a magnificent distraction

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!!

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.

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.

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....

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. :)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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).

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.

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).

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.

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.

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....

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!