exploring worlds via words

Holy Sh*t!

2007-04-14T18:56:00.000-04:00

I got in to Clarion West!

I'm going to be in Seattle this summer!

No Fuckin' WAY!!!

The murder of Anna Politkovskaya

2006-10-10T16:45:00.000-04:00

This is a forward from my undergraduate thesis advisor.

Write. Respond. Let them know the world is watching.

--

Dear colleagues, dear students, and dear friends,

I am writing to alert you to the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, in case you have not heard. She was gunned down in the elevator of her apartment house in Moscow on Saturday evening.

As those of you who have taken my classes and read her books know, Anna was a passionate and dedicated journalist who wrote about Chechnya like no one else did. The Chechen people have lost a great friend and the world has lost a writer who was absolutely devoted to the truth and to the survival of ordinary people in utterly frightening special war zones, abandoned by everyone else. She was the only one who spoke with clarity about them. Anna wrote alarming and distressing books, and in the last years of her life nothing alarmed her as much as the regime of Ramzan Kadyrov. She was writing about torture by Kadyrov death squads, in special prisons in Tsentoroi, Kadyrov’s hometown, when she was killed. Her last article published in Novaya Gazeta a few days ago deals with the insidious effect of “Chechenization” - the strategy that has turned into the wholesale abandonment of the entire republic to rapacious and deviant criminals. Anna wrote about the murderous war and the chokehold of the Kadyrov personality cult with great force and with devastatingly precise images. Few could convey the horrifying reality of the war and of how it has changed people like she could, or more effectively destroy lies and deceptions. Ania was by far the best-informed analyst on Chechnya. She was also the most passionate. She was a frequent visitor to the United States and spoke at many conferences and workshops. I met her some years ago at her offices in Moscow and was absolutely impressed by her fearlessness and her dedication to her work. Nobody who met her remained unchanged by what she had to say, even if they disagreed or if her fierceness in condemning violence and injustice made them uncomfortable. There is absolutely nobody who can replace her, and she will be sorely missed.

Please find below addresses to which you can send condolences and other letters. I am writing to you because you are one of the relatively small number of people in the USA who have become acquainted with her work in some form. Please also share your ideas and thoughts with me, as I will be helping organize responses and memorial meetings for her over the next days and weeks. I will be writing letters to President Putin, the Russian government, and the Russian prosecutors office, and if you are interested I will share the texts of the letters with you, to co-sign if you so wish, for inspiration to write your own, or to spread as widely as possible. Please feel free to forward this message. I apologize if you received it in error.

Website of Chechnya Advocacy Network (with links to news, information about memorial activities, and addresses):
http://chechnyaadvocacy.org/

Address for Letters to the Editor at Novaya Gazeta:
2006@novayagazeta.ru

Website for condolences at Novaya Gazeta, Anna's newspaper (Russian mostly, but go ahead and send texts in English):
http://politkovskaya.fastbb.ru/

--

Michaela Pohl, Associate Professor
Department of History
Vassar College
Poughkeepsie, NY 12604
USA
Web: http://history.vassar.edu/pohl.html

Universal Declaration of Human Rights; December 1948

2006-10-04T10:55:00.000-04:00

Because once upon a time, slaves were 3/5 of a person.

--

PREAMBLE
Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,

Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,

Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law,

Whereas it is essential to promote the development of friendly relations between nations,

Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,

Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in co-operation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms,

Whereas a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge,

Now, Therefore THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY proclaims THIS UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.

Article 1.
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Article 2.
Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.

Article 3.
Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

Article 4.
No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.

Article 5.
No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Article 6.
Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.

Article 7.
All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.

Article 8.
Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.

Article 9.
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.

Article 10.
Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.

Article 11.
(1) Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.

(2) No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed.

Article 12.
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Article 13.
(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.

(2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.

Article 14.
(1) Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.

(2) This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Article 15.
(1) Everyone has the right to a nationality.

(2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.

Article 16.
(1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.

(2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.

(3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

Article 17.
(1) Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.

(2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.

Article 18.
Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

Article 19.
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Article 20.
(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.

(2) No one may be compelled to belong to an association.

Article 21.
(1) Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.

(2) Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country.

(3) The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.

Article 22.
Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.

Article 23.
(1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.

(2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.

(3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.

(4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

Article 24.
Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

Article 25.
(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

(2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

Article 26.
(1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.

(2) Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.

(3) Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.

Article 27.
(1) Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.

(2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

Article 28.
Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.

Article 29.
(1) Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.

(2) In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.

(3) These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Article 30.
Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.
--

Meme this and pass it on.

A European style hiatus

2006-09-19T12:46:00.000-04:00

This blog has been a really fascinating experiment for me. I've learned alot about online communities and the incredible resources that the internet has made available to writers. It's nice to know you're not alone.

Unfortunately, I don't have the time (especially with grad school and trying to finish my novel) to devote to blogging as much as I should. They say you should blog at least once a day. I think I'm going to be lucky if I blog once a week.

So thanks to all my readers (who seem to like to flood my email box rather than leaving actual comments) for tagging along. If I begin to post again regularly, I'll let you know. I'll still be lurking around; just not posting as often.

Warriors of Heaven and Earth

2006-09-18T11:43:00.000-04:00

Set in 7th century China, this is a great Western / frontier movie of honor and revenge. A At the command of the Chinese Imperial Emperor a Japanese swordsman must hunt down a renegade Chinese army commander before he is allowed to return home to Japan. But in the middle of their cat-and-mouse game, the two agree to team up to protect a Silk Road caravan carrying one of the most precious and most powerful treasures of the world: relics of Buddha.

I was totally engrossed in the stunning desert vistas of Western China. Not to mention fantastic swordfights and action sequences, as well as a completely addictive soundtrack by Bollywood master A.R. Rahman (I had to go out and get the CD). For those stuck in a Western-Tolkien fantasy rut, this movie is the perfect cure. It's different from "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon" in that it's got the whole epic journey thing going on, but with a different kind of twist on honor, respect, and evil. I highly recommend this to all writers who are working on an epic fantasy, because this is a movie which utilizes Western movie fantasy conventions to tell a very Eastern tale, and can show you just how well nuances can be twisted to make something truly original.

They can't do this to Wonder Woman!

2006-09-14T13:56:00.000-04:00

Via Ragnell's blog:

Rachel Bilson the New Wonder Woman?

I have to copy Ragnell and point out the best comment from Dawn:

She’s proved her suitability?!?!?

Has she displayed strength? Athletic prowess? A memorable character? Perhaps a beauty that’s more handsome then pretty? Does she give off a warrior vibe?

No. She, “she donned a Wonder Woman outfit for a sexy seduction scene.”

Because the KEY part of Wonder Woman’s character, as we ALL know, is her power of sexy seduction.

Oh geez. Oh frig. I need a beer.

Please Mr. Joss. Say it ain't so!

Orchid Fever

2006-09-14T11:02:00.000-04:00

"There is something distinctive about the sight and sound of a human body falling from a rainforest canopy. The breathless scream, the wildly gyrating arms and legs pumping thin air, the rush of leaves, and the sickening thud, followed by uneasy silence. Listening to that silence, I reflected on how plant collecting can be an unpleasant sort of activity."

- From Eric Hansen, Orchid Fever: A Horticultural Tale of Love, Lust and Lunacy

--

The first few lines of a book are considered some of the most important lines a writer writes. Within those lines, the reader decides whether or not your book is worth the time. With these lines, I was immediately hooked. As a writer, I find comedy and humor to be the most difficult to do, which Eric Hansen manages to do flawlessly. I've been a huge fan of Eric Hansen ever since I picked up Motoring with Mohammed (no joke, that book actually made me laugh out loud on a packed crowded LIRR commuter train, causing my fellow commuters to give me dirty looks).

From Amazon.com

The orchid is used for everything from medicine for elephants to an aphrodisiac ice cream. A Malaysian species can grow to weigh half a ton while a South American species fires miniature pollen darts at nectar-sucking bees. But the orchid is also the center of an illicit international business: one grower in Santa Barbara tends his plants while toting an Uzi, and a former collector has been in hiding for seven years after serving a jail sentence for smuggling thirty dollars worth of orchids into Britain.

Pick it up if you have the chance, even if travelogues aren't really your thing. It's a great read.

How to Write a novel

2006-09-12T11:49:00.000-04:00

A little late (yea, I've been away from the blogosphere for a bit) but Justine had a great funny post here about How to Write a Novel.

"You may get stuck along the way, and have no idea what your characters should do next. Raymond Chandler says that’s when it’s time to send someone in brandishing a gun. Sending in a vampire also works. Or you can set something on fire, have a long lost relative or best friend show up, have your protag lose all their worldly goods, or discover that the lovers are actually siblings (ewww!)."

As for me, I've tried writing via outline, but I can't. I'm very much of an organic kind of a writer, and I've always been that way. Even as an undergraduate, writing papers, I would just sit down and write, and not have any idea what the heck my thesis was, and when I finally finished the paper, I would read over, and go, OH that's what I'm talking about. I'd add an intro, and a conclusion, tweak it a bit, and then it'd be done. (Now I'm not saying that that's necessarily the most efficient way of doing things, and trust me, it involved a lot of hair-pulling and tears in college as I struggled to find my way but it works for me).

As I write fiction, I find myself doing the same thing. I write scenes, interactions, and usually not in sequential order. I think I'm beginning to realize that when I get bogged down in the middle of a manuscript (as I am now), I just have to keep moving ahead, skip over that part and write the next thing, even if it is the end, and come back. Of course, this just makes it all the more difficult for my poor crit partners.

Land that I Love

2006-09-12T11:24:00.000-04:00

One of the very few good things about living on Long Island is that I have a fantastic Speculative Fiction writers' group. I am incredibly lucky to be a part of this group of very talented writers. One of them has self-published a satirical science fiction novel, Land that I Love. And what's cool about it is that it's FREE! So check it out!

Computer judges

2006-09-07T13:18:00.000-04:00

In an attempt to better establish a consistent rule of law, some places in China are now using computer software to issue verdicts.

Read the story here.

I don't know whether to be horrified, or happy that the Chinese are trying to make justice more standard.

on death.

2006-09-07T10:52:00.000-04:00

I was going to come back to blogging earlier this week. But someone I knew passed away. It was a distant relative, not someone I knew well, but all the same, it was sad. He lived a full life and he was much loved by his family and he's probably in a better place without pain.

I just hope I can live as full of a life as he did before my time comes. It makes me want to redouble my efforts to write faster, and get out there and experience life before the end comes all too fast.

One of the coolest sites ever

2006-08-15T14:35:00.000-04:00

Paperbackswap.com gets you free books!

From the website:

What is PaperBackSwap? We are a group of real people who have formed a Club to swap paperback books with each other. No gimmicks. No spam. No advertising. No kidding. We are not a large corporation trying to sell you something. We're just a group of real folks who wanted a way of trading paperbacks with each other through the U.S. mail. Please read the testimonials and you will understand that this book club is for real.

When another member requests one of your books, you mail it to them. Yes, you pay for the postage. But then another member returns the favor when you request a book from them and they mail it to you. And that way the books are always free because we are all trading books with club members!

Once you have registered, simply list your paperback books that you would like to share with other Club Members. Once you have listed at least 9 of your books, we will give you 3 book credits to get you started trading books with other club members. However, the more books you post, the more likely you are to receive requests. And that means more books for you. So post as many books as you can!

I've received a bunch of great books from them already including:

E.M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel
Betsy Lerner, The Forest for the Trees: An Editor's Advice to Writers
Dai Sijie, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress

hiatus

2006-08-15T11:00:00.000-04:00

I haven't been posting much lately because I've been trying to finish up a bunch of projects for the end of my summer classes. I'll probably continue to be on and off the blog for the next 2 weeks or so as try and finish up all these papers and projects.

Mangosteens!!!!!

2006-08-10T11:11:00.000-04:00

Mangosteens

Yay! Mangosteens might be available in the U.S. soon! I had my first bite of them traveling around in S.E. Asia. (you can see my post about it on my travel blog from back then here.

Yum! My day has just been made!

Going where few Romances have gone before

2006-08-09T10:56:00.000-04:00

I confess being troubled over the recent discussion of how foreign settings don't sell novels in the romance genre.

So I'm in the middle of taking a Cultural Geography class through the University of Texas online, and recently I had to do an assignment on "mental maps." Mental maps are essentially the way in which you perceive the world. For example, even though you may have never been to inner city Detroit, London, or Dubai, Qatar, you have already have certain impressions which may be negative or positive about whether these are desirable places to live/visit.

This knowledge is generally shaped by second-hand knowledge in determining the favorability or unfavorability of an area, such as letters and emails sent home, television and newspaper reports as well as pop culture. For example, many in the United States might jump at the offer of free house and land to move to sunny California because of positive perceptions in pop culture. Fewer might take the offer if it were offered, say in Belize or Guatemala because of either lack of knowledge or perceptions of these tropical areas as poor third world countries, even though the climate, environment, social class and economy may be similar to that of a California suburb.

Very have the time nor resources to actually journey to particular places in order to discover the differences between first hand experience and second-hand knowledge. Instead, we find out about the outside world through what people tell us, like PaperBackWriter's recent blog where she writes:

Bad thing about leaving the USA: having to pretend to be Canadian so no one will spit in your food, or your face, or . . .

Now I'm not trying to say that her experience is not valid; it totally is, but reinforces the idea of "dangerous scary foreign lands" for many Americans who may have never been abroad. Countries as disparate as France, Russia, Senegal, Brazil all with different attitudes toward Americans are lumped into the "foreign" and "exotic" outside.

As a result, alot of Americans go to the Caribbeann for vacation, but far fewer might go to Thailand or Sri Lanka, based on perceptions of desirability and safety. In this way, perception based on second-hand knowledge rather than truth based on first-hand knowledge can play a greater role in determining factors in human migration. NYTimes columnist Thomas L. Friedman a few years ago, did a traveling column around the world to examine the effects of globalization. He went from all over the place from Asia to the Middle East, Eastern Europe, to Latin America. The only place he experienced anti-Americanism? In Iran, but not from Iranians (who were uncommonly polite) but from random French tourists sitting in a restaurant.

We generalize from a few anecdotes because that's all we hear and know. Yet if I were to generalize that Americans hate French people based on the anecdotes of hate mail and vandalism some of my French friends have received living in America, we know that that wouldn't be fais.

You can read a quick summary of mental maps here.

What does this say about insular Americans who only read about stories in America? Well you can read my take on the bottom of this post here. But I don't think it bodes well for the future of America at all. Women who read romance novels are the ones raising the next generation of kids. If we reinforce their sense of America as a singular entity, unconnected with the rest of the world, we are ill-preparing our children to deal with a globalized world. The fact is, every decision an ordinary American makes, from buying a t-shirt made in China, to buying organic soy milk made from beans grown in Brazil, to has a huge effect on people thousands of miles away. The world is only going to become more connected.

I'm going to continue setting my stories in Asia, Africa, and other "foreign" places. However, I'm going to have to work with the double-duty of luring the reader in, perhaps via the worlds of paranormals. I think that readers who read paranormals set in other worlds, should be more open to foreign settings. But I suppose we shall see won't we?

Smart Bitches, Trashy Books has a post up today about romance novels featuring exotic settings here.

Teach me Tonight, a scholarly blog about romance has a post here about the branding romance novels and of the conservative conneissur-ism (not even sure if that's a word) of romance readers.

Stupid Craigslist things that make me procrastinate

2006-08-08T14:50:00.000-04:00

In case you missed it, Craigslist is totally a Generation Y /Hip hop Generation / whatever-we're-calling-ourselves-these-days. Not only is it a place to get stuff you want, unload stuff you don't want, but it's a place to find dates, chat, talk and rant. Few things make me laugh the way the Best of Craigslist section does.

Here's one recent post:

Things I Have Done That I Really Should Have Been Sacked For By Now

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 2006-07-12, 2:05PM EDT

Today marks my two year anniversary at my current job - the longest I have ever held continuous employment at one company. Earlier, I had one of those "Remember when you did that thing with that bloke..." conversations with a colleague and I came to one inescapable conclusion - My Bosses Are Fucking Idiots.

No way should I still be employed here after some of the shit I've pulled.

In two years, I have had 2 disciplinaries, one formal written warning, a 42% lateness rate, countless verbal warnings and 17 performance improvement plans (Where they 'monitor' your performance for a set period and point out everything that you did wrong), with my initial 3 months probation period (which was then extended to 6) - this means that at no point have I been employed here without having some suited twat looking over my shoulder with a clipboard 'observing me in my work environment'

And STILL they haven't twigged that the best thing for them would be my instant dismissal.

Which brings me to the point of post - Things I have done that my company should have sacked me for a long time ago:-

1. Sent an e-mail to myself from my bosses PC implying that she was sexually harassing me, and then used it as leverage against her to escape a disciplinary.

2. Twice felt the need to go spend a 20 minute 'toilet' break on a hot summer's day after a morning spent ogling the female population of my office dressed in their skimpy outfits

3. Edited a chain E-mail to imply that reader should end their own life and then forwarded it on to a mailing list that included somebody that recently had tried and (unfortunately) failed to commit suicide.

4. Almost got my friend sacked in a prank gone horribly wrong after I used http://www.sharpmail.co.uk/html to send an e-mail that appeared to be from him to one of the office juniors. It read something along the lines of:

"Nice strappy shoes Gemma, I really like the way they show off your painted nails..... It makes me want to run my hard penis in between your toes and cum on your shin."

(realistically, I should have anticipated the shit-storm, that followed).

5. Racked up about 6 hours internet time a day, despite the company policy that anything over 1 hour is considered excessive.

6. Shot the Financial Director in the face with an elastic band gun, after seeing my friend about to come through the door and failing to notice the suited gentlemen walking one pace ahead of him.

7. Hid for an hour in the post room whilst said director tore the place to pieces interrogating people in an effort to find "That Cunt who shot me"

8. Sat at my desk for an entire morning happily munching a box of hash brownies, whiting out a few hours later and then being sent home by boss-lady because she was worried that I looked 'really pale'

9. Used the opportunity of looking very ill in public to take a further two weeks off work.

10. Not realised that an incoming call was actually from somebody in the Houses Of Parliament (one of our A-list clients) and answered the phone "What's up MotherFucker?!"

11. Outright lied to the same MP when he asked to speak to the manger by telling him that he had called a residential number - A fact he accepted despite having spent 5 minutes on our hold system listening our company's god awful theme music.

12. Put on a dodgy accent and pretended to be called 'Raoul' when said MP called back and, against all laws of probability, ended up speaking to me again.

13. Told a colleague whilst very drunk at office party that "I wouldn't fuck you if you were on fire"

14. Spent the next few days trying to work out exactly what the above sentence means

15. Ignored 30 minutes worth of phone calls to write this horse-shit.

no -- it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

looking back at the Southampton Writers' conference

2006-08-03T12:55:00.000-04:00

I've been meaning to post my thoughts on the recent Southampton writes' conference, but haven't had much time due to conferences, so I'll just give you a short breakdown.

Speakers I enjoyed the most: Melissa Banks (Girls Guide to Hunting and Fishing) Matthew Klam (Sam the Cat and Other Stories), Megan Wolitzer (This is Your Life), David Rakoff (Fraud), Gary Trudeau (Doonesbury), and Roger Rosenblatt (Children of War).

Frank McCourt gave the intro to the conversation between Gary Trudeau and Roger Rosenblatt, which really made me laugh, and regret that I couldn't make it to his reading.

What I learned from this lecture/reading series? 'Funny' is a difficult thing to do. I have the utmost respect for people who can write well and write funny (even though that wasn't the topic of the conference).

Some of the other writers there are award-winning writers; and yet, despite considering myself a widely read person, I didn't recognize most of the writers there. Again, reinforcement of the lesson to all wannabe writers: there are easier paths to fame and fortune.

This was my first writers' conference. Will I go to this again? I'm not sure; I think it would have been more helpful had they had the workshops like they normally do (but there's a campus buy-out and moving story that I'm sure you can google around and find out about if you're really interested). It's normally a 12-day conference that they shortened to 5 days, and next year it's expected to go back to normal.

Speaking to other wannabe writers, what quality did they like most about the authors? Down-to-earthness (not even sure if that's a word).

Thing I wish I did most? I should have not been so shy and been more open and asked questions. I really wanted to introduce myself and ask Megan Wolitzer some questions, and I had my opportunity when people were standing around outside during one of the breaks chatting, but I lost it, when Matthew Klam started talking to her. I didn't want to be rude and interrupt, and I lost my chance when my cell phone rang. Stupid cell phone

I enjoyed myself though and if I have money next year, I'll probably go back for one of the workshops.

We don't want no foreign lands

2006-08-02T10:35:00.000-04:00

In a recent post from the literary agent better known as Miss Snark, there was a recent post about a workshop at the recent RWA convention where people brought their first 2 pages, read them aloud in front of 2 literary agents and an editor. The agents would tell them to stop as soon as they found a reason to reject them.

Surprisingly enough, two of the strangest reject reasons (which the agents readily admitted were subjective) were:

1) The story had a dog
2) The story was set outside in a foreign land.

You can read more about it here (And definitely don't miss the comments).

Now, what concerns me is number 2. The more I think about it, the more it makes a lot of sense because the majority of genre novels are set in white bread America featuring "white" characters. At the same time, the more it annoys the hell out of me because this only reinforces the sense of an insular white America to insular American readers. Yes there are great books by Iranian, Chinese, Japanese writers speaking of the human experience in gorgeous ways, but the people who read those are not the great majority whose reading habits are more Dan Brown and Stephen King. By making white America the norm (which it is not), you only serve to exoticize the rest of the world, and by default non-American people.

Hmmm. This bears some rethinking of my writing strategies and goals.

Great Reasons to be a Guy

2006-08-01T13:40:00.000-04:00

As I've been trying to write better male characters, I found this posted over at the message boards on All About Romance novels to be quite funny:

Great Reasons To Be A Guy...

1. Phone Conversations are over in 30 seconds flat.
2. You know stuff about tanks.
3. A five-day vacation requires only one suitcase.
4. You can open all your own jars.
5. Dry cleaners and hair cutters don't rob you blind.
6. You can go to the bathroom without a support group.
7. You can leave the motel bed unmade.
8. You can kill your own food.
9. You get extra credit for the slightest act of thoughtfulness.
10. Wedding plans take care of themselves.
11. If someone forgets to invite you to something, he or she can still be your friend.
12. Your underwear is $10 for a three-pack.
13. If you are 34 and single, nobody notices.
14. Everything on your face stays its original color.
15. You can quietly enjoy a car ride from the passenger's seat.
16. Three pairs of shoes are more than enough.
17. You don't have to clean if the meter reader is coming.
18. Car mechanics tell you the truth.
19. You can quietly watch a game with your buddy for hours without ever thinking: "He must be mad at me."
20. Gray hair and wrinkles only add character.
21. Wedding dress - $2,000. Tuxedo rental - 75 bucks.
22. You can drop by to see a friend without bringing a little gift.
23. If another guy shows up at the party in the same outfit, you just might become lifelong friends.
24. Your pals will never trap you with: "So, notice anything different?"
25. You are not expected to know the names of more than five colors.
26. You know which way to turn a nut on a bolt.
27. You almost never have strap problems in public.
28. You are unable to see wrinkles in your clothes.
29. The same hairstyle lasts for years, maybe decades.
30. You don't have to shave below your neck.
31. Your belly usually hides your big hips.
32. One wallet and one pair of shoes, one color, all seasons.

I am such a dork.

2006-07-28T15:33:00.000-04:00

Unfortunately, I was only able to catch the last 10 minutes or so of the reading by Amy Tan and Billy Collins at the
Southampton Writers' Conference last night because I had evening classes. But I stuck around and bought two things for the signing, Amy Tan's latest release Saving Fish from Drowning and an anthology of poetry with a foreword by Billy Collins. Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry. I got them to sign the books, but I was so nervous that I was completely tongue-tied. I didn't know what to say to Amy Tan, I mean, it's Amy Tan! She asked me if I was in the writing program here and I mumbled some weird reply and just felt really awkward. Billy Collins asked me how I was enjoying the conference and I mumbled some stupid reply, and I left feeling like, Wow I am such a dork.

But hey, this is the first writer's conference I've ever been to. If there's a certain quota of karmic stupidity and dorkiness that one has to go through in life before they become cool, hey, at least I'm being a dork when I'm just a nobody-wanna-be writer, right?

Career investments

2006-07-27T13:41:00.000-04:00

So I finally sucked it up and shelled out the cash to join the Romance Writers of America. It's one of the largest and most powerful writers' organizations in the United States, and super-cushy with almost all the major publishing houses. What kept me away from it for awhile was the fact that it's pricey to join ($100!!!!!) and the fact that when you join, you're only joining the National Chapter. You've got to put out more money (though not nearly as much) to join the local chapter or any of the special interest chapters like Futuristic, Fantasy and Paranormal. Not to mention that I have issues with an organization that sanctions a sub-genre based on race (Arabesque or African-American Romance is considered a sub-genre). But going with the idea that change is more effective from the inside, I've decided to join, because as a member (theoretically) I get a say in their policies, and for the power this organization wields, that's a lot. They also offer numerous networking opportunities for published and unpublished authors, agents and editors, and as networking is invaluable to nearly any career, well on the advice of authors like Sunny I figured I'd give it a shot (even if it is a financially painful shot for this poor grad student; hey its an investment right?).

Investing further in my writing career, I'm going to the Southampton Writers' Conference held at Stony Brook this week. Last night, I got to see one of my favorite authors, E.L. Doctorow speak. Of course I ended up buying another copy of Ragtime for him to sign, and City of God which I haven't read yet. The conference is definitely features authors of a much more highbrow literary persuasion, like Amy Tan, Bharati Mukherjee, Billy Collins and Frank McCourt but I hope to be able to pick up some good tips and info to the writing craft. (Plus I'm able to attend because of a student discount which made attending this conference a steal: Thank you anonymous donor who made this possible!)

Kyrgyzstan

2006-07-26T11:00:00.000-04:00

From the NYTimes: The lower Tien Shan mountains. In Kyrgyzstan, 94 percent of the land covered by mountains.

Kyrgyzstan, a Central Asian country that is affordable, adventurous and accessible, with a Muslim population so moderate it’s not uncommon to see mothers in bikinis drinking beer on the beach.

Even before I wrote my undergraduate thesis on Central Asia and the Silk Road, I've been fascinated with the steppes and mountains of Central Asia. The NYTimes has had a Frugal Traveler series this summer, and this week, he writes from Kyrgyzstan. There are so many amazing wonders to be explored beyond our own cultural and geographical boundaries of our nation. If you haven't been able to tell, I'm fascinated by people and cultures and different ways of thinking and doing things.

In Central Asia, there's been traditionally a very different strain of Judaism and Islam. In "Hundred Thousand Fools of God" by ethnomusicologist Theodore Levin, there are stories of certain areas, shaped by the diversity and mixing of Silk Road Culture, away from the broader rivalries of Muslims and Jews for hundreds of years, where they not only live in peace, but are integral to each other's culture. In fact, in one area, a Muslim wedding is absolutely unthinkable, without the blessing of a Jewish wedding singer.

I know I'll make it to Kyrgyzstan some day.

Immortal Revenge?

2006-07-25T12:02:00.000-04:00

Recently I was asked where as a writer, I get my ideas from. I get ideas from everywhere; everything I read, things I see, sounds I hear, everything has a story behind it, or has implications for something that might be stewing in my mind. Take a recent editorial from the New York Times, He Who Cast the First Stone, Probably Didn't, which talks about how aggressive actions, like throwing a punch at someone, are generally thought to be ok, if you're attacking some one who hit you without provocation.

After all, it is wrong to punch anyone except a puncher, and our language even has special words — like “retaliation” and “retribution” and “revenge” — whose common prefix is meant to remind us that a punch thrown second is legally and morally different than a punch thrown first.

That’s why participants in every one of the globe’s intractable conflicts — from Ireland to the Middle East — offer the even-numberedness of their punches as grounds for exculpation.

The problem with the principle of even-numberedness is that people count differently. Every action has a cause and a consequence: something that led to it and something that followed from it. But research shows that while people think of their own actions as the consequences of what came before, they think of other people’s actions as the causes of what came later.

In a study conducted by William Swann and colleagues at the University of Texas, pairs of volunteers played the roles of world leaders who were trying to decide whether to initiate a nuclear strike. The first volunteer was asked to make an opening statement, the second volunteer was asked to respond, the first volunteer was asked to respond to the second, and so on. At the end of the conversation, the volunteers were shown several of the statements that had been made and were asked to recall what had been said just before and just after each of them.

The results revealed an intriguing asymmetry: When volunteers were shown one of their own statements, they naturally remembered what had led them to say it. But when they were shown one of their conversation partner’s statements, they naturally remembered how they had responded to it. In other words, volunteers remembered the causes of their own statements and the consequences of their partner’s statements.

What seems like a grossly self-serving pattern of remembering is actually the product of two innocent facts. First, because our senses point outward, we can observe other people’s actions but not our own. Second, because mental life is a private affair, we can observe our own thoughts but not the thoughts of others. Together, these facts suggest that our reasons for punching will always be more salient to us than the punches themselves — but that the opposite will be true of other people’s reasons and other people’s punches.

Now, this is very true, from 9/11 to the Middle East. Are the Israelis attacking with or without justification? Do suicide bombers have justification for what they're doing? Answers to that are probably better debated elsewhere, but from this article, I began thinking about the nature of immortals. Long-lived human beings / immortals have been a staple of fairy tales and fantasies for a long time. With such comparatively larger life-experiences, they're bound to have different reactions and perceptions to things and events then the average person (i.e. the woman born in 1776 will not have the same attitude towards marriage as the woman born in the 1980s; if your grandmother doesn't have the same attitude as you, the woman born 200 years ago certainly won't).

So, will a long-lived immortal be less violent and less likely be angsting for revenge like a 19 year old boy? Theoretically someone who had been around that long would have actually seen the long-range price of violence and revenge. For example, someone born in Europe around 1776 would have seen the excesses of the French Revolution, the maneuvers of Napoleon, the trenches of WWI and the horrors of WWII. Think of some of the veterans you might know or attitudes they might have toward war. Would someone who had seen all that still react in the same way toward a perceived slight that the rest of us had?

Many immortal beings that I read about don't have any of the logical cultural implications that living so long would entail. I think the few authors who have even gotten close are Catherine Asaro and Charles DeLint. In one of her books, the Euban Queen actually draws upon her vast hundreds of years of experience and thinks very differently from other Traders. In DeLint's books, some of his immortals have been around for so long (since before Earth was made) that they can't function in this reality. Their experiences have been too much and too long.

Right now, I'm working on a heroine who was born in 1776. Reading her attitude towards marriage (she's vehemently against marriage) she sounds like a modern day femi-nazi, but she remembers a time when women were property and lost all their rights when they did get married.

Year of Reading 2006: 6 month update

2006-07-24T12:46:00.000-04:00

Wow, for someone who purports to be a fantasy / science fiction writer, only lately have I actually been reading much in the genre. What's surprising to me is the number of nonfiction books that I do read. Some have been for school obviously, others, out of interest or researching story ideas.

And it also occurs to me that this list doesn't include the number of ebooks I read. Yes I read ebooks, in fact I review them for a website that shall remain unnamed, and under a pseudonym because I don't want anything I say about a book to come back and bite me from people in the publishing profession that may hold a grudge, which might not be so good for an unpublished writer like me.

Year of Reading: Books of 2006

Censorship in the world's most populous democracy

2006-07-19T12:48:00.000-04:00

Quick - what do India, Pakistan, China and Ethiopia have in common?

It’s not a love of cricket. Or clandestine nuclear arms programs. Or even a fondness for flatbread.

They’re all - apparently - blocking blogspot.com.

Read the rest here via Amitava Kumar

Second Blog Carnival of Feminist Science Fiction and Fantasy Fans

2006-07-18T11:17:00.000-04:00

The Second Blog Carnival of Feminist Science Fiction and Fantasy Fans is up over at Kalinara's blog!

Pology

2006-07-17T12:15:00.000-04:00

Pology is free excellent online magazine featuring photos and essays about traveling, the kind of traveling that forces you to step outside your boundaries and confront life. There are some amazing photos here as well as well-written essays about discovery.

From the editor:

In a time where representations of the world are fed to us through polarized lenses, traveling has become of supreme importance. Traveling can remind us that in any situation there are multiple and often conflicting truths. Traveling can humble us, and remind us of how little we know. Immersion in a new culture can force us to see a beauty in the world that all too easily gets lost in the routine of the mundane. On our pages you will find impassioned vignettes of cultural exploration. Too much of today's travel writing focuses on where to stay, eat and shop, but I'm convinced that there is a breed of traveler out there that knows getting lost and having the details unfold spontaneously is what leads to the stories that can be fondly retold for the rest of your life.

http://www.pology.com

Thursday Thirteen

2006-07-13T14:23:00.000-04:00

Thirteen Places I've been

(in no particular order)

1. Seattle,WA
2. Beijing, China
3. Moscow, Russia
4. Tokyo, Japan
5. Paris, France
6. Puerto Vallarta, Mexico
7. Quebec, Canada
8. Rome, Italy
9. Shanghai, China
10.Washington D.C.
11.Florence, Italy
12.Magnitogorsk, Russia
13.Kaifeng, China

Links to other Thursday Thirteens!
1. (leave your link in comments, I’ll add you here!)

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!

The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!

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The whore that saved the world

2006-07-11T13:29:00.000-04:00

I just finished reading Kushiel's Scion, the fourth in a series by fantasy author Jacqueline Carey. She's one of my favorite authors in the fantasy genre; her books are lush, evocative, with themes that resonate throughout history, and an excellent literary style that brings you into the story with all five senses.

But what I really love is that the first three books of the series is features a non-stereotypical strong heroine. Essentially, Phedre, is a whore (and I'm using the word in a positive way to reclaim it from all it's negative connotations). She performs physical services in exchange for compensation. But aside fromo that, Phedre breaks the stereotype because she's a whore who saves the world, not by picking up a sword and fighting and getting all alpha-girl in Wonder Woman way (not that I don't love those characters, but sometimes it's easy to think that female heroes have to save the world in the same manner that a man might chose to) but she saves the world essentially by being a whore.

For Phedre, sex is power and she uses that quite skillfully in a world governed by a religion where the foremost precept is Love as thou wilt. In the world of Terre D'Ange, sex is not dirty; it's a celebration of love and life. As a result, whores are sacred and respected for their services in the way that doctors are. I really enjoyed this series not just for the gorgeous prose, but for the completely different depiction of a what a female heroine is.

Kushiel's Scion the 4th book set in the world of Terre D'Ange is the story of Imriel, Phedre's foster son and the real son of her deadliest enemy, Melisande Shaihrizai. Melisande and Phedre are enemies in the classic, opposite sides of the coin in that Magneto/Xavier kind of way with respect, love, and hate entwined in all their interactions. Although I didn't think Kushiel's Scion is as strong as Kushiel's Dart, it was wonderful to return to the world of Terre D'Ange. Moreover, this novel is different in that it features a hero who has been emotionally damaged by forced sex with implications of rape at an early age (though I was disappointed to see the author do some shying away of actual rape of the hero, though the question is still up in the air). In general, premises like this usually feature women. It will be interesting to see how Carey deals with sex, rape and its implications for a hero's masculinity. Can a male hero have been raped, come to terms with it, find sex as a source of power and fulfillment and still be considered a hero? If female heroines can, why not male heroes?

Pirates of the Caribbean (I'm going to spoil your fun)

2006-07-11T10:07:00.000-04:00

Pirates are fun right?

Oyceter had a recent post on race and racism in the recent movie Pirates of the Caribbean 2.

Race and Pirates

And I watched, and I grew more and more uncomfortable. Jack Sparrow and crew run amok of cannibals. The cannibals, are, of course, Black. They have face paint and random piercings; they have made Jack Sparrow their king. He speaks to them in terms like, "Licka licka, savvy?" There are a few people of color in his pirate crew, but their speaking parts are small, and they all have very strong accents. Or they don't speak at all and lend their faces to the motley look of the crew. The main character of color is a Black woman, a voodoo witch or something, with eyeballs in jars, blackened teeth, and an accent so strong that I couldn't understand her half the time.

While I was noticing this and noticing the fact that there were no non-stereotyped portrayals of people of color, I was growing more and more uncomfortable with this awareness. I'm actually very ashamed to say this, but I kept thinking of things like, "Oh, is it really that bad?" and "It's just a movie" and "Really, it's about pirates, what can you expect?" and "It's all in good fun."

Except... it isn't.

And I can't get over the fact that even though I had been reading about race right before the movie, noticing the stereotypes and being critical of race in the movie made me incredibly uncomfortable and squirmy, so much so that I tried to rationalize it away. I spent the first half of the movie squirming and becoming more and more aware of the fact that my mind kept trying to slip away from the topic of race, kept trying to not confront it and come up with more and more reasons why it really wasn't that bad.

Except... it is that bad.

It is bad that I cannot think about race without this extreme uncomfortableness, that I cannot do it without attempting to rationalize and excuse, that I cannot do it even after reading about it and being fully committed to speaking out. And it is even worse, because I know if I had seen the movie without having read the Tatum beforehand, I would have noticed, but I would have let myself brush it off, let myself not post about it.

I didn't even post about this last night because it made me so uncomfortable.

Read the rest here

It's easy to turn a discussion like this into white vs. black or some other stupid thing like white=racism=bad. But I think that it's ok to know this movie is racist, and yet enjoy it. Alot of the arguments made for POTC can also be made for Lord of the Rings (and don't even get me started on how much I dislike Tolkien's use of female characters), a movie that I thoroughly enjoyed.

There are some works (see my Fahrenheit 451 post) that I cannot enjoy, simply because for my personal tastes, it reflects a view of society that I find offensive. At the same time, I think of myself as a staunch free speech advocate. I think artists should never be forced to censor themselves. The only solution is to make more informed decisions about your choice of entertainment.

As for POTC, it's a choice that everyone has to make for themselves. Personally, I don't think I will see the movie until it comes out on DVD and I can get for free at the library, but I'm not going to call those who enjoy the movie racists.

Every dollar you spend in fact, is a political act. You buy sweatshop labor at Wal-Mart, sandwiches at the local deli made by illegal immigrants, gasoline to fill your car that is being subsidized by American soldiers, etc. You can try and live in denial about the effects of the American lifestyle, or you can accept it and live with the fact that in the daily course of living you do harm and let that drive you to make better choices and do better things.

As a writer, I write about strong female characters and strong supporting male heroes whose masculinity isn't threatened by women like Buffy or Wonder Woman. I also write characters who are diverse in terms of race and class, and use my knowledge of history to try and make insular Americans better informed about the outside world around them. Writing fiction may not produce as drastic results as feeding the poor in Rwanda (which I have seriously considered doing), and may seem more frivolous, but I think that people learn more from pop culture and fiction then they're even aware of, which is why POTC, a frivolous movie deserves serious consideration as to what it conveys about our commercial culture.

Why I can't stand "Classic Science Fiction"

2006-07-10T10:00:00.000-04:00

The following are portions of a feminist critique of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 that I wrote for a recent science fiction class. Although Bradbury himself would be appalled at this interpretation, I think the criticism is valid.

--

Published in 1953, Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 envisions a
dystopian future in which conformity and censorship are the norm.
Books are burned rather than read, and fireman Guy Montag is among
those who do the burning. In Bradbury's futuristic society,
nonconformity, individuality, and free thought are seen as sources of
needless social conflict. Guy's wife Mildred, a pill-popping
housewife who considers to the TV sets in the wall as her "family"
comes across to most readers as the epitome of an individual molded
into brainlessness by a society discourages individual expression.
However, Mildred's innate dissatisfaction, and failure to connect with
her husband can also be seen as the consequences of expectations of
female conformity in 1950s America, later recognized in Betty
Friedan's The Feminine Mystique.

Many have pointed to the publication of The Feminine Mystique in
1963, as the starting point for the contemporary women's movement. In
America during the mid-twentieth century, the ideal woman was
envisioned to be a domestic housewife who found meaning and identity
through her family. However, many women were finding that despite
achievement of this upper middle class dream, they felt empty, as if
they were leading meaningless lives. Society said otherwise, leading
many women to blame this problem on themselves, resulting in high
rates of drug and alcohol abuse, mental illness and suicide.

Similarly, in Fahrenheit 451, Mildred's personality is not only shaped by a censored society but by the expectations that keep her at
home. These completely separate gendered spheres contributed to the
social isolation and alienation felt by both Guy and Mildred. In
Mildred's case, her emotional estrangement comes not only from the
censored society but from her husband's expectations and reactions to
her experiences as a domestic housewife.

The reader's first introduction to Mildred finds her lying in bed
in the dark, plugged into headphones. "There had been no night in the
last two years that Mildred," had not been plugged into "great tides
of sound" which carried away from the physical world (12). Guy
stumbles and realizes that his wife has overdosed on pills. He finds
"her eyes all glass, and breath going in and out, softly, faintly…and
her not caring whether it came or went, went or came" (13). Poor
Mildred looks like a hollow empty doll, a description which will serve
as an allegory for Mildred's personality, at least in Guy's eyes.

By the next morning, Mildred is fine, if in denial. In response to
Guy's question about her overdose, Mildred says, "I wouldn't do a
thing like that…what would I want to go and do a silly thing like that
for?" (19). The reasons for her suicide attempt are never made clear.
Mildred is either unaware, or pretends that it never happened.

In any case, Guy doesn't spend much time, if any, investigating the
reasons behind Mildred's suicide attempt. He's too intrigued by
strange 17-year-old Clarisse and the reasons behind his job. Guy's
concerns are with Clarisse and his own life outside of the house and
not with his wife. As a result, it is not surprising that Mildred
tells Guy that the old woman he burned is "nothing to her," because to
Mildred, Guy was just doing his job and the old woman was a criminal
(51). To housewife Mildred, Guy's job has no relevance to her life,
other than what they can afford.

Just as Mildred shows little interest in what's troubling her
husband, Guy takes little interest in Mildred's daily life. Instead,
Guy just assumes that he knows and assumes that Mildred sits at home
all day, taking pills, watching TV, and connected to the headphones.
In particular, Guy is baffled by Mildred's connection to the TV,
referring them as "the uncles, the aunts, the cousins, the nieces, the
nephews, that lived in those walls, the gibbering pack of tree apes
that said nothing, nothing, nothing, and said it loud, loud, loud"
(44). The TV is nonsense to him, as books are to Mildred. Later when
Guy reads out loud a line from a book she responds, "What does it
mean? It doesn't mean anything!" (68).

Clearly, the two have problems connecting. After Guy returns from
burning the old woman, her books, and her house, he comes back in a
funk. Mildred is aware of this, and does the best she can to help her
husband, but Guy doesn't see her efforts that way.

She talked to him for what seemed a long while and she talked about this and she talked about that and it was only words, like the words he had once in a nursery at a friend's house, a two-year-old child building word patterns, talking jargon, making pretty sounds in the air. (42)

Yet, later that night, thinking about the old woman he burned alive, Guy implies that his estrangement from his wife was due to the fact that she was always
listening to the Seashell headphones. "Well, then, why didn't he buy
himself an audio-Seashell broadcasting station to talk to his wife
late at night, murmur, whisper, shout, scream, yell?" (42).

Guy is completely unaware of his wife's attempts to connect with him.
Even though Mildred has tried to talk to her him, Guy sees his wife
as uncaring about everything except for her technology. Instead, Guy
wonders how his wife got "so empty?" (44). He blames their inability
to connect on the wall TVs, likening them to "a wall between him and
Mildred," because "No matter when he came in, the walls were always
talking to Mildred" (44). However, as shown earlier, when Mildred
tries to talk to her husband, he doesn't really listen. No wonder
Mildred feels that the TVs are her "family" (49) because at least they
respond (20).

This is not to say that Guy isn't correct about what's wrong with
Mildred. He recognizes that there was "another Mildred, that was a
Mildred so deep inside this one, and so bothered, really bothered,
that the two women had never met" (Bradbury, 52). But Guy is unaware
of how his own actions have contributed to alienation between the
couple. As we've seen, Mildred's feelings are not of great concern to
him, except when their interactions confirm his suspicions about the
effects of their censored society.

Friedan also recognized this growing problem among American women.
If a woman had a problem in the 1950's and 1960's, she knew that
something must be wrong with her marriage, or herself. Other women
were satisfied with their lives, she thought…She was so ashamed to
admit her dissatisfaction that she never knew how many other women
shared it. If she tried to tell her husband, he didn't understand
what she was talking about. She did not really understand it herself.
(Friedan, 19)

Mildred, may have in fact been aware of her problem. Again, it is
never clear why Mildred attempted suicide, and Guy spends little time
investigating the reasons behind it. However, regardless of whether
Mildred was aware or not, Guy gives her no reason to confide in him.
When Mildred tries to talk to her husband, he doesn't listen, so why
should she bother talking to him about a problem that Friedan termed
"the problem with no name?" (Friedan, 15).

Never does Guy ask Mildred about her day at any point throughout the
book. Instead she has make her husband notice that she too, has a
life, worthy of relating. "I had a nice evening," she says suddenly,
interrupting his complaints, the morning after Guy's melancholy about
the burning the old woman, an evening partially spent talking to a
husband who hadn't even been listening (49).

Even as Guy awakens to the effects of the censored society, he
remains just as firmly as ever in his mindset toward Mildred. Later
on in the novel, Guy criticizes his wife and her girlfriends for their
interactions with the wall TV. "Oh God, the way they jabber about
people and their own children and themselves and the way they talk
about their husbands and the way they talk about war, dammit, I stand
here and I can't believe it!" (98). But what other place, what other
escape is left for women in this world?

And it's not just Mildred who has this problem. When Guy finds his
wife near death, Guy calls for a medical team, and is surprised when
non-doctors arrive with a machine. They inform him bluntly, that
these cases happen often, "nine or ten a night" (15). In fact, they
had "Got so many, starting a few years ago, we had the special
machines built" (15). In this society, the suicide problem is so
endemic, that it is not even considered to be a major concern anymore.

Granted, clearly this censored society oppresses freedom of thought
from everyone, but for women, they are also oppressed by competing
strands of societal expectations of the ideal woman and a denigration
of their domestic experience.

A reflection of the time in which Fahrenheit 451 was written, Mildred evinces the 1950s domestic ideal of woman as housewife. Bradbury
recognized the discontent and alienation of Mildred, just as Friedan
would ten years later with with the pubication of The Feminine
Mystique. Though Guy attributed this disaffection as a problem of
society, Guy never stops to question how his own actions contribute to
Mildred's unhappiness, or of how Mildred's particular experience is
different from his own.
---
See also a general commentary of mine on "classic sci" here.

First Blog Carnival of Feminist Science Fiction and Fantasy Fans

2006-07-06T10:51:00.001-04:00

Just try and tell me that Green Lantern would ever be put in a pose like that...

Hey my post On Catwoman was included in the First Blog Carnival of Feminist Science Fiction and Fantasy Fans! This is an excellent collection of takes on pop culture.

Articles not to be missed include:

What happens when you draw male superheroes in the sexualized way that female superheroes are drawn

Speech by Joss Whedon on why he writes strong female characters

Why does the motivation for female heroes tend to be sexualized (as in rape)?

There are some fantastic articles here. Go procrastinate!

Lois Lane and Lex Luthor Returns

2006-07-05T12:11:00.000-04:00

I went into Superman Returns with high hopes and expectations. Bryan Singer, the director of The Usual Suspects and the first 2 X-men movies did a really good job with those movies and I was waiting to see his take on Superman. Though after seeing it, I left the movie theater with a sense that the movie was slightly "off key." It had all the elements that should have made it an excellent movie, but there were a number of things that kept it from hitting the right notes.

Brandon Routh? Ok, fine, he's hot, did a relatively decent job Clark Kent/ Superman, but he was boring. But you know what, Superman is boring. I mean, a guy who you know could survive near anything; where's the drama in that? The essential conflict in Superman is his double life as Clark Kent / Superman, and namely his interest in Lois Lane. Lois Lane is what makes Superman human, and interesting. The conflict and story of Superman, rests on the character of Lois Lane. (Which is why I thought the TV series Lois & Clark was very appropriately titled).

Let's talk about Kate Bosworth's Lois Lane. I admit, before I even saw the movie, I thought that casting Kate Bosworth was a bad choice. She's much too young to be Lois Lane, a hard-charging experienced reporter with a 7-year kid, and seeing the movie confirmed my beliefs. (Brandon Routh is also much too young to be Clark Kent, but that's another topic all together). You know you have a problem when Jimmy Olsen looks older then both Clark and Lois.

Anna Genoese found Bosworth to lack a certain gravitas, and I have to agree. I think both Teri Hatcher and Margot Kidder played much a much stronger, and balanced Lois Lane. (And my favorite part in the Lois & Clark series was when Clark proposes to Lois and she takes off his glasses, showing that she's known for quite awhile who Clark was).

However, James Marsden as Richard? Stroke of brilliance. He gave an excellent performance that really made you root for him (he's getting good at these characters who are involved with women who love other men isn't he? He played Cyclops in X-men).

Lex? Smallville's Lex Luthor, and even Superman: The Animated Series had a much better, much more evil and disturbed Lex Luthor. I'm not a big fan of Smallville, but Michael Rosenbaum has totally brought a new dimension to the character of Lex Luthor. (Can you tell that I think it takes Lois and Lex to make Superman interesting?) I was totally disappointed in Kevin Spacey, who is such a good actor, but hey you've got to work with what you're given. And why was there such a lame-ass plot about growing a continent in the Atlantic Ocean?

Parkey Posey as Lex's henchwoman? Absolutely terrible. I can see that Bryan Singer was trying to model her almost as a 1920s kind of a mob gal, but she was just annoying. If they had included Mercy, Lex's henchwoman in the comics (who is so tough that she's kicked the crap out of Catwoman), that would have made for a much more interesting story movie.

And also, as a nitpicking thing, why the hell was Metropolis completely populated by white people? Where were all the brown people? Sure Kal Penn was in it, but why the hell didn't he get a single line in the movie?

Still, this was a relatively good summer movie. The part where Superman saves a plane in mid-air? Classic. Despite it all, decent movie, though perhaps a matinee one.

Puerto Vallarta Part 1 (I need a better title)

2006-06-27T11:57:00.000-04:00

Puerto Vallarta, Mexico (disclaimer: I didn't take this picture; blogger won't let me upload my pictures at this moment.)

I don't travel the way most people travel when they think of traveling. I'm pretty much a backpacker, wandering around foreign places, staying at cheap youth hostels, meeting people at random points and sharing a bit of conversation and friendliness with someone you'll probably never see again. In talking to others, I realized that what I like most about traveling is the chance to learn about people. Others chose to travel to explore nature, mountains, and scenery. More often, most people like to go to warm sunny places where they can sit by a beach / pool and relax.

I like doing all of those things too, but to me, there's something magical about wandering a foreign city, whether it be Amsterdam or Bangkok, and seeing new things, and learning about people and different ways of doing or thinking. For me, it breaks me out of my shell, and makes me think about how little the disturbances and bumps in my life really mean nothing in the big picture. That sounds nihilistic I know, but it's not; it forces me to reconnect and think about the more important things, which in the end, sometimes are the little things; sharing a meal with people you don't know anything about and whose language you don't speak, and yet you still end up communicating anyway; getting on the wrong bus, which takes you to a place that you didn't mean to go, and yet, seems to have dropped you off at exactly where you needed to be. For me, traveling is a way to reconnect with myself, while learning about the wider greater world that we live in.

In general, I've tended to lean against vacations like all-inclusive resorts or cruises. They seemed mockingly insular and excessive, not to mention expensive. Maybe it's a remnant of the fact that I grew up in a resort town, but I found resort mills that locked you away from local color and culture just not my taste. (Jamaica Kincaid has an excellent book, "A Small Place" that talks about these themes and the varying points of view between a Western tourist visiting the tourist island of Antigua and a local native). Furthermore, resort mills in places like the Caribbean often do little to contribute to the local economy and people as the profits tend to go towards foreign-owned entities. They lock tourists away in a tiny little protected enclave, highlighting the economic, cultural and at times, racial disparity between the haves and the have-nots (and if there is anything I believe in fervently, it's the idea that real learning and communication takes place between people of disparate backgrounds). Moreover, the waste produced by these resort mills and drawing in tourists often accelerate the destruction of the very landscape that makes the place such an appealing getaway (just think about the amount of sunscreen that is probably washed onto delicate coral reefs every year in these islands, and about the amount of water it takes to sustain lush gold courses and water parks).

Of course I say this quite hypocritically as I've enjoyed the beaches of the Bahamas, and stayed at one of those mega-hotels. But we made an effort to put money into the local economy by eating at local restaurants and going with an independent tour company staffed by locals who practiced environmentally friendly practices. (And I have to say, the Valerie's fish fry on the beach served once a week out of an old abandoned schoolbus was one of the best meals I ever had; a great illustration of Rule #1 of Eating: When in a new place, always try what the locals are famous for making, even if you think you don't like it; often people unfamiliar with how to properly cook certain things will screw it up (the same reason why you don't look for New York bagels on the West Coast of the U.S.). In the islands of the Caribbean, that was fish; I hated fish, but damn if that wasn't the tastiest barracuda and shark I had ever had; fresh-caught that very day).

Recently, my sigo (significant other) and I went to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico and stayed at this massive resort complex, the Grand Mayan. Now, normally there is no way that we would have been able to afford a trip to a place like the Grand Mayan, but it was a wedding gift from the in-laws. And I have to say, that I really enjoyed myself, which causes me to rethink certain stereotypes and ideas I've held.

To be continued...

Can't we get some Brits to announce Cup games?

2006-06-27T10:49:00.000-04:00

Remember how I complained about American announcers of the World Cup games? Apparently, I'm not the only one who doesn't understand Spanish and switches over to Univision.

The Sins of American Sportscasting

African Identity and the World Cup

2006-06-22T11:37:00.000-04:00

My friend Heather commented on the World Cup post:

I write from Senegal, a country that does not have a team in the world cup. Since the world cup has began, no work has been done in the garden during game hours. We slave in the morning, and my boss sits by a tv the rest of the day. If I bike more than two minutes in any direction I am sure to see at least three tvs set up outside fully surrounded by men and boys. They cheer for Brazil or for whichever team has the most black players. Out in the villages where they don't have electricity, generators are being run into the ground to power the games. Between games, the sandy roads are congested with clumps of aspiring world cup players practicing their moves. I wonder what life will be like here after the games.

I commented back:

That's interesting. They must be going crazy for the Ghana team then? Are they rooting more for African teams or for teams with black players? I suppose it speaks to either presence of a greater Pan-African awareness or a possibly Western-shaped racial solidarity. Kwame Anthony Appiah, the Ghanian philosopher I was telling you about (no idea if he's related to the captain of the Ghana World Cup team, Stephen Appiah) has argued that the idea of "Africans" being defined as "black" is essentially a Western invention, which, if true, seems to have transplanted itself to African villages.

Also, I wonder what Africans of European descent think: do they too root for African teams out of a sense of pan-Africanism? Which in itself can be called a Western-influenced invention. I couldn't ever imagine Koreans rooting for the Japanese team out of a sense of "pan-Asian-ness" or Argentines rooting for the Brazil team out of "pan-Latin-Americaness."

I just wanted to add that the idea of "blackness" as an African identity, according to Appiah is that it is essentially a transplanted notion from New World blacks who found community defined by race in societies dominated by paler skin peoples who lumped all dark-skinned peoples from Africa in the category of Africans. Africa is an immemsely large continent with a plethora of peoples and cultures. Prior to whites defining African as "black," Africans saw themselves as Herero, Asanti, or by their clan.

Kickin' some Cup Comments

2006-06-22T10:55:00.000-04:00

Grrr. What frustrates me to no end is that American TV doesn't replay World Cup games. Because it's being played in Germany, it gets televised according to German time, which over here on the East Coast is in the middle of the day. I really wanted to see the Ghana vs. U.S. game, which is playing as we speak and I'm stuck at work. But noooooo, ESPN doesn't replay any games of the largest sporting event in the world in the evening. Meanwhile, they have reruns of the World's Strongest Man competition which I must have channel surfed across at least a dozen times in the past 6 months.

You'd think that the Spanish channel might replay them, but no. Actually, I have to say that I prefer watching the games on the Spanish channel because I hate the American commentators. They sound so arrogant and bored. Even though I don't speak a word of Spanish, I prefer the Spanish commentators because they're actually really excited and in to the game and it shows.

I just googled the halftime scores: Ghana 2, U.S. 1. Today's game decides who makes it out of Group E to the next round. I'm rooting for Ghana; it's the country's first time in the World Cup. I always like the underdogs, and a victory in the World Cup today would mean so much more to the people of Ghana then the U.S.

World Cup

2006-06-21T12:53:00.000-04:00

Paraguay vs. Trinidad & Tobago

It closes the shops. Closes the schools. Closes a city. Stops a war. Fuels a nation. Breaks borders. Builds a hero. Crushes a dream. Answers a prayer. And changes everything.

-ESPN World Cup Tagline

While I was in Mexico, my husband and I were World Cup watchers. I'm not a big sports fan, but wow, these Cup games are really fantastic! My favorite so far has been the Ghana upset over the Czech Republic; now that was a great game.

For Americans who have no idea what the heck I'm talking about:

While it's cheesy, it fits. The game means that much to the world. But for simplicity's sake, focus on 'Closes a city,' 'Stops a war' and 'Fuels a nation.'

Cities will come to a full halt in 31 of 32 contending countries. Many from the 197 unfortunate countries who didn't qualify will also shut down.

In a recent column for The Chicago Tribune, Tom Hundley compared this phenomenon to religion. With two billion believers, Hundley wrote, Christianity is the second religion in the world, behind soccer.

"It may be an exaggeration to call soccer a religion, but it is obviously more than a game," he stated. "The quest for the World Cup, soccer's grail, can humiliate the powerful and make the wretched and ragged of the Earth feel like world-beaters."

In cities scattered across six continents, bars and pubs will be full. Federation Internationale de Football Association or FIFA, estimated 28.8 billion viewers during the 2002 World Cup. Quick reminder: There are only 6.6 billion people in the world. 64 games will be played with an average television audience around 320 million per game. The Super Bowl draws a third of that.

The impact of the World Cup is powerful. It can put an end to a lot of hatred in the world. Well, maybe not an end, but at least a temporary truce. Africa has five countries competing in Germany. Tunisia is the only veteran of the bunch, making its third appearance. Angola, Ghana, Togo and the Ivory Coast are all making their World Cup debuts. Possibly the most interesting of this group is the Ivory Coast, which has been torn apart by coups, rebellions and ethnic conflicts since 1999. When the Elephants qualified in October 2005, the head of the Ivory Coast Football Federation pleaded with President Laurent Gbagbo to restart peace talks. Elections are scheduled for October of this year.

Another example of soccer's peacemaking qualities occurred in 1915 during World War I (before the World Cup started). On Christmas Eve near a small French village, a British mortar battalion sat in trenches 100 meters from German lines. Observing the brief cease-fire, the two sides exchanged carols, shouted friendly teasing and finally met, swapping cigarettes.

"Somehow a ball was produced," Bertie Felstead, the last known member of the British battalion recalled a few years ago. "I remember scrambling around in the snow. There could have been 50 on each side. No one was keeping score."

In 1967, 48-hour cease-fire came to the Nigerian Civil War. The reason? So, the Brazilian forward Pele, considered the best player ever, could show off his skills in an exhibition match.

Read the whole article here.

There's also another interesting socio-political analysis of the World Cup here via Amitava Kumar. Not only has:

"No country has ever won a World Cup while committing genocide or gearing up to commit genocide," but, "No country has won the World Cup without having a substantial industrial base."

William Gallas (France) vs. Cho Jae Jin (Korea)

New York Urban Etiquette, or "yes we have manners!"

2006-06-20T13:30:00.000-04:00

New York Magazine has got a great tongue-in-cheek article, "The Urban Etiquette Handbook." For writers researching NYC, this is totally invaluable as it highlights numerous features of NY daily living that I'm, sure, most people in other parts of the country don't need to consider.

Some highlights:

New Rules for Getting Along.

How do you politely determine the level of commitment of a gay couple?
One approach, of course, is to do it the same way you would for a straight couple: Ask how long they’ve been together; determine where Party A lives and, later in the conversation, ask Party B if he lives in Chelsea/Park Slope/Hell’s Kitchen, too; ask one of them if he has a dog and listen to see whether the other speaks about it with a tone of ownership. Cohabitation isn’t necessarily a sign of commitment, though: Many gay men have open relationships, so the only surefire way to know the level of commitment is to offer to go home with one of them.

Office

When does an e-mail exchange end?
At the office, acknowledging receipt of requested work or information is entirely appropriate and necessary, but acknowledging receipt of receipt-acknowledgment is superfluous.

City Living

How do you walk into your apartment building behind a woman while letting her know you’re not a mugger/rapist?
First, know what you’re dealing with: She fears getting into the elevator with you, she fears your walking up the stairs on her tail, and she fears appearing like she’s rattled by either. The gentlemanly thing to do, then, is to make a concerted effort to avoid all of the above. In an elevator building, find a reason to hang back and let the doors close on her alone. In a walk-up building, however, fiddling at your mailbox will just force her to adopt a more panicked pace. Consider answering a pretend cell-phone call: “Hi, Mom!”

When is it okay to ask a stranger about something in the newspaper he’s holding on the train?
Paper-snooping is acceptable in only two situations: (1) if it’s a news story of sufficient importance that the next people you see outside the train will be talking about it, or (2) if it’s sports news with commiseration potential. (“Traded who for hot-dog-concession equipment? Fuckin’ Isiah.”) Even in the random event you see an article mentioning your own name, you probably shouldn’t say anything: Either it’s in a flattering light and you’d be boastfully massaging your own ego, or it’s in a non-flattering light and the person reading the paper probably doesn’t want to know that he’s just met the Park Avenue Pervert.

Breaching Subway Decorum
When it’s okay to annoy strangers on a train.

THE GROOMER
Crime: Plucking eyebrows, curling eyelashes, flossing teeth (!), or clipping fingernails (!!) on the subway.
Rudeness Factor: 8
Why It’s Inappropriate: Because a civilized society is measured by the delineations between its public-transit vehicles and its bathrooms.
When It’s Appropriate: If it’s your absolute last chance to freshen up before a job interview, funeral, or proposal of marriage.

Family

How little money can you give to your child’s private school?
Swallow your fury, mentally berate the social-climbing slimeballs who make New York such a dishonesty-filled place to live, give a bare minimum of $300 at annual-fund time, and consider it part of tuition. But no matter what you do or don’t give, the school is never allowed to hold it against your kid.

Friends

WHEN IS IT ACCEPTABLE TO BLACKBERRY DURING A CONVERSATION?
When it’s a “conversation” in the sense of “The New School Presents a Conversation With Harold Bloom” and you’re there. Otherwise, never. This remains one of society’s most frequent breaches of basic human decency. Seriously, what is wrong with those people?!?

IS IT EVER OKAY TO DRIVE A HUMMER?
Yes! If you’re leading a nighttime raid in Tikrit. Otherwise, Hummers have returned to their rightful place as a semi-obnoxious, semi-absurd rarity. Accepting a ride is different: In New York, being a passenger in any vehicle, matter how gauche or fuel-inefficient, is a rare treat.

Interpretations of Culture and Globalization part 3

2006-06-19T12:23:00.000-04:00

In contrast, there seemed to be less of a global awareness in Kenya possibly because Kenya was in the earlier stages of a shift towards a larger identity. European colonial administrators left many local authorities and their jurisdictions intact, prolonging the local sense of identity, thereby dampening the development of a greater common identity.

Indeed, as mentioned earlier, the very concept of nationality, which is often tied up with culture, is an essential part of modernity and the modern human identity. Today, nationality is an essential component of the modern human identity. It is difficult to even consider anyone not having nationality, which for some people, may be as difficult to picture as someone not having a culture. Yet that is exactly what Benedict Anderson, in Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism did. In Imagined Communities, Anderson found that the very concept of a nation, and the corresponding nationality and nationalism, is a relatively modern idea. Anderson found “nation” to be an “imagined political community” that is both “inherently limited and sovereign.”

According to Anderson, nation-states and nationalism are cultural artifacts which came about through the intermingling of two historical forces, the religious community and the dynastic realm. With the rise of print capitalism and colonial rule, nationalism became “‘modular,’ capable of being transplanted, with varying degrees of self-consciousness, to a great variety of social terrains, to merge and be merged with a correspondingly wide variety of political and ideological constellations.”

Just as nationalist identies are a modern conception, so is the idea of “Africa” and “Africans.” In Kwame Anthony Appiah’s In My Father’s House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture, Appiah discusses the idea, origins and implications of Pan-Africanism. The idea of Africa as a singular cultural entity comes not from Africans in Africa, he argues, but rather from the African diaspora. In In My Father’s House, Appiah defined racialism as the idea that there are inheritable characteristics, including certain moral qualities, that allow classification in such a way that each race has traits and tendencies that is unshared by any other race. Furthermore, there are also differences between extrinsic and intrinsic racists. extrinsic racists believe that each race has their own specific moral qualities. Intrinsic racists believe that different races have different moral statuses that are dependent upon the moral status of other races. Ideas of race and its supposedly intrinsic/inherited qualities, both physical and moral, lent to a further association of race with an overly broad sense of “African” culture.

Such thinking is representative of a continuing tendency of Westerners to generalize from the experience and situations of New World blacks and to see race as a common identifier. In the New World,“ what bound those African-American and Afro-Caribbean Pan Africanists together was the partially African ancestry they shared.” Because they were identified by ancestry, the concept of racial solidarity was developed and delineated by black and white. This understanding of race was further reinforced by prominent Africans such as Nkrumah who studied at historically black educational institutions in the United States.

In the New World, race determined identity, an idea that was transferred on to the continent of Africa, despite its wildly varying peoples and terrains. While race may contribute to the shaping of a particular cultural identity and perceptions within certain societies, race does not by itself create a common culture. Again, what creates culture is a multiplicity of influences including the environment, gender, religion, etc.

Where in the world have I been?

2006-06-09T11:13:00.001-04:00

create your own visited country map

Wow. It's crazy how large Russia is isn't it? I've been to Moscow and Magnitogorsk (a city that straddles the Ural Mountains which divide Europe and Asia) and according to this map, I've visited like half the world. Funny how human-created boundaries can distort perceptions.

Sorry I haven't been updating this as much recently. Blogger's been being really annoying lately.

Anyways, I'm off to add Mexico to this list. I'll be back in a week!

A Year of Reading: Books of 2006

2006-06-07T16:15:00.000-04:00

I read alot, even when I'm not in school. I thought it'd be interesting to keep track of what I'm reading this year in order to be able to look back and see how I what I've read may have shaped my writing. I got the inspiration from Sara Nelson's So Many Books, So Little Time: A Year of Passionate Reading, an ode to readers and books. She decided to keep track of a year's worth of reading to see how what she reads influences her life and vice versa.

The most recent books are listed on top of each list.

Books I'm reading now:

Women of the Pleasure Quarters: The Secret History of the Geisha

Books I've read:

Julie Lepore, The Name of War: King Phillip's War and the Making of American Identity
James Merrell, Into the Woods: Negotiators on the Pennsylvania Frontier
-Alan Grant, DC Heroes: Last Sons (I have to add a minus to this because it was so terrible.)
Jennifer Cruisie, Welcome to Temptation
Jennifer Cruisie, Fast Women
Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in PostWar America
Michael McGerr, A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870-1920
*Alisa Kwitney, Sex as a Second Language

*Naomi Novik, The Black Powder War

*Naomi Novik, Throne of Jade

*Paul Coelho, The Alchemist

*Naomi Novik, Her Majesty's Dragon

*Susan Quilliam, Body Language

*Charles DeLint, Widdershins

*Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Scion

*Karen Armstrong, A Short History of Myth

Marjorie M. Liu, Tiger Eye
Gena Showalter, Animal Instincts
Emma Holly, All U Can Eat
Suzanne Brockmann, The Admiral's Bride
*James Scott Bell, Write Great Fiction: Plot & Structure
Jennifer Worick, Joe Borgenicht, and Larry Jost, The Action Heroine's Handbook
Gloria Kempton, Write Great Fiction: Dialogue
Linnea Sinclair, Finders Keepers
Lucie Aubrac, Outwitting the Gestapo
Augusten Burroughs, Dry
*Lauren Willig, The Secret History of the Pink Carnation (good beach book; I always loved The Scarlet Pimpernel and this is a funny chick lit-ish kind of take on that whole mythos)
Annie Hwang, The People's Republic of Desire (those interested in consumer, sex and pop culture in modern China should check this out; the first bits of the book are entertaining, but it's kind of jumpy, like a collection of blog entries.
*Elizabeth Vaughn, Warprize
*Kwame Anthony Appiah, In My Father's House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture
Gena Showalter, Heart of the Dragon
T.C. McCaskie, Asante Identities
*Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism
Belinda Bozzoli, Theatres of Struggle and the End of Apartheid
D. Fairchild Ruggles, ed., Women, Patronage, and Self-Representation in Islamic Societies
Nancy Kress, Write Great Fiction: Characters, Emotion & Viewpoint
*Suzanne Brockmann, Breaking Point
Norah Vincent, Self-Made Man: One Woman's Journey into Manhood and Back
H.G. Pope, Jr., K. Phillips, R. Olivardia, The Adonis Complex: The Secret Crisis of Male Body Obsession
Anne Bishop, Sebastian
Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale
John Iliffe, Africans: The History of a Continent
*John Williams, Classroom in Conflict
Dawn Cook, The Decoy Princess
Raymond Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
Phillip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
*H.G. Wells, War of the Worlds (listened to Audio CD)
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections of the Origin and Spread of Nationalism
David Northrup, Africa's Discovery of Europe 1450-1850
Samuel Fussell, Muscle, Confessions of an Unlikely Bodybuilder
Catherine Asaro, The Final Key
*Brandon Sanderson, Elantris (such a good book; I actually emailed the author to tell him what a good book it was)
*Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart
*Elizabeth Kostova, The Historian (yes it's a vampire novel, but very well done)

Books I've re-read:

*Carrie Asai, Samurai Girl: Book of the Sword (taking notes about pacing and plotting)
*Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Dart (to take notes to learn about pacing and plotting)
*Robin McKinley, The Hero and the Crown (This was one of the few books I read when I was younger that made me realize that girls in fantasy didn't always have to be beautiful wimpy princesses. I love this book; I'm still trying to convince my husband that Aerin is a great name for a kid :)
*Stephen King, On Writing
*Orson Scott Card, Characters & Viewpoint
*Chanrithy Him, When Broken Glass Floats: A memoir of growing up under the Khmer Rouge

Books I've tried to read, but have put down for now, hoping to return to when I have more time:

Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique
Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
Strunk & White, Elements of Style (illustrated edition)
Randy Kennedy, Subwayland: Adventures in the World Beneath New York
Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep

Mark Helprin, A Winter's Tale

(* means highly recommended)

Look for this post to be continually updated!
last updated September 12, 2006

Crashing into Race

2006-06-06T11:07:00.000-04:00

It's the sense of touch. In any real city, you walk, you know? You brush past people, people bump into you. In L.A., nobody touches you. We're always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much, that we crash into each other, just so we can feel something....

I finally got a chance to watch this movie last night and I have to say that it was really excellent, and fully deserving of its Academy Award for Best Picture. The movie is about a group of people, all of different races, classes and backgrounds, who don't know each other but whose lives are intertwined by random chance and coincidences.

I thought this movie did an excellent job of having multi-faceted characters, in terms of race, showing it's complexity. I think too often, people who are not people of color automatically assume that race / racism /racist means the KKK and its violent predecessors. (And it is really stunning at how far we've come as a society, in terms of dealing with race; though I firmly believe we still have a ways to go, which is a subject for another post). In this movie, there isn't anyone who you can tag as completely racist, or non-racist, completely good, or bad, that therein, is where its brilliance lies. My favorite character in the movie was played by Matt Dillon, who captured his role of the racist cop perfectly. I don't want to give away any spoilers, but I think it shows exactly why race is such a difficult thing, especially in terms of organizations like the police that are frequently accused of harboring racists.

As a writer, I think this movie is a great aide to learn how to craft multi-dimensional characters. And although there were some that complained about the shifting perspectives, and found this movie to be lacking characterization, it did exactly what it was trying to do; it was a story that showed how race is intertwined in our society.

Unfortunately, I have the feeling that people who most need to watch this, will not; the people who hear the word "race" and think it doesn't apply to them because they consider themselves not to be racist, which I think most people of Caucasian background in America, assume of themselves. But at the same time, we need to realize and raise the question of, if race is not a problem, why are so many minorities absolutely convinced, that white people and American society is racist? And not just convinced, but KNOW, like they know the sky is blue, that white people are racist and conspiring to keep colored people down? Yes, this may sound bizarre to "whites" (and I really hate using that term), and easily dismissable, but you can't just dismiss these very real and concrete feelings that influence their social, economic, cultural and political choices, that will in some way, impact you and your society.

I'm not saying that the concept of "white racist America" is true; I'm just saying that this commonly held belief has to be acknowledged and confronted, just as much as people of color need to realize that most ordinary "white" Americans, are not racist. When you start screaming that they are, they're more likely to become defensive, shut down and ignore your ravings and any future discussion about race because they don't want to be called racists. (As a side note, I think that black Congresswoman who claimed racist sexual harassment by a Capitol cop did more damage to race relations recently then any recent incident of police harassment).

Ok, in conclusion, Crash is a great movie. Go see it.

Bride and Prejudice

2006-06-05T10:23:00.000-04:00

I finally got a copy of Bride and Prejudice, a British movie that tells the story Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" from the point of a middle-class family in India. I absolutely loved this movie. The song and dance numbers were fantastic, full of wonderful rhythm, color and song (think recent Broadway musical movies like Chicago, only better). I really enjoyed this movie, which was such a refreshing take from the American movie scene.

But as I was watching this film, I kept wondering, would real Bollywood lovers enjoy this film as much? Different cultures have different concepts of what makes a great movie and storyline; I've watched some foreign films like Children of Heaven and Fast Runner, with plotlines and endings that I just didn't get. Similarly, I have a feeling that this is movie was "Bollywood Lite" for westerners, which made me think about how I laugh at Chinese take-out in America and deride it as poorer derivative of Chinese food that my family eats at home. (Though I must confess I have a soft spot for American Chinese vegetable lo mein). True Bollywood lovers may scoff at this movie, but as a Bollywood viewer virgin, I have to admit that my unsophisticated self with American sensibilities was very entertained. This is a fantastic foreign film for people not used to watching foreign films (and hey Ashanti does a GREAT hip hop dance number in here).

The important thing to remember is that movies like this, which are filtered for Western sensibilities, do not necessarily present what culture or an art is most commonly perceived as. As long as you don't take this movie to represent all Bollywood films, or all of Indian society (or American or British society for that matter), and enjoy it for what it is, films like this are great. In fact, I'm going to try and get my hands on some more Bollywood films. Next on my list are I have found it and Straight from the heart and I 'd love to hear more recommendations

Interpretations of Culture and Globalization part 2

2006-05-31T17:03:00.000-04:00

Read Part 1 Here.

---
There are other facets to the globalization/culture argument including modernity, feminism and post modernity. Those who argue for the protection of cultures against supposed incursions of the West tend to conceive of culture as a fixed, unchanging object. It is better to leave societies alone and untouched, they argue, so that they cannot be "contaminated."

It should not be assumed that modernity is the sole provenance of the West. There are numerous problems with this method of thinking, including an unconscious categorization of modernity with Western culture, which casts the non-Western as primitive. Although much of the characteristics that gave rise to modernity arose from the West, such as the widespread use of the printing press, it is a Western-centric history that fails to recognize the pivotal role of non-Western societies in giving birth to the modern era. Scholars such as Benedict Anderson have argued that the nation-state system, a defining characteristic of the modern world, originated from the New World. Features of modernity, including the beginnings of a global economy with the growth of European trade and exploration can be seen even earlier in the Muslim diaspora and Silk Road trade. Thus, modernity is as much of a legacy of the Asia and Africa as it is of the West.

Leading sociological thinkers such as Max Weber and Emile Durkheim generally understood modernity to be a consequence of industrialization. In the modern period, people, products, and tasks were characterized by increasing specialization via the division of labor. Modernity includes the standardization of social aspects that facilitate greater integration, such as time. More generally, modernity can be described of as a transition from typically smaller local communities to greater integration into a larger society.

Thus, one of the contradictions of modernity is that with greater integration, there is greater awareness of others, and correspondingly greater delineation of “us vs. them.” Hence, awareness of other cultures more sharply defines the symbols in one’s own by the simple recognition that one’s own worldview is not the same as the other’s worldview.

Tied up with issues of modernity are also issues of feminism and women’s rights. Societies wishing to be “modern” must confront conceptions and ideas that not only bring greater material comforts but drastically change the status quo. Often, these issues are most sharply in focused in issues of women’s rights.

Tabitha Kanogo’s book, African Womanhood in Colonial Kenya, shows how women’s identity and social roles have been tied up in the struggles between the traditional and the modern. In this book, Konogo demonstrates the tensions between older concepts of women as property changing with the coming of industrialization and specialization. As in seen in the west, with industrialization comes a correspondingly increased sense of individualism.

Comparative examination between clitoridectomy in Kenya and foot-binding in China suggests that ideas of feminism and equality are central to modernization. As shown in the Konogo book, the conflicts over clitoridectomy are multi-dimensional with regards to their desirability, its symbolism as an act of womanhood as well as the social mores attached to that act.

The difference between social efforts to ban clitoridectomy in Kenya and similar movements to ban foot-binding in China is that the practice of foot-binding became linked with backwardness. This concept of backwardness would not have been possible without an awareness of the opposing principle of modernity. Foot-binding was seen as suppressing women, which in turn repressed the supposed potential of the Chinese people. The Chinese (at least the upper class who wrote and left numerous tracts behind) were supremely aware of China’s place in the world, and that they lived in an era in which China was weak while the Europeans were strong and respected in the world. Therefore it was for reasons of national pride and modernity that foot-binding was eradicated, and not for concerns of the women themselves.

Harry Potter and the Stages of Life

2006-05-30T13:53:00.000-04:00

Sigh. I just read over on mugglenet.com that the last Harry Potter book will probably not be released until next year. By this time next year, if all goes according to plan, I should have my Masters and finished at least another novel.

I don't know about anyone else, but I there are some books that I remember as marking certain periods in my life.

My freshman year, I remember sitting out on the Quad at Vassar with my friend Laura and her family for her birthday. Her mother had gotten her a copy of this new book that had apparently been making waves over in the U.K. called "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone."

My sophomore year, I procrastinated on declaring my major, by reading "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets."

I don't remember where I was for the third Harry Potter book, but oddly enough, it's probably my favorite of the entire series.

When the fourth book came out, I was working at my first real professional job out of college, at a law firm and becoming increasingly depressed at the thought of working in cubicle farms for the rest of my life. Harry Potter 5 took me into another world.

Harry Potter 6? Two good friends of mine from college got married that weekend. And my maid of honor gave me the copy as a bridal shower gift.

There are other books that I will always remember. When I was 12, Robin McKinely's The Hero and the Crown made me realize that it was ok for girls to go out to kill dragons.

And I stayed up all night, until about 5 a.m., the night before 9/11, unable to put down Guy Gavriel Kay's The Lions of Al-Rassan.

I'm sure there are other books that mark periods of my life, but at the moment, this is what I can remember.

How about you?

Heather in Senegal

2006-05-30T12:28:00.000-04:00

My friend Heather is a new Peace Corps volunteer in Senegal! She just arrived in April, and you can read all about her fascinating experiences there at her blog.

Some highlights:

April 3
Peace Corps has all new volunteers do a demystification visit during their first week in the country. It is a wonderful idea. I went to Kaffrin with another girl from my stage (group of volunteers who started at the same time), and we stayed with Anne, an urban agriculture volunteer. I expect my work will be similar to hers. On the first day she took us to the market for bean sandwiches and grocery shopping. This was a shocking experience. The market is a hot, crowded, loud, fish-smelling series of stands where people sell vegetables, fish, fabric, sandals, and other things. The stands are generally just tables on which the salable items are displayed in piles. Because I would not push people or force my way forward, I kept getting separated from the others. We went to the market every morning, and gradually I got used to the sites. An elderly man who sells vegetables likes to joke with Anne about her being his wife. When he saw Anne with two new females he broke into praises to Allah for giving him three wives, and he hollered threats at all nearby men lest they look at his wives.

April 19
Toubob: this is a word that basically means “different,” but can be taken as “honky” or as something more offensive. Kids call out “toubob!” every time they see me. Sometimes I reply in French or Pular that I’m not white. I say I’m black and ask where the white person is. Today I responded by saying “Asalam allekum,” which is the basic greeting. They toubobbed me again, so I repeated myself in a tone of voice that said, “Come now, I know your manners are better than that.” I like that some tones of voices seem universal. They laughed and returned the greeting in a tone that sounded a tad apologetic. If the kids are close to my home I usually introduce myself. I have also tried singing toubobtoubobtoubobtoubob back to the kids and doing a jig. Today a volunteer in her second year told us that regardless of how affective our work is, for the next two years we will be like a cartoon show on TV for our villagers.

May 24
I am sure I mispronounce many words, but my family has taken delight in correcting me on two in particular. At the end of every meal, completely regardless of how much I have eaten, as soon as I put down my spoon or otherwise indicate that I am done everyone at the bowl yells "eat!" It is as if I am a conductor giving a cue to a well trained choir. I have been responding, "mi haddi." That is what it sounded like everyone else was saying when they are full. No, they have been saying "mi harri," and I have been concluding each meal by announcing that I am circumcised. My second colorful error has been saying, "I soiled my pants," when I intended to say, "I need."

A Feminist Take on Memorial Day

2006-05-30T11:58:00.000-04:00

I know this is late, after Memorial Day, but I've been reading a number of touching tributes to the men and women who have served in our armed forces. Despite feelings about the use and justification of war, it is important to acknowledge those who have chosen to put their lives to a greater cause. When people sign up for the military, they're signing up because they believe in something bigger than themselves (discussion of whether their beliefs are misplaced is for another day), tapping into the same motivation that drives people to join the Peace Corps.

However, there is one group that I think is always forgotten. A group that, by its very nature, does not lend itself to glorious stories, and heroic poetry, but yet, is just as vital to our nation. It's the people that get left behind, the friends and family who watch their loved ones go off. My views as a feminist is what made me think about this, because in the past, it's been the mothers and wives who are forgotten. Women's contribution to war efforts, yes, are arguably well-recognized in WWI and WWII, because they constituted some of the largest war mobilization efforts known. But I'm talking about in general, the Korean and Vietnam war mothers, wives, and sisters, and survivors of those who died in smaller battles that were never named.

Yes, there is strength and courage in those serving the military. But it also takes a certain strength and courage to watch those you love go off, risk their lives, and also help them take care of their wounds, mental and physical when they return. Today, it's not just the women who get left behind, but also the fathers, brothers, uncles and sons. Just as we need to recognize those who serve, we need to thank those who support and love our defenders.

On the Romance Genre: a historical take

2006-05-26T15:10:00.000-04:00

There's bit a lot of discussion about what precisely defines the romance genre over at Dearauthor.com, MiladyInsanity, JorrieSpencer, Brianna's Mommy, and Bev's Books to name a few. Most readers are of the opinion that a romance HEA must involve the hero and the heroine staying together. They don't have to be married or have kids, but they must stay together.

I commented on DearAuthor.com that:

I think the definition of a HEA is changing and that’s what Aphrodisia is responding to: as long as the woman is happy, it doesn’t matter if she ends up with the hero or not. As long as everyone is happy at the end, to me, that means it is an HEA, regardless of who she’s with at the end. I don’t care if she’s partnered, married, with kids, etc, as long as she’s happy. I’m also satisfied with a “Happy for now” ending, which implies that there’s an ongoing story. So, no I don’t think it’s false advertising for Aphrodisia to stretch the genre to accomodate these changing attitudes which is what I think they’re doing.

Racy Li commented back on DearAuthor.com that:

Markets change and evolve to meet the changing tastes of society. Romance is changing to accomodate the women of the “Sex in the City” generation. I think in a few more years, it will change again, to meet the tastes of teenagers who grew up reading romances in Japanese anime.

Bev responded that:

I mean it sounds completely reasonable that any “living” thing will change over time. The same is true of literary genres, I’m sure. What we read now is definitely not the same thing published and read 100 years ago.
The problem is that there are limits, even to this type of change. Limits imposed, not by readers or even publishers, but by our own human natures. Do genres exist because we created them the way they are or do they exist because we exist and we need ways to explain that very existence to ourselves? The world around us changes, but we as human beings do not. Not that quickly, at any rate.

Bev is coming from the position that a romance is ultimately a story about a relationship (we'll leave discussions of threesomes and gay/lesbian relationships for another day) between two people, usually a man and a woman. A romance requires an life affirming HEA (happily ever after) which means that the two people must stay together.

Others, including, Angie over at Brianna's Mommy

But if you’re talking about the heroine’s HEA alone, you’re not talking about romance. Romance is about a relationship and the HEA there. If you have anything else, you have chick-lit or women’s fiction. I can’t agree that Romance is changing to include a story that’s not about the couple. Because you’re not redefining romance then, you’re just writing a different genre and calling it romance.

I decided to do some lazy research and did some googling about the history of the novel and the romance genre.

On Wikipedia (yes my history colleagues I know Wikipedia is not exactly the most reliable, but that's why I said lazy research) it says:

As a literary genre, romance refers to a style of heroic prose and verse narrative current in Europe from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance.

The term was coined to distinguish popular material in the vernacular (at first the Romance languages French, Portuguese and Spanish, later German, English and others) from scholarly and ecclesiastical literature in Latin.

You can read the whole article here, but essentially, what the article says is that the term romance originated the describe stories that were different from Biblical stories. These were stories like those of the Le Morte D'Arthur cycle, the Odyssey, which later grew to include myths like the Scandinavian and Norse sagas.

Wikipedia also notes that one of the most distinguished literary critics of the 20th century, Northrup Frye, wrote in his ground-breaking work, Anatomy of Criticism:

Thus if the hero is superior in kind to men, the action is a myth. If the hero is superior in degree to others and to his environment, the mode is that of Romance, where the actions are marvellous, but the hero is human. "The hero of romance moves in a world in which the ordinary laws of nature are slightly suspended: prodigies of courage and endurance, unnatural to us, are natural to him, and enchanted weapons, talking animals, terrifying ogres and witches, and talismans of miraculous power violate no rule of probability... Romance divides into two main forms: a secular form dealing with chivalry and knight-errantry, and a religious form devoted to legends of saints. Both lean heavily on miraculous violations of natural law for their interest as stories."

Thus, the definition of a "romance" as a story of a relationship between a man and a woman, is actually quite a recent and modern invention.

I tend to think of "romance" in a broader more historical sense, which reflects my interest in myths and fantasy. It involves love, but it can also involve action and adventure. For me, as long as an ending is true to the story, then I'm good with the story.

However, with that said, I understand what many people are saying. I like stories with happy endings too. (It's probably the main reason why I've stayed away from acclaimed fantasy series like Roger Zelazany and George R. R. Martin, though I finally picked up Game of Thrones the other day.) But for me a happy ending can just as easily have the hero and heroine going their separate ways, as long as it remains true to the story. Sometimes I think modern romance writers try too hard for the HEA and as a result it seems forced. I think that's why I tend to like romance and stories of relationships outside of the romance genre mainly because, well it seems more fitting to me.

And thus, in conclusion, it don't think it IS false advertising to have a book labeled "romance" if the hero and heroine don't end up together, because in fact, it marks a return to the traditional wider definition of what a romance is. Though clearly most modern romance readers seem to want the definitively modern HEA where the couple remain together, which means the market is likely to stay that way. However there if there is room for a subcategory of vampire romances, there is definitely room for a romance subcategory with non-traditional endings.

p.s. I'm new to this blogging thing, so if anyone has any objections to me mass-quoting so much, just email me and I'll take them down, though I think I put links back to the original site for every quote.

Interpretations of Culture and Globalization part 1

2006-05-26T11:48:00.000-04:00

This is part one of a multi-part meditation on culture and globalization and Africa that I wrote a month or so ago.

---

In modern discussions regarding globalization, the issue of cultural imperialism and a growing homogeneity often arises with regard to less developed societies, usually in the Third World. Well meaning individuals argue that globalization instills a Western-dominated homogeneity that oppresses minorities and eradicates culture differences that ought to be preserved. They point to the plethora of big box Wal-Marts, McDonald’s, and Starbucks crowding out the multiplicity of local variations. They lament a semi-undefined uniformity, citing an array of disappearing traditions, from speaking English to loss of “traditional” dress.

However, such individuals are engaging in a different sort of cultural arrogance; it is a subconscious arrogance that individuals who are exposed to Western products and Western ways will automatically toss aside all facets of their culture, in favor of the vastly superior West. It also fails to recognize the complexities of culture.

What they fail to realize is that culture cannot be reduced simply to clothing, food, and cars. Culture is much more complex then that. Anthropologist Clifford Geertz, who pioneered the theories of symbolic anthropology, has argued that culture consists of the thoughts, beliefs, and actions that a group of people uses to interpret the world around them. Meaning is ascribed through socially agreed upon symbols that guide human behavior. These created symbols form “webs of significance,” which define human behavior. Culture and its symbols are learned through experience and interaction. As the human experience shifts and changes over time, so do the meanings ascribed to these symbols.

Long Island Food Review: La Brasa

2006-05-26T11:20:00.000-04:00

I was intrigued by a new Columbian restaurant tucked away next to a Getty gas station and a Laundromat. La Brasa Restaurant, I am happy to report is one of those wonderful old-fashioned mom and pop restaurants that are becoming rarer and rarer. It’s a tiny little charmer of a place, the décor slightly fancier than a diner or a luncheonette, with white table cloths, but with a tv playing Spanish soaps. At the moment, they’re redoing their prices on the overhead lit up fast food menu, so when you walk in, just walk up to the register and grab a paper menu.

Rotisserie chicken is their specialty (and at $8 to for a whole chicken to go, quite reasonable), but don’t just limit your choosings to chicken. I’ve been back several times and I’ve never been disappointed. On Weekdays between 11:30pm to 3pm they serve great $7 lunch specials that come with a ton of food. (For a small little girl like me, this ends up being my dinner too.

I’ve had the Friday lunch special, Arroz con Pollo (shredded chicken rice) with salad, sweet plantains & soup. This was the Columbian version of fried rice with chicken, peas, carrots and it was quite nice. The chicken soup was a lovely old-fashioned home-made Columbian soup, with bits of cilantro and yucca, though lacking in the meat. It reminded me of my dad’s homemade Chinese soups where the point of a soup is the flavor of the liquid, and not what’s in the soup.

Today though, even though it was Friday, the guy let me order the Wednesday lunch special, which was pork, sweet plantains, soup, and rice and beans. The grilled pork was perfectly seared, juicey and full of flavor. The rice and beans, were perfect as always as was the plantains (and let me just say that before I tried this place, I hated plantains. That’s how good they are). And the beef soup, was wonderfully flavored, though again, lacking in the meat with only one chunk. But all that food for just $7!

I also got an order of empanadas for only $1.25. You get three, and I have to say, the texture was perfect, with a crunchy corn meal crust filled with pork and onion on the inside. Dip it in their homemade hot sauce of cilantro, garlic, and onion and you’ve got a great appetizer.

This place also prides itself on Columbian hot dogs “perros calientes” with 9 different kinds and for good reason. They’re served on a large sesame roll with a combination of lettuce, onion, ketchup, mayo, mustard, jalapeno and pineapple sauce and are wonderful. Prices range from $3.50 for the Super Perro (mozzarella, sauces, lettuce and onion) to $5 for the Mixto (topped with chorizo, chicken, mozzarella, sauces, lettuce and onion). Excellent hot dog, but this is definitely another case of quality over quantity (we Americans are too fat anyway) as the toppings are much larger than the skinny, but wonderfully flavored hot dog.

This is not to say every dish is like that, quality over quantity. You want meat? Order the Picada, which is a literally, a tray of meat, including chopped grilled steak, chicken, fired pork skin, chorizo, yucca, sweet plantains, green plantains, potato and corn cakes. The thing is massive; you could feed 2 people on it easily, and if you have girls with small appetites, you could feed 4. At $19.95, it’s a bargain.

Support old-fashioned mom-and-pop restaurants and local small businesses in Suffolk County. Stop by La Brasas, just a 5 minute straight shot down Hawkins Ave off of Exit 60 of the L.I.E. Grab some food and take it to the Hamptons with you.

La Brasa Restaurant
426 Hawkins Ave
Lake Ronkonkoma, NY 11779
631-467-3278

Barbara Bauer - Scam Artist

2006-05-25T12:12:00.000-04:00

There are literary agents out there, and then there are scam artists.

Barbara Bauer is one of them.

Absolute Write was a long standing writers' forum who over the years, received a number of complaints about certain "agencies" who promised authors publication in exchange for reading fees. (Note to all writers: NO respectable Lit Agent should EVER ask for money up front).

They helpfully compiled a list of 20 worst "Preditors and Editors." Barbara Bauer complained, called the server for Absolute Write said that they were libeling her.

Miss Snark explains here why Barbara Bauer is a scam artist. (And although Miss Snark is an anonymous agent blogger, she is well-known and respected in by numerous, named and known publishing people who blog online.) Barbara Bauer had also tried to get Teresa Nielsen Hayden, of Making Light and of Tor, fired (Read the whole story here).

So I am joining Miss Snark's and Jim Hines's efforts to Googlebomb Barbara Bauer by linking to these sites and reposting the list of

20 Worst Agents

* The Abacus Group Literary Agency
* Allred and Allred Literary Agents (refers clients to "book doctor" Victor West of Pacific Literary Services)
* Capital Literary Agency (formerly American Literary Agents of Washington, Inc.)
* Barbara Bauer Literary Agency
* Benedict & Associates (also d/b/a B.A. Literary Agency)
* Sherwood Broome, Inc.
* Desert Rose Literary Agency
* Arthur Fleming Associates
* Finesse Literary Agency (Karen Carr)
* Brock Gannon Literary Agency
* Harris Literary Agency
* The Literary Agency Group, which includes the following:
Children's Literary Agency
Christian Literary Agency
New York Literary Agency
Poets Literary Agency
The Screenplay Agency
Stylus Literary Agency (formerly ST Literary Agency)
Writers Literary & Publishing Services Company (the editing arm of the above-mentioned agencies)
* Martin-McLean Literary Associates
* Mocknick Productions Literary Agency, Inc.
* B.K. Nelson, Inc.
* The Robins Agency (Cris Robins)
* Michele Rooney Literary Agency (also d/b/a Creative Literary Agency and Simply Nonfiction)
* Southeast Literary Agency
* Mark Sullivan Associates
* West Coast Literary Associates (also d/b/a California Literary Services)

If you ever get contacted by one of these agencies, stay away. FAR AWAY.

The Changing Romance Genre

2006-05-25T11:02:00.000-04:00

Hey, the girls over at DearAuthor.com made a post about a comment I made!

And so did Milady Insanity!

Heian Japanese Poetry

2006-05-24T10:28:00.000-04:00

A while ago, I picked up "Ten Thousand Leaves: Love Poems from the Manyoshu," translated from the Japanese by Harold Wright. The Manyoshu is an anthology of poems compiled in the 8th century during the Heian period in Japan. I totally fell in love with some of these:


  2.
  Your favorite flowers
       that are growing near the house
            have bloomed and faded
  Yet, the tears that fill my eyes 
       have not begun to dry



  25.
  Ah, if she were here
       we could listen together
           on this ocean shore
  To the sound of passing cranes
       crying in the rising sun




  111.
  How could I undo
       the sash my wife had tied
           as I departed?
  Unless it tears itself apart
       it will stay there till we meet




132.
To love someone
     who does not return that love
         is like offering prayers
Back behind a starving god 
     within a Buddhist temple

The Heian period roughly from the 700s -1100s is generally considered
Japan's "classic" period when the imperial court was at the height of its power and when Chinese and Confucianist influence was greatest. The poems from the Manyoshu are a collection from more than 400 known writers who wrote about daily life. The book that I have, focuses specifically on the love poems, which were passed between lovers. Strange as it may be to think, Japan used to have a matriarchal culture, and during the Heian period, women kept their own name, titles, and residences. Yes residences; even if you were married, you would live in a separate building from your husband because housing was grouped according to sex. So if you were a married lady at the imperial court, you would live in the women's quarters with your maids and ladies-in-waiting.

I love short poems like these. I admire poetry like this because it can evoke so much, with such a spare use of words. It's a skill that I'm trying to learn (not poetry writing dog knows we have too many bad poets in the world), the use of as few words to convey as much as possible.

Telling Stories

2006-05-22T10:58:00.000-04:00

It's so nice to be done with the semester.

The past week, I just relaxed by going to work, cleaning, reading all the books I've been meaning to read, and writing (yes that's how lame my life is).

I finished my first novella.

I started a new one.

The New York urban fantasy one is on hold for now; I found myself trying to write a novel with an overt message about culture and postmodernism (that's what over-education does), when what I should have been doing was writing a good story.

If you're bored and looking for something decent to read while you're stuck at work, try HerCircle ezine.

From the website:

Storytelling is an integral part of the human experience. Even before there was a written language, people told stories as a means of preserving the ideals and events important to their time. The creation of the alphabet allowed for these histories to be written down and preserved, thus forming the foundation of the literary canon that we know today.

Literature in Her Circle is divided into four departments: What She Knows seeks to explore the multiplicity of women's realities and to identify prescribed modes of behavior; Breaking Form represents a departure from those realities and behaviors; War Cry denotes stories that consider the role of women in conflicts, both theoretical and physical; and Transcending Bounds attempts to re-imagine the many worlds of women, fostering a sense of a world community of women.

HerCircle is also currently accepting submissions...

On Catwoman

2006-05-05T20:02:00.000-04:00

Your results:

You are Catwoman

You have had a tough childhood,
you know how to be a thief and exploit others
but you stand up for society's cast-offs.

Catwoman

90%
Supergirl

80%
Superman

80%
Green Lantern

75%
Wonder Woman

75%
Spider-Man

65%
Batman

60%
The Flash

50%
Robin

45%
Hulk

40%
Iron Man

20%

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz

This is funny, because I have always been a fan of Catwoman. Not a fan of any of the Catwomen that have ever been on screen, not the campy '60s series, not Michelle Pfieffer, and definitely not Halle Berry (that movie was just atrocious). She's an archetype that represents independence and the grey area between good and evil. LIke life, she is unpredictable, and has her own motives, sometimes in self-interest, and sometimes for the good. But you never know and that's why she keeps you on your toes.

I used to read and collect the Catwoman comic book, but I haven't had the money to lately (and plus I thought the that some of the male comic book writers recently put on her title ascribed motivations and thoughts to her that were ludicrous, because NO self-respecting woman would think that way, especially not Catwoman). I do think alot of the female superhero comic book characters get a short shrift and often come out not as well portrayed as the male superheroes (why does Wonder Woman currently have no love interest when every other male superhero does) because of the general lack of women in comics. I'm not saying that it's the fault of male writers, or saying that they are deliberately being sexist, or that there's a conspiracy against women; I think it's just a lack of understanding of how women think.

It's a shame because she truly is a great character.

minor rant about academic writing

2006-05-05T17:50:00.000-04:00

Academic writing is some of the most dogawful writing. Is it the point of people to put you to sleep before you figure out what they're saying so that you can't properly discuss their ideas (Jurgen Habermas I'm talking to you, even though I think you're probably already dead). Maybe they're afraid of their ideas being understood and open to attack. If no one knows what they're saying, then everyone can nod, pretend to be intelligent and agree with them.

And why in the world would you put long lengthy quotations in the middle of a book in Latin or Indonesian and not bother to translate it? Even if you're writing the book for an academic audience, I know lots of academics, and I don't think I know a single one fluent in English, Indonesian and Latin. The point of a quotation is to illustrate a point of your argument; so having a quote in Indonesian is fine, but a little translation might be nice.

I like sparrows.

ok back to writing papers.

this time i mean it

2006-05-03T18:36:00.000-04:00

Ok really no more. I've really got to get my work done. (Funny, how I end up writing more when I procrastinate on writing papers).

I'll be back in a few weeks.

On Popular Fiction

2006-05-03T18:20:00.000-04:00

I think Elizabeth Lowell has written some of the best romances out there. On her website, she has a great article, "Popular Fiction: Why We Read It, Why We Write It" that talks about the difference between "popular" and "literary fiction."

The underlying philosophy of much popular fiction is more optimistic: the human condition might indeed be deplorable, but individuals can make a positive difference in their own and others' lives. The Muses of popular fiction are Zoroaster and Jung, the philosphy more classical than to modern. Popular fiction is a continuation of and an embroidery upon ancient myths and archetypes; popular fiction is good against evil, Prometheus against the uncaring gods, Persephone emerging from hell with the seeds of spring in her hands, Adam discovering Eve.

In a word, popular fiction is heroic and transcendent at a time when heroism and transcendence are out of intellectual favor. Publishers, whose job is to make money by predicting the size of the market for a piece of fiction, are constantly trying guess where a manuscript falls on the scale of white to gray to black. Publishers to understand why readers read the books they do. Marketers give tests, conduct surveys, consult oracles, etc., and constantly rediscover a simple fact: people read fiction that reinforces their often inarticulate beliefs about society, life, and fate....

That is what critics disdain. Heroism. Transcendence.

Romances were once scorned as badly written, formulaic, lurid escapist fare best read in closets. They still are. I suspect they always will be. Their appeal is to the transcendent, not to the political. Their characters, through love, transcend the ordinary and partake of the extraordinary.

That, not bulging muscles or magic weapons, is the essence of heroic myth: humans touching transcendence. It is an important point that is often misunderstood. The essence of myth is that it is a bridge from the ordinary to the extraordinary. As Joseph Campbell said many times, through myth we all touch, if only for a few moments, something larger than ourselves, something transcendent.

Unfortunately, transcendence has been out of intellectual favor for several generations. Thus the war between optimism and pessimism rages on, and popular culture is its battlefield. Universities and newspapers are heavily stocked with people who believe that pessimism is the only intelligent philosophy of life; therefore, optimists are dumb as rocks.

How many times have you read a review that disdains a book because it has a constructive resolution of the central conflict—also known as a happy ending? The same reviewer will then praise another book for its relentless portrayal of the bleakness of everyday life.

This is propaganda, not criticism. What the critics are actually talking about is their own intellectual bias, their own chosen myth: pessimism. They aren't offering an intelligent analysis of an author's ability to construct and execute a novel.

Contrary to what the critics tell us, popular fiction is not a swamp of barely literate escapism; popular fiction is composed of ancient myths newly reborn, telling and retelling a simple truth: ordinary people can do extraordinary things. Jack can plant a beanstalk that will provide endless food; a Tom Clancy character can successfully unravel a conspiracy that threatens the lives of millions. A knight can slay a dragon; a Stephen King character can defeat the massed forces of evil. Cinderella can attract the prince through her own innate decency rather than through family connections; a Nora Roberts heroine can, through her own strength, rise above a savagely unhappy past and bring happiness to herself and others.

I like science fiction, fantasy and romance for the qualities she states here. I like good stories, stories that speak to the essence of life, that transcend boundaries and cultures. If you write something so dense and abstruse (like that word) that few people will be able to understand it, then what's the point of trying to get published?

I told my hubby recently that I was afraid I was becoming a snob. I certainly have the academic credentials to out-snob many snobs. But now that I consider the "popular fiction" that I like to read and write, I suppose that will keep me from being a snob.

I suspect that is probably why I will never enter an MFA program. No weird post modernist stuff for me!

War of the Worlds and African Colonization...

2006-05-02T18:07:00.000-04:00

...or how science fiction can be subversive. The following below is a very chopped up version (for brevity) of a paper I wrote for a science fiction class this past semester. I was also taking an African history class at the time, and was struck by the parallels between, War of the Worlds and African colonization. Science fiction originally began as a form of social critique (think Frankenstein, Fahrenheit 451, etc).

Maybe that's why I like science fiction so much :)

---

It is difficult to overemphasize the effects of technology, and the Industrial Revolution had on European motivations and justifications for colonizing Africa. Written in 1898, H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds was a social critique of the ways in which Europeans linked technological superiority to intellectual and racial superiority.

In War of the Worlds, Martian technology is used as a manifest representation of their intellectual superiority. The Martians bring mysterious weapons that resemble modern military armaments, including poison gas and heat rays. These weapons enable them to assert virtually unlimited power over the halpless humans whose weapons are useless against them. Because of their technology, the Martians act without fear of human reprisal.

Similarly, European technological superiority went virtually unchallenged in nineteenth century Africa. Reflecting the twin ages of industrialization and imperialism in which War of the Worlds was written, the connection between intelligence, technology, and racial superiority was intrinsically linked to justifications of imperialism. In the late 18th and 19th century, Britain’s society was transformed from an agricultural economy to one of manufacturing. Part of this revolution was made possible by technological innovations such as steam engines and factory machines. The increased efficiency in manufacturing allowed countries like Great Britain to dominate the globe economically, culturally and militarily.

At the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885, various countries of Europe divided and appropriated the African continent for its resources. In War of the Worlds, the Martians come to earth for the some of the same reasons that Europeans went to Africa: raw materials and natural resources (other reasons were to be beyond comprehension for humans). In War of the Worlds, the Martians use human blood, taken by force to sustain themselves, mimicking European nations who built their empires and economies on slavery. In similar fashion, as a consequence of the Industrial Revolution, the high demands for rubber led to brutal exploitation of the peoples in the Congo area.

Although the advanced intelligence of the Martians is shown through their technology, Martian technology is also used as a way to challenge conventional nineteenth century definitions equating technological superiority with intellectual superiority. When discussing the tall tentacled Martian handling machines, the narrator remarks upon alien machines complete lack of wheel technology. Wells utilized the advanced Martian technology to challenge European concepts linking wheel production to technological progress. In contrast to the widespread idea that the wheel was intrinsically tied to technological progress, the advanced and highly intelligent Martians in novel did not use the wheel.

The aliens’ lack of the wheel can be seen as an attack at imperialist and racist judgments against Africans during the era of imperialism. One of the rationalizations used for the conquest of Africa was the fact that sub-Saharan Africans were intellectually inferior due to their lack of the wheel. As the wheel was considered the basis of all human technology, the Africans’ failure to use the wheel was seen as a deficit of progress and intelligence. However, as European colonists soon found themselves, the frequent rains of the tropical environment made wheel useless in sub-Saharan Africa.

In an allegory of past European efforts to penetrate Africa, the Martians are not defeated by humans, but by tiny bacteria. One of the major factors that had previously limited European expansion into Africa was unfamiliar diseases. However, advances in medicine and technology helped Europeans arrive, and stay in Africa. Written at the dawning of this scientific revolution, Wells’ social critique via allegory of foreign invasion in the era of European expansion, was a cautionary tale.

Against Moral Superiority

2006-05-02T13:38:00.000-04:00

Arrogance and a belief in moral superiority turns me off.

This is why I dislike the languages of Bush, who suggests that you're either against America or for America. He sees black and white world, with Americans firmly on the side of the good. The problem is, is that when you believe yourself to be so strongly on the side of good, and so morally superior to everyone else, that you can't handle the slightest bit of criticism, you're in danger of becoming the very evil you fight for. How can you fight evil, without recognizing the evil within yourself?

In an article titled "The Rehabilitation of the Cold War Liberal," Peter Beinhart, in this past weekend's Sunday NYTimes Mag, articulates my position better than I could ever express it.

"Even more important, they described America itself differently. Americans may fight evil, they argued, but that does not make us inherently good. And paradoxically, that very recognition makes national greatness possible. Knowing that we, too, can be corrupted by power, we seek the constraints that empires refuse. And knowing that democracy is something we pursue rather than something we embody, we advance it not merely by exhorting others but by battling the evil in ourselves. The irony of American exceptionalism is that by acknowledging our common fallibility, we inspire the world."

That is precisely why I'm a liberal.

Unfortunately thanks to Democratic incoherence, the people who we are trying to reach out to have no clue what we stand for, except hating Bush. That's no way to win or run a country. A couple weeks ago, The Economist magazine put it best when they called the American problem "Incoherence vs. Incompetence."

If things keep going the way their going, Democrats and liberals deserve to lose 'cause we ain't offering anything anyone can understand.

Roasting Bush

2006-05-01T15:33:00.000-04:00

This is so great. It's a transcript of Steven Colbert roasting Bush at the recent White House Press Correspondents' dinner. I'm not a big fan of the show, but this is hilarious.

Roasting Bush

"Credo"

2006-04-30T16:15:00.000-04:00

Ok, big surprise. So I'm still a procrastinator. Here's an interesting post by Cassandra, a conservative blogger who I read frequently. I definitely don't always agree with everything she says, but here's an interesting post on Credo, in which she writes about organized religion and how people tend to see "institutional vs. individual vices."

Here's my response:

Why is it people always conflate individual with institutional vices?...People carry their failures within them, and the Church is at worst a vehicle rather than a root cause of their inhumanity to their fellow men.

That is pretty much a universal truth that doesn’t just apply to Christian churches. There is a big difference between individual and institutional vices, but one that is not seen. There are good, well meaning Communists, Evangelical Christians, Muslims, Socialists, Republicans, Democrats, who are dedicated to making the world a better place through peaceful, interactive means in a way that doesn’t see the “other” as an enemy, but rather colleagues to work with. Colleagues, who may draw from a different set of values, and perspectives, but colleagues nonetheless in this crazy game of life. Unfortunately, depending on who we are, and what we’ve been exposed to, we hear those categories, we think Stalin, Eric Rudolph, bin Laden, Jerry Falwell and Jesse Jackson.

All beliefs are not created equal; and I’m not arguing for moral equivalence. But we need to understand that beliefs come from experience, and that each person’s particular experience, life story, and perspective is just as unique and valid as our own. Once we understand their experience, then you can begin to understand why their beliefs are what they are. You can’t shift a person’s perspective until you know where they stand.

We tend to move in social circles with people who are “like us,” and thus our only representations of “others” are the media. That is why it is important to recognize that the loudest, most repugnant/ridiculous voice does not necessarily represent the millions more who are actually making a difference, albeit in a less showy, media-attractive manner.

I believe that dialogue and conversation with those we disagree with are key to changing the world, one sentence at a time.

And cue the hippie bongo drums… “Kumbaya" :)

Peace

2006-04-24T12:19:00.000-04:00

“Peace means something different from ‘not fighting’. Those aren’t peace advocates, they're ‘stop fighting’ advocates. Peace is an active and complex thing and sometimes fighting is part of what it takes to get it.” (Jo Walton)

from Making Light

busy busy busy

2006-04-23T22:29:00.000-04:00

I've got the end-of-the-semester caffeine hyped up busy busy busyness.

Needless to say, I'll be on hiatus for the next few weeks or so as I attempt to write about a hundred pages worth of academic blah blah blah.

Enjoy the weather! It's gonna get hot soon!

Food Philosophy

2006-04-20T13:39:00.000-04:00

"Americans have no taste."

That's what alot of foreigners visiting this country say. All they eat is McDonald's and KFC. And after they eat that, they swear off of American food entirely (to be fair, have you ever tried an "ethnic food," like Bangladeshi, and hated it? Did you eat the Americanized version, or the authentic version? There's a big difference.) And I have to partially agree.

Many Americans, have NO CONCEPT of what good food is. It is NOT Prego tomato sauce or Kraft macroni & cheese, or Wonderbread. Many have never tried fresh fruit off the tree, vegetables in season, or a freshly killed fish. (Agribusinesses have plasticized they way we eat, but that’s another rant for another day.) Which is such a shame, because America today has arguably has some of the most diverse eating options available in the entire history of humankind.

In the area of Long Island that I live, the restaurant scene is predominated by either very upscale restaurants, or chain restaurants like Friendly’s, Olive Garden and Pizza Hut. It’s been hard finding affordable (an absolute necessity for a grad student) food that is also good, without resorting to chain restaurants. But I’ve been able to find some. Jane & Michael Stern’s (also authors of "Roadfood") book “Eat Your Way Across the USA” was about finding the best American food in local diners, shacks, buffets etc. They wrote:

In most parts of this country, the truly wonderful food is not the pricey fare sold in linen-tablecloth dining rooms. From the po’boys of Cajun country and the pig pickin’s of the Carolinas to the pie places of the upper Midwest and the old-time pizza parlors of the Northeast, America’s most distinguished food tends to be of-the-people-fare, eaten without pomp-and-circumstance and fine wine, but with a large stack of paper napkins and a tumbler full of iced tea or a cold beer on the side.

I agree with their assessment of American food, and a few years ago, got to follow their book across parts of the country (I still have dreams about the German potatoes at Otis Café; a tiny little local neighborhood place in Otis, Oregon). But I would argue that there is more to American food. America is about the diversity of cultures. It is also about Santa Fe Tamales, and California banh mi (Vietnamese sandwiches), and Long Island Turkish food.

Don’t eat the food of people who have been in America a long time. Eat the food of the people who just got here; many of them come from places where vegetables picked yesterday was the norm, and they truly know how to make the best of their food. The secret is to find out where these poorer immigrants (usually ethnic minorities) shop and eat. In the coming days, I’ll post some real gems that I’ve found on Long Island on this blog.

Great Expectations

2006-04-19T12:18:00.000-04:00

My friend Eric has found himself in the middle of a cultural debate after writing a review of an anthology of “Irish” fantasy in which people jumped all over him for his expectations of what “Irish” fantasy. No leprechauns and wood elves, he said. Others replied, but that’s not what “Irish” fantasy is! You’re being racist!

Poor Eric is not racist by any means but I think his critics have some valid points. I think he’s a victim of how the demands of the mass market subversively shapes our how we view the world (such as the way that teenage girls think they must all have bodies like Playboy bunnies). In this case, it shapes how we view “other” cultures. Read my comment, posted to his blog, (it's the third comment down) here.

Crunchies

2006-04-19T10:56:00.000-04:00

It's 10:55AM and I have the worst craving for a "Crunchie." Crunchies are a made by Cadbury, sold in the British diaspora (Canada, New Zealand, UK, etc), but not so much here. They're this honeycombed crunchy sponge toffee covered with milk-chocolatey yumminess. I had a small bar this past Sunday because a cousin from Ireland sent over some. And now I want more!

Silly Americans. Why is there no market for Crunchies here? Because if there were, Cadbury, would definitely be selling them and making money here! Instead we get those stupid cream-filled Easter eggs.

Trading books

2006-04-19T10:27:00.000-04:00

So I just discovered zunafish.com, and I'm totally hooked. It's a site where you can post DVDs, cds, and (most importantly for me) paperbacks that you don’t want and swap them with someone else. I read a lot (this is probably my personal mantra), I would guess, around 30-40 books a year. And while I enjoy most of them, I don’t enjoy them enough that I know I’ll read them again. This is a fantastic way to exchange my old books, for books I want. So far I’ve traded:

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway for Stardust by Neil Gaiman

Do Penguins Have Knees for Sex and Religion: A Textbook

Comfort Woman by Nora Okja Keller for We Are the Stories We Tell: Short Stories by North American Women since 1945 ed. by Wendy Martin

Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce for First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers by Loung Ung

Unfortunately you have to pay a $1 to the site for the swap, but I figure, at least these books are not collecting anymore dust on my shelf and not going into a landfill, and furthermore, I'm making sure that the books that I'm getting are not going into a landfill.

My annoyances about this site are:

-limited selection (probably because it's relatively new)
-no categories for Fantasy or Romance (hello, it's like the largest market there is in all of American publishing!)
-limited science fiction section

Still, I'm looking forward to getting rid of the two bags of books collecting dust in my closet.

Tortures

2006-04-18T10:36:00.000-04:00

A poem about history...Can you see it?

---

Tortures
Wislawa Szymborska
trans. Stanislaw Baranczak & Clare Cavanagh?

Nothing has changed.
The body is susceptible to pain,
it must eat and breathe air and sleep,
it has thin skin and blood right underneath,
an adequate stock of teeth and nails,
its bones are breakable, its joints are stretchable.
In tortures all this is taken into account.

Nothing has changed.
The body shudders as it shuddered
before the founding of Rome and after,
in the twentieth century before and after Christ.
Tortures are as they were, it's just the earth that's grown smaller,
and whatever happens seems right on the other side of the wall.

Nothing has changed. It's just that there are more people,
besides the old offenses new ones have appeared,
real, imaginary, temporary, and none,
but the howl with which the body responds to them,
was, is and ever will be a howl of innocence
according to the time-honored scale and tonality.

Nothing has changed. Maybe just the manners, ceremonies, dances.
Yet the movement of the hands in protecting the head is the same.
The body writhes, jerks and tries to pull away,
its legs give out, it falls, the knees fly up,
it turns blue, swells, salivates and bleeds.

Nothing has changed. Except for the course of boundaries,
the line of forests, coasts, deserts and glaciers.
Amid these landscapes traipses the soul,
disappears, comes back, draws nearer, moves away,
alien to itself, elusive, at times certain, at others uncertain of its
own existence,
while the body is and is and is
and has no place of its own.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/april_is/message/10

"Breaking Point"

2006-04-13T10:29:00.000-04:00

I love Suzanne Brockmann’s books. Every time I pick one up I learn something new. Right now I’m reading “Breaking Point,” which came out last year. What I really like about how this book is that she gets the reader engaged into the characters as human beings without emphasizing their race or class background. I’m a quarter of the way through the book and only now did I realize that one of the main characters is of Indian descent. Another of the main characters is gay, and not a silly frivolous man, but a real, tough FBI agent. It doesn’t matter (it shouldn’t matter) but it makes the story so much more realistic because it shows modern American society as it is: multicultural. She does an excellent job of writing minority characters without emphasizing their…minority-ness, and rather shows them as human beings.

When I finish reading this book, I may just have to go out and buy it now rather than later…

Finn's Emotional Mini-bio

2006-04-13T10:10:00.000-04:00

Right now I'm reading Nancy Kress's Write Great Fiction: Characters, Emotion & Viewpoint : (Techniques and exercises for crafting dynamic characters and effective viewpoints). I find it helpful when stuck to go back to the basics and re-evaluate what's going on characterwise and plotwise. I figured I'd try one of the excercises in the book for my MC.

--

Emotional Mini-Bio for Finn

Name: Finn Foxjoy

What 3 or 4 things does this person value most in life: Memory, friendship, loyalty

What 3 or 4 things does she most fear: Never knowing finding her past, doctors, inadvertently hurting someone

What is this person’s basic underlying attitude about life? To know who you are, you need to remember what you were. Everything else falls into place from there.

What does she need to know about another person in order to accept that other as “all right” and trustworthy? She never fully trusts anyone. Everyone she cares for only has pieces of trust; it's all the easier to avoid complete betrayal. Except for Takeo. Takeo has her full and complete confidence. Why? I have no idea. There's a story there that I haven't explored yet.

What would cause this person more pain than anything else possible? Not finding her past; never knowing who she was.

What would this person consider the most wonderful thing that could ever happen to her? Finding her past and a family and place to whom she belongs.

What 3 words would she use to describe herself (accurate or not)? Odd, Lost, Artist

How accurate is her self-description? She paints very well but art is not truly her passion. She doesn’t know this yet.

What organization most embodies this person’s values? Hippies? Artists?

Does she belong to this group? If not why not? Hippies and artists generally don’t have an organization.

Playing on the ipod now: "Diamonds Are Forever," Kanye West.

Foreign News Source Update

2006-04-12T12:14:00.000-04:00

I've updated the post on Foreign News Sources so that all you have to do is just click on the link.

April is National Poetry Month

2006-04-12T10:13:00.000-04:00

Apparently, April is National Poetry Month! I think everyday is made better by a little poetry. Sign up at this list here and get a poem in your email box everyday, along with a link to the poem of the day from last year. In today's email:

---
Anne Hathaway
Carol Ann Duffy

'Item I gyve unto my wife my second best bed …'
(from Shakespeare's will)

The bed we loved in was a spinning world
of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas
where we would dive for pearls. My lover's words
were shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses
on these lips; my body now a softer rhyme
to his, now echo, assonance; his touch
a verb dancing in the centre of a noun.
Some nights, I dreamed he'd written me, the bed
a page beneath his writer's hands. Romance
and drama played by touch, by scent, by taste.
In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on,
dribbling their prose. My living laughing love -
I hold him in the casket of my widow's head
as he held me upon that next best bed.

[Anne Hathaway was Shakespeare's wife so this is, appropriately
enough, a Shakespearean sonnet, a form I've always loved because of
the punch of that last rhyming couplet. I really like the creativity
in building a love poem like this out of that line from Shakespeare's
will, the link between sex and writing, this idealized but still
lovely look at their relationship. The way it's responding to and
referencing all of his work -- the forests, castles, torchlight,
clifftops, seas.

In her book, The World's Wife, Carol Ann Duffy has written a whole
series of poems by the wives of famous men, some of which are
hilarious. I recommend Mrs. Darwin, which you can read here:]

---

Thanks to Anna Louise for posting this over at her blog

A New York Fairytale

2006-04-12T00:30:00.000-04:00

So below is a brief book jacket blurb I wrote as an exercise to try and remind myself not to get lost in random subplots. I've tentatively titled my novel New York Sidhe: An Epic Urban Fairytale (and no, you don't pronounce Sidhe like "city"). Once I finish the novel, it will be interesting to see if there's any resemblance to this blurb written in the beginning.

***

Three years ago, artist Finn Foxjoy was found in a coma in the New Mexican desert, with nothing but a scrap of paper from a fortune cookie company in Queens. She has no memories of what came before, and so comes to gritty glitzy New York City looking for answers. But even mysterious dreams of pixies and fox-spirits don’t prepare her for the true diversity of New York City, where oblivious mortals dine at Rashaaka-run restaurants on Murray Hill, and dance to the beats of Sidhe hip hop artists of Chelsea. Where wisdom and comfort from Hopi elders can be found in 24 hour diners in Queens, selkies dive Brooklyn waters, and angels roost in the crown of the Statue of Liberty.

This is the real New York City.

There are some things that can’t be seen until you close your eyes. And for Finn, New York City is only the beginning…

Never did I even think...

2006-04-11T11:59:00.000-04:00

You Should Be a Film Writer

You don't just create compelling stories, you see them as clearly as a movie in your mind.
You have a knack for details and dialogue. You can really make a character come to life.
Chances are, you enjoy creating all types of stories. The joy is in the storytelling.
And nothing would please you more than millions of people seeing your story on the big screen!

What Type of Writer Should You Be?

Thanks to Wendy who posted this on her blog.

I used to be afraid to call myself a writer

2006-04-06T13:41:00.000-04:00

On of the books that really inspired me to become a writer was Stephen King’s “On Writing.” If anything, it showed me that almost everyone’s first draft sucks and needs editing, and heck, my first drafts didn’t seem all that different from his. Maybe I could be a writer after all!

I went to college intending to be an English major, but found the department so intimidating that I majored in history. (Not that I regret that choice at all, in fact it’s helped me in other ways). But some of the raw talent I saw just blew me away. How could I, ever hope to be a writer when this person could take apart Joyce and Faulkner so easily when I couldn’t even get past the first 10 sentences (though I did make it through both authors eventually, kicking and screaming). These people wanted to write great lit, be hailed by the critics, and be considered American classics.

And me? Little old me with my fantasy/ science fiction heavy bookshelf? Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate good lit too; Cisneros, Rushdie and Dostoevsky come to mind. But I like good stories. I can’t stand the post-modernist lit that critics love (and why is it always about whiny people whining about their lives). Good writing is good, but will your story stand up to translation into Swahili? Into Farsi? May be all the literary lit is good writing, but I like good stories more. I like stories like the Ramayana, the epic of Gilgamesh and that stand the test of time and transcend cultural boundaries.

That’s what I hope to write some day. Only, from a woman's point of view :)

Lovin' Libraries

2006-04-05T16:48:00.000-04:00

I love LibraryThing! This is like, smut for booklovers. I have so many books that it would take me days to enter them all in, so I'm going to keep adding a few day by day. I've added a new category today of "Books I don't own but will buy when I have money some day."

Yes, I know, LibraryThing is only supposed to be for books you actually have. But I read so much and so quickly that I would go poor if I ever had to buy all the books I read. (Plus, I really do not have the space in my tiny apartment). Also, there are some amazing books that have really shaped some aspect of my writing or thinking, that, for various reasons of space and money, I can't own right now.

That's why I love libraries. The local one where I live is fantastic. If they don't have a book, dvd, or cd, they will interlibrary loan it for me from the county. If the county doesn't have it, they will actually go and buy it for me.

Am I being a hypocrite, you ask? Don't I want people to actually BUY my books someday? Well, yes, but I understand that some people don't have the money, or the space. Should people not be able to read because they don't have the money? (Personally, I think it's stupid that in some places, you can watch tv for free, but not read for free). Also, if they read it at the library and enjoy it, maybe they'll think about picking another one of my books if they happen to be browsing at the bookstore.

Going to the library keeps me open-minded and lets me experiment with books I might not normally read. (I don't know about you, but I hate it when I blow $10 on a book and I hate it).

Furthermore, if people like my books enough that they ask that libraries actually buy them, well, it's GREAT. In the weird bizarre world of publishing, somehow sales to libraries count more because the books they buy are never returned (as opposed to the unsold books sitting at your local bookstore that will eventually be returned to the publisher). There are authors I love so much (Guy Gavriel Kay) that I will buy the book AND demand that my local library buy it, just to encourage him to write more.

All of the authors I love and routinely buy, I've found through the library. Once I'm not a poor grad student whose geographic location changes every few years, I WILL buy those books.

WHINE!

2006-04-04T16:58:00.000-04:00

You know it’s slightly to be frustrating than pounding away at a novel for a year or two, only to be half done when you find out that another book just came out with a similar concept as the one you've been working on for 2 years.

I am not going to be a baby.

Just because he wrote about an “other” New York City of elves and fairies, doesn’t mean that I can’t write about a New York that has fairies (to be more specific, it also includes djinn, rakashas and hsien). How many “middle-earth” Tolkien-esque fantasies are there in print? Or more recently, have you notice how many women have been writing vampire and werewolf romance novels? Maybe his novel will be the one that opens a new sub-genre of urban New York fantasy.

Someone once said that there were no new ideas, no new stories, only variants of the same 2/3/4 stories over and over again.

I just have to keep telling myself that.

AGH!!!!!

Say no to language ignorance

2006-04-03T16:39:00.000-04:00

The NYTimes today has a funny article about westerners getting tattoos in Chinese or other Asian characters. You know, after i started studying Chinese and seeing the ridiculous characters brazenly emblazoned on clothing, pillows, and sheets, etc, without any concept of meaning I thought people were silly. But it's just beyond stupid to get a tattoo of words you don't even understand. Tian Tang, an engineering student born in China has an entire blog devoted to misuse of Chinese characters over at http://www.hanzismatter.com. My favorite has got to be the "ease of gas retention" and the Finnish racist who downloaded an "Asian font" and got "Say No to Niggers" tattooed on his back. Riiight. That's what you get for being a racist.

Oh, and is Chinese really the language of god? Tien Tang says, "I don't think so."

I don't agree with the Asian person quoted in the article that it's "insulting" to Asian culture (these people are too busy insulting themselves), but in fact, it's rather...sweet, in a wanting to be multicultural and open-minded kind of way. Though I guess it can also be seen as exoticizing a language system used by millions of people, and as a result, reinforces the idea of Asians as "other" rather than fellow human beings. Whatever. That's their stupidity; and by the way, I have great secret mystical Chinese characters that will touch your soul all for the low price of $99.99.

Of course Asians in Asia are also obsessed with how "cool" Western characters are. Just take a look at Engrish.com. See if you can find Elmo under the toy section

A feminist take on "classic" Sci fi

2006-03-31T13:37:00.000-05:00

I like science fiction. However, when it comes to the "classics" like Heinlein and Asmiov, I can't usually get past the first 5 pages.

To help me write a paper I was working on for the class in science fiction I was taking, I went to a panel at ICON, one of the largest science fiction / fantasy conventions in the Northeast. The panel was about "Favorite Sci/Fi and Fantasy books." Of course almost all the books they talked about were written by white men. This in itself is not a bad thing, except when it shapes the story to such a point that I can't relate to it.

All writers have an agenda, and a writer's personal experience shapes one's world view, as well as their writing. Classic science fiction tends to be very white and male (not that there aren't exceptions like Mary Shelley), and reflect the times in which it was written.

I'm not saying that this is bad or a writer should censor themselves to be more politically correct. But if you are trying to include universal themes, and write a book that you want everyone to read, you need to be aware of your own biases. For me, I will likely never pick up any more Heinlein or Asimov, because I just can't get past female characterization. I'll come across something and just think "no woman, would EVER do that or think that."

Of course it cuts both ways too. I think Sheri S. Tepper is one of the finest science fiction writers out there. But her male characters can be very cardboard (she's a very feminist scifi writer), and as a result, I have male friends who can't read Tepper for the same reason I can't read Heinlen. In both cases, any message is lost.

Yes this is an odd criticism to make for a field of literature based on speculation and imagination. But alot of classic scifi has very subversive social critiques about the society and times in which it was written (Fahrenheit 451 for instance). Those messages, however, are lost upon a growingly diverse audience.

I guess the key is to just focus on the story. Good stories, like that of H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds, the epic of Gilgamesh, or the Ramayana, I think will remain read as long as people can read.

Foreign News Sources

2006-03-29T12:19:00.000-05:00

Today, more than ever, it is so important to understand how the world views us, and perhaps, more importantly, how news in our own society is filtered. All news comes through a filter; what kind of filter depends on where you are. Rather then accepting what our media says about how people see Americans, why don't you see for yourself.

The inclusion of various news sources in this list is in NO WAY an endorsement or statement regarding their credibility. These sources have been largely been selected for the numbers of their readership (although a few government outlets have been included here for contrast and comparison purposes). Regardless of truth, these news sources are the lens with which millions of people see the world and which shape their ideas and perceptions. In some most cases, the news outlets are just like ones in America, free presses in a democracy based in a market economy. However, there are some news sources funded by other governments. (Can you tell the difference?) In any case, this list is compiled so that you may examine and analyze how other peoples of the world may see themselves, and see us.

I've tried to list at least 10 sources from each major region of the world. (Africa was particularly hard; if anyone finds any good reliable African news outlets, please let me know). Also if any links are broken, or direct you to the wrong place, please let me know.

Africa

Regional
West Africa News
http://www.westafricanews.com

Kenya
The Eastern Standard
http://www.eastandard.net/

The Daily Nation
“Kenya’s Premier Newspaper”
http://www.nationmedia.com/dailynation/

South Africa
The Dispatch
A major news outlet of South Africa
http://www.dispatch.co.za/

The Daily Mail and Guardian
“Africa’s first online newspaper”
http://www.mg.co.za/

Asia
China
China View
The English language outlet of the official government news agency (Xinhua)
http://www.chinaview.cn/

China Daily
English version of a major newspaper in China
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/home/index.html

Bangladesh
Bangladesh Observer
“Premier English Daily since 1949”
http://www.bangladeshobserveronline.com

Japan
The Japan Times
"The World's Window on Japan"
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/

The Asahi Shimbun
A major English-language newspaper of Japan; affiliated with the International Herald Tribune
http://www.asahi.com/english/

Hong Kong
The South China Morning Post
Hong Kong's leading English language daily
http://www.scmp.com/

India
The Daily Telegraph
One of India's top English-language newspapers based in Calcutta
http://www.telegraphindia.com/

The Times of India
A major newspaper
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/

Malaysia
The Straits Times
Major English news outlet in Singapore
http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/

Pakistan
The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/pk

Jang
Pakistan’s largest publisher of English and Urdu language print media
http://www.jang.com.pk/thenews/index.html

South Korea
The Korea Herald
South Korea’s largest English language newspaper
http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/index.asp

Taiwan
The Taipei Times
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/

Thailand
The Bangkok Post
Thailand’s premier English language daily
http://www.bangkokpost.com

Europe
Czech Republic
Radio Prague
“The International Service of Czech Radio”
http://www.radio.cz/english/

Greece
Kathimerini
“Greece’s International English Language Newspaper”
http://www.ekathimerini.com/

Hungary
The Budapest Sun
“Hungary’s Leading English Language Newspaper”
http://www.budapestsun.com/

Italy
Ansa
English page of a major Italian news outlet
http://ansa.it/main/notizie/awnplus/english/english.html

Ireland
The Irish Independent
http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/

Poland
The Warsaw Voice
“Polish and Central European Review”
http://www.warsawvoice.pl/

Russia
Itar-Tass
The official government Russian news agency
http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/

Moscow Times
Affiliated with the International Herald Tribune
http://www.moscowtimes.ru/

Pravda
A new source with an interesting history behind its name (see the “about” page).
http://english.pravda.ru/

St. Petersburg Times
http://www.sptimes.ru/

Switzerland
SwissInfo.org
“Switzerland’s News and Information Platform”
http://www.swissinfo.org

Turkey
“Turkey’s First and Only English Daily”
Turkish Daily News
http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/

United Kingdom
BBC World Service
British Broadcasting Corporation
http://www.bbc.co.uk

Latin America and Caribbean

Regional
Latin American Post
http://www.latinamericanpost.com/

Argentina
Buenos Aires Herald
http://www.buenosairesherald.com/

Bermuda
The Royal Gazette
Bermuda’s main newspaper
http://www.theroyalgazette.com

Chile
The Santiago Times
http://www.tcgnews.com/santiagotimes/

Costa Rica
The Tico Times
“Central America’s Leading English language newspaper”
http://www.ticotimes.net/

Cuba
Granma
Cuba’s government controlled news outlet
http://www.granma.cu/ingles/index.html

Jamaica
The Jamaica Gleaner
Jamaica Newspaper “Established in 1834”
http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/

Uruguay
Merco Press
“South Atlantic’s News Agency”
http://www.mercopress.com/index.asp

Venezuela
Venezuela’s Electronic News
“100% free independent of all political factions”
http://www.vheadline.com/main.asp

El Universal
http://english.eluniversal.com/

Middle East

Bahrain
The Bahrain Tribune
http://www.bahraintribune.com

Egypt
Egypt Today
“The Magazine of Egypt”
http://www.egypttoday.com

Iran
The Tehran Times
Iran's major English newspaper
http://www.tehrantimes.com/

Israel
The Jerusalem Post
http://www.jpost.com/

Jordan
Jordan Times
http://www.jordantimes.com

Lebanon
The Beirut Daily Star
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/home2.asp

Palestinian Territories
The Palestine Chronicle
http://www.palestinechronicle.com

Qatar / Regional
Al Jazeera
Major Arab News network
http://english.aljazeera.net/HomePage

Saudi Arabia / Regional
The Arab News
The Leading English-language daily of the Middle East
http://www.arabnews.com/

United Arab Emirates
The Khaleej Times
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/Index00.asp

Liberal flack

2006-03-29T11:22:00.000-05:00

Lately, I’ve gotten some flack from my liberal colleagues for my critiques of what’s wrong with the Democrats, and the problems with progressives in America. I’ve also been critiqued by some for trying to stay on top of the “conservative” media.

And yet, they ask, “why are so many people deceived by Bush and the Republicans?”
They are baffled, by the fact that half the country leans right. And yet, conservatives are just “crazy ignorant uneducated religious people.”

They’re not.

Republicans have a message, that reaches and resonates with half of the American people. If you think that all those people are crazy, and that there’s no use reasoning with them, well then, what’s the point in trying anyway? Save your breath and other people's time.

Liberals would do well to study the conservative message. What are the values and beliefs behind them that people find so appealing? What is it in the Republican message that is so much more convincing than ours? We need to respond to these values and these beliefs, because clearly, if no one is being convinced by “so-called clearly superior” liberal arguments, than we need to change our tactics. And if you are so convinced of your own righteousness that you think that people should change to suit your beliefs, well that’s the definition of a close-minded person.

When I heard that Bush was re-elected, I was furious. Absolutely furious. But not at the Republicans; they did exactly what they needed to do. I was ashamed to be a progressive, because clearly, we did not get our message out.

If I were a were a wise old Chinese poet scholar, I’m sure I could find something pithy to say, like, “Do not criticize your neighbor’s house until you fix your own.”

I hold liberals to a higher standard for the same reasons I hold Americans to a higher standard in world affairs. We should know better.

More on that later.

Baghdad Burning

2006-03-28T16:08:00.000-05:00

It is really amazing how the internet is creating a global community. Tired of reading filtered news? Well with the internet you can find out exactly what people are thinking almost anywhere in the world. "River" is an Iraqi woman who has been blogging from Iraq for the past 3 years.

According to this article over at the English page of Al-Jazeera the blog has been nominated for the British Samuel Johnson prize in nonfiction, which is the world's richest nonfiction prize.

Of course, remember, blogs are stories from one person's point of view. Regardless of whether you think this is true or false, it represents and reinforces beliefs that are commonly held, beliefs, that citizens in a globalized world will have to reckon with.

You can read her blog here: http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/

Thanks to Amitava Kumar, a professor at my old alma mater.

Writers: Researching NYC?

2006-03-21T14:16:00.000-05:00

Here is an excellent list of NYC-related blog links from the Gotham Gazette . Some of the more interesting ones include:

NYPD Rants - where cops go to let off some steam

Overheard in New York - hilarious; snippets of conversations overheard on the streets

Gothamist - Everything and anything about NYC

Gawker - media gossip

I love New York and am so addicted to these sites. For anyone who is writing anything set in NYC, you NEED to look at these sites!

Happy Equinox!

2006-03-20T12:50:00.000-05:00

So I had actually never heard that myth that only during the Spring Equinox, eggs can be made to stand on their end. Apparently, that's only a myth: you can make eggs stand up any day of the week.

Bad Astronomy: Eggs standing up!

Thanks to Gothamist for posting this link!

Hoy es Adios

2006-03-19T13:53:00.000-05:00

I like listening to alot of modern foreign music. It doesn't matter to me if I don't understand Japanese or Spanish or Hindi because if the tone and voice of the artist does the song right, you don't need to understand the words. (I can't understand half the songs sung in English on the radio these days anyway.)

Lately I've been listening Carlos Santana / Alejandro Lerner's "Hoy Es Adios." Now I had no clue at all about what was actually being sung, but the sorrow in the singer's voice was just so amazing, that I kept listening to it over and over to help me write a really key scene in my novel. There was just something so sad in his voice that I had to keep coming back to.

Here are the lyrics in the original Spanish from Lyrics Depot

Él se fue con el invierno,
Él se ha ido a trabajar,
No me ha escrito en mucho tiempo,
Él dijo que volverá.

Pero el tiempo pasó
No preguntes porque,
Él ya no regresó a nuestro hogar
La frontera marcó
Su destino final.
Y a mis brazos jamás volvió

Hoy es adios,
Mañana quizás,
Sé que tu vas a volver
Hoy es adios
Mañana quizás
No hay fronteras en nuestro querer

Ya ha pasado un nuevo invierno,
Es de que te ví marchar,
No hay un mundo mejor que el nuestro,
Sé que undía volverás,

Pero el tiempo pasó
No preguntes porque,
Él ya no regresó a nuestro hogar
La frontera marcó
Su destino final,
Y a mis brazos jamás volvió

Hoy es adios,
Mañana quizás,
Sé que tu vas a volver
Hoy es adios
Mañana quizás
No hay fronteras en nuestro querer

Now I asked a couple friends who speak Spanish to translate it for me, and one of them told me that I could just use an onine translator like babelfish.com. I googled the song and something popped up on googled that said "Translate this page" and this is what I got:

It went with the winter,
He has been going away to work,
It has not written to me in long time,
He said that he will return.

But the time happened
You do not ask because,
It no longer returned to our home
The border marked
Its final destiny.
And to my arms never it returned

Today it is good bye,
Tomorrow perhaps,
I know that your you are going to return
Today it is good bye
Tomorrow perhaps
There are no borders in ours to want

It has already spent a new winter,
It is of which ví to march to you,
There is no a world better than ours,
I know that undía you will return,

But the time happened
You do not ask because,
It no longer returned to our home
The border marked
Its final destiny,
And to my arms never it returned

Today it is good bye,
Tomorrow perhaps,
I know that your you are going to return
Today it is good bye
Tomorrow perhaps
There are no borders in ours to want

So I guess this a song about migrants crossing the American border? A song about death? Spanish speakers, how reliable is the online translator from the original Spanish?

In any case, it's funny, because as I noted before, main character is essentially an undocumented immigrant in the United States. This song works in so many ways.

What songs have especially touched you and made you keep listening? What was it about those songs?

Travelogues

2006-03-18T14:11:00.000-05:00

Two good friends recently went off to Africa (one for Peace Corps, another for a 6 month corporate version of Peace Corps). I must admit, were I to hear this while working in my past office cubicle jobs, I would feel trapped in comparison. Now that I'm back in school (and enjoying myself for the most part), I simply tell myself that my turn to travel will come again (Senegal 2007!). I tell people that I get antsy if I'm stuck in the country for too long. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I don't love America, it's that I love traveling and having new experiences, seeing new things, meeting new people and trying new foods. The more third world the better. (Trust me, there is NOTHING like fresh food in the third world; everything is ALWAYS hand done).

With that said, when I don't have money (like now), I try and satsify my wanderlust via travelogues. "Motoring with Muhammed" by Eric Hansen is one of my favorite travelogues of all time. You can read more about my thoughts on it here On the Road. This article also includes my take on "A Year in Provence" by Peter Mayle, "Looking for Lovedu: A Woman's Journey Across Africa" by Ann Jones, and "Sorcerer's Apprentice" by Tahir Shah.

Playing on the ipod now: "Mr. Brightside," The Killers.

Aliens among us

2006-03-17T23:13:00.000-05:00

So the main character of my novel is an illegal alien. Yes although I've positioned myself as a science fiction/fantasy writer, no it's not the space-travelin' kind of alien. I mean, undocumented-no-papers kind of illegal alien. The story begins with a brown-skinned girl, found unconscious in the desert of New Mexico. So I've been collecting details of how illegal immigrants are treated and perceived in this country.

Actually, by my main character being illegal, it solves a few major plot problems. You know, how when you're reading a mystery or a book sometimes, all this stuff happens and you're just like, why don't you just tell someone or go to the police? (Well if they did, there would be no story.) Someone breaks into my MC's apartment? Beats the crap out of her? There's no going to the police; too much fear of being kicked out of the country. She can't go to the hospital; fear of being deported. If she's raped or robbed, there's no authority she can rely on for help.

I didn't mean to write her that way, but in alot of ways, my MC is writing her own damn story. Too bad she's not telling me how she works through her situation on Chapter 16; I've been trying to figure how she ends up 10 stories underneath Grand Central Station in the first place.

A different kind of traditional values

2006-03-16T11:05:00.000-05:00

The NYTimes has a fascinating article today about a new video that Dutch immigration officials have put together to help immigrants (who are largely from Muslim countries) pass the Dutch citizenship exam. The film features nude beaches with women sun bathing topless, men kissing men, among other things.

From the article:
"The film is meant for people not yet in Holland to take note that this is normal here and not be shocked and awed by it once they arrive," said Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born member of the Dutch Parliament."

I find this fascinating because this is essentially an attempt to force the cultural values of one society, on a minority. If a similar video was made here to display "traditional" American values to minorities applying for citizenship, my leftist leanings have an automatic gut reaction of saying "NO" and calling this cultural imperialism.

But the anti-immigration homosexual Pim Fortuyn was most afraid of socially conservative immigrants swamping the Netherlands. If these new Dutch citizens achieved a majority voting bloc in a democracy, they could conceivably outlaw homosexuality, making him a criminal for who he is.

This is what religious red-state America is afraid of. Faith is so central to their lives, that they're afraid of being marginalized in their own country. That's what's driving some religious conservatives: fear. And at the same time, historically oppressed minorities are afraid of returning to a time in which yellow, brown, and non-Christian was not American; essentially fear is what's driving them too.

We have to stop being afraid of each other, and start talking to each other as human beings, and recognize the validity (no matter how cracked up you think their reasoning is) of each other's feelings.

A Dutch Film Warning: Nudity and Gay Kisses Ahead

A place for an Indian Doris Day?

2006-03-15T11:34:00.000-05:00

Recently, I saw the Canadian movie “A Touch of Pink,” an old Hollywood style romantic comedy about a gay Ismaili (Shiite) Canadian man. It’s one of the most wonderfully refreshing movies I’ve seen in a long time, escapist and funny and yet multi-layered. Like movies like the Taiwanese “Wedding Banquet” the movie is about Alim’s relationship with his mother who is convinced that Alim needs to get married to a nice Indian girl, and his struggle to tell her about his relationship with his boyfriend Giles. Throughout this, Alim is guided by the imaginary spirit of Cary Grant, played by one of the actors from “Sex in the City.” But what’s nice about this movie is that it doesn’t tell just the story of Alim’s modern identity in a secular world, but also of his mother. There is a fantastic scene between Giles (Alim’s boyfriend) and Alim where Giles, angry at their hidden relationship, accuses Alim of thinking of his mother as “an uneducated brown Paki.” We find that Alim’s mother had gone to London when she was young, hoping to be like Doris Day, only to find that there was "no place for an Indian Doris Day." I loved this movie and I highly recommend it on many levels. It’s a great escapist romantic comedy, but at the same time introduces themes of crossing generational, and cultural boundaries.

Here’s the link to it on amazon.com so you can check out the reviews:

Is everyone getting their own reality show?

2006-03-14T18:02:00.000-05:00

Apparently, Osama Bin Laden's niece is going to have her own reality show. The American Wafah Dufour Bin Ladin has:

"appeared in GQ magazine last December reclining on satin sheets wrapped in feathers and posing in a bubble bath wearing nothing but a necklace.

She cites U2, the Cure and Depeche Mode among her musical influences."

Hey, if I say I'm related to a terrorist, can I get my book published? See, I'm not even asking for a tv show or anything...

See bin Laden's nice on TV!

The new teenage heroines

2006-03-14T15:50:00.000-05:00

Naomi Wolf has an interesting article in the NYTimes about young adult novels being published today. Rather than being told from a traditional teenage heroine's point of view (the not-so-popular girl trying to find her identity or some riff on that theme), these heroines ARE the Mean Girls. Not only do these middle schoolers tote Prada bags filled with cell phones and Sidekicks, they're poppin' E, Viagra and doin' public "Semi-sex" because Oral Sex "is so over." These are the girls you used to be afraid of in high school, and were the traditional villain in the young adult novel.

Yuck. Give me "Are you there God? It's Me Margaret" any day.

Young Adult Fiction: Wild Things

When Handmaids live amongst us

2006-03-14T15:17:00.000-05:00

I just finished re-reading "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood for a science fiction class I'm taking. Atwood presents a new vision of dystopia, of a closed, totalitarian society that is cut off from the rest of the world, one in which women are considered "baby-makers." The things that go on seem unimaginable, and yet, I found this novel the very frightening of all because it seemed so anchored in today’s world. The references to Islamic terrorists, the taking away of rights due to a lockdown for safety and security, and the religious aspects of the novel make for something that is horrifyingly real.

Reading this after the Chanrithy Him’s memoir “When Broken Glass Floats: Growing up Under the Khmer Rouge” (which is excellent by the way) I found the fear, the lying, risks of betrayals, and all-seeing spies, the sumptuous violations for people in charge to be very similar. Although there are definitely aspects of "The Handmaid's Tale" that are unique, I found myself thinking about North Korea. In particular, North Korea and Gilead (the society in Atwood's book) are similar in that both are closed societies. We don’t know much about North Korea, except for the few straggling refugees in China, and occasional academics and humanitarian groups that lament their situation, much like the "Historical Footnote" at the end of "The Handmaid's Tale."

It's amazing what types of societies can exist parallel to ours, ones that we have little inkling about, and yet which influence each other in remarkable ways.

Bad physics, Good Fantasy

2006-03-14T12:53:00.000-05:00

There’s an interesting article in the NYTimes today about how some ideas from quantum mechanics have been totally co-opted by New Agers. Essentially the idea is that
“based on the insights of modern quantum physics, that reality is just a mental construct that we can rearrange and improve, if we are enlightened or determined enough.”

For those of you who might have forgotten, one of the things about quantum physics is that the simple act of observing something, changes it. So your powers of perception shape what you see (I think: I might be getting into bad physics here). This is all tied up with Schroedinger’s Cat and the Heisenberg Principle.

Yes it is probably bad physics. But it’s a great premise for magic in an urban fantasy :)

Far Out Man, But is it Quantum Physics?

Argue with me!

2006-03-13T12:35:00.000-05:00

I think one of the best things about American society is the ideal (note I say ideal) that you can argue with people, have completely different points of view, and yet still be on a cordial basis. Unfortunately, I don’t think this is emphasized enough in schools. Even in my graduate classes, I find many who tend to back away from a lively spirited debate. Are they afraid of upsetting people? Of being personally attacked?

Unfortunately, it seems that we're not teaching students to debate or really discuss issues in a civil manner. I once worked in a office that was solidly working class, where any disagreement with the boss was viewed as a challenge to her authority. It was not uncommon for workers to be fired for expressing points of view different from the points (you weren't considered a "team player"). And as this gets perpetuated, well, no wonder there's such a divide between blue states and red states. As frustrating as it is for either side, we need to recognize that the other side has a valid point of view before we can even get them to consider our points of view. Even if there is a culture against dissent (being ever so helpfully fostered by the Bush administration).

In any case, I think it’s dangerous not to disagree.

Talk about crossing borders

2006-03-13T12:17:00.000-05:00

I don’t know if anyone caught the article in the NYTimes magazine a couple weeks ago, but the former spokesman for the Taliban is now a Yale undergraduate. You now have to pay to get a copy of the article on the NYTimes site (but I saved a copy of the article, so I can email it to those interested in reading more), but you can read a brief piece about it from the Hartford Courant here.

I understand Yale’s decision to let him in. If we can get someone like that to understand our way of thinking, while at the same time learning how ideologies espoused by radicals like the Taliban are so popular, maybe we can prevent coming to a point where violence is seen to be an option. It’s a test for the West and America: and if we succeed, Rahmatullah Hashemi will be a great “cultural ambassador” to those who we most need to reach.

25 Books to Remember

2006-03-12T13:15:00.000-05:00

The New York Public Library released its list of top 25 books of 2005. I have to admit I haven't read any of these, but some of them look really good. I'm looking forward to picking up "Japanland: A Year In Search of Wa," by Karin Muller, "Luck is Luck: Poems" by Lucia Perillo, and of course "A Year of Magical Thinking" by Joan Didion.

Thanks to the esteemed Miss Snark for posting this on her blog. She rocks.

Why Science Fiction?

2006-03-11T14:17:00.000-05:00

The following is something I wrote for a class I took called "Themes in Science Fiction."
--
The earliest stories of humanity were told in an attempt to understand the world around them. What is now considered our ancient mythologies were once religions; attempts to seek meaning in life and understanding in how the world works. I believe that science fiction and fantasy continues this tradition.

It is in science fiction and fantasy that we can convey our anxieties and fears about scientific progress, using our imaginations to probe the unthinkable. As Alan E. Nourse stated, science fiction is "[p]redominantly a speculative literature in which the reader is invited to ponder in some detail the effect that a given advance, change discovery , or technological breakthrough might have upon society as we know it and upon human beings as we know them.”

For example, what might happen if there was a nuclear war? What if the polar ice caps melted? What would we do if a killer virus devastated the population? Since humanity turns to technology to solve problems, it is only logical that we would write science fiction to speculate problems we might face, as well as how to fix them.

Science fiction is different from fantasy in that it tries to imagine the worlds that humanity might create by extrapolating and imagining the futures of existing research and technology. The difference between science fiction and fantasy is not necessary the story telling, but rather the methodology and the setting used to convey the themes.

I also like Harlan Ellison’s definition of science fiction:" Anything that deals in even the smallest extrapolative manner with the future of man and his societies, with the future of science and/or its effects on us, with fantasy as an interpretation of the realities with which we are forced to deal daily."

Often, when Olympic athletes are asked about the techniques they use to prepare for competition, they often talk about how they “imagine” themselves successfully, making that jump, achieving that pass, scoring that goal, etc. It turns out that this “mental preparation” helps contributes to the results of successful athletes. In a similar fashion, I think that is what science fiction is for society. It helps us ask questions about the future, mentally preparing us for the challenges that are to come.

However, as much as science fiction is used to explore the unthinkable, in creating new worlds, asking subversive and disturbing questions, I believe that part of the reason that it has such a bad reputation is that many science fiction writers focus on the ideas and the situations, sometimes to the detriment of plot, character, narration etc. (I can think of several “classic scifi books” that fit into this category). When academia teaches literature they focus on the techniques used to tell the story. A lot of times, I think this can be lacking in science fiction.

Regardless of how science fiction is perceived, I think it plays an essential part in helping our society plan for the future. Like others have said on the board, much of what was once science fiction is now science. Who would have thought that humanity could’ve gone to the moon? Or that we could “stop” light? Science fiction really is our future.

Why blog?

2006-03-09T10:06:00.000-05:00

I don't want to be just any writer. I want to be like Hemingway. I want to travel, and live an amazing adventurous life, traveling, seeing, and experiencing new things. Ultimately, one is a product of their experiences; I still want to change the world, but I hope to do that through writing; to convince people to step outside of their comfort zones, outside of their boundaries, and to look at things from a different point of view. And by doing so and helping people look at things through another lens, maybe I can contribute to a greater understanding. In these times, though I guess, in all times, humanity could use a little more compassion and understanding