Isak

On the Murder of Dr. George Tiller

(Cross-posted at RH Reality Check)

Many have heard the really terrifying news that Dr. George Tiller, an abortion provider in Kansas, was gunned down this morning while he attended services at his Lutheran church in Wichita.

At this writing, a suspect has just been taken into custody.

The chilling fact of Dr. Tiller's death comes after years of being terrorized: he's had his clinic bombed, flooded and vandalized; received decades of death threats; endured wild lawsuits; and was the unfortunate target of conservative media that hounded him. He'd also been shot before (in both arms)--and went back to work the next day.

While of course everybody has the right to personally oppose abortion, the killing and harassment of Dr. Tiller is beyond the pale. (I've articulated my own pro-choice feelings about abortion here, here, and here). The hypocrisy of murder being the recourse of someone who is "pro-life" is so evident it barely needs discussing.

What does need emphasizing: Dr. Tiller's courage in persevering with his work--his commitment to the women who came to him--even in the face of such cruelty is astonishing. His murder comes down in my mind to an act of terrorism; it is, after all, intended to send a fearful message to other abortion providers or advocates or women who seek abortions. (Matthew Yglesias makes a powerful point about how effective this is.)

As Feministe points out, this is the first direct shooting of an abortion provider in more than a decade (after a fearful spate of them through most of the 1990s), though the anniversary of Roe v. Wade last January saw one man smashing his SUV into a St. Paul clinic full of patients and employees. It seems that clinic bombings and murders increase substantially during pro-choice administrations.

A candlelight vigil in honor of Dr. Tiller is planned in Wichita tonight at 8pm in Old Town Square. Find more info on Facebook.

As well, this is a wonderful time to donate and volunteer our time to organizations that have Tiller-esque courage and compassion. Consider showing your love for these favorites of mine:

• Medical Students for Choice
• National Abortion Federation
• Abortion Conversation Project
• Backline

Read more about Dr. Tiller--his life, work, and death--here:

• The Wichita Eagle
• The Kansas City Star
• Mike Hendricks
• Daily Kos
• Feministing
• Dr. George Tiller's clinic website (UPDATE 6/2/09: The clinic website it temporarily offline).
• Wrath of Angels: The American Abortion War, by James Risin

Peace, my friends. Peace.

Image Credit: Feministe

It's Like Book It!, But With Drugs Instead of Pizza Hut Personal Pies

"Literature's like coke and music's like heroin! Literature sharpens the mind, music stupidifies," laughs punk legend Iggy Pop, whose new album is inspired by a French novel about "death and sex".

For more on how the "godfather of punk" is inspired by Michel Houellebecq, look here.

Roxana Saberi Speaks About Her Imprisonment

Journalist Roxana Saberi, who was incarcerated for four months in Iran on spurious charges (and whose detainment, trial, sentencing, hunger strike, and wonderful release Isak has been following with great attention) now gives her first full-length interview to NPR.

Saberi tells Melissa Block that she gave a false confession to Iranian interrogators as a result of severe duress, but that she soon recanted when her "conscience got the better" of her. She also says that "to this day she doesn't know why she was arrested — or why she was freed."

She is remarkably candid; it's a remarkable interview with a heroic woman.

Image Credit: National Public Radio

RIP Ronald Takaki (1939-2009)

Maybe it's just me, but it seems like an unusual number of legends have been falling lately. The latest casualty: Ronald Takaki, the groundbreaking scholar, surfer, and activist who elevated the multiethnic past and present of the United States.

He did so in his popular teaching (he established UC Berkeley's PhD program  and undergrad programs in ethnic studies, the first of their kind in the nation); in his writing (12 books, including A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America, which shook up my freshmen year of college); as a speaker (he gave talks and interviews around the world for decades); and in his activism (he "was a vigorous proponent of multicultural education and a vocal opponent of Proposition 209, the 1996 California ballot initiative that rolled back affirmative action policies in state-funded institutions.")

And he did so by recognizing the larger implications of his personal experiences.

Takaki is the grandson of Japanese immigrants and a Hawaiian native whose surfing earned him the nickname of "Ten-Toes Takaki." He was the first of his family to go to college, attending The College of Wooster in Ohio.

From The Los Angeles Times:

His years at Wooster, where he was one of two Asian Americans on campus, gave him a new awareness of himself as an ethnic American. One of his professors "asked me how long I'd been in this country, where did I learn to speak English. I told him I was from Hawaii and he says, 'But how long have you been in this country?' I guess I didn't look American," he recalled in an interview in the Lincoln Journal Star in 2000.

He graduated from Wooster in 1961 with a bachelor's in history. At UC Berkeley he received a master's in 1962 and a doctorate in 1967 with a dissertation on the history of American slavery.

His doctoral work caught the attention of UCLA. Takaki was hired and in 1967 taught the university's first African American history class.

...  Teaching the class, which drew students of various ethnicities, led Takaki to begin to reformulate race as "more than just a binary of black and white." It inspired him to develop a course on the comparative history of racial inequality.

Takaki, who eventually moved from UCLA to UC Berkeley, was a popular teacher, in high demand among students for his 34 years on the Berkeley campus. He retired in 2003.

Takaki had multiple sclerosis for nearly 20 years, which, according to his son, led him to take his own life in his Berkeley home last Tuesday.

Rest in peace, Ten-Toes.

UPDATE: I just encountered a personal and powerful remembrance of Takaki, via Feministing, that absolutely bears re-quoting. Here's Oiyan, writing at the APAP website:

I first encountered his book Strangers from a Different Shore at the local public library in Springfield, Massachusetts. It had just been published, and I was 16. I'm not sure how I came across the book, but I found myself feeling like I needed to hide as I read the book. Each chapter detailed Asian American history, which until that point, I had no idea existed. With each chapter read, I began feeling more and more power. The knowledge the book presented almost felt illicit. Having grown up in a provincial, all-white, lower-middle class, mostly immigrant community, and being told over and over by the society in which I was growing up that my experience did not matter, the book was electrifying. I remember checking the book out, going straight home, and sitting in the corner of my bedroom on the floor, door closed, and the book lit by my desk lamp I had brought with me to the floor. I'm not sure why I read it like that, but I remember shaking as I devoured the book. You have to understand that in my experience, true relevant knowledge was made out to be illicit and dangerous. When I was 13, I wasn't allowed to do a book report on the Autobiography of Malcolm X. Maybe that's why I hid in a corner to read Takaki's book when I was 16. I do remember that the book was critical in helping me make sense of the violently racist experiences I had and the historical contexts for these experiences, and my relationship to the rest of the world around me, as an Asian American. It was the first time I realized I was Asian American, and I began to develop a voice.

According to Hyphen, memorial donations be sent to the Asian Law Caucus, 55 Columbus Ave., San Francisco, CA 94111.

Image Credit: The Los Angeles Times

Alice Munro Wins Man Booker International Prize

Cheers to this: Alice Munro, the Canadian short story writer, wins the Man Booker International prize for those whose body of work has most contributed to "fiction on the world stage."

Munro beat out some fine finalists, including Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, the Nobel laureate VS Naipaul, Australia's Peter Carey and the Booker prize-winning Scottish author James Kelman.

"Her commitment to the story as a form is very impressive. Lesser writers would have produces a good or mediocre novel, or three or four, over the years. The fact she decided this is what she was going to explore is very impressive, especially in the Anglo writing world, which is inimical to the shorter form," (said one) judge, the novelist and critic Amit Chaudhuri. "She's wonderful – the way she brings in memory, the way she handles language and narrative …The level of craftsmanship involved demands attention."

UPDATE: I was informed by an Isak reader that after the Man Booker International longlist came out (and I made my impassioned case for wanting this to be Alice Munro's year), the other impressive contenders led bookmakers to have Munro down as an outsider to win, at 16/1 odds. I regret not putting money on this one. Maybe this is the bain of advocates: you anticipate that what you advocate for will always be just beyond reach. Winning isn't expected.

Enough rhetoric. Here's to Munro! Long live the short story! (cue clink of the glasses).

The War Where Art Mattered

I knew the premise of the film called The Rape of Europa (and the book it's based on) before I saw it: Art mattered hugely to Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party.

Hitler, of course, was a painter who didn't get into art school when he was 18. Crazy popular gallery shows in Germany attempted to articulate the difference between "degenerate art" (i.e. expressionist, abstract, made by Jews, Slavs, Poles) and the art of the German ideal Hitler espoused (i.e. realist, sentimental, classical, German). And Hitler used classical architecture and city design to communicate his ideology in urban spaces.

As well, wartime Europe was simultaneously a war to rescue the bulk of Western art and architecture from bombing, devastation, neglect, and--this is where The Rape of Europa is particularly fixated--on the Nazi looting of art held by museums, galleries, collectors, and families across the continent.

I knew this art history: and still, the film was fascinating, eye-opening, and extremely compelling. Here's the trailer (which I don't think does the documentary justice):

What has stayed with me most of all is the insight into how World War II was a war where art mattered. It mattered to the Axis and Allies both; it mattered to citizens and to political leaders; it was a primary fact of the action of the brutal decades before, during, and after the rise of Nazism.

This is not a casual point. During the war in Iraq, I can think of a handful of sad news articles that chronicled how Iraq's artistic and architectural treasures have been trashed. I can't think of any word on the role of art in the wars in Vietnam and Korea.

Today, art (or perhaps "only" non-Western art?) seems like it is merely a tragic footnote to the war story, rather than a key catalyst and purpose as it was throughout World War II.

Is this because we have the idea of Europe's art mattering more?

Is it because we've lost the sense of art mattering at all, lodging it in the category of a pleasing but expendable hobby despite all the rhetoric about art being 'humanizing' (see: cuts to school arts programs and state art funds)?

Is it because even during World War II, we might have been merely responding to Hitler's prioritization of art, rather than prioritizing it ourselves?

Is it because art during World War II had such great meaning for citizen populations, who at great risk preserved and smuggled art treasures, while today there's no such public buoy, thereby excusing state leaders who cease to care as well?

Be Still, My Heart

It's the Fiction Forward issue of that unwaveringly fantastic publication, Bookforum. As usual, the contents are (mostly) online. Allow me to tantalize you with such offerings as:

• Africa's Literary Boom, by James Gibbons
• New York City's Urban Ecology, by Philip Nobel
• The Moviegoer: Harry Potter and Easy Virtue
  
• Interview: Aleksandar Hemon
• Francis Bacon's Source Material, by Richard Cork
• Fiction excerpts by Ryan Boudinot, Holly Goddard Jones, and several others
• Reviews of Victor LaValle's  Big Machine (a novel I've been waiting for); The Letters of Samuel Beckett, Vol. 1; In the Kitchen, by Monica Ali; Trouble by Kate Christensen; and many, many others.

I swear, my crazy heart is beating faster.

Ruth Padel Resigns

I admit to not seeing this coming: Ruth Padel, the first female Oxford professor of poetry, has resigned just over a week since her election to the prestigious post. This comes after controversy that she provoked a smear campaign against her leading rival, Derek Walcott. From the media reports, I think such claims about Padel's actions are overblown.

Nonetheless, Oxford University will have a new election to one of the most prestigious poetry posts in Britain and attempt to bring a bit of calm to the ridiculous tempest swirling 'round the position.

War/No More Trouble

Discover more from Playing for Change. The DVD and CD of the project are both available now.

Stories That Taught Me About Writing

See my list of favorite Debut Short Story Collections here.

It would be a mistake to think of short stories as merely teachers of lessons. In fact, it is my pet peeve that short fiction is diminished in the public imagination as a limited form that is serviceable only as a precursor to a writer's Big Novel; that is, the idea that short fiction is "practice" fiction. It is, also, diminished in the legacies of great writers. The stories of Leo Tolstoy, for example, might be admired but they are generally considered footnotes to War and Peace. And cherish a writer who specializes in stories though we may--I'm looking at you, Flannery O'Connor, Eudora Welty, Angela Carter, and Alice Munro--we'd never dream of validating them with a Pulitzer or a Nobel or another Major Prize, now would we?

Rant aside, I happily admit that there are an uncountable number of short stories that I've pored over, that shocked me into understanding more about how fiction is made and about its possibilities. They are the stories, among tens of thousands that I've loved, that come before me at a moment when I'm ready to internalize something about the craft of them. Unmentionable imitations filled up my computer files. And today, I re-visit them regularly, and along with the joy comes the learning. I love these stories, and I'm grateful to them. And this list is, of course, outrageously incomplete.

Stories That Taught Me About Writing
(in no particular order)

1. "How to Be the Other Woman," by Lorrie Moore
2. "Dance in America," by Lorrie Moore
3. "Emergency," by Denis Johnson
4. "The Fall River Axe Murders," by Angela Carter
5. "The Cabinet of Edgar Allan Poe," by Angela Carter
6. "Three Versions of Judas," by Jorge Luis Borges
7. "Bones of the Inner Ear," by Kiana Davenport
8. "Pet Milk," by Stuart Dybek
9. "Carried Away," by Alice Munro
10. "Runaway," by Alice Munro
11. "A View of the Woods," by Flannery O'Connor
12. "A Late Encounter with the Enemy," by Flannery O'Connor
13. "Everything that Rises Must Converge," by Flannery O'Connor
14. "Brownies," by ZZ Packer
15. "The Ant of the Self," by ZZ Packer
16. "The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World," by Gabriel García Márquez
17. "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings," by Gabriel García Márquez
18. "A Clean Well-Lighted Place," by Ernest Hemingway
19. "Hands," by Sherwood Anderson
20. "Goodbye, My Brother," by John Cheever
21. "The Things They Carried," by Tim O'Brien
22. "The Dead," by James Joyce
23. "Gusev," by Anton Chekhov
24. "Anyuta," by Anton Chekhov
25. "Me and Miss Mandible," by Donald Barthelme
26. "Robert Kennedy Saved From Drowning," by Donald Barthelme
27. "The Lottery," by Shirley Jackson
28. "What Feels Like the World," by Richard Bausch
29. "The Amish Farmer," by Vance Bourjaily
30. "Body Art," by A.S. Byatt

... and while I can't pick just one of her stories--because they are so embedded as a whole in the collection they are a part of--I'd be remiss to not take this opportunity to celebrate all that Lydia Davis has taught me. See why in my reviews of Samuel Johnson is Indignant and Varieties of Disturbance.

The Future of University Presses And Journals: A Manifesto

I'd excerpt or paraphrase Ted Genoways' online manifesto at the Virginia Quarterly Review, but it's too good to be parsed. You have no choice but to take on the whole of it. I nodded so vigorously through it that I'm damn near dizzy.