns and her attempts to integrate Doc Hata into her life (and the lives of the other Bedley Run inhabitants) -- underlying the events of Doc Hata's distant past, near past, and present. This question is interrogated by Sunny, who senses that Doc Hata needs her more than she needs him and isn't afraid to confront him about that. It's also complicated by his experiences in World War II as a Korean by blood, a Japanese by nationality, and a medic by trade. Questions about Doc Hata's allegiances and ties -- questions about who he owes what to -- plague him throughout his entire life until finally, as an old man, he simply wants to have connections to somebody. But even that changes when, finally, he realizes he just wants to take care of the people he feels a connection with -- to help their lives be easier for them.

The title is also interesting. It's Sunny who points out to Doc Hata that his life has been a life of gestures, a life of constant performance without deeper meaning. At first, it seems untrue and unfair since Doc is so apparently-beloved by everyone in Bedley Run. But as the novel wears on, this observation permeates the narrative, bleeding through into moments that should have depth (such as with his relationship with Mary Burns) but begin to seem transparent in their lack of it. Lee's use of analepsis has an interesting relationship with this "gesture life." The novel exists in three different times: the distant past (WWII), the near past (Sunny's childhood/adolescence), and the present (Doc Hata's life alone in Bedley Run). At first, the novel takes place in the present. It doesn't take long for the near past to start invading on that narrative, and we begin to get a better understanding of Doc Hata based on the information that seeps through about Sunny. However, the distant past doesn't really start to become an issue until halfway through the novel when suddenly it is not only alluded to, but begins to occupy large sections of the narrative. About 2/3 of the way through the novel, the near and distant pasts almost blot out the present, leaving little space for it between them. The more we learn of Doc Hata's past, the more it sort of makes sense that he lives his "gesture life" and keeps people at bay...and the more we begin to understand why he is the way he is (to an extent).

Dictee (Theresa Hak Kyung Cha)

2010-02-17T20:57:00.000-05:00

Okay, this is the second time I've read this unusual memoir, but I can't say I feel like I fully understood it this time either. Sadly, the blurb on the back of the book helped quite a bit, since it explained that each section is about a different person -- historical figures, family members, etc. This is one of the most unusual aspects of the memoir...that it isn't actually entirely about the author. It's about her mother, Joan of Arc, Yu Guan Soon, Greek goddesses, and herself. Of course, this is part of why I'm still struggling to understand it -- it's a memoir told through the stories of several women, and then there's the inclusion of poetry. Well, not only poetry. Poetry, letters (typed, handwritten, you name it), photographs, prose, different languages (Chinese and/or Korean calligraphy, French, English, Latin) -- it's more than just pastiche, it's downright collage-like.

Right, so the writing itself. It's not straightforward...it's very fragmented and also "experimental" (if I can use that word to describe her use of language). Cha likes to take words that are typically written as one word (like "anything") and split them with a large space (to become "any thing"). The effect is really surprising -- I wouldn't have thought this would have made a noticeable or significant difference, but it really did. Whenever I came across a word like that, I found myself pausing over it and really thinking about its meaning. She also plays a lot with form. For instance, there's an entire "chapter" told half on the left page, half on the right page. It's hard to explain, but basically there are two voices, and one of them is stuck on the left page while the other is stuck on the right page. Anytime there's writing on the left side, the right side is blank. Once the left side stops, the right side starts. It's one of the most interesting methods for writing a dialogue (or dialogue-like stuff) I've ever seen.

Cha's method of telling her story by including the stories of others reminds me of the way that Oskar (from Günter Grass' The Tin Drum) and Saleem (from Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children) both believe that in order to tell one's own story, one must first tell the stories of one's ancestors. While Oskar and Saleem are both fictional characters, Cha's narrative is founded on a similar premise and effectively uses it to communicate key aspects of Cha's life. Instead of focusing on significant events from her life, as most autobiographers do, Cha focuses on mental and emotional states; this is not to say that the memoir is completely devoid of significant events, as it's not, but that its primary focus lies elsewhere...on a more internal plane.

Someday, I hope to understand Cha's memoir with more confidence, but for now I'll have to live with impressions that are sometimes vague and sometimes less vague.

Rolling the R's (R. Zamora Linmark)

2010-02-16T12:26:00.001-05:00

This is the second time I've read this book, and I've come out of it with significantly different conclusions. Last summer, I read it for a class and in our discussion many of my classmates talked about it as a sex-positive book -- one that not only portrays sex in a positive light, but specifically child sexuality. With that in mind, I was a bit surprised to find that while I had tended toward agreement with my classmates less than a year ago, upon revisiting the novel I realized I actually thought it was not something that could be considered "sex-positive." Yes, many of the characters have sexual encounters in the novel. Yes, most of those who do seem happy about it. But no, I don't think Linmark is asking his reader to be happy about it. Katherine Katrina-Trina Cruz, a fifth-grader like the rest of the main characters, has a boyfriend who's a high school senior (star of the football team, etc.) and who she has been sexually active with for a while now. But the last chapter, "F for Book Report," leaves the reader with a sad look at Trina's relationship. While she claims to be happy and says that she feels sorry for a character in the book she read who remains a virgin, Linmark's narration invites us to feel sad for Trina instead. Every time she praises her "babe" in this chapter, it's clear that she believes what she says, but that what she says is not the truth. For instance, she says that "Erwin not dicking around when he say he love me [...]. And he no like met get pregnant, too. So everytime we go all the way, he always bring his box of rubbers cuz he no like me get pregnant too young too soon. I love him so much" (148). While Trina seems to think that Erwin's words are sincere and his actions gallant, they hardly seem so to the reader. Her insistence that he's not "dicking around" when he claims to love her highlights its false ring. Also, the way she proudly explains that he uses condoms as a consideration for her falls short of making the reader sympathetic to Erwin. Instead, the reader is able to see what Trina is not: that Erwin is using her, that he doesn't love her, and that he most likely cares about whether or not she gets pregnant because of how that would affect him and his football playing (not because of how young she is). Similarly, Edgar is extremely proud about his sexuality, and flaunts it for all to see. This is definitely something I would see as a positive portrayal in this book -- homosexuality is not denigrated here, and in that sense I'd say you could argue the book is sex-positive...except that it's not sex positive. Sure, Edgar's having a sexual relationship with Mr. Campos, the school janitor, and he lets Vicente witness this relationship. However, it's a "secret." The only reason he lets Vicente watch is because he's made Vicente his special project: he recognizes some of Vicente's desires and thinks that he can help Vicente by forcing him to come out of the closet. But when Vicente reveals the secret of Edgar and Mr. Campos to the rest of their friends, Edgar denies it, saying "I would never give my youth up that fast. I not that stupid. 'Sides, he stay married already. Vicente just jealous cuz I can get what I want and he no can" (135). The fact that he denies it (and then gets angry enough to call Vicente a faggot) indicates that he isn't proud of his relationship with Mr. Campos. Instead, he tries to hide it by giving reasons that can be interpreted as the very reasons he's not willing to admit to the relationship: he's given up something he can't get back, it isn't a smart thing to do, the man is old enough to be his father, and he can't get what he really wants (Scott Baio, or a young and attractive lover). That Edgar, who is usually so flagrantly proud of his accomplishments (everything from the Christmas presents he gives to the music he records off the radio) is not proud of what he does with Mr. Campos in the janitor's closet after school, and the reader can't really feel happy for him even when he purports to be happy himself. I will say this, though: Linmark's novel may not ask us to be happy about the imbalanced relationships these kids are engaging in, but he does ask us to be happy about their sexuality itself. Edgar has found happiness in being who he is -- and doing so in the open, for all to see. Trina has also found happiness in her attractiveness, unlike her teacher (who is her foil in many ways). Orlando Domingo, the school's high achiever, finds happiness in dressing up like Farrah Fawcett (in "Kalihi in Farrah," 22-25). Each of these kids has a sexuality, and when they embrace it the results are viewed in a positive light. When others take advantage of that sexuality, the results are viewed in a negative light. The most explicit example of this is Vicente and his encounter with Roberto Freitas in "Mama's Boy" (138-139). Vicente, who hasn't yet come to terms with his sexuality, has a sexual encounter forced on him and his experience is wholly tragic. Early in the novel, the chapter "Rated-L" (16-19) makes a significant point about truth and lies that runs throughout the entire novel: when characters tell the truth and follow their hearts, they are rewarded with happiness; when characters lie and deny their hearts, they are punished with misery.

Bone (Fae Myenne Ng)

2010-02-15T19:23:00.000-05:00

One of the most unusual attributes of Ng's novel is the backwards chronology (each chapter chronologically precedes the one before it). I think this form nicely parallels the central event of the novel: Ona's suicide. In Ng's novel, Ona's suicide is at the heart of the family's breakage and Leila's issues regarding marriage (among other things). It has cast a shadow across all of their lives, tainting their memories and embittering them in various ways. The backward chronology of the novel places the suicide squarely in the middle of everything by making it the focus from the very beginning. Leila brings it up on the very first page, and from that point forward every mention of Ona, every detail about her unhappiness or her relationships is highlighted because of Leila's previous introduction of it as the event that altered the family irreparably. Besides that, the first 8 chapters deal with the aftermath of Ona's suicide and its many repercussions (some of which are more obvious while others would not ordinarily appear connected except that Leila makes those connections for the reader); then, three entire chapters are spent on the suicide and Ona's funeral (the immediate effects); finally, the last three chapters are devoted to pre-suicide life...but Ona still plays a key role in that life and all of her unhappinesses and difficulties are once again highlighted as key focal moments. In other words, Ng's novelistic structure is a formal match for the novel's primary catastrophe.

On a completely different note, I really enjoyed the fact that the novel took place in San Francisco's Chinatown and the Bay Area in general -- since I've spent a significant amount of time in the city during the past few years, being lucky enough to have friends who live there, I was familiar with most of the businesses and locations the characters visited. This added another dimension to the novel for me because I was able to firmly situate myself within the novel's world in a way that's different from the imagination-based way I do that when I read a book about an unfamiliar location.

I also thought Ng's representation of the immigrant's struggle was very well-rounded and portrayed a wide variety of different first- and second-generation immigrant experiences. Mah's story is one very particular story: a woman who comes to America with her husband, is abandoned, and finds another man to marry in order to gain citizenship so she can raise her children here. She works in a sweatshop and eventually begins her own business. Leon's story is another: a man who comes to America by purchasing a paper identity, and therefore his citizenship. Then, of course, there are Mah's daughters -- each one with a different attitude and a different set of problems...and a different relationship to and attitude toward her Chineseness. Unlike Okada's No-No Boy, where different characters feel like they're types more than they feel like they're people, Ng's characters seem like real people. They represent certain experiences, but are harder to put into boxes (although I think it's too reductive to say that Okada's characters are only types, as they are complex and have depth as well).

My American Kundiman (Patrick Rosal)

2010-02-14T13:23:00.002-05:00

This is the second time I've read this collection, and I find myself equally enmeshed in Rosal's fresh language and poetic style. After reading Inada's Legends From Camp, I couldn't stop thinking of how Rosal's poetry is influenced by hip-hop in a way that's similar to how Inada's poetry is influenced by jazz (although with fewer explicit references to that influence). The first time I read this collection, I did my best to hear the rhythms and get the "beat" of the poems down -- that was before I had the privilege of hearing Rosal give a reading of his poetry. This time, I had Rosal's voice, Rosal's rhythm, Rosal's sound in my head as I read the collection, and it was a completely different experience. I remembered listening to him read "St. Patrick" at one of my professors' houses last fall, and I dug up the video and have embedded it at the end of this post. Experiencing Patrick Rosal reading his poetry is a wonderful experience -- he's so full of energy and rhythm, and he uses his entire body in the telling of his poems.

In any case, this second reading of the collection was immensely different than the first one. I also thought a lot more about the collection's title, and paid closer attention to Rosal's note at the collection's beginning that explains what a kundiman is and some of its cultural background: "The kundiman is a traditional Filipino song of unrequited love" and "was a coded desire, a manifest longing in song, a beloved poetic subversion composed and such in a time [of colonization] when overt expressions of love for the Philippines were looked down upon" (xi). I tried to keep that in mind as I read, and it helped me focus my reading (poetry is considerably difficult for me to read as I never really know if I'm "doing it right") a little more. I was able to see more of what Rosal might have intended when he said that this collection was meant to honor this tradition and be read as "love songs for America." The subjects of his poems tend to be people and places in his life, and reading them as embodying the spirit of the kundiman helps connect them to each other and shows the tissue that binds them together to be Rosal's love or admiration of them.

Okay, here's the video of Rosal performing "St. Patrick" from Autumn of 2008. Enjoy!

No-No Boy (John Okada)

2010-02-13T13:26:00.000-05:00

This novel was a little bit strange. I mean, it was very straightforward as far as content and narrative trajectory are concerned, but it was weird because a lot of the characters felt like examples instead of substantive people. I think there are two categories for these "examples" too: the first-generation Japanese immigrants living in America, and the second-generation Japanese Americans born to those immigrants.

With regards to the first-generation immigrants, there are four main characters/groups: families like the Ashidas and like Ichiro's family who moved to America with the single-minded purpose of reaping what they could sow (wealth, education, etc.) without partaking in or assimilating to anything even remotely related to American culture; families like the Kumasakas who came for a similar reason but eventually grew to like it enough that they purchased a house after a few decades and decided maybe it wasn't so bad; families like Emi's who came for similar reasons, grew to like it, but asked to be repatriated when it became clear that America was going to put them in the internment camps; and families like Kenji's who were more open-minded about their immigration and grew to not only like America, but to adapt to and take on some aspects of American culture and lifestyle. Of all these families, the ones like the Ashidas and Ichiro's (or at least, his mother) are villainized -- they are often blamed (directly and indirectly) for their children's struggles and failures, and they are depicted as being literally insane. On the other end of the spectrum, the Kumasakas are depicted sympathetically while Kenji's father is blatantly idealized. In some ways, the novel is walking a fine line between providing an interesting array of characters and illustrating the complex factors at play in the younger generation's decisions to enlist, accept the draft, or become no-no boys and simply being an assimilationist text. I think it's unfair to say it's actually assimilationist propaganda, but I also think that it could be argued that an assimilationist vein runs throughout the novel.

As far as the second-generation Japanese Americans are concerned, there are also four types: those like Freddie who are no-no boys and are failing to survive now that the war has ended; those like Ichiro who are no-no boys but ultimately find a way to re-enter the lives that were interrupted by internment; those like Kenji who enlisted and either died or were severely injured because of the war, but who ultimately feel that it was worth it; and those like Eto who enlisted and fought but remain angry and insecure because they have returned and are not really being treated any more respectfully than before the war. In this case, Kenji is romanticized and the reader is asked to be sympathetic toward Ichiro.

The point of all of this is that Okada's novel tells a compelling story, but at times seems like its sole purpose is to get the American public (most likely the non-Japanese portion of it) to better understand and sympathize with the plight of Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans in a post-WWII America. That's not to reduce the novel to this one point -- I think there are a lot of other very interesting things going on in this text, but I wanted to focus on this particular aspect of it.

The Chickencoop Chinaman (Frank Chin)

2010-02-12T12:40:00.000-05:00

This play was much more abstract than I originally expected. I'll admit that I'm still puzzled by the idea of the "Chickencoop Chinaman." Chin introduces this character in the very first scene, when Tam says that he is "THE NOTORIOUS ONE AND ONLY CHICKENCOOP CHINAMAN HIMSELF" -- the "result of a pile of pork chop suey thrown up into the chickencoop in the dead of night and the riot of dark birds, night cocks and insomniac nympho hens running after strange food that followed" (7). He says that "in the beginning there was the Word! Then there was me! And the Word was CHINAMAN. And there was me. [...] I lived the Word! The Word is my heritage" (6). He goes on to say that he was not born: "Created! Not born. No more born than the heaven and earth. No more born than nylon or acrylic. For I am a Chinaman! A miracle synthetic" (8). So I get that he's supposed to be more a product of his environment than the result of generations of cultural history -- he's born of a word, the product of a mad night in an Oakland chickencoop. But is that it? It hardly seems like Chin would continue bringing up this Chickencoop Chinaman thing throughout the entire play if there wasn't more to it than that. I'm stuck, though. What else could it mean? What is the deeper meaning? Maybe there isn't one??

Okay, so on to something I have more conclusions about. There's this whole idea of cultural blending that continues to plague the play. Tam's speech is described as jumping "between black and white rhythms and accents" (6), and when he meets Charley Popcorn, the old man is thoroughly confused. Popcorn tells Tam, "The way you talked, why, I took you for colored over the phone. [...] Why would a Chinese talk like a colored man?" (40) -- a question that Kenji understands more thoroughly. Kenji's nickname is "BlackJap Kenji" because he "hated yellow-people" (20) and also talks like Tam does. But Tam's nickname was "Tampax" -- a nickname that grew out of another nickname: "Ragmouth" for his "fancy yakity yak" (26). The speech patters aren't the only indication of different cultures rubbing off on each other. Kenji's apartment itself is a visual indication of the influences that informed him: "Tatami on the floor. The walls are covered with posters of black country, blues and jazz musicians that clash with the few Japanese prints and art objects" (9). And of course, there's Lee herself -- a woman who's at least part Chinese, but has been passing as white. In fact, even her ex-husband thinks she's entirely white -- Tam is the only one who realizes she's not. Despite that, she's supposedly on her way to Africa and gets offended when other people try to criticize Blacks. Chin makes an interesting statement about what it means to be American, what it means to be Asian American, African American, etc. -- and how these different identities relate to and rub against each other.

Finally, how can I pass over the Lone Ranger and Tonto? Here's Tonto, played by the same actor who plays Tom. But when he was growing up, Tam was certain that the Lone Ranger was Chinese. He surfed the radio waves listening for a Chinese presence, and he thought he'd found it in the Lone Ranger: "I heard of the masked man. And I listened to him. And in the Sunday funnies he had black hair, and Chinatown was nothing but black hair, and for years, listen, years! I grew blind looking hard through the holes of his funnypaper mask for slanty eyes. Slanty eyes, boys! You see, I knew, children, I knew with all my heart's insight [...] he wore that mask to hide his Asian eyes! And that made sense of me. I knew he wore a red shirt for good luck. I knew he rode a white horse named Silver cuz white be our color of death. [...] And he was lucky Chinaman vengeance on the West...and silver bullets cuz death for a Chinaman is always expensive. [...] I knew the Lone Ranger was the CHINESE AMERICAN BOY of the radio I'd looked for" (32). But when the Lone Ranger turns out to be an old, white racist and Tonto is willing to butcher his perfectly good English to speak in the broken English the Lone Ranger insists he use, Tam is deeply injured (as symbolized by the gunshot to his hand -- a significant choice of places on the body since Tam is an aspiring author).

All I Asking For is My Body (Milton Murayama)

2010-02-11T08:39:00.059-05:00

Murayama's novel(la) may be a short one, but it's not lacking in substance. One aspect I am very interested in is the way Murayama uses language. The novel is written in English...but...the English used is often pidgin English, incorporating Hawaiian words, phrases, and slang in addition to words and sentences in Japanese (with translations following in parenthesis). This doesn't alienate the reader, but it definitely makes them aware of their relationship to this story and its characters -- for myself, not being from Hawaii or of Japanese descent, I was reminded that this was someone else's world, someone else's culture. For someone who is from Hawaii and/or of Japanese descent, the experience of reading this novel would be much different. Since one of the novel's primary themes revolves around issues of nationality vs. cultural heritage, the use of language creates a kind of tension that helps complicate this idea. The protagonist is an American citizen, but the language he uses is a medley representing different heritages (one of which is Hawaiian -- something he doesn't have in his blood). This subtly brings up the idea of America as melting pot, and serves as a nice counterbalance to the post-Pearl Harbor view of anyone of Japanese ancestry (regardless of nationality or citizenship) is unable to assimilate and is actually incapable of learning English.

I was also really interested by the motif of the body in this novel. There is a struggle between the mind and the body throughout the story, as Tosh and Kiyo are both highly intelligent, but are unable to pursue an education and are forced to do manual labor instead. The title itself brings up Tosh's argument about how he just wants to be in control of his own body, his own life. Tosh's and Kiyo's attempts to become successful boxers (relying on their bodies without the accompaniment of their minds) indicate their reliance on their bodies to free them from their situation. At one point, Kiyo even says that he has no other option -- schooling won't get him a good enough job, and neither will anything else he could do. Most of the other eldest sons in the camp have given up on their minds (never enjoyed school, gave into their parents' pressure to be filial without questioning the system, etc.) and labored in the fields solely with their bodies. When Kiyo joins the military, he makes a trade: he signs his body over to the military in order to release it from the bonds of his filial duty. It is only by bartering with his physical self that he is able to simultaneously escape and fulfill his filial duties. But the specific means by which he gets the money -- learning to "padroll" (a method of cheating by knowing the odds and learning to throw the dice a certain way) -- revolves around physical prowess combined with mental proficiency. He has to be able to train himself to throw in a particular manner, relying on his movements and his brain to win the money his family needs. Murayama represents the body and the mind as being two great but different powers: the body is the physical embodiment of self that cannot be separated from the intellect (which Tosh and Kiyo have in abundance, but are never able to capitalize on). It is only by using BOTH the body and the mind that Kiyo is able to move forward with his life.

Edinburgh (Alexander Chee)

2010-02-10T07:54:00.001-05:00

I don't quite know where to begin with this novel. It was certainly not a happy novel, but it was still good. I think the fire motif was one of the most interesting elements of the novel. Fire is everywhere -- in cultural folklore (the fox-daemons), in physical contact, in sexual attraction, in Peter's suicide, in Big Eric's death, and more. I'm not sure exactly what to make of all this fire imagery. The relationship between fire/heat and love/lust is a fairly common one, but Chee seems to be doing something more complicated than that here. Also, the explicit relationship between fire and the fox-daemons (introduced in the Prologue, of all places) shifts this motif away from that overused one. In any case, fire definitely seems to be a kind of release, a burning-away of extra or unwanted things...but that's pretty weaksauce as far as interpretation goes. "Hm, let me think, the fire seems to burn stuff." Yeah. We got that.

Moving on, I also think Chee is doing something unusual with narration here. For the most part, the novel moves forward chronologically and is narrated by Fee. However, it's broken down into four sections and the third one is narrated by Warden. Oddly, this section also has significant chronological overlap with the fourth/final section, in which the narration returns to Fee. If one were to remove the third section, the novel would continue relatively unimpeded (albeit lacking a complexity that that section introduces, and also lacking some information that would fill in the gaps -- which is what the fourth section is relegated to doing at this point). Given the otherwise-consistent nature of the narrative, I'm not entirely sure I understand the full purpose(s) of this deviant third section. For the most part, I think it's productive, and it does allow for a refreshing outsider's view of Fee.

Fee's sexuality kind of gets overshadowed by Big Eric's molestation of him and the other choir boys...something I'm not entirely sure I like. While Chee goes out of his way to make a point that what Fee feels and is is different from what Big Eric feels and is -- in other words, that being gay is an entirely different thing than being a pedophile -- I think that the lack of attention given to Fee's sexuality could potentially be misleading. I mean, it's true that Fee's feelings for other boys (specifically Peter) is introduced before he is molested, but it's also true that his fixation on Peter and his later obsession with / attraction to men and boys who look similar comes dangerously close to making Fee's "type" look very similar to a pedophile's "type" or "preference." Also, the fact that Fee ultimately gives in to Warden makes him all too similar to Big Eric in a way that I don't think Chee was going for. For the most part, Edinburgh is a gay-positive novel (I mean, even Peter says he wishes he could have returned Fee's love...which one could read as him wishing he could have been gay). BUT. Yeah, but...I think the way the cycle of abuse starts to repeat itself is not entirely innocent of implicating Fee as a potential pedophile. After all, he fell in love with a boy who died at a certain age and after that he constantly seeks out other boys/men who resembled that first love. This fixation on a certain age group and look reminds me all too much of one Humbert Humbert -- a connection that doesn't do any good for the gay-positive reading of Chee's text.

In any case, I also want to make sure I address the issue of names here. Fee, well, I'm not entirely sure about the connections except that I think it relates to the idea of a price that has to be paid. A fee, a toll of sorts. I haven't worked the rest out, but in the vague confines of my mind it makes sense. Big Eric, well, I think the important part of his nickname is the "Big" part -- he plays a big role in the boys' lives, he fails to realize he's "big" (i.e. grown), he is the "big" event -- the defining moment -- of their childhoods (not in a good way, of course), etc. Bridey, well, I'm not sure how someone named Albright comes to be called Bridey...and then play the role of the "housewife" (which Fee and Bridey both allude to several times in the final section) who Fee repeatedly picks up and carries places (like a groom carries his bride) and gets down on one knee to propose to. And of course, let's not forget about Warden...the disturbing/disturbed boy who smiles after murdering his own father and setting fire to his house -- a smile Fee soon realizes was a victor's smile borne of the misconception that he finally had control over Fee (in much the same way a jailer, or warden, has control over his inmates). Not to mention, Warden is the guard who ultimately tests Fee's innocence (a test he sort of fails and sort of passes) and determines his fate in many ways.

Chee's novel, while not a happy one (as I said before -- and I really liked Fee and Bridey together and wanted them to remain blissful...a wish I knew was futile from the start), is definitely a powerful read. I think Chee gets some unusual political points across and explores a sensitive topic in a way that doesn't glorify the sexual aspects of molestation while simultaneously not downplaying the trauma that results from molestation.

The City in Which I Love You (Li-Young Lee)

2010-02-09T13:19:00.001-05:00

This collection has an interesting structure. The book is divided into five parts, and it's a palindrome (Parts I and V have 1 poem, Parts II and IV have 6 poems, and Part III has 2 poems). Parts I and V seem to be "bookends" in that they both appear to be narrated from "the present" and kind of ease the reader into and out of the collection. Part III is a kind of turning point, shifting away from the boyhood of Part II by focusing on loss and being lost, separation from family, the confusion of a new place. This section sets up Part IV nicely because the move from those issues to adult relationships in Part IV is made smoother by the title poem.

Structure aside, form is heavily influenced by the Bible (as is content, to a certain extent). This is somewhat obvious if you just skim the contents, as many of the titles are fairly explicit references...but it's also done in a subtle way. Now, I'll be the first to admit that I'm not on familiar terms with the Bible. What little I've read comes from undergrad courses, but I think its influence in Lee's poems is strong enough that you can catch on without being intimately acquainted with the Bible. For example, the title poem begins with Song of Songs 3:2 (other parts of Song of Songs are referenced in "Furious Versions"...something I just discovered when I looked up Song of Songs 3:2 to make sure it was a real part of the Bible) and from there, Lee's poem is a continuation of this premise. In other words, the Biblical passage is not simply an epigraph, it's the beginning of the poem. Many of the poems feel like they have a cadence that matches/imitates the rhythm of Biblical verses. Of course, I feel unable to take this line of reasoning any further since I really can't base it on concrete knowledge of the Bible.

Moving on, one of the most prominent motifs in the collection is the father-son relationship. Even in Part IV, when the narrator is typically an adult male, this relationship continues to be present (whether it's central or on the peripheries). More specific than simply a parent-child relationship, Lee explores the father-son relationship from every angle. His poems get at the strength of this bond, as well as the important role it plays throughout a boy's/man's life. While Marilyn Chin's poetry focuses on the mother at the grave expense of the father, Lee's poetry manages to focus on the father without compromising the mother/wife. She's not portrayed negatively, she's just not in the spotlight. He's much more generous with his women than Chin is with her men, but he's significantly less interested in them as well.

Rhapsody in Plain Yellow (Marilyn Chin)

2010-02-08T23:09:00.001-05:00

This collection was hauntingly beautiful. That sounds pretty cheesy, but it really was. The "beautiful" part comes with her language and the form of her poetry (which I found varied and unusual). The "haunting" part really applies to the tone and content of the poems. When I finished the collection, I felt lonely and small. Chin's poems circle around some very serious issues -- spousal abuse, rape, and discrimination -- in a manner that doesn't spare the reader.

Her formal techniques are (as I mentioned earlier) "interesting." That is to say, she's doing some different things with form. She incorporates a lot of Western musical genres and elements -- sonatas, rhapsodies, themes and variations, chords, Blues, arias, etc. -- into her titles which bleed into the form of the poems. At the same time, she fragments them. Her poems are visually scattered across the page, with lots of white space and many asymmetrical gaps and breaks. Also, to complicate matters, she includes a lot of Eastern elements -- Samsara, Chinese quatrains, the lunar calendar, Chinese characters, historical figures, etc. -- in the content of her poems, alluding to a more diverse cultural heritage. Because both cultures inform her poems (and to such a great extent), Chin sets up a tension between East and West...which plays nicely into the theme of assimilation and difference that runs throughout the collection.

Another moment where Chin creates tension is in her portrayal of men and women. The men in this collection are nothing short of dastardly, entering the stage as rapists, abusers, controllers, drunks, and bullies. They have little to no regard for the women in their lives, and often mistreat them. Some of the worst men in the collection are actually white men. At the same time, Chin really raises women up onto a pedestal -- the women here are often dying or dead, but they are also strong. Many of the women are mothers and wives, and they are looked up to and respected in the poems.

Chin's poems are complex, and they're not easy to access. While I feel confident with some of the poems, there are other poems that I read and reread but still know I'm not quite "getting." The notes at the end of the collection helped, but as usual with notes I found that things I wanted to be in there were not. In other words, I'm lacking some knowledge that would help me better understand the poems, and I think Chin does this intentionally. She gives you some handouts via the notes, but for the most part there's a lot of stuff the reader is just not going to know unless they share the wealth of cultural knowledge that she has. I think this is meant to alienate the reader, to an extent -- to put them in the position the characters in her poems are so often placed in: that of the outsider.

Woman Hollering Creek (Sandra Cisneros)

2010-02-08T21:35:00.001-05:00

Throughout the collection, Cisneros explores the various roles a woman fills during the course of her life: daughter, sister, lover, mother, wife, friend. The picture she offers is bleak, with the female protagonists trapped in unhappy relationships, pregnant with unwanted children, and saddled with familial obligations and burdens. Her women tend to find strength somewhere within themselves, but often in defiance of or opposition to the men in their lives. They tend to go against the grain of what their families and cultures tell them to do, and when they don't they have difficulty achieving happiness.

At the same time, the men are depicted in a really negative light. When they're not abusing their girlfriends/mistresses/wives, they're being unfaithful to them or leaving them. Oddly, there's a direct correlation between Cisneros' men and their adherence to traditional Mexican culture: the more traditional the man, the more unhappy the woman. The final story, "Bien Pretty," comes fairly close to subverting this...until the protagonist's lover reveals that he has four kids from two different women -- his wife and his other mistress -- while trying to convince the protagonist that he loves them all equally. Obviously, this undoes any productive work Cisernos might have done with his character.

I think this collection is meant to be empowering for women, and I think that on that level it succeeds. However, I still have concerns about the way Mexican men are represented. At the same time, Mexican culture is represented in a very positive light in other ways. The warmth of the kitchen, the strength of the bonds between women, the happy memories from childhood, etc. There's a tension between these two aspects of the culture -- the men it produces and the lives of its women -- that might be able to be explained by a passage in the final story when the protagonist is talking about the women in the telenovelas she watches: "I started dreaming of these Rosas and Briandas and Luceros. And in my dreams I'm slapping the heroine to her senses, because I want them to be women who make things happen, not women who things happen to. Not loves that are tormentosos. Not men powerful and passionate versus women either volatile and evil, or sweet and resigned. But women. Real women. The ones I've loved all my life. If you don't like it lárgate, honey. Those women. The ones I've known everywhere except on TV, in books and magazines. Las girlfriends. Las comadres. Our mamas and tías. Passionate and powerful, tender and volatile, brave. And, above all, fierce" (161).

Interpreter of Maladies (Jhumpa Lahiri)

2010-02-08T11:04:00.003-05:00

I read two short stories from this collection: "Interpreter of Maladies" and "The Third and Final Continent."

"Interpreter of Maladies" seems to be doing something interesting with its use of monkeys. There are monkeys all over the city, and as the story progresses they play an increasingly important role. At first, the Das family is entertained by them -- the kids get excited, and Mr. Das asks Mr. Kapasi to stop the car so he can photograph them. He explains that the children have only ever seen monkeys in the zoo. The monkeys, which are an ordinary part of life in Puri, are objects of fascination and entertainment for the American tourists. They reappear in the final scene as well. Mr. Kapasi warns the family that the monkeys are relatively safe as long as they don't tempt them with food. When Mina Das storms out of the car and goes to rejoin her family, she leaves a trail of food in her wake (a sign of her excess?), and the monkeys begin to trail her. However, rather than attacking her (because Mr. Kapasi follows her, preventing them from doing her any harm), they surround and attack Bobby. It's significant that they choose Bobby, who is not actually Raj Das' biological child, and that they beat him with the same stick that he provided them with. I'm not secure with my reading of this, but my thoughts are thus: Bobby, an American who represents the desecration of traditional family values (he's the product of a loveless affair, his parents have a loveless marriage, and he's the weakest child -- always having to be looked out for by his older brother) provides an Indian monkey with a stick. That monkey turns against him because of his mother's excesses, and becomes violent. The only person who can save him is Indian himself, and does so reluctantly (only acting after Mrs. Das begs him in a panic). Hm, I thought I had something more concrete to say, but I guess I'm still working it out in my mind.

As for "The Third and Final Continent" I think there's a really interesting thing happening with mothers. The narrator's mother, who we never meet, died before he ever left India. She was a widow, and slowly lost her mind. Her children had to take care of her, and when she finally died it was also a relief. When the narrator goes to America, he rents a room in Mrs. Croft's house and she becomes a kind of surrogate mother-figure for him. She treats him sort of like a child, and when he does something right she expresses her approval. While she has lost some of her coherence (repeating her awe at the fact that there's an American flag on the moon for several evenings in a row), she has not lost her mind. When the narrator finds out her true age (103), he begins to not only respect her, but also show concern for her. In fact, when Mala finally joins him, he continues feeling distanced and detached from her until he takes her to Mrs. Croft's house and she is subjected to the old woman's scrutiny. While Mrs. Croft is scrutinizing her, he begins to sympathize with Mala and finally starts to feel like they have a connection -- a connection based on being subjected to the Western world and its gaze. Once she has given her approval, saying that Mala is a "perfect lady," the narrator finally warms to his wife. In many ways, his reaction is like that of a child seeking his mother's approval. It's only once he gains that approval that he can invest himself in the very thing he sought approval for: his wife.

Legends From Camp (Lawson Fusao Inada)

2010-02-06T23:06:00.054-05:00

Technically, this book is a collection of poems. However, it's more than that. It's broken down into five different parts, each of which has its own cover photo and (prose) introduction. Each section revolves around a different theme, and within that section there are poems and short segments of prose. Inada has no rigorously-set style or form that he sticks to, but instead he varies from section to section. The third part (entitled "Jazz") has the most definitive style, as its name implies. He takes his inspiration from jazz music, which contributes to both the content and the form of the poems in this section. Of course, you can see the influence of jazz music in other poems as well, but none so strongly as those in this section.

Another interesting thing about this collection is Inada's focus on the intersections between different ethnicities. He grew up in Fresno, California, and he makes a point to bring up the fact that the biggest racial divide is the one between "affluent white" and "other" several times. At one point, he writes, "Fresno doesn't mean much. Unless you happen to be of Armenian, Chinese, Japanese, Pilipino ancestry. Unless you happen to be Hmong--and 30,000 Hmong moved there recently. Unless you happen to be German, Italian. Unless you happen to be Chicano, African American, an Okie--then Fresno rings bells in your family. Unless you happen to be one of many "people of the land" (33). This idea comes up again and again throughout the collection. Inada also spends a significant amount of time linking the Japanese who were interned during World War II and the Native Americans (it's the seizure of land and rights that makes this a strong connection, as well as the fact that many of the Japanese internment camps were apparently on American Indian reservations).

This collection started out exploring Inada's past, and his life in the internment camps and Fresno. It moves mostly chronologically throughout his life, ending up with his life in Oregon (where he's been a professor since 1966) and his performance poetry. The sectional divisions allow him to change the style and theme of his poems significantly as he progresses through his life. In some ways, the poems from the end of the collection don't seem very related to the poems from the beginning of the collection...which makes sense, since they cover parts of his life from at least 20 years after the early parts of the novel. I like the way the collection evolves, and it's interesting to experience highlights of his life through a variety of styles and forms.

The Tin Drum (Günter Grass; Breon Mitchell translation)

2010-02-05T21:08:00.062-05:00

I read this novel shortly after reading Salman Rushdie's novel Midnight's Children, and it was hard not to keep comparing the two works when I first started Grass' novel. There are a lot of similarities -- too many to ignore -- but given Rushdie's statements about how much Grass' novel influenced him and given his ideas about the "empire" writing back, it started to make more sense as not only the similarities, but also the differences began piling up. It's really interesting to think of what Rushdie might be doing, especially when you consider how much the "collective shame" of Germany following WWII can be connected to post-Emergency India. It's also interesting to think of the ways key symbols act within each novel (the tin drum in Grass', the silver spittoon in Rushdie's; the refusal to grow in Grass', the rapid growth in Rushdie's; the loss of the ability to singshatter glass in Grass', the loss of the All-India Radio in Rushdie's; the importance of the apartment complex and its inhabitants in Grass', the importance of the housing compound and its inhabitants in Rushdie's -- there are so many more, but these are some of the most interesting to me).

Moving away from this book-to-book comparison, Grass' novel has a lot to offer on its own. There are some interesting things happening with form here -- most of the chapters are fairly straightforward, but there are three chapters where the form of the narration is changed. In one, Oskar writes the chapter in the form of a script; in another, he turns his pen over to Bruno (his watcher) who writes most of the chapter; and in yet another, he includes Vittlar's court testimony as the way he relates the story of his arrest, rather than narrating it himself. The chapters are randomly placed, and none of them occur in the first book...but they're still interesting and I'm trying to figure out what I make of them. Partly, I think it's significant that they happen later on because I feel that Oskar's narration becomes less reliable the further into his story he progresses, so that's one thing. Also, I think that as he physically grows later in the novel, he loses some of his more creative capacities (along with the ability to singshatter glass) and the fact that he begins to allow others to tell his story goes along with the loss of his more creative abilities. However, the fact that he keeps drumming is an indication that he hasn't lost all of those abilities, but toward the end of the novel his drumming is primarily used to help others (and himself, in the case of how he uses it to help him write his autobiography) return to and relive their childhoods.

I'm really intrigued by this idea of a narrator writing his story from the confines of a mental hospital, especially when you add the fact that he really doesn't want to leave it. From the very beginning, he marks himself as an abject figure: "Granted, I'm an inmate in a mental institution; my keeper watches me, scarcely lets me out of sight, for there's a peephole in the door, and my keeper's eye is the shade of brown that can't see through blue-eyed types like me" (3). In fact, mentally unstable characters fill the pages of the novel, and the days of Oskar's life. Crazy Leo/Weird Willem is marked by his very name, and his inseparability from the cemetery also places him in that liminal space between life and death. Oskar's friends -- Klepp who tests his health by never leaving his bed, Vittlar who turns Oskar in so he can see his own name in the papers, Fajngold who speaks directly to his murdered family, and even Oskar's presumptive son Kurt who clearly has some severe issues with rage -- are a motley crew who are mostly mad, but also fairly harmless. What does it mean that Grass' characters are so rarely sane? I want to draw a connection between these madnesses -- which also multiply in the post-war part of the novel -- and the atrocities of the Second World War. Is Grass trying to make a statement about the effects of unleashing such madness during the war by presenting us with characters who are overcome by their craziness in the aftermath of that war? Is he illustrating a point about what happens when you try to move on from an era of such widespread destruction and devastation? Or is he trying to show us that there's a cruel madness in every person, and the war was only one manifestation of that madness that is always just beneath the surface? While I like this last hypothesis, especially since Oskar is so utterly devoid of conscience both before and after the war, I can't help but think that The Onion Cellar contradicts it and points us in the direction of the nation's recovery from the events their country set in motion.

Whatever his ultimate point about the war, Grass' novel certainly seems to have something to say about men and women. The representation of women is unflattering at best -- they're often the passive objects of male desire, and also tend to be sexually promiscuous and indecisive. That's not to say that the portrayal of men is flattering -- it's not. Most of the men are rather inept, and unable to satisfy the women in their lives. They either run away, die, or fail to "man up" in the ways the women in their lives would appreciate. I think this, too, comes back to the war, but I'm at a loss to say exactly how I think it relates.

The Tin Drum was a really intense (and dense) read, but I'm glad I read it. I can see how it fits into the canon of magical realist fiction, but it's also different than a lot of more contemporary magical realist novels I've read. The novel is quite bleak, offering characters few or no chances for happiness. Most of the time, characters' chances have passed, and they are left to live out the rest of their lives in misery (or take their own lives, like Greff the greengrocer). All love affairs end in death, unwanted pregnancy, or unhappy marriages. Many sexual relationships only exist as a symptom of another, deeper problem. Characters who seem like decent people have a hard time surviving, and characters who are rotten to the core come closest to prospering. Oskar himself is thoroughly unlikable, and reading his life as narrated by him is not entirely a pleasant affair. Compelling, yes. Intriguing, yes. Disgusting at times, atrocious at others. But ultimately enlightening and bewildering. After the adventure of reading this book, I still think it's worth reading at least once. I think I'll end up reading it again, in all reality.

Shell Shaker (LeAnne Howe)

2010-01-22T17:15:00.004-05:00

This is the second novel by LeAnne Howe that I've read, and there's a strong chance that at least one of the two books (the other one was Miko Kings: An Indian Baseball Story) is going to have to go in my dissertation. Shell Shaker was incredible. I love the way Howe weaves together different eras and different lives to form a novel that's not quite historical fiction, not really magical realism, and not actually a family drama...but has elements you could find in all three of these genres. Really, this novel is in a genre all its own. The slipperiness of time in this story makes it all the more interesting to read, and the relationship of the ancestors' lives to the present-day characters' lives is ... I can't think of an adequate word. Something like fascinating, captivating, and engrossing all rolled into one.

Howe has created a diverse cast of characters here. Perhaps one of my favorite is the man who goes by the alias "James Joyce" -- an agent who works for the IRA, speaks in stream of consciousness, and is just about as incoherent as Finnegan's Wake unless one happens to be well versed in Irish history, legalese, and Choctaw history. Another of my favorites is Hoppy/Hopaii Iskitini (Little Prophet) -- Tema's son who recently dyed his hair emerald green and appears to be the next great leader of the Choctaw Nation. I also loved Dolores and Isaac -- the couple who have endured a half-century-long courtship only to discover that they are crazy about each other. But it's not just the quirks of the characters that make them so interesting -- it's the way Howe has breathed life into them. By intertwining their lives with their ancestor's lives (and consequently their thoughts and emotions as well), she brings a different kind of depth to them that is hard to attain if one is writing about characters who only have one lifetime worth of history.

I also think the novel is very ambitious with its message. There are so many things Howe seems to want to communicate, and so many issues she's got her characters addressing...yet it's not a preachy novel. It never really gets to that point that sometimes occurs when authors use their characters as personal mouthpieces through which to spout political convictions. These characters seem so alive that their thoughts and words seem to belong to them. In fact, Redford McAlester/Red Shoes turns out to be a really complex character, and his ideology is complicated (to say the least). His perspective -- one founded on greed, revenge, and resentment...oh, and love, pride, and survival -- is prickly. I mean, for a large part of the novel you just don't want to be sympathetic to him. But...then he gets a chance to speak and you realize it's not so easy to villanize him because while many of his motives were less-than-honorable, some of them were also admirable. What do you do with that? Can't place him easily into any category...no more black-and-white.

La Maravilla (Alfredo Véa, Jr.)

2010-01-20T22:05:00.002-05:00

At first, I had a hard time getting into this novel. Perhaps this is because I was trying to read it in 5-minute increments.... Anyway, once I dedicated a more significant amount of time to reading it, I really got into it. The world Véa created in this novel is so full of life -- and so much of it revolves around the lives of people who don't have a lot of money but who live their lives to the fullest possibility. Interestingly, the people who feature in this novel are people who are forgotten and ignored by the rest of society. They are the poor, the transsexuals, the disowned, the alcoholics, the unemployed, the emotionally unstable, the sexually abused, and just about every other kind of marginalized there is. Véa makes some complicated statements about the value our society places on certain kinds of lifestyles and on certain types of lives. In this case, his characters illustrate the beautiful things these undervalued people have to offer their fellow community members, and the tragedy of not recording their daily lives and wanderings. There's a beautiful passage in here about the notes Boydeen (the reclusive court-reporter who lives in her basement room beneath the Rainbo Market and records everything within earshot on her machine) keeps: "If ever read, they would show that asphalt would eventually come to Buckeye Road, that the Blue Moon would burn down under suspicious circumstances. She would record Mr. Lee's eventual loss of the Rainbo to an eminent domain action. She would type that he cried quietly on the porch, and the record would reflect that he spat on Gold Mountain. [...] In the middle of the night, desperate mothers would come to the porch to pray and have it written. Young black nobodies from nowhere would walk together, hand in hand to the porch and say words to marry each other in writing, on this fringe of life. People with so little to have and so little time to have it would come to the porch and say their words to someone. [...] Nothing within earshot of the Rainbo Market would go unchronicled. Anyone who wished to say a thing and have it kept could come to the porch and speak into the depths." (184) I love this passage -- it's moving, and gets across the loss everyone suffers from not knowing about these people's lives.

On another note, I love the way the world of the living fuzzes out into the world of the dead and the world of the undead. Worlds bleed into each other here -- an Irishman's ghost walks his dog, silently apologizing to everyone he encounters, J.B.'s ghost follows Vernetta around with the noose still around his neck, and Apache (Josephina's dog) returns after a two- or three-year visit to the underworld. Cultures blend and melt together in Buckeye Road, and so do cultural beliefs and practices. African American residents of the town close their eyes and pick up their pace when they walk past the Mexican graveyard. Chinese convenience store owners honor debts to a Spanish curandera who's married to a Yaqui elder. A white "Arkie" pines for her son (borne to a half-African American, half-Filipino father). Even Beto's mother -- half Yaqui, half Spanish -- is in a relationship with a Filipino American. It's a slice of a beautiful culture that exists from the mingling of multiple cultures...a dream idea of what America could be like, except that Buckeye Road is no dream. The people are so poor that half of them live in abandoned cars or drain pipes; many of the inhabitants are alcoholics, and about an equal number are prostitutes, whores, or transvestites; when a killing happens (not infrequently), bodies are left in the street until the authorities come to pin the blame on someone. It's a place that will eventually be absorbed by Phoenix, but whose inhabitants have actively resisted that occurrence for a long time.

I'm eager to read more of Véa's writings, especially since this one is so perfect for my dissertation project. Perhaps his other novels will also be really ripe with possibility, and my options will multiply....

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (Haruki Murakami)

2010-01-14T16:46:00.002-05:00

First impressions: interesting, entertaining, puzzling. I'm really interested by how the form of this novel -- alternating chapters that initially appear to be in separate worlds but ultimately converge -- mirrors the content. Not only does the isolation of the End of the World suit its reason for being, but so does the cold technology-obsessed nature of the Hard-Boiled Wonderland suit its money-grubbing, self-serving characters. More than that, the End of the World turns out to be a much more imaginative (if somewhat grim) place full of interesting characters and possibility...beneath the surface, anyway. The Hard-Boiled Wonderland -- future-Tokyo -- is also full of interesting characters, but they're all characters with serious flaws and no real desire to be changed or saved in any way. Plot spoiler coming now: I think that's why the narrator chooses to allow himself to transfer his consciousness to the End of the World (a "place" that exists within his own mind only -- one that he has created for purposes of self-preservation in the Hard-Boiled Wonderland that is his "real" life) in the end -- because despite the fact that the Town's inhabitants have all allowed their shadows (and therefore their minds) to die and have no real emotions, they have the potential to be awakened to new things. The narrator makes friends there, and his love-interest (the Librarian) shows a genuine desire for his help -- she wants him to help her find her mind. He believes there is work for him to do, and that the people he has created in his subconscious need him. In the Hard-Boiled Wonderland, they don't need him. He's just another worker engaged in the trading of information that doesn't belong to him. His wife left him after just a few years of marriage, and his life is empty except for work, whiskey, and old books and movies. The End of the World offers him something the Hard-Boiled Wonderland cannot: meaning. Significance, importance, other people who depend on him (whether or not they are aware of this dependence). His actions mean something there; in the Hard-Boiled Wonderland, the do not. His neighbors don't even peek out of their doors when his apartment is being decimated by the two Semiotecs, and the Professor's granddaughter informs him that they didn't come out when she shot one of the Semiotecs' ears off either. His life or death are immaterial there. In the End of the World, he will never die and his life will have meaning.

I didn't expect the ending Murakami wrote. In fact, I was really surprised when the narrator backed out of his escape plan at the last minute, leaving his shadow to escape on his own. ... But. ... Upon reflection, it makes sense. I was just so firmly rooted in our world that I figured he'd want to stay in the Hard-Boiled Wonderland. Also, I was sentimentally attached to his shadow (more so than the narrator himself was, apparently) and wanted to see them reattached. At the same time, his relationship with the Librarian in the End of the World did seem more complex and interesting than his relationship with the Librarian in the Hard-Boiled Wonderland, and I didn't consider that too much either. I guess throughout the novel the space allocated to him in the Hard-Boiled Wonderland was being filled in (or erased, depending how you want to look at it) bit by bit. Once the Semiotecs trashed his apartment (destroying his favorite things before anything else), he was basically homeless. Then, his relationship with the Librarian looked like it could be fruitful, but there were indications that it would ultimately go the same direction as his marriage went. So...I guess that just left one option: the End of the World.

The Gatekeeper continues to creep me out a bit, and I'm not sure what Murakami was really trying to do with him. The Caretaker at the Power Station remains one of the most interesting characters to me, as does the Colonel. I'm still curious about the presence of all these Townspeople -- they all seem to come from different backgrounds like the narrator does, having been separated from their now-dead shadows for different amounts of time and at different parts in their lives. I'm left to guess at whether they were supposed to be brought there like him, and this place has more of a life of its own than I originally thought (i.e. it might not exist solely within his mind), or whether as a figment of his mind they were just all given different backgrounds and histories for whatever reason. That one is going to have to remain a mystery, though. This book is awesome! I can't wait to read more of Murakami's stuff, although ironically, I'm going to have to. :)

Tracks (Louise Erdrich)

2010-01-10T08:54:00.003-05:00

Now I can see why so many people recommended this book to me. It's a very interesting read, especially for someone who's interested in the things I'm interested in. For one thing, the politics of this novel are really complex. The chapters alternate between two narrators, and they're both characters in the novel. However, they're characters who represent very opposite values. Erdrich's decision to start and end with Nanapush (an older traditional Chippewa man) and to leave Pauline (a younger mixed-blood Christian fanatic) mixed up in the middle of things puts the reader's sympathies with Nanapush right off the bad. Add to that Pauline's mental instability and sneaky nature, and you have a character nobody really wants to sympathize with. The political implications of this authorial decision are many, but perhaps most significant is the fact that Nanapush (a likable character) has the first and last word against Pauline (an unlikable character) is highly likely to make the reader sympathetic to his point of view on all things -- views on other characters, political ideology, cultural beliefs, etc. The fact that Pauline is so irritating just adds the likelihood that readers will not only be unsympathetic to her, but will actively hope for the demise of her and everything she stands for.

I also think Nanapush is an exceedingly interesting character. From the beginning he is characterized as a trickster figure, and his actions throughout the novel are consistent with this. Most of the time he fights his battles with his tongue, preferring to humiliate his adversaries rather than physically harm them. Second, he's very clever and he uses his cleverness to his advantage. Third, he likes to do things on a whim (such as naming Fleur's daughter Lulu Nanapush) and these offhanded decisions tend to end up working in his favor. Interestingly, he also harbors a deep distrust for all things white. He won't allow his name to be documented, he doesn't particularly care for the church, he is saddened by the land being lost to whites (and Native Americans who have become too interested in white ways) -- the list goes on. Since trickster figures were around long before white colonizers, it's interesting to think of this extra aspect of Nanapush's personality. I wonder what the implications are if I consider this anti-white aspect of his character to be part of his role as a trickster as opposed to part of his unique personality....

But wait, there's more! Since I'm really interested in the issue of magical realism and contemporary novels, Erdrich's novel offers an opportunity to think about some of the problems with the label "magical realism." Since this is a novel by a Native American author that incorporates cultural beliefs and practices, it's a classic example of the issue of exactly what constitutes the "magical" in magical realism. Is it an entirely Western concept that the scene where the ghosts of the dead play cards with a living character, gambling for her life, does not qualify as "realism"? Is the presence of Misshepeshu (the lake man) to be considered a supernatural event, or cultural folklore incorporated into the fiction? Is the tornado in Argus to be considered an exceptionally well-timed natural disaster, or Fleur's vengeful powers reaching out to cut down those who harmed her? In other words, there are a lot of events and characters in the novel that, by Western standards, would be considered supernatural; are we to consider them as such, or is that another classic example of the West imposing its belief structure on a culture that doesn't subscribe to it?

On a much more personal note, I really enjoyed this story. It was interesting and I enjoyed reading it because it made me think more deeply about some of the issues I've been grappling with in my own studies. I am looking forward to reading Love Medicine and The Plague of Doves now...or rather, this summer when I (theoretically) have the time. Also, this novel made me realize how much the CIC-AISC seminar I participated in this previous June helped deepen my knowledge of Native American history during the removal process. This is one of the few novels where I feel safe in saying that I understood the context for the taxes, housing loss, and redistribution of land that was happening throughout the story, and it added a depth to the novel that I might have missed out on if I wasn't familiar with the history.

The Dew Breaker (Edwidge Danticat)

2010-01-08T16:39:00.002-05:00

Oddly enough, this novel somehow ended up on my reading list as a magical realist novel. Now that I finished it, I'm not sure this is really where it belongs. The narrative style is, however, interesting. Each chapter is focalized around a different character; while the narrative is third person, it shifts its focus from one character to another character. At times, this is disorienting as the relationships between the characters are not always clear. The first chapter revolves around Ka, the daughter of the "dew breaker" (former Haitian torturer turned expatriate and father, now living in New York over 30 years after his crimes), and the dew breaker himself. After that, the central character of each chapter leaves the dew breaker's family for a while to be replaced with different victims and others who were affected by the dew breaker's crimes from when he lived in Haiti (including his wife). Eventually, it returns to his past, and then to his wife's present.

The journey through this novel was troubling. Danticat's exploration of the different ways a series of people were affected by one man's actions is a reminder of how all of our actions influence other people's lives. While the dew breaker's actions are admittedly much different than the action of most ordinary people, the complex web of relationships stemming from the violence of a time of violent politics in Haiti's history made me think about the way that our pasts are never really over as long as we (or those we affected) remember them.

The characters were interesting, although due to the shifting nature of the narrative, few of them were very thoroughly developed. This is not meant to be a criticism of the novel; my preference for reading novels is related to my fondness for getting to know the characters over a few hundred pages, and since this novel's mission lies elsewhere, this desire was not satisfied. However, the dew breaker's family is more developed than most of the characters, and I found the character of his wife (Anne) to be the most interesting of all. His daughter, Ka, was somewhat flat and mildly irritating -- she was whiny and unforgiving -- but his wife was far more complex. She had her own chapter about midway through the novel ("The Book of Miracles") and then returned again at the end to complicate everything. The novel opens with the dew breaker's confession of his past to his adult daughter, and in this chapter we only hear Anne through a brief phone conversation and Ka's incredulous wonderings. We don't even get her name at this point. By the end of "The Book of Miracles" we know more about her family, her love of miracles, and her desires for her family. When the end of the novel finally comes around, we see another side of her as her family history and her marriage are finally revealed to be in tension with each other and all of a sudden a conflict that was introduced as a father-daughter issue has been exploded to encompass father, daughter, and mother and has been revealed to encompass the deep-seeded husband-wife relationship as well.

Danticat's novel resembles the "iceberg" concept of literature: for everything that is revealed, so much more lies beneath the surface. It's different though, because most of the time when people talk about icebergs and novels, they're referring to the author's tendency to leave it to the reader to infer the more complex aspects of their novels. In Danitcat's case, I feel like so much of it was open and obvious to the reader, but the book's ending opened up a million more questions and made me want to reevaluate the rest of the events in the novel.

Haroun and the Sea of Stories (Salman Rushdie)

2010-01-07T22:17:00.047-05:00

I've read this book a number of times now, but every time it has me from the first sentence: "There was once, in the country of Alifbay, a sad city, the saddest of cities, a city so ruinously sad that it had forgotten its name." After that, it's all over for me. I can't put it down until I finish every last word of it. It's a beautiful story, woven together from Rushdie's finest skills of wordplay and imagination. Someday, when I finally get to teach a magical realism course, I'll either start or end the quarter with this novel. Not only is it absolutely magical, but it's also rife with the political mission so much of the genre concerns itself with. While Haroun and the Sea of Stories is certainly closer to fantasy than much of the magical realism I read, it's such a powerful story that its flights of fancy make it even more meaningful.

As I learn more about the context surrounding the writing of this book, I continue to discover new meanings to add to the other meanings I've already caught onto in previous readings. For example, I always wondered about the possible connections between the Valley of K and the nations in our world, but I was never able to make the connection between the Valley of K and Kashmir (despite the now-rather-obvious-seeming discussion of its nicknames -- Kosh-Mar and Kache-Mer -- on page 40). However, now that that connection has been made for me, I'm able to see all sorts of other significances popping up off of the page.

The really fun thing about this book is that there are these real-life political meanings that connect concretely to histories and politics in our own world (like the K/Kashmir thing), but there are also so many other connections that revolve around ideas and questions that, while perhaps no overtly political, bear significant political implications. The recurrence of the question, "What's the point of stories that aren't even true?" speaks to a functionalist tendency in our world today that threatens all manner of important things: creativity, imagination, critical thinking/questioning, etc. One example I can think of that is particularly relevant in contemporary America is the devaluation of the Humanities in colleges and universities around the country. While the scientific and technological fields most certainly have very obvious functions within our society (especially when it comes to making money and therefore gaining influence), the less obvious nature of the values the Humanities have to offer have resulted in the growing dismissal of these fields in the American academy. Rushdie's novel offers a well-imagined and dark look at what can happen to a world and its inhabitants when the balance between imagination and functionality is lost.

For anyone looking for a quick but interesting, thought-provoking, and fun read I hope you will consider reading this novel. It's a great introduction to Salman Rushdie as well, and will stimulate parts of your brain that you might not have used since childhood. Filled with Seussical passages ("The ship's entire power supply was cut off at once: stirrers stopped stirring and whirrers stopped whirring; blenders stopped blending and menders stopped mending; squeezers stopped squeezing and freezers stopped freezing; poison-storers stopped storing and poison-pourers stopped their pouring" [164]) and fascinating characters (Water Genies, Plenimaw Fishes, the Walrus), Rushdie's writing will make you ponder without realizing you're doing it. Let me know what you think when/if you read this!

Midnight's Children (Salman Rushdie)

2010-01-05T18:03:00.070-05:00

If I had to describe this veritable tome of a book in one word, I'd have to say that that word is INTENSE. I've read Rushdie in the past -- Haroun and the Sea of Stories and The Satanic Verses -- and while these texts were whimsical and dense (respectively), they were nothing compared to Midnight's Children. In many ways, I feel like I missed a lot of the underlying meaning due to my shallow understanding of India's history. The knowledge I do have about India from 1947 on is enough to have given me a basic understanding of the key historical figures and events in the novel and prevent overwhelming confusion, but I'm still left with one thought on my mind: wow. Rushdie's ability to weave words together and create a magical world within our own still amazes me. Okay, so here are my thoughts on the novel.

The narrator and protagonist, Saleen Sinai, was not the most ideal narrator for a reader like me because of his tendency to provide vague details about the future only to snap back to the present and continue on chronologically with the story. In some ways, it felt like the foreshadowing technique Rushdie was using was unnecessary in that you had to read it, but it didn't advance the story. However, I have read enough Rushdie to trust that there is a reason for this -- a purpose that this storytelling style is working toward -- and now I just need to think about it and try to make some sense of this technique. So far, I haven't gotten that far. On another hand, Saleem's relationship to India presents an interesting basis for the novel. The fate of the Midnight's Children makes a strong statement that I can't quite unravel yet, but I have a lot of theories. I must admit that I really wish Rushdie had spent less time on Saleem's parents' generation and more time on the Midnight's Children themselves. Of course, that's just my obsession with "magical realism" talking -- I always prefer the more interesting to the flatly realistic (although I don't think you could actually call the other parts of the novel "flatly realistic" either) -- but even without the more unusual elements, the novel was an interesting interpretation of historical events through a somewhat magical story. This is where my lack of familiarity with Indian history became a true handicap: I knew Rushdie was making some pretty interesting political commentaries (especially with the India-Pakistan partition politics where Saleem was fighting for Pakistan...and also the part where Saleem lost "radio" contact with the rest of the Midnight's Children when he left India during his parents' separation), and I could only really get the basic gist of them but not the more complex implications of these messages.

I can see how people would argue that this novel is a counterpart to The Satanic Verses in that it's very much about India and what it means to be Indian in a newly-decolonized India, whereas The Satanic Verses is very much about what it means to be Indian in England (and hybridity and all that). I'm looking forward to rereading The Satanic Verses soon.

Fool's Crow (James Welch)

2009-12-14T10:02:00.002-05:00

As I read this novel, I was continually distracted by the fact that the characters were Pikuni (Blackfeet), and they were inevitably going to be decimated by novel's end. Since the text is set in 1870, I knew that westward expansion and broken treaties where going to leave a mass of destruction in their wake. I feared Welch was going to go in a morbid happily-ever-after direction and make his characters all die so they could reunite in the Sand Hills (afterlife location), but instead he surprised me. Thirty pages to the end of the novel, he had Fools Crow come to the realization that his people were doomed, and that there was no way to defeat the Napikwans (whites). However, Fools Crow determined that it was not time to give up; instead, he insisted on the importance of making sure that the culture didn't die with his generation. This idea of passing on the cultural heritage becomes the central focus of the novel's message -- even though the Pikuni are going to be killed by the Napikwans, they must never forget that they are the chosen people and their children will need their culture as much as they do. I'm not sure how I feel about this message. On the one hand, it's certainly better than the ending I feared (one where death offers the only possibility for happiness if one happens to be Pikuni); on the other hand, it's lacking in many ways. It might be misconstrued as suggesting compliance and the-path-of-least-resistance in some ways, because Fools Crow seems to have no urge to fight. In fact, when he visits the camp of the Pikuni band that was ambushed, he sits down and weeps. I'm not saying he should hop on his horse and go shooting up the Napikwans in a suicide mission, but the weeping and the speaking of hollow words (he tells some survivors who have lost their children that it's important for them to pass the culture on to their children) isn't exactly a positive message. It's a bit defeatist, actually. The very last chapter has more to offer. This chapter, in which Fools Crow and Red Paint are joyously participating in the naming ceremony for their newborn son, offers a glimpse of life continuing on in a beautiful manner. While it's slightly marred by "a peculiar kind of happiness--a happiness that sleeps with sadness" (390), the chapter is lovely. At the same time, the last paragraph is about the blackhorns (buffalo) and how their presence and return indicates that all is as it should be. Since it's painfully obvious that this return is going to be shortlived, since buffalo are all but exterminated now, I'm not sure how to take this ending. On one hand it offers hope through the continuing of a lifestyle and a culture. At the same time, this hope has a time limit -- an expiration date. What does this say about Blackfeet in today's world? Are they practically extinct like the buffalo? That's hardly a productive reading. Are they continuing to live on, resisting elimination and thriving within their culture? I'd like to believe that's what Welch is saying, but I don't particularly think there's room for that reading. So what's Welch's point? That's the question I'm struggling with. He did such a beautiful job of creating complex and interesting characters, and of illustrating through them the various reactions to and ways of dealing with the Napikwans. Unfortunately, until I figure out what I think this ending is trying to say, I'm not sure what to do with all the other stuff. I think it's too complex to be justified in saying it's meant to provide an ethnographic portrait of Blackfeet life and culture in 1870, but I'm having trouble translating its message to contemporary American life. I'll have to continue thinking about this one....

Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa (Rigoberto González)

2009-12-07T09:28:00.003-05:00

This memoir reads like a novel. I think part of that is the disjointed nature of time González writes through -- some parts are strictly chronological, but they are interspersed with chapters that move back and forth in the author's past or that bring the reader back to the narrative present (1990). It's a dark book, full of family conflicts and an abusive relationship, but it's not an oppressive read. In fact, it's a compelling read that explores the effects of being homosexual in a family that doesn't accept that aspect of a person, and in a social and cultural environment where homosexuality is shameful. In many ways, it's a beautiful book that brings to light the internal struggles of a young boy as he grows into adulthood and embraces his sexuality. However, the family layer is also very important in this memoir. González spends a lot of time writing about his parents and his paternal grandfather, and the issues that he has with them are closely tied to his feelings about being gay. When he deals with his mother, he most often ends up wondering how she would react if she had lived long enough for him to admit to himself that he is gay. As for his grandfather, most of the issues there simply stem from his grandfather's abusive relationship with his father, and the tyrannical way he runs his household. Most of the time, he's focused on his relationship with his father. There are so many things going on in that relationship -- alcoholism, abandonment, personality conflicts, and more -- that it is obvious how much this relationship troubles González, and how much it continues to play out in his own relationships with his lover (and other men). This book takes on similar issues as those in Victor Villaseñor's novel Macho! but instead of focusing on the social and political aspects of life as a Mexican American, González focuses on how his sexuality interacts with those social and political aspects of life, and how this plays out within the family. The abusive relationship he leaves at the beginning of the memoir returns throughout the text, and while it doesn't take up a significant amount of space in the narrative, it is clearly one of the most significant aspects of the text. Because of the way this storyline is interwoven throughout the memoir, the connections between this relationship and the family story become apparent when I don't think they would have otherwise.

Macho! (Victor Villaseñor)

2009-12-05T07:44:00.004-05:00

This book had a lot of things going on. It took up politics on so many levels (Chávez and his unions, immigration, loyalty, family, etc.), and there were times when this did stretch the story a little thin for me. However, I think that for the most part, it makes a really strong point about these things by using its characters to illustrate various points. The main character, Roberto, is (for the most part) very likable. Because of this, when Roberto struggles to understand certain things (like why illegal Mexican farm workers might support Chávez and his cause intellectually, but are unable to support it in any other way) the reader comes to an understanding with him.

Villaseñor also uses an interesting formal technique: after each chapter, there is a page that has an italicized passage on it. These italicized passages relate to the story in different ways (at times, thematically; at other times, they connect directly with the plot), but they appear to be entirely nonfictional. They are certainly not related to the main characters, and are often quoting news sources, interviews, and other such narratives. These are the most overtly political passages of the novel, and the way they interact with the bulk of the novel (the fictional chapters) is really interesting. I wonder how much of the politics would have gotten through without these italicized blurbs. Because the narrative scope pulls away from Ricardo in these passages, they push the reader to really see a larger picture instead of focusing on Ricardo's unique (and fictional) experience. In some ways, they pull the reader out of the "dream" and hit them over the head with the fact that the rest of the book is simply inspired by these realities, but not real.

Overall, I thought the book was very enjoyable. The back cover tells me that some critics have compared Villaseñor's style to Steinbeck's, and while I agree that it is deceptive in that it appears very simple when in fact the story itself is very complex, I also couldn't help but wonder if someone just said that because at one point the characters end up in the Salinas Valley. At the same time, I enjoy Steinbeck and I enjoyed Villaseñor, so perhaps there's more to that connection than I'm considering here.

Runner in the Sun (D'Arcy McNickle)

2009-12-04T10:10:00.006-05:00

I just finished D'Arcy McNickle's 1954 novel about a young boy named Salt who saves his people from ... well, from themselves, I suppose. It's a nice story, although it is written in an almost fable-like language which has the potential to oversimplify its message (in my opinion). It was a quick and enjoyable read, but one that I think is representative of an era of writing during which authors of color were serving as pseudo-ethnographers: their stories, which were finally beginning to be read by a larger (white) audience were being taken as anthropological histories rather than works of fiction. It's a style that brings me back to works I read in high school and before -- works that were taught in hopes of broadening our understanding of other cultures, but which were not the contemporary works that address political and social issues that I am more interested in today. In any case, I can't be too hard on McNickle because I did really enjoy the story. However, I must admit that part of its appeal was the fact that there was never really any narrative tension (and since I am a big wimp, this was helpful for me because I was never pushed to the point of being nervous or jumpy on behalf of the characters). So perhaps this is not ultimately a good thing as far as the writing is concerned, but it was nice since I was able to enjoy the process of reading more than I sometimes am when things get suspenseful and dangerous in a book.