Politics Politics

It looks like quite a few people are still very interested in what our soon-to-be president and his wife have to say.

He's still provoking tremendous excitement across the globe, including among African-descendant people in Latin America (thanks, HBR!), and in particular in Brazil (from left, singer Toni Garrido, actor and model Walter Rosa, actor and MC André Ramiro, and actor Rocco Pitanga, photo: João Laet, Agência O Dia). Though black and brown French people and Britons are energized by Obama's victory, France's lone black governmental minister remains pessimistic that a French Obama is possible with the current political crowd. Yet his French enthusiasts have formed committees to discuss and push for change, and have the support of France's first lady, Carla Bruni Sarkozy. In the UK, it's not likely anytime soon, given the political system and comparatively smaller black and brown populations, but some believe the electorate would be ready.

There's a subset in this country, however, who aren't happy at all at the election results (just as they weren't by the very prospect of Obama's candidacy or victory), and are acting out in horrid ways. It's imperative that while we respect people's free speech rights, the authorities do not write off as "knuckleheads" or "aspirational," that is, take lightly the threats against the president or anyone else, or dismiss violent or deadly acts by these folks. As the Oklahoma City bombing 13 years ago demonstrated, domestic terrorists can be as great a threat and as deadly as foreign ones.

We're hardly in a post-racial world; this is part of what poet Brian Gilmore eloquently argues in his Bookforum review of historian David R. Roediger's How Race Survived U.S. History and law professor and my college classmate Ariela J. Gross's What Blood Won’t Tell, books that Brian says "chart the ongoing legacy of the legal apartheid system in the United States." Not that I need to say this, but no one should be celebrating the end of "race" or racism, two terms that unfortunately that often elided into one another to efface the latter and misrepresent the former.

Back to President Elect Obama, I'm trying not to focus too much on the ideological-political casts of his appointees (I've been disappointed by some of the picks, like Rahm Emanuel, and heartened by others, like Mona Sutphen), or get too caught up in the drama involving any mention of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's role in the new administration. Certainly I think she'd be an excellent Secretary of State, or really anything he appointed her too, because she's brilliant and dogged to the point at times of ruthlessness, but then several of the people whose names have been bandied about for this post could serve with distinction. The real issue as I see it is would this post be enough for Hillary? Then again, short of the presidency, what would a comparable platform? One person he pray he does not pick is Colin Powell, has irrevocably disgraced himself through his active participation in putting us in Iraq. His endorsement of Obama was great, but that was more about his own atonement. Another, and this goes without saying of course, is John McCain--President Obama, just say no, seriously. With regard to his larger staffing process, I sincerely hope he is considering many more new faces and fewer of the Clintonistas, and lots of Latinos and Asian Americans, since he won among both groups overwhelmingly. There's a reason the vote totals in California, New York, Illinois, New Mexico, and other states weren't close at all.... His first two choices for the US Supreme Court should be Elena Kagan and Harold Hongju Koh. Sí se puede!

I'm glad to see that it's increasingly unlikely that the longest-serving Republican Senator, now a convicted felon, will not be heading back to Washington. This means no Palin appointee, including herself, and a moderate-progressive Democrat, Mark Begich, will be holding the junior Alaska seat for at least the next 6 years. Al Franken remains in limbo, though the way things are looking incumbent Norm Coleman could be facing not just a recount but a judge and jury fairly soon. I keep getting emails from Jim Martin's campaign about the runoff in Georgia; the voting begins today.

Videos: Anti Prop H8 Rally & March

"Do not feel shame for how I live." - Essex Hemphill

I'll write another post, with photos, from yesterday's extraordinary Anti Prop H8 rally and impromptu march (it wasn't planned, but the police complied) in downtown Chicago, but here are some video clips I took.

Fake NY Times

One can hope, no?

Video: Michigan Avenue/Grant Park Election Celebration

Way too much work today, so here's one of the videos from last Tuesday's celebration. It's taking place on Michigan Avenue. Enjoy!

Our Long Nightmare Will (Soon?) Be Over

Update: Gif fixed!

Monday Notes

Many thanks to Joshua Marie Wilkinson and his colleagues at Loyola University of Chicago who hosted the talks + reading that I was fortunate to participate in last Friday. Joshua, who opened the event by reading one of Barack Obama's poems, invited six of us to speak about poetry and something else we were doing that inflected our work, and my co-speakers offered great remarks. Jennifer Karmin spoke about poetry and activism; Robyn Schiff (I miss her!) spoke about poetry and publishing; Abraham Smith spoke about poetry and performance; Quraysh Ali Lansana (Q!) spoke about poetry and history; and Lisa Fishman spoke about poetry and farming. I read some remarks on collaboration in relation to my work, extending it to my translation projects (another form of collaboration, and one in which this blog has played a great part), and some art stuff. (Dear collaborators...hint, hint....)

After a delicious lunch, we all read briefly, and then I had to go catch a plane, missing what was billed as a "snow storm." I was very glad to see so many local poets and students there (a group from the university came down), and to see them really getting into the poetry as well.

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Rapturous reviews of Roberto Bolaño's final, unfinished magnum opus 2666 (FSG, 2008) have been appearing over the past week. The persnickety Adam Kirsch says that it has the "confident strangeness of a masterpiece." (Francisco Goldman's summer 2007 review of a portion of Bolaño's collective oeuvre, including the Spanish version of 2666, can be found here.) The Spanish version graced my carrel at the library this summer, though I wasn't able to get far in it. Would that there were a parallel vein of time.... But the English translation, by Natasha Wimmer, who deserves an award, is out, and although I have only grazed a few pages, I can say, as I did in an email to Reggie H., that it confirms for me that Bolaño will join that cadre of exception writers since 1900--Rilke, Proust, Tolstoy, Hughes, etc.--who are among the finest in the literary tradition but never received the Nobel Prize. You can get the book in one hardcover volume or a boxed three-volume set; I bought the box. Bolaño originally suggested five volumes, but his heirs and executors wisely, it seems, kept the entire work (mostly) together.

Also receiving rhapsodic treatment is Toni Morrison's new novella, A Mercy (Alfred A. Knopf, 2008). Reviewer after reviewer discusses its exploration of slavery's early form and praises its poetic language, tautness, haunting qualities, and links it to Morrison's masterwork, Beloved (1987). Even the nation's toughest critic, who hasn't spared Morrison harsh criticism in the past, is jumping on the bandwagon. If you missed her reading selections from it on NPR, you can hear it here. It's on my list, for the winter break...

One of the books that recently crossed my desk is Asher Ghaffar's Wasps in a Golden Hum Dream a Strange Music (ECW Press, 2008). It looks gorgeous, from cover to cover, and I've also added it to my list!

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One of the most dismaying bits of recent news was the horrific school collapse in Pétionville, Haiti, just outside the capital, Port-au-Prince. More than 94 children and adults have died, and the international search and rescue effort, which did pull 4 surviving children from the rubble on Saturday, will now likely turn to a recovery of bodies. Up to 250-300 people were thought to be in the building at the time of its collapse. (Above left, a woman in anguish for her missing child is assisted by relatives at the site of the collapsed the church-run school, La Promesse, in Petion-ville, Haiti on November 10, 2008, AFP/Getty Images.)

It now appears that the school's owner, Pastor Fortune (Fortin?) Augustin, who had voluntarily turned himself in, is being charged with involuntary manslaughter; when the building collapsed, workers were adding an additional floor, and the pastor is alleged to have constructed the building without engineering help. Haiti is still trying to recover from the quartet of devastating storms which have battered the Caribbean islands since the late summer. Haiti lost 2/3rds of its crops and entire neighborhoods still remain under water.

If you are able to, you can contribute relief funds here or here.

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I'm not going to speculate on President-Elect Barack Obama's transition team or his putative cabinet picks, though I found this short New York Times piece on Valerie Jarrett quite illuminating. Really, I think we should just wait and watch. Despite the right's claims that he was the second coming of V. I. Lenin (yeah, right!), and the desire among some in Washington for the second coming of Dwight Eisenhower (whom the contemporary Republicans have banished from their roster, along with other decent Republican presidents like Teddy Roosevelt and Calvin Coolidge, who was Ronald Reagan's favorite), he has mostly been a center-left legislator, both in the Illinois State Senate and the US Senate. This maps closely onto what I read as his ideological orientation, which is center-left, with the emphasis on the center. Obama isn't and hasn't ever been a left radical, though he often announces leftist intentions and demonstrates progressive tendencies. But he will likely govern from the center-left, perhaps further to the left, because he received a greater popular vote mandate, than any of his previous three predecessors. He is, nevertheless, going to appoint DLC-prototype folks like Rahm Emanuel and his ilk to high posts, bring in a host of Clintonistas, and draw upon the University of Chicago braintrust he hung with for quite some time, and not just the progressive ones.

Some of the early news we're getting, such as his team's careful review of Bush's executive orders and his plan to reverse many of them and his intention to close the abomination at Guantánamo Bay, more than balance out his accommodating stance towards someone like Connecticut's independent senator, Joe Lieberman. Uggh!

Now, can anyone scare up some inauguration tickets for C, me, and family members? (Former classmates...help!)

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Speaking of Obama, poet John Murillo sent along a link to an article noting the President-Elect was recently spotted carrying a copy of Derek Walcott's Selected Poems (Edward Baugh, ed., FSG, 2007) as he was dropping his daughters off at school. I noted to the CC folks that "So much marvelous work in this collection that I'm sure hits Obama at a very deep level," and posted the poem I'd posted on here a month ago, "As John to Patmos." Given that he's already alluded to Langston, Alice Walker (tell me you knew that!), and others, I thought that we might hear snippets of Walcott and many others from our literature in his speeches, including his inaugural. Get your ears and eyes ready!

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One of the greats to remember and honor: Miriam Makeba. Singer, actress, activist-fighter, visionary, "Mama Africa": beautiful. She was 76.

Quote: Rosario Ferré

"I think that magic has to do with the subconscious, much as the ancient sorcerers believed. The identification of man with his material surroundings and his active participation in that world are detailed in books of Carlos Castañeda, for example, as well as, on a different level, with the books of sociologists like Lévy-Bruhl and Ernst Cassirer, or Lévi-Strauss. The magical identification has a lot to do with literature, this alternate way of viewing the world."
-Rosario Ferré (b. 1938-), in Marie-Lise Gazarian Gautier, Interviews with Latin American Writers, Normal, Illinois: Dalkey Archive Press, 1992, p. 85.

Sweet Tea + Podcasts + Farewells

So let's shift gears a bit. There are tons of things I've been meaning to post about, but here are a few.

Weeks ago I went to see my colleague E. Patrick Johnson perform pieces from his remarkable new work, Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South (University of North Carolina Press, 2008). A collection of interviews, with extensive, clarifying commentary, that E. Patrick conducted in 2004 and 2005, the work gives voice to a wide array of men who are rarely represented, especially so thoughtfully and with such complexity, in our culture. You can order the book online, and as I've urged friends, please do go see Patrick perform selected interviews if he comes to your city or town.

***

One of the major issues we face is the lack of affordable, universal comprehensive health care and prescription drug benefits. I am lucky to have employer-provided insurance, but despite having very good coverage, I can attest to how exorbitant my bills have been, and I know that without insurance, there'd be no way I could have paid for them. So many people either go without necessary health care and prescriptions, or go bankrupt as a result of necessary care, every single day. The SEIU wants to keep health care at the forefront of our new President Obama's agenda. You can sign on here to support their effort.

***

I went through about a week of Apple Appstore Appophilia--there're so many interesting ones! And they're free! And you can get ones that perform the most useful or obscure things for you, at least in theory!--but it waned quickly, right around the time I realized that no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't properly record my voice on Jott and ended up writing down the list of library call numbers I'd been trying record to my phone. Then yesterday I saw my colleague John Bresland's video essay-in-progress about his fascination with iPhone Apps (and so many other things; it was outstanding) and that Appophilia started up again. Sort of--I've downloaded a few since yesterday, which I guess points to my suggestibility or something. But the truth is, I'm actually more enthralled now with iTunes' Podcasts, which I listen to when I'm driving to work, waiting to hop on the plane, working out at the gym...yes, I admit it. In place of Common, Jazmine Sullivan, Belasco, Ghostface, N.E.R.D., Janet Jackson, Q-Tip, and all the rest of my favorite playlist residents, I actually have been listening to (CUNY series) Mark Anthony Neal lecturing on rethinking contemporary Black identity; Paul Krugman on health care and the economy; (NYPL) Daniel Mendelsohn, James Wood and Pico Iyer (who has an almost surreally high voice and loves V.S. Naipaul far too much) on literature, criticism and new media; Frank Bidart and (92nd St. Y, 1968) Adrienne Rich reading their poems; John Edgar Wideman reading his fiction; and William Rhoden on Black athletes and responsibility, just to name a few.

Some podcasts are just inappropriate for an elliptical trainer or free weights, though. Saul Kripke, for example; why on earth did I think I could get through more than a few minutes of this, doing anything except sitting very quietly, notebook in hand, and concentrating to the full extent of my capacities? Or a very old (1961) pair of Nadine Gordimer stories from the 92nd Y, which were about as engaging as a piece of toast discovered behind a refrigerator. I managed about two minutes and then had to say enough. Yes to Gordimer, no to her voice and those pieces. Driving in New Jersey, I found listening to the New Yorker's podcast of Mary Gaitskill reading Vladimir Nabokov's "Signs and Symbols" so entrancing that I had to make sure I was watching traffic lights and stop signs. But Donald Antrim's enthusiastic version of Donald Barthelme's "I Bought a Little City" didn't grab me. So it goes.

I've never been a fan of audiobooks, since I love to hold the physical book in my hand, but I do love readings, lectures and talks, and conversations, and anything along these lines conducted by very smart people, so I can't get enough of these podcasts. What really got me going after my few early dabblings was when a particularly brilliant colleague also suggested I check out the iTunes U offerings. I haven't looked back. At the risk of singling out several universities, Stanford by far has the best offerings, while MIT's courses are the most thorough, and Yale has lots of material but a lot of seems geared towards Yalies. Other universities whose materials I've downloaded include Carnegie Mellon, Case Western, Oxford, SVA, UC Berkeley, UC Davis, DePaul, Vanderbilt, and Villanova. The university doesn't appear to have any materials on iTunes right now.

A few times I've rewound the talks so many times trying to get into them that I realize, it's time for some music. And then I'm back to Janelle Monáe, Tom Zé, TV on the Radio, Ben Harper, Kelis, Kid Sister, Violator.... Looking at the iTunes offerings, I realized I haven't explored the video casts much beyond comedy shorts, so I'll have to try more of those, especially the lectures. There's a whole series on Kara Walker, including a reading by Kevin Young and a lecture by Dorothy Walker, that I've got to check out. On my list for a plane trip tomorrow: Claudia Rankine reading from her work and Elizabeth Boyi on African and Caribbean Francophone writers!

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Also, I must say goodbyes to Chicago icon, writer, historian, and social activist Studs Terkel, who passed away on Halloween; South African author Es'kia Mphahlele, who died on October 27; and the inimitable critic and visionary John Leonard, whose sentences could induce vertigo. He died on Wednesday. Last week Chicago Public Radio made my day by devoting a chunk of airtime to celebrating Terkel, and you can hear some of that material, and find links to other great stuff, like Terkel chatting with Langston Hughes, here.

The Day After

"I'm rocking with Obama but I'm not a politician...."
--Jay-Z, "Jockin Jay-Z"

I was so elated and disoriented this morning (I went to bed at about 3 am, after relaying between the TV post-election chatfests on CNN and MSNBC and all of my favorite political websites) that I wasn't sure I would be able to get through the day, but I couldn't cancel student meetings or my class and didn't want to miss my colleagues Eula Biss's and John Bresland's reading/screening or a program event, so I headed up to the university determined to make it through until 5 pm. I must say that I wasn't fully there, and as I type this entry, I still am not. Obama's election still doesn't fully feel real, but I know that last night's results are not a mirage, and that the country--63 million Americans and counting--decisively rejected George W. Bush's and Dick Cheney's continuous disaster of an administration that has dominated the last 8 years, and took a huge leap into the future by electing Obama and Biden. Further proof of this were the vote tallies that increased the Democrats' margin in the Senate and in the House.

About five years ago, at the Evanston home of two very distinguished university colleagues, I met Barack Obama in person. He was running for the US Senate seat that he will now forgo to assume the presidency. I remember telling C after I left the event how struck I was by Obama's charm, brilliance, poise, political acumen, and vision. He spoke without notes about his aims for the position, and while he was articulating mostly standard liberal positions, he did so in a way that felt fresh and persuasive. I realized that night that Obama was going to win the Senate seat, even though he faced a field of around 6 or 7 other Democrats in the primary, and then 1 of 5 or so Republicans. He saw that he had and has that elusive it that cannot be acquired or taught. I also felt that his sense of timing was uncanny; Peter Fitzgerald's open seat was a likely Democratic pickup at the very moment when the state was turning against Bush and the war, and Illinois had already shown the nation that it was willing to make history by electing a Black candidate doing so in exemplary fashion when Carol Moseley-Braun was elected in 1992. Obama demonstrated these gifts at the Democratic convention, before a national audience, and after he won his Senate seat in a landslide, I figured he'd eventually run for the presidency, but not for a decade or more. But he realized that the clock was ticking, and launched his campaign in 2007, and the rest, as we can now say, is history.

I've met and known a few politicians and political figures in my time (one of our most recent Republican Undersecretaries of Indian Affairs is my high school classmate), but few have impressed me immediately in the way that Obama did several years ago. All of those struggles, those battles, for centuries, from the 17th century through the Abolition movement through the Civil Rights struggle and Black Power movements, the words and deeds of history's well-known and unknown fighters, were going to take symbolic and material form in someone, and yesterday, they did so in him. Certainly I've had my moments of disenchantment with his politics and fence-straddling, as I made clear when he capitulated on the FISA bill, but I remain convinced that he is an extraordinary figure. What the next four years and after will spell I cannot say, but I do know that he has the skills and talents to match the very best presidents we've had, and it'll be up to all of us, those who supported him and those who didn't, to ensure that he achieves all that he's--and we're--capable of.

I was at Grant Park (though not in the ticketed section) and was able to participate in the mass celebration, which I described to colleagues today as something akin to all of Chicago's sports teams winning at the same time, though everyone was on her or his best behavior, polite, brimming with smiles and teary eyes, laughing, saying hello and apologizing for accidental bumps, breaking into spontaneous songs and dances and cheers, almost a kind of Kantian ethical dreamworld filled not with Prussian burghers but Midwesterners of every age, color, race and ethnicity, physical status, and so on.

The official tallies claim that only 200,000 people were there, but I think far more were on the streets (Michigan Avenue, the various side streets all the way down to Congress Parkway, and west well to State) surrounding the park. Out of the thousands who went to the park, I missed some colleagues who were there, but ran into a handful of students, all as excited as I was, on the El, on the street, and at the park's edges. I'm going to post a few pictures below, and will post a video from my other camera, from which I haven't yet downloaded lots of pictures, but it was as festive an experience as I've ever had.

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One thing that has tempered my ongoing elation is the news that all of the major state-based anti-gay ballot measures passed last night. In Florida (same-sex marriage ban), in Arizona (same-sex marriage ban), in Arkansas (gay adoption), and most notoriously in California, voters approved measures that would restrict or remove rights and equality for LGBTQ people. California's Proposition 8, the anti-same sex marriage amendment, did pass by a vote of 52.5% vs. 47.5%, and as CNN's exit polling suggests which should be taken with qualifications, black voters overwhelming claimed to have supported it:

This was very disappointing news, though not exactly surprising. Although some of the most pro-LGBTQ figures in our society are Black leaders (public intellectuals, politicians, business people, etc.), and many Black people are very accepting of LGBTQ friends and family members, an issue like this California same-sex marriage ban, presented in the abstract, especially without a sustained chorus of prominent Black and other POC gay and non-gay people advocating against it, was likely to receive a homophobic backlash, and the Obama turnout had a converse effect, it appears. My first question was, what effect will this have on same-sex couples who have already married? Do those marriages stand or once this new amendment takes effect will they invalidated, even though they would be recognized in two other states (Massachusetts and Connecticut)? Can another Supreme Court ruling or a legislative act trump this referendum amendment to California's constitution?

One thing I told C is that from this day forward, one thing that all Black LGBTQ people, our Black non-LGBTQ and non-Black queer and non-queer allies must do is make a much greater effort to educate those segments of our fellow folks who still hold fast to heterosexism and homophobia. I have said and will say again that Black people are no more homophobic than any other group. At the same time, we as Black communities do have pockets of homophobia that we must address. However you feel about marriage or same-sex marriage, it is inconceivable that we should be taking away rights and legalizing civil discrimination against any of us. Black people over these hundreds of years in America have fought too hard, sweat and bled and died to secure equality, and we should absolutely not be helping in any way to further discrimination, which affects all of us, including those of us who are Black and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer, who want to and demand to be treated equally and fairly, by other Black people and by everyone else. So as I said, we need to redouble our efforts from today forward, however we can, to address this issue in our community, even as we strive to address homophobia in the broader American society.

Please do read blogger Pam Spaulding's great take on things here at Pam's House Blend.

I am also glad that civil rights groups are immediately challenging the Proposition 8 results in the courts. As I told colleagues today, I take consolation in the fact that yesterday's vote, particularly among the young, points to a better future in so many ways. We will have a female president sooner rather than later, as well as political and social leaders from all backgrounds, and the politics of demonization and discrimination, which the vile right wing and cowards on the left have utilized as a mechanism of power and dominance, are losing their salience. So while yesterday brought a very saddening note, I have tremendous hope for the future, our American future.

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Those photos:



A band on Michigan Avenue

T-shirt vendors

Artist and instantaneous art

On Michigan Avenue, from the steps of the Art Institute of Chicago

The crowd proceeding up Michigan towards Grant Park

From the steps of the Art Institute of Chicago, looking south down Michigan

Obama-Biden Win Presidency!

BARACK OBAMA IS THE 44th PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

BARACK OBAMA IS THE FIRST AFRICAN-AMERICAN PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

BARACK OBAMA AND JOSEPH BIDEN HAVE WON THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION!

CONGRATULATIONS, SENATORS OBAMA AND BIDEN!!!!

GOD BLESS YOU, PRESIDENT-ELECT OBAMA AND VICE PRESIDENT-ELECT BIDEN, AND THANK YOU, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA FOR MAKING THIS POSSIBLE!
YES WE CAN, YES WE DID!

Congrats to Kearnizzle + Intl Writers + 1968+40 + Condolences

Congratulickations to Cave Caneiste Doug Kearney (photo, The Other Project Blogspot), who received a Whiting Foundation Award for his sustained, exemplary and ongoing poetic magification. Doug is a poet, performer, librettist, educator, professor, a high performance lyric man-machine, with one of the hairiest chests of any wordsmith I've ever known (one notices these things). If he comes to your corner of the great American literary showgrounds, catch him because he and his work are definitely worth seeing. He levitates and makes words do so too. Really, he does.

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This weekend four writers came to town for two events through the good graces of the International Writers Program at the University of Iowa, my colleagues Reg Gibbons and Stacy Oliver, the university's Center for the Writing Arts, and the Guild Complex in Chicago. They were Leila Al-Tarash (novelist and media producer, Jordan); Tarek El-Tayeb (poet, playwright, fiction writer, essayist Austria and Egypt); Yael Globerman (poet and fiction writer, Israel); and Gutierrez "Teng" Mangansakan II (poet, fiction writer, film producer and director, Phillippines). The first was a classroom conversation at the university. As they did last year, the writers spoke on Friday to an audience of our students and faculty members, talking about their lives and work in the context of their societies. A few highlights include El Tayeb's discussion of his start as a storyteller when very small as a means of self-protection and enchantment of a wilder, older schoolmate, and his belief that his work was an attempt to write about something he'd lost; Laila al-Atrash's exploration of the censorship of her work regarding its religious content, though once sexually taboo material is permitted, and of the necessity of having had to balance a full-time career in the media with her writing, which she's been able to devote much more time to; Yael Globerman's commentary on the waves of immigration that have marked Israel and Israeli literature, and her sense that the silence about what had happened in Europe--the Holocaust--had been broken by David Grossman first and then increasingly addressed by subsequent generations of writers, as was the case with the silence about Arabs in Israel, which was also now part of Israeli literature; and Tang Mangansakan's disquisition on moving from the geographical periphery (Mindanao, in the south) to the cultural center, in Manila, and writing in English, one of the colonial and now predominant languages in the Phillipines.

One moment that particularly interested me was the somewhat contentious but good-spirited back-and-forth between al-Atrash and Globerman over the issue of immigration, home and the Other in Israel; al-Atrash was a native of Palestine, and her perspective differed from Globerman's, though they came to agreement with al-Atrash's comments about the great fear of the Other, the sense that the person whose life was in so many ways similar and geographically close but fundamentally unknown was monstrous, terrifying, a grave threat, and yet, over the years, that sense of Otherness had broken down, though not without a great toll levied through the years. Their dialogue was, if I may sound somewhat trite, symbolic of the dialogue that is ongoing. Another moment that particularly caught my ear was when Teng Mangansakan talked about his own blogging (his site is Funktional Schizophrenic), which he saw as a means and form of writing, and of building audience. Through review of his site counter, he learned that about 60% of his readership was in the US, and he not only was making money as a blogger, but also selling books through the medium. He also mentioned his video essay Jihad, about his own personal jihad as a queer Muslim Filipino, and I do hope to see it and more of his work if and when they appear at one of the local film festivals or on DVD.


Reg, Tarek, Yael and Laila at the Friday morning event

On Saturday, along with Chicago-area writers Tony Trigilio and Paul Martínez Pompa, I joined them on a panel discussion, entitled "Migrating People, Migrating Literature," that was part of the Chicago/International Writers Exchange. It was hosted by the Guild Complex at the Chopin Theater on the edge of Wicker Park (Real World Chicago!) and Humboldt Park (you've got it, Saul Bellow's old stomping grounds). Many thanks to Reg Gibbons, Michael Puican, Ellen Placey Wadey, and everyone affiliated with the Guild Complex who staged this event. I believe it was taped and will be available soon via audio, so I'll post the link when I have it. We had to write short pieces about migration before the event, but we mostly discussed other things, ranging from translation to politics and writing and the politics of writing to the various ways you might study literature to various kinds of authenticities. It was a joy to meet Tony and Paul, and converse publicly with the visiting writers, and I only wish they didn't have to head back to Iowa so soon. Below are a few photos from both the second event.


Tony, Teng and Yael before the conversation

Laila and Paul after the conversation

Paul, Tarek and Yael

***

Also this weekend, the university held a conference commemorating the courageous protests, led by Black students enrolled 40 years ago, which led to the establishment of the now renowned African American Studies department, increased admissions of Black and especially poor and working-class Black students, more Black faculty (because of them I have my job!), and number of other changes that have made the campus more hospitable to Black students and other students and faculty of color.

One of the highlights was hearing poet and fiction writer Angela Jackson, whom I'd previously written about when my colleague Ed Roberson held a mini-conference last year on the Black Arts Movement in Chicago, read from her forthcoming novel, Where I Must Go, about that episode and related events. It will be published by Northwestern University Press next July, and if the excerpt I heard, which involves a number of the university's Black students visiting a revolutionary on the South Side of Chicago and having their eyes opened, figuratively and literally, by his critique of them, their education, and their belief systems, is a harbinger, this will be a remarkable work. Angela is a poet of true grace and wit, and the selection she read showed she had recaptured that era vividly and distilled it, deploying her abundant lyric and dramatic talents in the process. It will be interesting to read this novel's likely critique of the Black bourgeoisie's and the revolutionaries' sometimes intersecting, sometimes conflicting aims, especially in light of our current era, when their convergence has taken the symbolic and material form of a nationalist and post-nationalist dream likely to come true in the form of Barack Obama. What I was so aware of, as I listened to the notes of recognition among the audience members, so many of them alumni or the heirs of that era, was that this current would not have been possible without them, and it was part of their vision, even if different what they envisioned.

They are all my heroes.


Angela Jackson reading from her forthcoming novel Where I Must Go


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Earlier today I saw the very sad news that Madelyn Dunham, Senator Barack Obama's grandmother, passed away today. She was 86 and lived in Hawaii. He had lived with her during his high school years, and had just gone to visit her a few weeks ago when she became gravely ill. My offer my sincerest condolences to Senator Obama and his family, and I wish she could have lived to see the outcome on Wednesday, because I strongly believe he will that he'll be victorious tomorrow.



Here's a link to Ta-Nehisi Coates's thoughtful and moving Atlantic Monthly commentary on and tribute to Obama's grandparents.

Senator Obama's comments on his grandmother are here (in text and video form).



My condolences also to the family of Illinois's senior Senator, Dick Durbin, whose 40-year-old daughter, Christine passed away after a lifetime struggle with heart disease. My thoughts go out to him and his entire family. I should also note that Senator Durbin is running for reelection, and has been one of the few consistently outspoken liberals in the Senate. He is on track to return to the Senate with a very large margin of support.

VOTE

Phoning for Senator O

Earlier today I decided to take a step I hadn't in many years, and contribute more than money and unwanted thoughts to a political campaign, so I volunteered to go to a MoveOn-sponsored phone party for Barack Obama. Here's an excerpt of my prosaic email to two friends in New England about the experience:

Today I went to a MoveOn.org phone banking party for Obama. It was at the home of a middle-aged couple living in West Rogers Park, perhaps 15 blocks from my spot in Chicago. The middle-aged couple who hosted the event were quite friendly, and the wife is a lawyer who is planning to monitor a polling place in Indianopolis on Tuesday. When I got there at 4 pm, only a few people were present, but slowly others started showing, and by the time I left, several waves of people had shown up. We were tasked with calling people in Virginia who'd somehow turned up on MoveOn.org's lists. My pages of lists were all to voters in Newport News, Virginia, which as you both know is a predominantly African-American city. I was really nervous at first--I'm not a phone person, and am pretty shy--but once I got going it was a lot of fun. Many of the people I called were not home, and we weren't supposed to leave messages, but I hate calling people and hanging up, so I did give them the Obama campaign's info, address and number in Newport News, and soon learned that others were doing so as well.

What really heartened me was the number of people I spoke to who had already voted, were already working for Obama or on voting issues generally, were urging family and friends to vote, or were eager to go knock on doors tomorrow and on Sunday. Some of these people were elderly, I could tell, but they were so excited. I spoke to one woman who sounded like she was probably in her 40s or 50s. She said she had only just got back from burying her father in Florida, had returned to school and had Saturday classes, but really wanted to help out and said that she would take time out at 5 pm tomorrow to go get material and do what she could.

Also, the phone bankers came from all different backgrounds. One woman brought her daughter. There were two older South Asian women who arrived when I was nearly finished. It was really cool to see the diversity and enthusiasm of people there, and I may make calls this weekend if I can fit it into my schedule.

Now, 4 more days to go, and let's send positive thoughts towards Pennsylvania!

The scene at the event

Signing up

The phone banking form

Phillies Take Series 4-1

Amidst some of the worst umpiring in years, and despite rugby weather and a three-day game, the Philadelphia Phillies have won the World Series, 4 games to 1. It's their first World Series win since 1980, and second in their 120 year history. The Most Valuable Player was starting pitcher Cole Hamels.


Philadelphia Phillies' Pedro Feliz singles off Tampa Bay Rays relief pitcher Chad Bradford to drive in Eric Bruntlett during the seventh inning of Game 5 of the baseball World Series in Philadelphia, Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2008. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

The Tampa Bay Rays have the nucleus of a multi-year playoff team, if they're willing to keep these exciting young players on staff. With better, timely hitting, and competent umpires, they could have held their own.

Unfortunately for the Phillies or fortunately for the Rays, hardly anyone watched. The Houston Chronicle points out that viewership was abysmal (an 8.4 rating and 14 share), lower than the dismal 10.1 rating for the Cardinals-Tigers series in 2006 (which the Cardinals won, by the way). Short series are ratings killers, and small market teams (i.e., someone other than the teams based in New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago, etc.) draw fewer viewers. The weather issues didn't help. Perhaps doubling up on a few more double headers to trim the regular season might be a plan, though it would mean less money in owners' pockets.

I just hope Bud Selig, a font of bad leadership, doesn't decide to follow the NFL's lead and picking AL and NL domed or warm-city stadia might be a good idea for the Series. Could you imagine if the Cubs finally made it to the World Series with a team that looked capable of winning it all, and then their poor fans realized they had to travel to Anaheim or Atlanta or Miami to see them play?

Tuesday Mulligatawny

This summer before I got sick I'd hoped to catch up with Sarah Schulman (left), a writer whose writings and activism I really admire, and who gave me (and others) some very useful advice years ago up in Vermont. I wasn't able to, but I have been following one of her recent moves, which, according to Patricia Cohen in the New York Times, has been to co-organize a town hall meeting (it took place Monday night) to protest the paucity of female playwrights on Off-Broadway and non-profit New York stages.

The gathering was organized by the playwrights Sarah Schulman and Julia Jordan, who have rallied their colleagues to the cause, contending that their male counterparts in the 2008-9 season are being produced at 14 of the largest Off Broadway institutions at four times the rate that women are. More than 150 playwrights appeared at a meeting last month to discuss the issue, and all 90 seats at New Dramatists, the playwriting center where Monday night’s meeting is scheduled, are already spoken for, and there is a long waiting list.

I'm curious to see what comes out of this and prior meetings. Will there be concrete proposals on the part of theaters' artistic directors and boards to address the disparity? Will female playwrights be given more and equal opportunities to have their works staged and enjoyed? I'm also curious to know if this is a problem elsewhere, and if there have been similar discussions and gatherings in other major cities, like the second theater capital of the US, Chicago.

***

It was gone for a little over a year, but now it'll be back: regresará one of New York's finest Spanish-language bookstores. But only online.



As I wrote at the time of its closing last fall, Que nunca se la olvide, que siempre se la recuerde.

Will Macondo return in virtual form as well?

***

Who says pro athletes aren't into the arts? Literature? Poetry, to be exact? Yes, that's a leading question and no, I don't just mean the kind that comes wrapped in memorable melodies and beats (i.e., hiphop, r&b, rock, etc.), but the kind that follows in the wake of 20th century Modernism and warms the hearts of so many? Meet New Jersey's own Obama-supporting Fernando Pérez, of the Tampa Bay Rays:

Are you staying away from heavy plots during the playoffs?

Actually, what helps me a great deal right now is poetry, like Robert Creeley and John Ashbery.

But of course! Now, what would get your and your teammates backs swinging again?

(H/t to Reggie H.)

***

Perhaps the only thing better than The Wire starting a new season and surprising the hell out of all its fans is seeing its actors together again, for a good cause.



A colleague mentioned that it was somewhat startling to see Marlo Stanfield (Jamie Hector) and Chris Partlow (Gbenga Akinnagbe), two of the most psychopathic characters not on a reality show to grace recent TV, supporting Obama. I guess I initially saw the actors as themselves, and then I considered that all these characters had some serious ethical and personal flaw--well, the psychopathic duo were really on the outer fringes, to put it mildly--and probably would send Obama running if they were the ones giving their endorsement. I mean, he's not anywhere in the general vicinity of Kwame Kilpatrick, is he?

***

Does the global financial crisis demonstrate that Libertarianism as a practical and practiced ideology is dead? (Admit it, you're hoping the answer is yes, even as a struggle rages at the ground zero of its late high priest, Milton Friedman.) Jacob Weisberg thinks so. Ultrarandian Mr. Irrational Exuberance Alan Greenspan appears a mite chastened. And yet, we are on the verge of electing--shhhhh, don't tell the McCainiacs, Palindrones and sad old members of the GOP--a Communist socialist libertarian paternalist, right? I don't think so, and certainly not in light of the mess he'll have to clean up...but Cass Sunstein very well could end up on the federal bench nevertheless.

***

And don't say I didn't warn you....

(H/t to Christina Springer)

Quote: Rem Koolhaas

With its first 12 floors accessible only to men, the Downtown Athletic Club appears to be a locker room the size of a Skyscraper, definitive manifestation of those metaphysics--at once spiritual and carnal--that protect the American male against the corrosion of adulthood. But in fact, the club has reached the point where the notion of a "peak" condition transcends the physical realm to become cerebral. It is not a locker room but an incubator for adults, an instrument that permits the members--to impatient too await the outcome of evolution--to reach new strata of maturity by transforming themselves into new beings, this time according to their individual designs. Bastions of the antinatural, Skyscrapers such as the Club announce the imminent segregation of mankind into two tribes: one of Metropolitanites--literally self made---whose used the full potential of the apparatus of Modernity to reach unique levels of perfection, the second simply the remainder of the human race. The only price its locker-room graduates have to pay for their collective narcissism is that of sterility. Their self-induced mutations are not reproducible in future generations.
--from Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan, New York, Monacelli Press, 1994, pp. 157-158. Copyright © 1994, all rights reserved.

Video: Two Artists

A little Alison Saar and Kehinde Wiley for the weekend!


Alison Saar, Interview for Otis College of Art Legacy Project (Saar, Otis '81)


Kehinde Wiley, The World Stage: Lagos-Dakar

No on Prop 8 + Roubini + Polls + Empty Storefronts

It isn't too late: Proposition 8, with alleged heavy support from the Mormon Church, is in danger of becoming California law, ending the brief period of legal same-sex marriage in the Golden State. You can contact friends and family in California to urge them to vote no, and--yes, I know these are very tough economic times and if you have even any extra money someone is asking for it, but--you can donate here to the Vote NO on Prop 8 campaign to prevent the referendum from becoming law.

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There's Krugman, and Summers, and DeLong, and...then there's Nouriel Roubini. A friend of mine who saw him on TV back in the summer but didn't know who he was described him to me in an email as "dour," and "grave" in his affect. She had it right; Roubini rarely appears to smile, though based on what he has to say, what is there to smile about? He's been quite right about the economic crisis for some time (like, going back some years now), and while he was dismissed or ignored for a while, he's now turning up all over the place trying to school folks about what's happening and what's to come. Dour and grave would about encapsulate it, because today he suggests that a "panic" might force a market shutdown. He had previously predicted the collapse of the shadow banking system, the run on hedge funds (which is ongoing), the continued fall in the stock market, the inadequacies of Paulson's original plan, and other horrors that have come to pass. I'm now wondering not whether but when this most recent prediction will come to pass, and have now realize how naive was my belief that the October 1987 crash, which occurred only weeks after I'd begun my first post-collegiate job, in commercial banking no less, was the worst I'd see in my lifetime. Even factoring the possibility of the country electing another George H. W. Bush (who was, circa 1987, soon to bump up an office, start a war in the Middle East, employ a passel of liars and incompetents, and drive the economy in a ditch), and remembering the endlessly colorful and depressing stories my late grandfather (like all my grandparents, and both my parents, for that matter), who'd lived through the Depression, used to tell about the hardships of that era (there were no jobs! people slept on railcars! you had to make a can of beans last a week! etc.), I can't say I ever imagined things would get this bad. And the terrifying thing is, they could very well get even worse before they improve....

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I say I'm not going to look at the polls and then I can't help but look at the polls. Or sites that post the polls. And then I read the comments about the polls. Where people post more polls. And sometimes, as happened today, someone mistypes figures in a poll and I fly off the handle because the polls says that Obama is down 41-51 to McCain in Pennsylvania, Pennsyl-freaking-vania, and my dear friend Sally S. has told me that no Democrat wins the White House when the Phillies take the World Series (Tampa Bay won tonight), which has nothing to do with polling in Pennsylvania or anything else related to politics, at least directly, and though I'm not superstitious I have to go read another poll that confirms that in fact Obama is UP in Philadelphia, followed by 2-3 more polls that say the same thing, including that he's up in all the midwestern states, which means Indiana, which causes almost unreal elation and fear, and then I keep reading the comments section and the mistyper apologizes for reversing the numbers and others who've freaked out as well calm down, and then I realize I probably should get back to what it was I was doing, which is work having nothing to do with polls, but I feel myself wanting to click on a link to yet another site that has more polls....

Larry David offers a similar viewpoint, in his inimitable way.

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Gas has fallen somewhat, a good thing, though not enough to make aimlessly sightseeing around the vastness that is Chicago worth it. Nevertheless, I still do take time to tour parts of the city that I'm more and less familiar with, and one of the things I've been noticing increasingly is the large number of unfinished and empty condo buildings, which had begun to sprout like shepherd's purse along the city's eastern spine radiating northward and westward from the Loop. I've also noticed the ubiquitous rent and for sale signs, as well as the unoccupied storefronts, especially on once vibrant commercial strips. This isn't to say that every part of Chicago north from the Loops looks like this, and some streets, like Belmont and Clark in Boystown, or Broadway in Uptown, look as occupied as they ever have. But it does appear that in some areas, things have rapidly accelerated since last June, when I headed back east. I looked online, and this article, in the Milwaukee Business Journal, says Chicago's situation is "fair." According to the Chicago Real Estate Daily, foreclosures in general are rising in Chicago, but are slower than the national average. The empty storefronts are but one cause and symptom of the city's overall financial crunch.

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And from the annals of the outrageous, Austrian Naziphile ex-Governor of Carinthia and former Freedom Party leader Jörg Haider had a secret male lover, Stefan Petzner. Haider, in addition to having sung the praises of the Nazis and you-know-who, "voted against a parliamentary motion to lower the age of consent for homosexuals, [and] had presented himself as a family man who drank sparingly." Naturally. Haider engineered his secret lover's ascent in a new right-wing party, Alliance for the Future of Austria (BZO). The 27-year-old lover, who'd met Haider when he was a "beauty correspondent" (?), told the world about the relationship in a tearful, public breakdown. The Alliance, naturally, saw no future for Petzner as the leader of its ranks, and canned him. Supposedly Frau Haider knew about and accepted said secret lover. Sort of but not really. Haider died after leaving a gay bar so drunk he could barely walk, and then drove his car off a mountain road. Despite his extreme politics he was widely mourned. I'm a fiction writer and sure, you can make this stuff up, but really, do you? Do I? Does anyone? (Okay, yes, Thomas Bernhard would have had quite a go at this duo.) Does Hollywood? Another thought: had they been born in the US, these two (Haider und Petzner) would have fit right in with the GOP.

Poems: The Sixth Dalai Lama

Two short love poems by the Sixth Dalai lama, Tsangyang Gyatso (Tsangs-dbyangs Rgya-mtsho 1683-1705), translated by Nathan Hill with Toby Fee, from the Winter 2008 special translation issue of the Harvard Advocate.

(50)
Our tryst in the dense woods
of the southern valley
a parrot only knows,
all else are ignorant.
O parrot, please do not
repeat our secret words.

(65)
Behind me a demon.
Who cares if he's fearsome?
I saw a sweet apple
and was compelled to pluck.

Copyright © Nathan Hill with Toby Fee, The Harvard Advocate, 2008.

Quote: Abdellah Taïa

I was in my second life. I had just met death. I was gone. Then returned.

I was running. I was running. Quickly, quickly. Quickly, quickly.

Towards where? Why? I didn't know at the time. I don't remember everything. I don't remember anything now, to tell the truth. But it's coming, I know it.

I see words, I hear voices. I see an image, the same red and yellow image again and again. It's blurry. It will eventually clear up. I wait. I'm not writing any more. I'm on my little bed. I try to fill the pages of my private journal. A future book. I concentrate. I force myself to find that moment, that race. That chase. I'm not breathing anymore. I close my eyes. I concentrate even more. I curl up and try to distinguish the voices from another world which reach me in a din and which, with a single blow, stop. I relax. I'm afraid. I look at the sky, then my slightly dirty feet.

It's now returning to my head, my memory, my body. To my fingers. I feel it, I feel it. It's coming, it's coming. I'm happy. I'm excited. My heart's revving. My skin's growing slack. I lift my head, I open an eye and I watch what's falling.

It's me. Me. Little. An adolescent from the 1980s. A huge schoolbag stuck to my stomach, I'm crossing time, seconds, minutes, as quickly as possibly. I'm in a race. I have one idea in my head. An obsession. An Egyptian actress, mythical, beautiful, more than beautiful. Souad Hosni. A reality. My reality. I am pressed into going into my other life, imaginary, true, entering into communion with her, searching in her for my unknown soul.
--From Abdellah Taïa, Une mélancolie arabe, Éditions du Seuil, 2008, pp. 9-10. Translation by John Keene, 2008. Copyright © 2008, Abdellah Taïa, all rights reserved. (Photo © Denis Dailleux)