Library Journal Starred Review
Garson, Paul. Album of the Damned: Snapshots from the Third Reich. Academy Chicago. 2008. 410p. photogs. bibliog. ISBN 978-0-89733-576-8. $50. HIST
The most remarkable thing about this book is the ordinariness of the pictures. Husbands and wives posing, fathers and sons seated together proudly, groups of smiling soldiers, and, lest we forget where we are, dead bodies. Garson, a well-known photographer and magazine writer, has collected over 400 photographs taken mostly by German soldiers and some civilians that reveal in somber black-and-white tones a part of World War II that has often been overlooked by the numerous published collections of battle photographs. Garson's photographs show a quiet side of the war, one far away from the battlefield but still very much a part of the everyday experience of German and non-German citizens engulfed in a world war. Most striking is a picture of young men in bathing suits laughing and sharing a drink. After a full day spent murdering men, women, and children, these men went home to their wives and families, had a good night's sleep, and then went back to killing again the next day. A stunningly chilling collection of photographs recording the daily lives of ordinary people quietly going about their normal business in the midst of horror, this unforgettable work is recommended for all collections.—Ed Goedeken, Iowa State Univ. Lib., Ames
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Nonfiction review: history books
by Peggy McMullen, The Oregonian
Friday December 12, 2008
The cover of Paul Garson's "Album of the Damned: Snapshots From the Third Reich" is a photo of an infant in a baby carriage, an anxious look on his young face, a Wehrmacht officer's cap on his head. It's a jarring image, the pampered innocence with the uniform linked to the horrific deaths of millions of people. Garson compiled nearly 400 photos for the book, taken during World War II, mostly by German soldiers, some by civilians, some by professionals embedded with the troops. The photos purport to show everyday life -- sports, weddings, social events -- people at work and play. Few, however, escape the ominous presence of a uniform, or swastika. There are numerous disturbing photos of men brandishing weapons in "playful" games of mock hangings and fighting; worse are the ones of them happily dispatching animals (one involving kittens and knives is especially horrifying). Even the ones of a benign glimpse of life are chilling, seeing the smiling, joking, pleasant faces of men who so readily killed others who simply did not fit their Aryan profile.
Details: ALBUM OF THE DAMNED Paul Garson, Academy Chicago Publishers, $50, 410 pages
by Peggy McMullen, The Oregonian
Friday December 12, 2008
The cover of Paul Garson's "Album of the Damned: Snapshots From the Third Reich" is a photo of an infant in a baby carriage, an anxious look on his young face, a Wehrmacht officer's cap on his head. It's a jarring image, the pampered innocence with the uniform linked to the horrific deaths of millions of people. Garson compiled nearly 400 photos for the book, taken during World War II, mostly by German soldiers, some by civilians, some by professionals embedded with the troops. The photos purport to show everyday life -- sports, weddings, social events -- people at work and play. Few, however, escape the ominous presence of a uniform, or swastika. There are numerous disturbing photos of men brandishing weapons in "playful" games of mock hangings and fighting; worse are the ones of them happily dispatching animals (one involving kittens and knives is especially horrifying). Even the ones of a benign glimpse of life are chilling, seeing the smiling, joking, pleasant faces of men who so readily killed others who simply did not fit their Aryan profile.
Details: ALBUM OF THE DAMNED Paul Garson, Academy Chicago Publishers, $50, 410 pages
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Afro Asia was reviewed in the March 3rd edition of Publishers Weekly
Afro Asia: Revolutionary Political and Cultural Connections Between African Americans and Asian Americans
Edited by Fred Ho and Bill V. Mullen. Duke Univ. Pr, $23.95 (384p) ISBN 978-0-8223-4281-6
This essay collection reveals the historical events, political activities and aesthetic ideas that link African-Americans and Asian-Americans. Although a chasm is sometimes presumed to exist between the two groups, this book reveals the two diasporas' intersecting paths from the 19th century to the present day. Lisa Yun's “Chinese Freedom Fighters in Cuba: From Bondage to Liberation, 1847–1898” is a groundbreaking examination of the treatment of Chinese coolies who “could be brought in as indentured laborers... [and] used as slaves.” Statements (one in 1963, the other after the King assassination) by Mao Zedong in support of the struggle for African-American civil rights introduce essays exploring the ties between black liberation movements and Asian-American activism. Diane Fujino's insightful biographies of Richard Aoki and Yuri Kochiyama are especially fascinating. The essays on the arts, including “crossover” pieces (e.g., African-Americans and the martial arts, Asian-Americans and hip hop), are particularly accessible, and Ishmael Reed's “rare original account of the origins of modern Asian American literary production,” while terse, is of significant historical value. “An eclectic array of creative writing expressing Afro-Asian interaction” includes poems, creative nonfiction and a performance piece by memoirist David Mura and novelist Alexs Pate (Amistad). Readers should not be put off by the occasional Marxist or nationalist tenor of these pieces because Ho and Mullen's collection offers a fresh perspective well worth the effort. (June 08)
Afro Asia: Revolutionary Political and Cultural Connections Between African Americans and Asian Americans
Edited by Fred Ho and Bill V. Mullen. Duke Univ. Pr, $23.95 (384p) ISBN 978-0-8223-4281-6
This essay collection reveals the historical events, political activities and aesthetic ideas that link African-Americans and Asian-Americans. Although a chasm is sometimes presumed to exist between the two groups, this book reveals the two diasporas' intersecting paths from the 19th century to the present day. Lisa Yun's “Chinese Freedom Fighters in Cuba: From Bondage to Liberation, 1847–1898” is a groundbreaking examination of the treatment of Chinese coolies who “could be brought in as indentured laborers... [and] used as slaves.” Statements (one in 1963, the other after the King assassination) by Mao Zedong in support of the struggle for African-American civil rights introduce essays exploring the ties between black liberation movements and Asian-American activism. Diane Fujino's insightful biographies of Richard Aoki and Yuri Kochiyama are especially fascinating. The essays on the arts, including “crossover” pieces (e.g., African-Americans and the martial arts, Asian-Americans and hip hop), are particularly accessible, and Ishmael Reed's “rare original account of the origins of modern Asian American literary production,” while terse, is of significant historical value. “An eclectic array of creative writing expressing Afro-Asian interaction” includes poems, creative nonfiction and a performance piece by memoirist David Mura and novelist Alexs Pate (Amistad). Readers should not be put off by the occasional Marxist or nationalist tenor of these pieces because Ho and Mullen's collection offers a fresh perspective well worth the effort. (June 08)
Sunday, February 10, 2008
From The New York Times
February 9, 2008
Talking Business
A Tight Grip Can Choke Creativity
By JOE NOCERA
On Friday, a lawyer named Anthony Falzone filed his side’s first big brief in the case of Warner Bros. Entertainment and J. K. Rowling v. RDR Books. Mr. Falzone is employed by Stanford Law School, where he heads up the Fair Use Project, which was founded several years ago by Lawrence Lessig, perhaps the law school’s best-known professor. Mr. Falzone and the other lawyers at the Fair Use Project are siding with the defendant, RDR Books, a small book publisher based in Muskegon, Mich. As you can see from the titans who have brought the suit, RDR Books needs all the legal firepower it can muster.
As you can probably also see, the case revolves around Harry Potter. J. K. Rowling, of course, is the creator of the Harry Potter series — “one of the most successful writers the world has ever known,” crowed Neil Blair of the Christopher Little Literary Agency, which represents her. Warner Brothers holds the license to the Harry Potter movies. Of the two plaintiffs, though, Ms. Rowling appears to be the one driving the litigation.
“I feel as though my name and my works have been hijacked, against my wishes, for the personal gain and profit of others and diverted from the charities I intended to benefit,” she said in a declaration to the court.
And what perfidious act of “hijacking” has RDR Books committed? It planned to publish a book by Steven Vander Ark, who maintains a fansite called the Harry Potter Lexicon. The Lexicon publishes Harry Potter essays, finds Harry Potter mistakes, explains Harry Potter terminology, devises Harry Potter timelines and does a thousand other things aimed at people who can’t get enough Harry Potter. It’s a Harry Potter encyclopedia for obsessive fans.
So long as the Lexicon was a free Web site, Ms. Rowling looked kindly upon it. But when Mr. Vander Ark tried to publish part of the Lexicon in book form — and (shudder!) to make a profit — Ms. Rowling put her foot down. She claims that she wants to publish her own encyclopedia someday and donate the proceeds to charity — and a competing book by Mr. Vander Ark would hurt the prospects for her own work.
But more than that, she is essentially claiming that the decision to publish — or even to allow — a Harry Potter encyclopedia is hers alone, since after all, the characters in her books came out of her head. They are her intellectual property. And in her view, no one else can use them without her permission.
“There have been a huge number of companion books that have been published,” Mr. Blair said. “Ninety-nine percent have come to speak to us. In every case they have made changes to ensure compliance. They fall in line.” But, he added: “These guys refused to contact us. They refused to answer any questions. They refused to show us any details.”
They fall in line. There, in that one sentence, lies the reason Mr. Falzone and his colleagues have agreed to help represent RDR Books. And it’s why Mr. Lessig decided to start the Fair Use Project in the first place.
•
It’s an odd twist that this dispute centers around a book, because ever since the recording industry first sued Napster, most of the big legal battles over copyright have centered on the Internet. The lawsuit Viacom filed against YouTube last year to prevent people from posting snippets of Viacom’s copyrighted television shows is the most obvious recent example.
But if you look a little further back, you’ll see that for a long time now, copyright holders have made a series of concerted efforts to extend copyright protection and make it an ever-more powerful instrument of control.
More than a century ago, copyrights lasted for 14 years — and could be extended another 14 if the copyright holder petitioned for an extension. Today, corporate copyrights last for 95 years, while individuals retain copyrights for 70 years after their deaths. The most recent extension of copyright, passed by Congress in 1998, was nicknamed the Mickey Mouse Protection Act, because Disney’s lobbyists were intent on keeping Mickey Mouse from falling into the public domain — and on preserving billions in profits for Disney.
At the same time, though, copyright holders have tried to impose rules on the rest of us — through threats and litigation — that were never intended to be part of copyright law. They sue to prevent rappers from taking samples of copyrighted songs to create their own music. Authors’ estates try to deprive scholars of their ability to reprint parts of books or articles because they disapprove of the scholar’s point of view. Mr. Lessig likes to cite a recent, absurd case where a mother posted a video of her baby dancing to Prince’s song “Let’s Go Crazy” on YouTube — and Universal Music promptly demanded that YouTube remove the video because it violated the copyright. Have these efforts had — as we like to say in the news business — a chilling effect? You bet they have.
About a decade ago, Mr. Lessig decided to fight back. His core belief is that copyright protection, as he put it to me, “was meant to foster creativity, not to stifle it” — yet that is how it is now being used. He fought the Mickey Mouse Preservation Act all the way to the Supreme Court (he lost). He founded Creative Commons, which is, in a sense, an alternative form of copyright, allowing creators to grant far more rights to others than the traditional copyright system. And he started the Fair Use Project to push back against copyright hogs like J. K. Rowling.
No one is saying that anyone can simply steal the work of others. But the law absolutely allows anyone to create something new based on someone else’s art. This is something the Internet has made dramatically easier — which is part of the reason we’re all so much more aware of copyright than we used to be. But it has long been true for writers, filmmakers and other artists. That’s what “fair use” means.
And that is what is being forgotten as copyright holders try to tighten their grip. Documentary-film makers feel this particularly acutely. My friend Alex Gibney, who directed the recent film “Taxi to the Dark Side,” about torture, tried to get Fox to license him a short clip from the television series “24” to illustrate a point one of his talking heads was making about how the show glamorized torture. Fox denied his request. Mr. Gibney, a fair-use absolutist, used it anyway — but many filmmakers would have backed away.
Which is also why the Harry Potter Lexicon case is so important. For decades, fair use has been thought to extend to the publication of companion books that build on the oeuvre of someone else — so long as the new work isn’t simply a rehash of the original. There are dozens of companion books to the Narnia chronicles, for instance, and the works of J. R. R. Tolkien.
What Ms. Rowling is saying, however, is that her control of Harry Potter is so all-encompassing that only she gets to decide the terms under which a companion book is allowable. She can talk all she wants about charities that will be deprived if she loses this case, but this is really a power grab. RDR Books should not have to “fall into line” to publish the Lexicon. Ms. Rowling is claiming a right that, if granted, will hurt us all.
And in a roundabout way, that gets us back to what the Internet has wrought. For, as Mr. Lessig points out, anybody who owns a computer can now create content that is based on someone else’s creation. Indeed, we do all the time, by posting content on Facebook, on YouTube, everywhere on the Internet. If the creation of that content is deemed to be a violation of copyright, “then we have a whole generation of criminals,” said Mr. Lessig — which is terribly corrosive to society. But if it is fair use, as it ought to be, then it becomes something quite healthy — new forms of free expression and creativity.
As it happens, Mr. Lessig made those last remarks in a lecture at Stanford last week. It was a kind of swan song, for he is leaving the field of copyright to tackle a new challenge: he will try to build a grass-roots movement to reduce the influence of money in politics. When I asked him if he was making this change because he was discouraged about the state of copyright, he sounded surprised by the question.
“I’m absolutely convinced now that this battle will be won on the right side,” he said. “I think there are now a lot of current leaders who can take the movement forward. When I started in this field, there were very few.”
I suspect he’s right, though it is likely to be a long struggle — which will involve a lot more legal cases like Warner Bros. Entertainment and J. K. Rowling v. RDR Books. And a lot of attitudes will need to change as well, starting with Ms. Rowling’s.
During my conversation with her representative, Mr. Blair, he pointed me to Ms. Rowling’s Web site, suggesting that would be the best place to find her response to the RDR Books case and the Harry Potter Lexicon. “You have our permission to quote from her Web site,” he said.
I already have that right, Mr. Blair. But thanks anyway.
February 9, 2008
Talking Business
A Tight Grip Can Choke Creativity
By JOE NOCERA
On Friday, a lawyer named Anthony Falzone filed his side’s first big brief in the case of Warner Bros. Entertainment and J. K. Rowling v. RDR Books. Mr. Falzone is employed by Stanford Law School, where he heads up the Fair Use Project, which was founded several years ago by Lawrence Lessig, perhaps the law school’s best-known professor. Mr. Falzone and the other lawyers at the Fair Use Project are siding with the defendant, RDR Books, a small book publisher based in Muskegon, Mich. As you can see from the titans who have brought the suit, RDR Books needs all the legal firepower it can muster.
As you can probably also see, the case revolves around Harry Potter. J. K. Rowling, of course, is the creator of the Harry Potter series — “one of the most successful writers the world has ever known,” crowed Neil Blair of the Christopher Little Literary Agency, which represents her. Warner Brothers holds the license to the Harry Potter movies. Of the two plaintiffs, though, Ms. Rowling appears to be the one driving the litigation.
“I feel as though my name and my works have been hijacked, against my wishes, for the personal gain and profit of others and diverted from the charities I intended to benefit,” she said in a declaration to the court.
And what perfidious act of “hijacking” has RDR Books committed? It planned to publish a book by Steven Vander Ark, who maintains a fansite called the Harry Potter Lexicon. The Lexicon publishes Harry Potter essays, finds Harry Potter mistakes, explains Harry Potter terminology, devises Harry Potter timelines and does a thousand other things aimed at people who can’t get enough Harry Potter. It’s a Harry Potter encyclopedia for obsessive fans.
So long as the Lexicon was a free Web site, Ms. Rowling looked kindly upon it. But when Mr. Vander Ark tried to publish part of the Lexicon in book form — and (shudder!) to make a profit — Ms. Rowling put her foot down. She claims that she wants to publish her own encyclopedia someday and donate the proceeds to charity — and a competing book by Mr. Vander Ark would hurt the prospects for her own work.
But more than that, she is essentially claiming that the decision to publish — or even to allow — a Harry Potter encyclopedia is hers alone, since after all, the characters in her books came out of her head. They are her intellectual property. And in her view, no one else can use them without her permission.
“There have been a huge number of companion books that have been published,” Mr. Blair said. “Ninety-nine percent have come to speak to us. In every case they have made changes to ensure compliance. They fall in line.” But, he added: “These guys refused to contact us. They refused to answer any questions. They refused to show us any details.”
They fall in line. There, in that one sentence, lies the reason Mr. Falzone and his colleagues have agreed to help represent RDR Books. And it’s why Mr. Lessig decided to start the Fair Use Project in the first place.
•
It’s an odd twist that this dispute centers around a book, because ever since the recording industry first sued Napster, most of the big legal battles over copyright have centered on the Internet. The lawsuit Viacom filed against YouTube last year to prevent people from posting snippets of Viacom’s copyrighted television shows is the most obvious recent example.
But if you look a little further back, you’ll see that for a long time now, copyright holders have made a series of concerted efforts to extend copyright protection and make it an ever-more powerful instrument of control.
More than a century ago, copyrights lasted for 14 years — and could be extended another 14 if the copyright holder petitioned for an extension. Today, corporate copyrights last for 95 years, while individuals retain copyrights for 70 years after their deaths. The most recent extension of copyright, passed by Congress in 1998, was nicknamed the Mickey Mouse Protection Act, because Disney’s lobbyists were intent on keeping Mickey Mouse from falling into the public domain — and on preserving billions in profits for Disney.
At the same time, though, copyright holders have tried to impose rules on the rest of us — through threats and litigation — that were never intended to be part of copyright law. They sue to prevent rappers from taking samples of copyrighted songs to create their own music. Authors’ estates try to deprive scholars of their ability to reprint parts of books or articles because they disapprove of the scholar’s point of view. Mr. Lessig likes to cite a recent, absurd case where a mother posted a video of her baby dancing to Prince’s song “Let’s Go Crazy” on YouTube — and Universal Music promptly demanded that YouTube remove the video because it violated the copyright. Have these efforts had — as we like to say in the news business — a chilling effect? You bet they have.
About a decade ago, Mr. Lessig decided to fight back. His core belief is that copyright protection, as he put it to me, “was meant to foster creativity, not to stifle it” — yet that is how it is now being used. He fought the Mickey Mouse Preservation Act all the way to the Supreme Court (he lost). He founded Creative Commons, which is, in a sense, an alternative form of copyright, allowing creators to grant far more rights to others than the traditional copyright system. And he started the Fair Use Project to push back against copyright hogs like J. K. Rowling.
No one is saying that anyone can simply steal the work of others. But the law absolutely allows anyone to create something new based on someone else’s art. This is something the Internet has made dramatically easier — which is part of the reason we’re all so much more aware of copyright than we used to be. But it has long been true for writers, filmmakers and other artists. That’s what “fair use” means.
And that is what is being forgotten as copyright holders try to tighten their grip. Documentary-film makers feel this particularly acutely. My friend Alex Gibney, who directed the recent film “Taxi to the Dark Side,” about torture, tried to get Fox to license him a short clip from the television series “24” to illustrate a point one of his talking heads was making about how the show glamorized torture. Fox denied his request. Mr. Gibney, a fair-use absolutist, used it anyway — but many filmmakers would have backed away.
Which is also why the Harry Potter Lexicon case is so important. For decades, fair use has been thought to extend to the publication of companion books that build on the oeuvre of someone else — so long as the new work isn’t simply a rehash of the original. There are dozens of companion books to the Narnia chronicles, for instance, and the works of J. R. R. Tolkien.
What Ms. Rowling is saying, however, is that her control of Harry Potter is so all-encompassing that only she gets to decide the terms under which a companion book is allowable. She can talk all she wants about charities that will be deprived if she loses this case, but this is really a power grab. RDR Books should not have to “fall into line” to publish the Lexicon. Ms. Rowling is claiming a right that, if granted, will hurt us all.
And in a roundabout way, that gets us back to what the Internet has wrought. For, as Mr. Lessig points out, anybody who owns a computer can now create content that is based on someone else’s creation. Indeed, we do all the time, by posting content on Facebook, on YouTube, everywhere on the Internet. If the creation of that content is deemed to be a violation of copyright, “then we have a whole generation of criminals,” said Mr. Lessig — which is terribly corrosive to society. But if it is fair use, as it ought to be, then it becomes something quite healthy — new forms of free expression and creativity.
As it happens, Mr. Lessig made those last remarks in a lecture at Stanford last week. It was a kind of swan song, for he is leaving the field of copyright to tackle a new challenge: he will try to build a grass-roots movement to reduce the influence of money in politics. When I asked him if he was making this change because he was discouraged about the state of copyright, he sounded surprised by the question.
“I’m absolutely convinced now that this battle will be won on the right side,” he said. “I think there are now a lot of current leaders who can take the movement forward. When I started in this field, there were very few.”
I suspect he’s right, though it is likely to be a long struggle — which will involve a lot more legal cases like Warner Bros. Entertainment and J. K. Rowling v. RDR Books. And a lot of attitudes will need to change as well, starting with Ms. Rowling’s.
During my conversation with her representative, Mr. Blair, he pointed me to Ms. Rowling’s Web site, suggesting that would be the best place to find her response to the RDR Books case and the Harry Potter Lexicon. “You have our permission to quote from her Web site,” he said.
I already have that right, Mr. Blair. But thanks anyway.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
LIBRARYJOURNAL Jan 29, 2008
Odrach, Theodore. Wave of Terror
Academy Chicago. 2008. c.350p. tr. from Ukrainian by Erma Odrach.
ISBN 978-0-89733-562-1. pap. $19.95.
Verdict: The author’s depiction of village life has the authority of a documentary, his characters are fully developed , and his language is quite earthy for the period. As Pound would say of fine literature, this novel is news that stays news and should be on the shelves of libraries whose patrons care about the world beyond their immediate ambit. Highly recommended.
Background: Three weeks after Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Soviet forces moved into and annexed eastern Poland and, by all accounts, instituted a reign of terror more murderous than the Hitlerite occupation. Odrach (1912–64) was born and lived in the region he grippingly portrays in this searing tale of what it is like to be suddenly under the thumb of the NKVD (the KGB’s precursor). In this area that the Soviets apportioned to Byelorussia (today’s Belarus) and Ukraine, Ivan Kulik arrives as headmaster of a village school in the Pinsk Marshes. From this vantage, he watches in horror as the Soviet yoke descends upon the inhabitants of the area. [Ordrach escaped to the West during the war and settled in Canada in 1953.—Ed.]—Edward Cone, New York
Odrach, Theodore. Wave of Terror
Academy Chicago. 2008. c.350p. tr. from Ukrainian by Erma Odrach.
ISBN 978-0-89733-562-1. pap. $19.95.
Verdict: The author’s depiction of village life has the authority of a documentary, his characters are fully developed , and his language is quite earthy for the period. As Pound would say of fine literature, this novel is news that stays news and should be on the shelves of libraries whose patrons care about the world beyond their immediate ambit. Highly recommended.
Background: Three weeks after Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Soviet forces moved into and annexed eastern Poland and, by all accounts, instituted a reign of terror more murderous than the Hitlerite occupation. Odrach (1912–64) was born and lived in the region he grippingly portrays in this searing tale of what it is like to be suddenly under the thumb of the NKVD (the KGB’s precursor). In this area that the Soviets apportioned to Byelorussia (today’s Belarus) and Ukraine, Ivan Kulik arrives as headmaster of a village school in the Pinsk Marshes. From this vantage, he watches in horror as the Soviet yoke descends upon the inhabitants of the area. [Ordrach escaped to the West during the war and settled in Canada in 1953.—Ed.]—Edward Cone, New York
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Publishers Weekly
11/19/2007
Wave of Terror
Theodore Odrach, trans. from the Ukranian by Erma Odrach.
Academy Chicago, $19.95 paper (350p) ISBN 978-0-89733-562-1
Odrach's delightfully sardonic novel about the Stalinist occupation of Belarus that began in 1939 is rich with history, horror and comedy. The story unfolds in Pinsk and the villages of the Pinsk Marshes, where peasants who endured czars and Polish conquerors squirm helplessly under the boot of a regime more authoritarian than any they've known. Families are sent to labor camps on trumped-up charges; hapless innocents are tortured and executed without explanation. Ivan Kulik, the headmaster of an elementary school in the Ukrainian-speaking village of Hlaby, is frustrated with farcical Soviet demands, especially that classes be taught in Belorussian (none of the students or teachers speak the language). University-educated Ivan is fluent in Russian but prefers his native tongue, which doesn't help when he becomes infatuated with the beautiful Marusia Bohdanovich, who incompetently affects Russian airs. Potentially deadly trouble looms for Ivan and Marusia after she catches the eye of a sociopathic secret police lieutenant named Sobakin. There's a surplus of tragedy, but Odrach finds amid the havoc an affecting thread of humanity. The novel has been skillfully translated into English by Odrach's daughter. (Jan. 08)
11/19/2007
Wave of Terror
Theodore Odrach, trans. from the Ukranian by Erma Odrach.
Academy Chicago, $19.95 paper (350p) ISBN 978-0-89733-562-1
Odrach's delightfully sardonic novel about the Stalinist occupation of Belarus that began in 1939 is rich with history, horror and comedy. The story unfolds in Pinsk and the villages of the Pinsk Marshes, where peasants who endured czars and Polish conquerors squirm helplessly under the boot of a regime more authoritarian than any they've known. Families are sent to labor camps on trumped-up charges; hapless innocents are tortured and executed without explanation. Ivan Kulik, the headmaster of an elementary school in the Ukrainian-speaking village of Hlaby, is frustrated with farcical Soviet demands, especially that classes be taught in Belorussian (none of the students or teachers speak the language). University-educated Ivan is fluent in Russian but prefers his native tongue, which doesn't help when he becomes infatuated with the beautiful Marusia Bohdanovich, who incompetently affects Russian airs. Potentially deadly trouble looms for Ivan and Marusia after she catches the eye of a sociopathic secret police lieutenant named Sobakin. There's a surplus of tragedy, but Odrach finds amid the havoc an affecting thread of humanity. The novel has been skillfully translated into English by Odrach's daughter. (Jan. 08)
Friday, November 16, 2007
from Washington City Paper
Arts & Events -- Washington DC
The Yurting Kind
By Eve Ottenberg Posted: November 14, 2007
Notes From Nethers: Growing Up in a Sixties Commune
By Sandra Eugster
Academy Chicago Publishers, 328 pp. $18.95
The ’60s and early ’70s meant political revolution to some; to others, it was an endless wild party. But there were those for whom the time was neither liberating nor exhilarating; rather, it was frightening and even constricting. Sandra Eugster grew up on a Virginia commune in the ’60s and experienced it in all of these ways, though her new memoir, Notes From Nethers, tends to emphasize the defects. Indeed, a reader might come away thinking that one mindless fad after another reigned supreme on the communes of this period. There are a few salient reasons for Eugster’s reproaches: She was a child who had no choice in her upbringing; she naturally craved stability and reliability from the adults around her, but she got the opposite. By 1977, when she escaped what she describes as chaos by going to college, communal life had crippled her socially. She could not distinguish between teasing and seriousness, had never dated, and was astonished that most women had not burned their bras—in fact, she didn’t know where to buy them or how to gauge their proper size. (She also didn’t know how to shave her legs, though this last crisis hardly seems catastrophic.) One can sympathize with her anger at her jargon-spouting mother for not foreseeing or correcting any of this—she was too busy with the latest hippie craze, which is a reminder of how much hokum prevailed back then. To her credit, Eugster doesn’t take cheap shots at the various easy targets, as a more conservatively biased writer would do. However, her depiction of the communards chanting “Hare Krishna” while naked in a homemade sauna is particularly dispiriting, and she describes several members of the commune falling under the spell of Guru Maharaj Ji, a charlatan whose popularity in the early ’70s signaled the decline of the counterculture. Eugster unearths many such artifacts that were better left buried: As the chapter titled “Placenta Soup” disturbingly suggests, alternative health and spiritual fashions, often indistinguishable from rank idiocy, were rampant. Primal scream therapy, a bit of therapeutic fakery appropriately consigned to the compost heap of history, reappears here like an unwelcome visitor. This silliness was disheartening enough at the time, but adults could brush it off as a distraction from more consequential matters of feminism, civil rights, environmentalism, or the antiwar movement. Eugster, however, was raised on a diet of spiritual and therapeutic quackery. Nonetheless, her praise for the tolerance and other virtues she learned on the commune brings to mind the special history of such experiments in this country, going back to Brook Farm, immortalized (albeit satirically) in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance, and other, more explicitly political 19th-century attempts at utopian societies. To do the subject justice, the communes of the ’60s should be seen in that context, not just as the trendy effluvia of a volcanic era.
Arts & Events -- Washington DC
The Yurting Kind
By Eve Ottenberg Posted: November 14, 2007
Notes From Nethers: Growing Up in a Sixties Commune
By Sandra Eugster
Academy Chicago Publishers, 328 pp. $18.95
The ’60s and early ’70s meant political revolution to some; to others, it was an endless wild party. But there were those for whom the time was neither liberating nor exhilarating; rather, it was frightening and even constricting. Sandra Eugster grew up on a Virginia commune in the ’60s and experienced it in all of these ways, though her new memoir, Notes From Nethers, tends to emphasize the defects. Indeed, a reader might come away thinking that one mindless fad after another reigned supreme on the communes of this period. There are a few salient reasons for Eugster’s reproaches: She was a child who had no choice in her upbringing; she naturally craved stability and reliability from the adults around her, but she got the opposite. By 1977, when she escaped what she describes as chaos by going to college, communal life had crippled her socially. She could not distinguish between teasing and seriousness, had never dated, and was astonished that most women had not burned their bras—in fact, she didn’t know where to buy them or how to gauge their proper size. (She also didn’t know how to shave her legs, though this last crisis hardly seems catastrophic.) One can sympathize with her anger at her jargon-spouting mother for not foreseeing or correcting any of this—she was too busy with the latest hippie craze, which is a reminder of how much hokum prevailed back then. To her credit, Eugster doesn’t take cheap shots at the various easy targets, as a more conservatively biased writer would do. However, her depiction of the communards chanting “Hare Krishna” while naked in a homemade sauna is particularly dispiriting, and she describes several members of the commune falling under the spell of Guru Maharaj Ji, a charlatan whose popularity in the early ’70s signaled the decline of the counterculture. Eugster unearths many such artifacts that were better left buried: As the chapter titled “Placenta Soup” disturbingly suggests, alternative health and spiritual fashions, often indistinguishable from rank idiocy, were rampant. Primal scream therapy, a bit of therapeutic fakery appropriately consigned to the compost heap of history, reappears here like an unwelcome visitor. This silliness was disheartening enough at the time, but adults could brush it off as a distraction from more consequential matters of feminism, civil rights, environmentalism, or the antiwar movement. Eugster, however, was raised on a diet of spiritual and therapeutic quackery. Nonetheless, her praise for the tolerance and other virtues she learned on the commune brings to mind the special history of such experiments in this country, going back to Brook Farm, immortalized (albeit satirically) in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance, and other, more explicitly political 19th-century attempts at utopian societies. To do the subject justice, the communes of the ’60s should be seen in that context, not just as the trendy effluvia of a volcanic era.
Thursday, November 08, 2007
Publishers Weekly
PW Daily Online, November 6, 2007
Wicker Park Goes Regional
By Claire Kirch -- Publishers Weekly, 11/6/2007 6:47:00 AM
Eric Miller, a commission sales rep with Miller Trade Book Marketing, is giving a new direction to Chicago-based Wicker Park Press, the small press he launched in 2002, shifting its focus from publishing primarily satire to specializing in regional titles about Chicago landmarks. Wicker Park's first regional title, Water Tanks of Chicago: A Vanishing Urban Legacy, photographs and paintings by Larry W. Green, has just been released, and Miller has shipped 500 copies of a 3,200-copy print run.
“There's a lot of people out there, who identify with Chicago,” Miller explained about his switch in emphasis. “There's a strong market for regional books.” His next title, which doesn’t have a pub date yet, will be on Chicago's celebrated Maxwell Street Market.
While ordering only a few copies of Water Tanks of Chicago for her store, Kris Kleindienst, co-owner of St. Louis's Left Bank Books, believes that Wicker Park's offerings will find their audience. “Regional is a niche that works, no matter what the region,” Kliendienst said. “And [Miller] chooses interesting books on interesting topics.”
Along with the change in publishing direction, Miller has revamped Wicker’s distribution. He is now selling the list to his accounts and has hired Partners Book Distributing to sell to the chains. Wicker Park titles had been distributed by Academy Chicago Press, founded in 1976 by Eric Miller's parents, Jordan and Anita Miller. Academy Chicago releases are in turn distributed by the Chicago Distribution Center.
PW Daily Online, November 6, 2007
Wicker Park Goes Regional
By Claire Kirch -- Publishers Weekly, 11/6/2007 6:47:00 AM
Eric Miller, a commission sales rep with Miller Trade Book Marketing, is giving a new direction to Chicago-based Wicker Park Press, the small press he launched in 2002, shifting its focus from publishing primarily satire to specializing in regional titles about Chicago landmarks. Wicker Park's first regional title, Water Tanks of Chicago: A Vanishing Urban Legacy, photographs and paintings by Larry W. Green, has just been released, and Miller has shipped 500 copies of a 3,200-copy print run.
“There's a lot of people out there, who identify with Chicago,” Miller explained about his switch in emphasis. “There's a strong market for regional books.” His next title, which doesn’t have a pub date yet, will be on Chicago's celebrated Maxwell Street Market.
While ordering only a few copies of Water Tanks of Chicago for her store, Kris Kleindienst, co-owner of St. Louis's Left Bank Books, believes that Wicker Park's offerings will find their audience. “Regional is a niche that works, no matter what the region,” Kliendienst said. “And [Miller] chooses interesting books on interesting topics.”
Along with the change in publishing direction, Miller has revamped Wicker’s distribution. He is now selling the list to his accounts and has hired Partners Book Distributing to sell to the chains. Wicker Park titles had been distributed by Academy Chicago Press, founded in 1976 by Eric Miller's parents, Jordan and Anita Miller. Academy Chicago releases are in turn distributed by the Chicago Distribution Center.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Chicago Tribune
Resourceful traveler: Specialty travel and guidebooks
BY JUNE SAWYERS
October 14, 2007
Bad Karma: Confessions of a Reckless Traveller in Southeast Asia
Academy Chicago Publishers, $17.95; ISBN: 978-0-89733-565-2
Tamara Sheward represents a side of travel writing that is the opposite of what we have come to expect of the genre: rather than playing the role of the respectful, deferential visitor she represents the flip, sarcastic and politically incorrect foreigner in a strange land. The funny thing is Sheward, a twenty-something Australian writer, loves venturing into unfamiliar territory -- the more unfamiliar the better. As she makes clear early on, she never had any interest in visiting Southeast Asia. Her ultimate travel goal was to (1) to escape from her fellow countryfolk and (2) to avoid the backpacking, pseudo-spiritual, self-righteous sorts. Alas, this was a road that led her straight to Asia. Off Sheward and her equally acerbic mate Elissa go. Humor is subjective, of course, and some people will be turned off by Sheward's profane and flippant attitude, but to this reader, "Bad Karma" is an absolute hoot -- rude and uncharitable it may be, but it is also the funniest travel memoir I've come across in recent memory. I won't even begin to describe the duo's absurdist, surreal adventures. But I don't think Sheward will be hired any time soon by the Thai, Laotian, Vietnamese or Cambodian tourist boards. Guaranteed, though, you'll learn several new words, including "farang" and "oop." Don't ask. Just read
Resourceful traveler: Specialty travel and guidebooks
BY JUNE SAWYERS
October 14, 2007
Bad Karma: Confessions of a Reckless Traveller in Southeast Asia
Academy Chicago Publishers, $17.95; ISBN: 978-0-89733-565-2
Tamara Sheward represents a side of travel writing that is the opposite of what we have come to expect of the genre: rather than playing the role of the respectful, deferential visitor she represents the flip, sarcastic and politically incorrect foreigner in a strange land. The funny thing is Sheward, a twenty-something Australian writer, loves venturing into unfamiliar territory -- the more unfamiliar the better. As she makes clear early on, she never had any interest in visiting Southeast Asia. Her ultimate travel goal was to (1) to escape from her fellow countryfolk and (2) to avoid the backpacking, pseudo-spiritual, self-righteous sorts. Alas, this was a road that led her straight to Asia. Off Sheward and her equally acerbic mate Elissa go. Humor is subjective, of course, and some people will be turned off by Sheward's profane and flippant attitude, but to this reader, "Bad Karma" is an absolute hoot -- rude and uncharitable it may be, but it is also the funniest travel memoir I've come across in recent memory. I won't even begin to describe the duo's absurdist, surreal adventures. But I don't think Sheward will be hired any time soon by the Thai, Laotian, Vietnamese or Cambodian tourist boards. Guaranteed, though, you'll learn several new words, including "farang" and "oop." Don't ask. Just read
Friday, October 12, 2007
Publishers Weekly reviews
Anne McCaffery: A Life with Dragons
Robin Roberts
Univ Press of Mississippi 978-1-57806-998-9, $28, cloth, 30 b/w illus, September 07
Robert's intriguing biography of the legendary Dragon Lady of Pernprovides a fascinating overview of Anne McCaffrey's life along with somekeen insights into how her career developed. A trail blazer, McCaffrey,now 81, says she "put romance in science fiction." Roberts counts heramong authors such as Ursula K. LeGuin and Joanna Russ who helped changethe face of a once male-dominated genre. In a chatty, chronologicalformat, Roberts sketches McCaffrey's life as a perky student, frustratedyoung mother and wife, SF insider (including her brief affair with IsaacAsimov) and expatriate. Her post-divorce move to Ireland came as asurprise to many but soon led to tremendous success, despite her longingfor the company of friends such as her mentor and agent, Virginia Kidd.McCaffrey was the first woman to win each and both of the prestigiousHugo and Nebula awards, and in 1978, she became the first author to havea science fiction book (The White Dragon) on the New York Timesbestseller list. This is not an "authorized" biography, and thoughMcCaffrey gave Roberts her blessing and access to crucial papers, sheappears to be an elusive interview subject. The result is an authenticbut sometimes enigmatic portrait. 30 b&w illus.
Anne McCaffery: A Life with Dragons
Robin Roberts
Univ Press of Mississippi 978-1-57806-998-9, $28, cloth, 30 b/w illus, September 07
Robert's intriguing biography of the legendary Dragon Lady of Pernprovides a fascinating overview of Anne McCaffrey's life along with somekeen insights into how her career developed. A trail blazer, McCaffrey,now 81, says she "put romance in science fiction." Roberts counts heramong authors such as Ursula K. LeGuin and Joanna Russ who helped changethe face of a once male-dominated genre. In a chatty, chronologicalformat, Roberts sketches McCaffrey's life as a perky student, frustratedyoung mother and wife, SF insider (including her brief affair with IsaacAsimov) and expatriate. Her post-divorce move to Ireland came as asurprise to many but soon led to tremendous success, despite her longingfor the company of friends such as her mentor and agent, Virginia Kidd.McCaffrey was the first woman to win each and both of the prestigiousHugo and Nebula awards, and in 1978, she became the first author to havea science fiction book (The White Dragon) on the New York Timesbestseller list. This is not an "authorized" biography, and thoughMcCaffrey gave Roberts her blessing and access to crucial papers, sheappears to be an elusive interview subject. The result is an authenticbut sometimes enigmatic portrait. 30 b&w illus.
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
Midwest Book Review, October 2007
The American History Shelf
Water Tanks Of Chicago
Larry W. Green
Wicker Park Press Ltd. PO Box 5318, River Forest, IL 60305-53189780978967604, $19.95 www.wickerparkpress.com
Water tanks, constructed for the purpose of supplying water through a gravity driven system for businesses, buildings, neighborhoods, and communities, were once ubiquitous components of an industrial past, but are now rapidly disappearing as crumbling, obsolete relics as technologies and the city have continued to evolve. For the past twenty years, Larry W. Green is a Chicago artist who has been photographing and sketching water-tanks in and around Chicago, Illinois. Now compiled and presented to the public in "Water Tanks Of Chicago: A Vanishing Urban Legacy", Green showcases and captions 37 of those images he has preserved or recreated. The purpose in publishing his work was to inform and alert the public to the need to preserve those (often crumbling) monuments to a yesteryear Chicago for their esthetic and historical significance. A superb presentation, "Water Tanks Of Chicago" is very highly recommended and could well serve as a template or example for photographically preserving similar landmark constructions in other American communities wanting to treasure and preserve their historic past in a rapidly changing present for the sake of future generations.
The American History Shelf
Water Tanks Of Chicago
Larry W. Green
Wicker Park Press Ltd. PO Box 5318, River Forest, IL 60305-53189780978967604, $19.95 www.wickerparkpress.com
Water tanks, constructed for the purpose of supplying water through a gravity driven system for businesses, buildings, neighborhoods, and communities, were once ubiquitous components of an industrial past, but are now rapidly disappearing as crumbling, obsolete relics as technologies and the city have continued to evolve. For the past twenty years, Larry W. Green is a Chicago artist who has been photographing and sketching water-tanks in and around Chicago, Illinois. Now compiled and presented to the public in "Water Tanks Of Chicago: A Vanishing Urban Legacy", Green showcases and captions 37 of those images he has preserved or recreated. The purpose in publishing his work was to inform and alert the public to the need to preserve those (often crumbling) monuments to a yesteryear Chicago for their esthetic and historical significance. A superb presentation, "Water Tanks Of Chicago" is very highly recommended and could well serve as a template or example for photographically preserving similar landmark constructions in other American communities wanting to treasure and preserve their historic past in a rapidly changing present for the sake of future generations.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Online review from www.travel-travel-travel.com 9/25/2007
THE BOOK TRAVELER– BAD KARMA Confessions of a Reckless Traveller in Southeast Asia
By Tamara Sheward Academy Chicago Publishers US$17.95
BAD KARMA is for the young and young-at-heart who will enjoy the author’s brash take on lesser known spots in Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia.
As Australian Tamara Sheward and sidekick, Eli, indulge their adventurous appetites with sometimes reckless abandon, their escapades highlight many pitfalls that await travelers out on their own, the ones who want to experience the “real” Southeast Asia.
The 300-plus page paperback is an eye-opener that the things we take for granted in our home countries are rarely accessible in far away lands (such as fast food establishments like the famous McD, Burger King, Kentucky Fried Chicken, etc)
Wickedly funny, even if the Aussie slang requires some translation, Sheward reveals the less than ordinary side of these once little-known places to tourists.
If anything, visitors should always carry extra local currency, especially farangs (foreigners) who are easy targets for inflated prices e.g. bus tickets, visas, etc.
The colorful travelogues on the people, visitors and locals alike, give travel writing that “edge” on normally flat narratives.
Reminds me of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice by Tahir Shah, minus the expletives!
- Bridget Azeez
THE BOOK TRAVELER– BAD KARMA Confessions of a Reckless Traveller in Southeast Asia
By Tamara Sheward Academy Chicago Publishers US$17.95
BAD KARMA is for the young and young-at-heart who will enjoy the author’s brash take on lesser known spots in Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia.
As Australian Tamara Sheward and sidekick, Eli, indulge their adventurous appetites with sometimes reckless abandon, their escapades highlight many pitfalls that await travelers out on their own, the ones who want to experience the “real” Southeast Asia.
The 300-plus page paperback is an eye-opener that the things we take for granted in our home countries are rarely accessible in far away lands (such as fast food establishments like the famous McD, Burger King, Kentucky Fried Chicken, etc)
Wickedly funny, even if the Aussie slang requires some translation, Sheward reveals the less than ordinary side of these once little-known places to tourists.
If anything, visitors should always carry extra local currency, especially farangs (foreigners) who are easy targets for inflated prices e.g. bus tickets, visas, etc.
The colorful travelogues on the people, visitors and locals alike, give travel writing that “edge” on normally flat narratives.
Reminds me of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice by Tahir Shah, minus the expletives!
- Bridget Azeez
Monday, September 24, 2007
Publishers Weekly reviews
** Starred Review **
Hamas: A History from Within Azzam Tamimi. Interlink/Olive Branch, $20 paper (384p)
ISBN 978-1-56656-689-6
In this trenchant history spanning from the first days of the 1987 intifada to the sweeping democratic victory of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) in the Palestinian elections of January 2006, London-based scholar Tamimi argues that seeing Hamas as merely another face of Al Qaeda obscures more than it elucidates. A successor to the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas comes out of a transnational Islamic reform movement that grew among Palestinians in the 1970s, largely in reaction to Arab nationalism's failure to champion the Palestinian cause. Increasingly, against a string of failed peace processes and the corruption and concessions of the PLO-led secular leadership, Hamas's popular support has rested heavily on its stance as a militant resistance movement wedded to the Palestinian dream of regaining pre-1948 Palestine, and as provider of essential social services. Tamimi draws extensively on the words of insiders in carefully charting and contextualizing the development of Hamas's highly resilient organization, shifting outlook and embrace of various tactics, including the offer of a truce with Israel and, most controversially, suicide bombing. Although mostly dispassionate and at times critical, this is a generally sympathetic analysis. It will be a key resource in English for any serious assessment of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
** Starred Review **
Hamas: A History from Within Azzam Tamimi. Interlink/Olive Branch, $20 paper (384p)
ISBN 978-1-56656-689-6
In this trenchant history spanning from the first days of the 1987 intifada to the sweeping democratic victory of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) in the Palestinian elections of January 2006, London-based scholar Tamimi argues that seeing Hamas as merely another face of Al Qaeda obscures more than it elucidates. A successor to the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas comes out of a transnational Islamic reform movement that grew among Palestinians in the 1970s, largely in reaction to Arab nationalism's failure to champion the Palestinian cause. Increasingly, against a string of failed peace processes and the corruption and concessions of the PLO-led secular leadership, Hamas's popular support has rested heavily on its stance as a militant resistance movement wedded to the Palestinian dream of regaining pre-1948 Palestine, and as provider of essential social services. Tamimi draws extensively on the words of insiders in carefully charting and contextualizing the development of Hamas's highly resilient organization, shifting outlook and embrace of various tactics, including the offer of a truce with Israel and, most controversially, suicide bombing. Although mostly dispassionate and at times critical, this is a generally sympathetic analysis. It will be a key resource in English for any serious assessment of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Publishers Weekly reviews
The Blackstone Commentaries by Rob Riggan. John F. Blair, $16.95 paper (280p) ISBN 978-0895873453
A former crime reporter and policeman, Riggan makes the New South circa 1972 seem positively noirish. Charlie Dugan, the larger-than-life sheriff of Blackstone County, North Carolina is running for re-election, with a powerful benefactor in local surgeon and county commissioner Dr. Martin “Doc” Pemberton. After local man Danny Carver identifies Doc as the driver of a car that forced him off a rain-slicked road, Charlie is in a quandary. He has worked to “create a more equitable justice” for the working poor like Danny Carver, but Doc’s recklessness, sense of entitlement and belief in his immunity from justice force Charlie to question his values. As Dugan struggles with his conscience and the case, he interacts with a compelling Faulknerian cast that includes his stalwart, former wild child wife Drusilla; Elmore Willis, a neophyte lawyer at war with the memory of his sainted father; and Winthrop Reedy, a mobile-home salesman trying desperately to carve out a middle-class dream. Intriguing characters, timeless themes, and powerful prose make Riggan’s second novel—following Free Fire Zone after more than 20 years—memorable. (Oct.)
The Blackstone Commentaries by Rob Riggan. John F. Blair, $16.95 paper (280p) ISBN 978-0895873453
A former crime reporter and policeman, Riggan makes the New South circa 1972 seem positively noirish. Charlie Dugan, the larger-than-life sheriff of Blackstone County, North Carolina is running for re-election, with a powerful benefactor in local surgeon and county commissioner Dr. Martin “Doc” Pemberton. After local man Danny Carver identifies Doc as the driver of a car that forced him off a rain-slicked road, Charlie is in a quandary. He has worked to “create a more equitable justice” for the working poor like Danny Carver, but Doc’s recklessness, sense of entitlement and belief in his immunity from justice force Charlie to question his values. As Dugan struggles with his conscience and the case, he interacts with a compelling Faulknerian cast that includes his stalwart, former wild child wife Drusilla; Elmore Willis, a neophyte lawyer at war with the memory of his sainted father; and Winthrop Reedy, a mobile-home salesman trying desperately to carve out a middle-class dream. Intriguing characters, timeless themes, and powerful prose make Riggan’s second novel—following Free Fire Zone after more than 20 years—memorable. (Oct.)
Monday, July 16, 2007
BAD KARMA: CONFESSIONS OF A RECKLESS TRAVELLER IN SOUTHEAST ASIA
By Tamara Sheward
Forthcoming from Academy Chicago Publishers in November 2007
316 pages, ISBN 978-0-89733-565-2, paperback, $17.95
“Bad Karma” review by Gillian Dooley for Writers’ Radio, Radio Adelaide
Tamara Sheward does her best in her book Bad Karma to convince us that she’s
crazy, inept, unattractive and insensitive, but in the end I couldn’t help liking
her and, in a bemused way, admiring her as a writer. Tamara and her friend Elissa are backpackers who can’t stand backpackers. Bad Karma relates their three-week journey through mainland Southeast Asia. They storm their way through Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and
Cambodia, leaving a trail of cigarette smoke and obscenities. They reserve their worst invective for the other western tourists they meet: this is the scene at a backpackers’ hostel in northern Thailand:
A German woman with hairy armpits and a turban was extolling the
virtues of nude pottery to a group of serious-looking twenty-something
girls in belly-dance pants and sarongs, while two bearded guys …
hunched over their guitars, belting out a Garcia-esque version of ‘Hello
Mary Lou.’ A tall black guy in orange African robes and matching pill-
box cap read poetry from a notebook to a tiny Japanese girl, who
covertly dragged on a joint and nodded sagely .. etcetera.
Tamara and El are in the same age group as these would-be enlightened ones, but have no patience with new-age pieties, dreadlocks and tai chi, though they’re not averse to a bit of chemically-induced euphoria. Their favourite occupation is drinking too much, followed by eating like pigs (known as schnarfing), and lying around doing nothing. They’re definitely not into travel for the sightseeing. Tamara’s philosophy of travel is ‘if I could see it in a book, then I didn’t have to see it in real life. … I simply wasn’t interested in things like ancient citadels and royal tombs. Nup. I was more interested in scruffing around local markets, retching at what passed as food in these far-flung places and pestering the natives in out-of-the-way bars.’
Sheward writes with Rabelaisian gusto. She and El tower over the inhabitants of Southeast Asia, just like Gargantua and Pantagruel. They encounter the most disgusting food, the filthiest toilets, the most bug-infested hostels, the most unroadworthy buses and the most excruciatingly embarrassing situations imaginable. But, although literal filth abounds, the girls remain
determinedly chaste throughout their adventures.
They never laugh at anyone more than they laugh at themselves. They ridicule the irritatingly-bearded, guitar-toting types mercilessly, but they give generously to beggars, and while protesting vigorously at being ripped off by bureaucratic minor officials, would never dream of cheating or doing down any of the people they do genuine business with. Tamara is a warm-hearted soul. She and Elissa are often severely tried by cruelty to animals, and by poverty and
suffering, and it shows through all the hyperbole and flippancy of her truly amazing prose style. No holds are barred – no simile is too outrageous, no digression too wayward, no joke too tasteless, no slang too crude.
But then, when it comes to describing the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum – the former Security Prison under Pol Pot in Cambodia – all the baroque extravagance of the language drops away and she writes movingly and powerfully. This is where it struck me most forcibly that this book is more than the ravings of an eccentric with an exaggerated relish for colourful expressions.
It is a clever, wry, expressive and engaging work which, almost despite itself, shows a perceptive and sympathetic grasp of all kinds of people and places, plus an attractive and healthy measure of self-mockery and self-knowledge.
By Tamara Sheward
Forthcoming from Academy Chicago Publishers in November 2007
316 pages, ISBN 978-0-89733-565-2, paperback, $17.95
“Bad Karma” review by Gillian Dooley for Writers’ Radio, Radio Adelaide
Tamara Sheward does her best in her book Bad Karma to convince us that she’s
crazy, inept, unattractive and insensitive, but in the end I couldn’t help liking
her and, in a bemused way, admiring her as a writer. Tamara and her friend Elissa are backpackers who can’t stand backpackers. Bad Karma relates their three-week journey through mainland Southeast Asia. They storm their way through Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and
Cambodia, leaving a trail of cigarette smoke and obscenities. They reserve their worst invective for the other western tourists they meet: this is the scene at a backpackers’ hostel in northern Thailand:
A German woman with hairy armpits and a turban was extolling the
virtues of nude pottery to a group of serious-looking twenty-something
girls in belly-dance pants and sarongs, while two bearded guys …
hunched over their guitars, belting out a Garcia-esque version of ‘Hello
Mary Lou.’ A tall black guy in orange African robes and matching pill-
box cap read poetry from a notebook to a tiny Japanese girl, who
covertly dragged on a joint and nodded sagely .. etcetera.
Tamara and El are in the same age group as these would-be enlightened ones, but have no patience with new-age pieties, dreadlocks and tai chi, though they’re not averse to a bit of chemically-induced euphoria. Their favourite occupation is drinking too much, followed by eating like pigs (known as schnarfing), and lying around doing nothing. They’re definitely not into travel for the sightseeing. Tamara’s philosophy of travel is ‘if I could see it in a book, then I didn’t have to see it in real life. … I simply wasn’t interested in things like ancient citadels and royal tombs. Nup. I was more interested in scruffing around local markets, retching at what passed as food in these far-flung places and pestering the natives in out-of-the-way bars.’
Sheward writes with Rabelaisian gusto. She and El tower over the inhabitants of Southeast Asia, just like Gargantua and Pantagruel. They encounter the most disgusting food, the filthiest toilets, the most bug-infested hostels, the most unroadworthy buses and the most excruciatingly embarrassing situations imaginable. But, although literal filth abounds, the girls remain
determinedly chaste throughout their adventures.
They never laugh at anyone more than they laugh at themselves. They ridicule the irritatingly-bearded, guitar-toting types mercilessly, but they give generously to beggars, and while protesting vigorously at being ripped off by bureaucratic minor officials, would never dream of cheating or doing down any of the people they do genuine business with. Tamara is a warm-hearted soul. She and Elissa are often severely tried by cruelty to animals, and by poverty and
suffering, and it shows through all the hyperbole and flippancy of her truly amazing prose style. No holds are barred – no simile is too outrageous, no digression too wayward, no joke too tasteless, no slang too crude.
But then, when it comes to describing the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum – the former Security Prison under Pol Pot in Cambodia – all the baroque extravagance of the language drops away and she writes movingly and powerfully. This is where it struck me most forcibly that this book is more than the ravings of an eccentric with an exaggerated relish for colourful expressions.
It is a clever, wry, expressive and engaging work which, almost despite itself, shows a perceptive and sympathetic grasp of all kinds of people and places, plus an attractive and healthy measure of self-mockery and self-knowledge.
From The Ethiopian American
Held at a Distance: My Rediscovery of Ethiopia
By Rebecca G Haile
Category: Memoir / TravelPaperback, 200pp, ISBN: 0-89733-556-2 / 978-0-89733-556-0Chicago: Academy Chicago Publishers, 2007
Price: $17.95 http://www.academychicago.com/heldatadistance.html
A Review
By Ayele Bekerie, PhD
Rebecca Haile’s Held at a Distance: My Rediscovery of Ethiopia is a well-crafted and captivating autobiographical, historical, and diasporic narrative. It is also a memoir of dislocation, migration, and rediscovery, primarily inspired by and based on her four weeks trip to Ethiopia after twenty-five years of absence. Rebecca meticulously narrates how she and her family succeeded in overcoming traumatic experience and rebuilt their immensely productive lives. Her narrative is indeed therapeutic and, hopefully, it will encourage thousands of silenced Ethiopians to voice their sufferings from the state sponsored violence of the Derg period (a repressive military regime that ruled Ethiopia from 1976 to 1991). Rebecca’s initiative in this regard is commendable.
Rebecca initiates narrowing the distance that kept her away from the country of her birth as a result of the repressive years of the Derg era. She also celebrates her successful and empowered life, a life that has risen way up beyond the punitive, vindictive and destructive power of the military regime. Rebecca’s innocent and ideal childhood was rudely and violently violated by a reckless and murderous regime – a regime that massacred thousands of Ethiopians, young and old, in the name of an ideology that it barely understands or able to describe it beyond stupefying and yet deadly slogans. Those who disagreed with the slogans or refuse to shout them at every meeting paid with their lives. Rebecca, by taking advantage of what she calls the healing passage of time, thinks and writes about the horrific outcome of state-sponsored violence as well as about the healing, perseverance and triumph of the human spirit.
Rebecca’s book has three parts. Part one focuses on the story of her family. Part two retraces the historic north or as she puts it, “The Remains of an Empire”. Part three is labeled intersections of a globalized life. These three parts are accompanied by prologue and epilogue that allow the reader to see the interconnectedness of the parts as well as the perspective of the writer. Rebecca is an independent thinker and she does not mince words in expressing her opinion on many and diverse issues, including political issues.
Rebecca supplements her insightful narrative with great black and white photographs of her family and the historic north. The cover of her book carries a smiling and confident self-portrait. The picture of her aunt, Iteye Ityobia, moves me. I am not sure if she succeeded in obtaining a visa to travel to the U.S. to see her brother, Professor Getachew Haile.
Rebecca, who is the daughter of the distinguished scholar, the winner of the McArthur Foundation Genius Grant for his research on ancient Ethiopian manuscripts, the speaker of several languages, the author of several books on the literary, religious, linguistic traditions of Ethiopia, the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church’s representative to the World Council of Churches, the Cataloguer of the Ethiopian Manuscripts, the champion of the Liberal Social Democracy principles and practice, not only pays a moving tribute to her father, parents and extended family, she is also coming of age in her own right to claim her motherland.
Rebecca, a graduate of Harvard Law School with honor (she was on the Law Review with Senator Barack Obama for two years!), a former clerk of a Federal Judge and a lawyer who work in major law firms in Washington D.C. and New York, is eager and willing to return to Ethiopia in a meaningful way, to become part of a new Ethiopia where the rights of all citizens are guaranteed by law and respected, where the rights of women, including the right to participate in the political decision making, the right to live free of sexism, sexual abuse and exploitation, abuse in the work place , both locally and globally, particularly in countries, such as Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and the Gulf States, to promote the rights of free speech and solving political difference by peaceful means. She wants to bridge the gap that held her at a distance for more than two decades, the gap that forced her to seek new life in America.
Rebecca is now a proud mother of two children, happily married to Jean Manas, a Greek Armenian (the Ethiopian orthodox church maintains one of the longest relationships with the churches of Greece and Armenia). Jean accompanied Rebecca in her historic journey to Ethiopia, a journey that took her back to her family and to the northern part of Ethiopia. Rebecca’s memoir is also remarkable in combining her family’s story with the story of the motherland. It is clear that she has become a woman of substance, integrity. She is articulate, assertive and open-minded.
Rebecca limited her reflections on Ethiopian history and historical sites to the northern part. I hope in due course she will be able to visit the southern part and be able to expand her rediscovery.
Rebecca’s narrative on her uncle is moving. His determination to continue to live and build bridges in Ethiopia, even under the most trying moments of the Derg, is quite exemplary.
Rebecca’s interaction with her grandmother and aunt also provide ample examples of the strength of family values and its capacity to sustain and nourish the family members.
Rebecca made several observations during her visits of Ethiopia: narrow policy in Aksum, misguided racial myth of the Ethiopians, the crude policy of the American Embassy in Ethiopia.
Held at a Distance is a great accomplishment. It certainly presents a balanced life of the author, a balance in which she displayed an American face to the world while she nurtured a private identification with Ethiopia that she kept mostly to herself.
Ayele Bekerie (PhD) is Assistant Professor of Africana Studies and Director of Undergraduate Studies at Cornell University. He has written and published in scholarly journals, such as , ANKH: Journal of Egyptology and African Civilizations, Journal of Black Studies, The International Journal of Africana Studies, and Imhotep.
Held at a Distance: My Rediscovery of Ethiopia
By Rebecca G Haile
Category: Memoir / TravelPaperback, 200pp, ISBN: 0-89733-556-2 / 978-0-89733-556-0Chicago: Academy Chicago Publishers, 2007
Price: $17.95 http://www.academychicago.com/heldatadistance.html
A Review
By Ayele Bekerie, PhD
Rebecca Haile’s Held at a Distance: My Rediscovery of Ethiopia is a well-crafted and captivating autobiographical, historical, and diasporic narrative. It is also a memoir of dislocation, migration, and rediscovery, primarily inspired by and based on her four weeks trip to Ethiopia after twenty-five years of absence. Rebecca meticulously narrates how she and her family succeeded in overcoming traumatic experience and rebuilt their immensely productive lives. Her narrative is indeed therapeutic and, hopefully, it will encourage thousands of silenced Ethiopians to voice their sufferings from the state sponsored violence of the Derg period (a repressive military regime that ruled Ethiopia from 1976 to 1991). Rebecca’s initiative in this regard is commendable.
Rebecca initiates narrowing the distance that kept her away from the country of her birth as a result of the repressive years of the Derg era. She also celebrates her successful and empowered life, a life that has risen way up beyond the punitive, vindictive and destructive power of the military regime. Rebecca’s innocent and ideal childhood was rudely and violently violated by a reckless and murderous regime – a regime that massacred thousands of Ethiopians, young and old, in the name of an ideology that it barely understands or able to describe it beyond stupefying and yet deadly slogans. Those who disagreed with the slogans or refuse to shout them at every meeting paid with their lives. Rebecca, by taking advantage of what she calls the healing passage of time, thinks and writes about the horrific outcome of state-sponsored violence as well as about the healing, perseverance and triumph of the human spirit.
Rebecca’s book has three parts. Part one focuses on the story of her family. Part two retraces the historic north or as she puts it, “The Remains of an Empire”. Part three is labeled intersections of a globalized life. These three parts are accompanied by prologue and epilogue that allow the reader to see the interconnectedness of the parts as well as the perspective of the writer. Rebecca is an independent thinker and she does not mince words in expressing her opinion on many and diverse issues, including political issues.
Rebecca supplements her insightful narrative with great black and white photographs of her family and the historic north. The cover of her book carries a smiling and confident self-portrait. The picture of her aunt, Iteye Ityobia, moves me. I am not sure if she succeeded in obtaining a visa to travel to the U.S. to see her brother, Professor Getachew Haile.
Rebecca, who is the daughter of the distinguished scholar, the winner of the McArthur Foundation Genius Grant for his research on ancient Ethiopian manuscripts, the speaker of several languages, the author of several books on the literary, religious, linguistic traditions of Ethiopia, the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church’s representative to the World Council of Churches, the Cataloguer of the Ethiopian Manuscripts, the champion of the Liberal Social Democracy principles and practice, not only pays a moving tribute to her father, parents and extended family, she is also coming of age in her own right to claim her motherland.
Rebecca, a graduate of Harvard Law School with honor (she was on the Law Review with Senator Barack Obama for two years!), a former clerk of a Federal Judge and a lawyer who work in major law firms in Washington D.C. and New York, is eager and willing to return to Ethiopia in a meaningful way, to become part of a new Ethiopia where the rights of all citizens are guaranteed by law and respected, where the rights of women, including the right to participate in the political decision making, the right to live free of sexism, sexual abuse and exploitation, abuse in the work place , both locally and globally, particularly in countries, such as Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and the Gulf States, to promote the rights of free speech and solving political difference by peaceful means. She wants to bridge the gap that held her at a distance for more than two decades, the gap that forced her to seek new life in America.
Rebecca is now a proud mother of two children, happily married to Jean Manas, a Greek Armenian (the Ethiopian orthodox church maintains one of the longest relationships with the churches of Greece and Armenia). Jean accompanied Rebecca in her historic journey to Ethiopia, a journey that took her back to her family and to the northern part of Ethiopia. Rebecca’s memoir is also remarkable in combining her family’s story with the story of the motherland. It is clear that she has become a woman of substance, integrity. She is articulate, assertive and open-minded.
Rebecca limited her reflections on Ethiopian history and historical sites to the northern part. I hope in due course she will be able to visit the southern part and be able to expand her rediscovery.
Rebecca’s narrative on her uncle is moving. His determination to continue to live and build bridges in Ethiopia, even under the most trying moments of the Derg, is quite exemplary.
Rebecca’s interaction with her grandmother and aunt also provide ample examples of the strength of family values and its capacity to sustain and nourish the family members.
Rebecca made several observations during her visits of Ethiopia: narrow policy in Aksum, misguided racial myth of the Ethiopians, the crude policy of the American Embassy in Ethiopia.
Held at a Distance is a great accomplishment. It certainly presents a balanced life of the author, a balance in which she displayed an American face to the world while she nurtured a private identification with Ethiopia that she kept mostly to herself.
Ayele Bekerie (PhD) is Assistant Professor of Africana Studies and Director of Undergraduate Studies at Cornell University. He has written and published in scholarly journals, such as , ANKH: Journal of Egyptology and African Civilizations, Journal of Black Studies, The International Journal of Africana Studies, and Imhotep.
Friday, July 06, 2007
From Progressive Historians
History and Politics Of, By, and For the People
Broken by the Badlands: A Review
by: delicatemonster
Mon Jul 02, 2007 at 22:50:45 PM EDT
FEVER & THIRST A missionary doctor amid the Christian tribes of Kurdistan
By Gordon Taylor Academy of Chicago Publishers, 354 pp., 2005, ISBN: 0-89733-537-6
The most impressive feature of Fever & Thirst, Gordon Taylor's meticulously researched study of the misadventures of a 19th Century doctor and missionary in the remnants of the Ottoman empire, is the grudging sympathy we come to feel for Asahel Grant, the erstwhile hero of this tale. By current standards of tastes, he is not an entirely endearing character: stoic, overly pious, headstrong and something of a quack. There is little to recommend him. Indeed, the opening chapter seems contrived to lower our expectations. This upright Victorian appears to be something of a masochist or a fool. Rousing from a hard night out of doors in Chumba, very close to what is now the border between Turkey and Iraq, our man finds his face swollen "into a bubble of pain." The night before he had slept on an azraleh: a platform rising some ten to fifteen feet above the ground to avoid mosquitoes. The particular azraleh that Grant slept on rose only a few feet above a roaring cataract whose cold waters he presumes have caused the swelling. Near the end of the first chapter, entitled "Remedy" we are introduced to what Grant-an M.D. by the standards of the 19th century-determines is the appropriate cure: a lancet, thrust fiercely into his jaw again and again to drain off the swelling.
"Grant found relief," Taylor writes, "`only by a desperate plunge of his lancet into the very roots of his teeth'. The blade, Grant admits, had struck so deeply into his gums that the labial nerve was severed, leaving his upper lip numb for nearly two weeks."
Gordon Taylor delivers this striking moment with such casualness that I found myself wondering if we weren't verging into satire, or spoof. But no: "This was not the act of a madman or quack" Taylor is careful to note; "Grant was a competent and conscientious physician, a man who never acted with anything but the best of intentions. No one can read about his desperate thrust of the lancet without the queasy realization that little had changed since alchemists stalked the earth. In some parts of the United States, doctors continued to draw blood up to the beginning of the 20th century, and the potions they dispensed lingered even longer in their black bags and in apothecaries' chest. Such was the staying power of an illusion; such was the world of Asahel Grant."
Indeed, Gordon Taylor devotes page after page to the leech gatherers of that time and the paradoxically effective powers of violent emetics. In retrospect what is most curious about this passage is how pronounced that word `illusion' stands out. Calling to mind Freud's Future of an Illusion and the indictment of superstitious belief patterns in general. And yet, it's a credit to Taylor's art, perhaps, or at minimum, his sympathy, that Asahel Grant's world stands on its own: horrific, primeval and heroic, even for modern day readers far removed from both Grant's cures and his beliefs.
In addition, I found myself reading this book in awe of its encyclopedic knowledge of the medical and religious practices of that geographic area and era. The main thrust of the story, however, is simple disaster. At twenty five years old, Grant's wife, Judith Campell Grant, dies in the relative wilderness of Urmia among the Nestorians, a group of primitive and semi-heretical Christians that Grant has come to cure and convert. She had "toiled like some super human being. She bore a son in the summer of 1836 and twin daughters in 1838. She taught school, she learned Persian, Turkish, and ancient and modern Syriac, she nursed the sick." Of course, soon she fell ill herself. Taylor notes that it was probably Malaria. He ends by eventually abandoning his children to conduct his missionary / medical work. The work itself Asahel Grant has no doubt about, but a modern reader lingers over certain questions of efficacy and judgment. Why abandon your own children? Are cures of leech bleedings and vomit inducing emetics the best possible thing to bring to these mountain primitives? And, as if that weren't enough, must you introduce your own prejudices to them: railing against the Papists ("sons of perdition") and Anglicans alike, while trying to dodge the advances of the latest band of Kurdish thieves?
Taylor manages to illuminate and discuss these questions while still maintaining a large and sympathetic heart for our doomed doctor. Along the way we learn about the value of Gall nuts-how gall-wasps actually make the necessary `tanning solution' by swelling the Oak trees of Aleppo with their own larva, the tediousness of sitting minutes on end for a daguerreotype, the reptilian politics of the Nestorian and Kurdish mountain tribes-and perhaps -- not so surprising-that Mosul, Iraq has always been a fetid, dangerous place. Both violent time and weathered country come to life in layer after layer of carefully researched detail. We know from the beginning, of course, how it will end. There can be little doubt: Grant is doomed from the moment the lancet pierces his gum. And yet, Taylor invests this last, almost ridiculous scene with grandeur and sympathy: he is ordered by his own mission board to `go home' and take care of his children. "from the weary doctor there now issued a great sigh of relief. It was the best thing that could have happened. `On reading this,' Grant wrote, `my heart was full, and I passed almost a sleepless night.'"
His heart is full, Taylor is careful to explain, because he can now return to tending for his children, relieved of his missionary duties. There is only one problem. He is in Mosul; and there is a typhus epidemic. "With too many refugees and too little room to house them, Grant's makeshift hospital had bred the germs that would destroy him."
The end comes quickly, ironically, within days of the notice that he must return home.
"Sometimes in his delirium he spoke Turkish, other times Syriac. He conversed with his mother and his children. He spoke with his Savior."
He dies, imagining he is on a ship, traveling to his home.
On April 24, 1844, by the banks of the Tigris, in the city of Mosul, which is even now the scene of horrific battles, Asahel Grant was buried. Even the Turkish governor at the time attended. The other Christian missionaries-his comrades-- lingered on for a time, as was their pattern, but soon even they departed, driven like Asahel Grant, and like our own violent effort today, by their own loss of illusions.
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Author Rebecca Haile explores family, identity in her childhood home - Redicovering Ethiopia
Held At A Distance: My Rediscovery of Ethiopia
By Rebecca G. Haile Academy Chicago Publishers (paperback $ 17.95 978-0-89733-556-0)
EXPRESS
A PUBLICATION OF The Washington Post - WASHINGTON'S FREE DAILY NEWSPAPER
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
Free Ride
Books: Rebecca Haile's 'Rediscovery of Ethiopia'
HOW DOES IT FEEL to straddle two cultures? What is the difference between people of the same blood, born in the same place but raised thousands of miles apart? Is home still home if it hasn't housed you in a quarter century?
In 1976, two years after Colonel Mengistu Haile-Mariam and his army, known as the Derg, overthrew Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie, Rebecca Haile and her family were forced to leave the capital city of Addis Ababa. Rebecca Haile was 11 when her father was shot by the Derg and left paralyzed. The family moved to central Minnesota.
Twenty-five years later, Haile returned to the country of her birth "with all [her] Americanisms" in tow. She found a family that was as welcoming as they were three decades before, an enthrallingly rich history and frustrating social stratifications. She chronicles her trip in her new book, "Held at a Distance: My Rediscovery of Ethiopia."
This week, Haile comes to Washington for two readings — Thursday at 7 p.m. at Olsson's Penn Quarter (418 7th Street NW) and Saturday at 2 p.m. at Sankofa Cafe and Bookstore (2714 Georgia Ave. NW). Before she arrived, Express asked Haile to discuss her trip home and how she feels about Ethiopia now.
» EXPRESS: Do you consider this book an autobiography? It provides a lot of the history of your time in Ethiopia.
» HAILE: No, I don't think of it as autobiographical. I laid out the history surrounding our departure as a way of explaining why we left and what I was thinking when I went back and why it had taken me so long to go back. But I didn't intend it to be an exhaustive story of myself and certainly not of my family.
» EXPRESS: Who did you write this book for?
» HAILE: When I returned, I didn't intend to write a book. I started taking notes for myself to make sense of the various issues that struck me — Issues such as identity mediation (What you think about when you have one foot in one culture and one in another?) and the question of memory (What is it that we remember, what stays the same, what do we carry with us, what has nothing to do with modern reality?). So I started out writing for myself.
When I turned it into a book, I was thinking of several things. It's only been in the last 30 years that Ethiopians have left Ethiopia. It occurred to me that what I was thinking about and the issues that I was struggling through would be relevant to a large and growing community of people — people born here or people who came here when they were very young.
Secondly, I'm interested in the humanization of Ethiopia. It's a country that people in the West, if we know it at all, we tend to know it through the headlines of poverty, famine and civil war. Not to deny that those things aren't very important in defining the modern nation — they are absolutely relevant and central issues. But that isn't all there is. There's also a country with its own unique and rich culture and history. It's a country full of actual ordinary people: Farmers, teachers, engineers, grandmothers, taxi drivers and church-goers.
» EXPRESS: D.C. has one of the largest Ethiopian populations in the world. Was that part of the reason you wanted to come to D.C.?
» HAILE: Absolutely. It's a natural place to do a reading. I had my first reading in New York last week. New York is where I live, and it also has a fairly good-sized Ethiopian community. But D.C. is definitely the biggest one, and I am looking forward to it. I've actually lived outside of that community. I've lived in places like Minnesota, gone to college in small towns where there haven't been big Ethiopian communities. So I'm really interested to see how this is received and the sorts of questions I'll get.
» EXPRESS: At the beginning of the book, you say you're uncertain whether you can still call Ethiopia home. How do you feel now?» HAILE: I feel that it is more available to me than I had realized. That the choice is more mine, if that makes sense. Through my family, which was incredibly welcoming both to me and of my husband, I came away feeling that there was room for me with all of my Americanisms.
» EXPRESS: How emotionally difficult was the trip home? Was it harder or easier than expected?
» HAILE: It was more emotional and greater than I expected. I'm not an incredibly emotional person, and because we left under such circumstances, I guess I intentionally or subconsciously kept my expectations low because I was fearful of what was going to happen.
It was just so emotional. Hanging out with my grandmother in her house again and just seeing this 90-some-year-old woman doing these rituals that I remembered from 25 years ago — they're exactly the same. Twenty-five years had passed like that and they were so happy to see us and [were] so loving and so thrilled. Then the opportunity to see a more modern Ethiopia through my uncle's work, which to me was so interesting. Then the chance to travel to the historic cities, which I had read about, but hadn't been to — and just seeing all that history.
» EXPRESS: Do you think the trip would have been different if it had been your father's trip instead of yours?
» HAILE: I would have to assume so. I don't think he feels the difference that I feel. His heart and mind are there always. He spent the same number of years abroad, but he spent his formative years there. His earlier choices were dedicated to his career choices, academic choices and religion. All his identity is there, and his professional work in the States has been about Ethiopia.
So I don't think he would feel any of the identity issues or cultural issues. He would never have this title "Held at a Distance," which for me, captures my relationship with Ethiopia. I tried to step back and I tried to look at it, and I have American eyes now. I don't know that he would have that same distance. I don't know that he would have written this book. I think he would have just felt at home.
» EXPRESS: Do you expect to return to Ethiopia again? And do you think other family members will return?»
HAILE: Yes. In fact, my younger sister has returned. She has gone. I think the government is repressive. It's not better than the one that was there then. So that's there. But I think people are going. I think people in my family — I don't know about my parents, but I think my generation will go.
» Olsson's, 418 7th St. NW; Thu., 7 p.m., free; 202-638-7610. (Gallery Place/ Archives-Navy)
Book Information: Held at a Distance: My Rediscovery of Ethiopia
By Rebecca G Haile (paperback, $17.95 ISBN 978-089733-556-0)
Held At A Distance: My Rediscovery of Ethiopia
By Rebecca G. Haile Academy Chicago Publishers (paperback $ 17.95 978-0-89733-556-0)
EXPRESS
A PUBLICATION OF The Washington Post - WASHINGTON'S FREE DAILY NEWSPAPER
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
Free Ride
Books: Rebecca Haile's 'Rediscovery of Ethiopia'
HOW DOES IT FEEL to straddle two cultures? What is the difference between people of the same blood, born in the same place but raised thousands of miles apart? Is home still home if it hasn't housed you in a quarter century?
In 1976, two years after Colonel Mengistu Haile-Mariam and his army, known as the Derg, overthrew Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie, Rebecca Haile and her family were forced to leave the capital city of Addis Ababa. Rebecca Haile was 11 when her father was shot by the Derg and left paralyzed. The family moved to central Minnesota.
Twenty-five years later, Haile returned to the country of her birth "with all [her] Americanisms" in tow. She found a family that was as welcoming as they were three decades before, an enthrallingly rich history and frustrating social stratifications. She chronicles her trip in her new book, "Held at a Distance: My Rediscovery of Ethiopia."
This week, Haile comes to Washington for two readings — Thursday at 7 p.m. at Olsson's Penn Quarter (418 7th Street NW) and Saturday at 2 p.m. at Sankofa Cafe and Bookstore (2714 Georgia Ave. NW). Before she arrived, Express asked Haile to discuss her trip home and how she feels about Ethiopia now.
» EXPRESS: Do you consider this book an autobiography? It provides a lot of the history of your time in Ethiopia.
» HAILE: No, I don't think of it as autobiographical. I laid out the history surrounding our departure as a way of explaining why we left and what I was thinking when I went back and why it had taken me so long to go back. But I didn't intend it to be an exhaustive story of myself and certainly not of my family.
» EXPRESS: Who did you write this book for?
» HAILE: When I returned, I didn't intend to write a book. I started taking notes for myself to make sense of the various issues that struck me — Issues such as identity mediation (What you think about when you have one foot in one culture and one in another?) and the question of memory (What is it that we remember, what stays the same, what do we carry with us, what has nothing to do with modern reality?). So I started out writing for myself.
When I turned it into a book, I was thinking of several things. It's only been in the last 30 years that Ethiopians have left Ethiopia. It occurred to me that what I was thinking about and the issues that I was struggling through would be relevant to a large and growing community of people — people born here or people who came here when they were very young.
Secondly, I'm interested in the humanization of Ethiopia. It's a country that people in the West, if we know it at all, we tend to know it through the headlines of poverty, famine and civil war. Not to deny that those things aren't very important in defining the modern nation — they are absolutely relevant and central issues. But that isn't all there is. There's also a country with its own unique and rich culture and history. It's a country full of actual ordinary people: Farmers, teachers, engineers, grandmothers, taxi drivers and church-goers.
» EXPRESS: D.C. has one of the largest Ethiopian populations in the world. Was that part of the reason you wanted to come to D.C.?
» HAILE: Absolutely. It's a natural place to do a reading. I had my first reading in New York last week. New York is where I live, and it also has a fairly good-sized Ethiopian community. But D.C. is definitely the biggest one, and I am looking forward to it. I've actually lived outside of that community. I've lived in places like Minnesota, gone to college in small towns where there haven't been big Ethiopian communities. So I'm really interested to see how this is received and the sorts of questions I'll get.
» EXPRESS: At the beginning of the book, you say you're uncertain whether you can still call Ethiopia home. How do you feel now?» HAILE: I feel that it is more available to me than I had realized. That the choice is more mine, if that makes sense. Through my family, which was incredibly welcoming both to me and of my husband, I came away feeling that there was room for me with all of my Americanisms.
» EXPRESS: How emotionally difficult was the trip home? Was it harder or easier than expected?
» HAILE: It was more emotional and greater than I expected. I'm not an incredibly emotional person, and because we left under such circumstances, I guess I intentionally or subconsciously kept my expectations low because I was fearful of what was going to happen.
It was just so emotional. Hanging out with my grandmother in her house again and just seeing this 90-some-year-old woman doing these rituals that I remembered from 25 years ago — they're exactly the same. Twenty-five years had passed like that and they were so happy to see us and [were] so loving and so thrilled. Then the opportunity to see a more modern Ethiopia through my uncle's work, which to me was so interesting. Then the chance to travel to the historic cities, which I had read about, but hadn't been to — and just seeing all that history.
» EXPRESS: Do you think the trip would have been different if it had been your father's trip instead of yours?
» HAILE: I would have to assume so. I don't think he feels the difference that I feel. His heart and mind are there always. He spent the same number of years abroad, but he spent his formative years there. His earlier choices were dedicated to his career choices, academic choices and religion. All his identity is there, and his professional work in the States has been about Ethiopia.
So I don't think he would feel any of the identity issues or cultural issues. He would never have this title "Held at a Distance," which for me, captures my relationship with Ethiopia. I tried to step back and I tried to look at it, and I have American eyes now. I don't know that he would have that same distance. I don't know that he would have written this book. I think he would have just felt at home.
» EXPRESS: Do you expect to return to Ethiopia again? And do you think other family members will return?»
HAILE: Yes. In fact, my younger sister has returned. She has gone. I think the government is repressive. It's not better than the one that was there then. So that's there. But I think people are going. I think people in my family — I don't know about my parents, but I think my generation will go.
» Olsson's, 418 7th St. NW; Thu., 7 p.m., free; 202-638-7610. (Gallery Place/ Archives-Navy)
Book Information: Held at a Distance: My Rediscovery of Ethiopia
By Rebecca G Haile (paperback, $17.95 ISBN 978-089733-556-0)
from Publishers Weekly
Minimal Damage: Stories of Veterans H. Lee Barnes. Univ. of Nevada, $24.95 (200p) ISBN 978-0-87417-721-3
War shows its human face in former Green Beret Barnes's mostly successful collection about veterans of Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Mogadishu and Iraq trying to get on with their civilian lives after experiencing the horrors of battle. In "Punishment," a former army medic, counting down his last hours on death row (he killed a policeman), relives the time he saved the life of an enemy soldier during the Panama invasion. In the title story, a black Desert Storm veteran finds his ordinary existence turned upside down when the victims of a serial killer are found buried around his house. And in the novella, "Snake Boy," a heroin-addicted, homeless Vietnam vet is kidnapped by a snake-handling evangelist who cures the vet of his addiction and forces him to join his traveling show. In several of the stories, the veteran angle seems peripheral, but the strongest pieces exemplify the words of one character who tells his daughter that "all we can do is invent myths to smooth the harshness." The lives on display here do just that in stories told with understated compassion and unexpected flashes of humor. (Sept. 07)
Minimal Damage: Stories of Veterans H. Lee Barnes. Univ. of Nevada, $24.95 (200p) ISBN 978-0-87417-721-3
War shows its human face in former Green Beret Barnes's mostly successful collection about veterans of Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Mogadishu and Iraq trying to get on with their civilian lives after experiencing the horrors of battle. In "Punishment," a former army medic, counting down his last hours on death row (he killed a policeman), relives the time he saved the life of an enemy soldier during the Panama invasion. In the title story, a black Desert Storm veteran finds his ordinary existence turned upside down when the victims of a serial killer are found buried around his house. And in the novella, "Snake Boy," a heroin-addicted, homeless Vietnam vet is kidnapped by a snake-handling evangelist who cures the vet of his addiction and forces him to join his traveling show. In several of the stories, the veteran angle seems peripheral, but the strongest pieces exemplify the words of one character who tells his daughter that "all we can do is invent myths to smooth the harshness." The lives on display here do just that in stories told with understated compassion and unexpected flashes of humor. (Sept. 07)
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory (Interlink, 978-1-56656-686-5, 400 pages, $20.00)
From Publishers Weekly Starred Review.
An emeritus professor of theology with no previous interest in conspiracy theories, Griffin has dedicated himself since 2003 to the "9/11 truth" movement, a group committed to "exposing the falsity of the official theory about 9/11," and this book is a thorough, highly detailed attempt to do just that. As Griffin aptly notes, "the assumption that conspiracy theories are inherently irrational" has recently taken root in American culture, making any attack on the official government record instantly dismissible, but Griffin takes to the difficult task with solid reasoning and true zeal. All but the most dogmatic readers will find Griffin's evidence-from the inconsistencies between NORAD tapes and the 9/11 Commission Report to rigorous exploration into the physics of the collapse-detailed and deeply unnerving. For instance, Griffin considers the fact that firefighters were told, five hours before the fact, that building WTC 7 was going to collapse, despite "the fact that WTC 7 was not hit by a plane, that the available photographs show no large fires, and that fire had never caused a steel-frame high-rise to collapse." Another chilling passage looks at the Pennsylvania crash site of United Airlines Flight 93 through the testimony of those first to arrive, who were unanimous in finding "no recognizable plane parts, no body parts." For anyone who doubts the government's truthfulness regarding the WTC terrorist attack, this well-researched volume will give you a trough full of ideas to chew on.
From Publishers Weekly Starred Review.
An emeritus professor of theology with no previous interest in conspiracy theories, Griffin has dedicated himself since 2003 to the "9/11 truth" movement, a group committed to "exposing the falsity of the official theory about 9/11," and this book is a thorough, highly detailed attempt to do just that. As Griffin aptly notes, "the assumption that conspiracy theories are inherently irrational" has recently taken root in American culture, making any attack on the official government record instantly dismissible, but Griffin takes to the difficult task with solid reasoning and true zeal. All but the most dogmatic readers will find Griffin's evidence-from the inconsistencies between NORAD tapes and the 9/11 Commission Report to rigorous exploration into the physics of the collapse-detailed and deeply unnerving. For instance, Griffin considers the fact that firefighters were told, five hours before the fact, that building WTC 7 was going to collapse, despite "the fact that WTC 7 was not hit by a plane, that the available photographs show no large fires, and that fire had never caused a steel-frame high-rise to collapse." Another chilling passage looks at the Pennsylvania crash site of United Airlines Flight 93 through the testimony of those first to arrive, who were unanimous in finding "no recognizable plane parts, no body parts." For anyone who doubts the government's truthfulness regarding the WTC terrorist attack, this well-researched volume will give you a trough full of ideas to chew on.
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