Van Jones tells the most important Prince story

On CNN, Van Jones tells the truth about Prince's life, which is that Prince was a generous soul. He says this is the most important story to remember about the man other than Prince was a genius musician.

I knew some of what Jones said about what Prince as philanthropist. I remembered his alignment with Yes, We Code and his concern about and help for New Orleans, but much of this I did not know.

The next video is Jones's 2015 interview with USA Today in which he talked about Prince supporting Yes, We Code and that movement'ss first hackathon, which was held in New Orleans in 2014. Prince headlined the Essence Festival here that year. That concert was the last time I saw Prince perform live.

"Head Games"--Yes, I did do an anti-abuse art project

This video features the art piece "Head Games." It documents a project I did for a required course in the MFA program at the University of New Orleans in Louisiana. The course is Form and Idea. Creative Writing Workshop students have had to take the course through the Film, Theater, and Communications department; however, this is the last year the course will be required for students in the creative writing MFA program.

The course has been replaced by craft courses in the students' specific disciplines, such as poetry and fiction.

My instructor was Henry Griffin, a screenwriter and film professor. He's a passionate and enthusiastic educator, consuming vast amounts of literature, film, and music. While I see the need for craft courses, even applaud their addition, I also think the program may lose something by not exposing its students to this interdisciplinary course.

For the final assignment, Griffin required us to take a piece of art from one genre--a song, a movie, a book, a painting, etc.--and adapt it to a different art form. I chose to turn Joni Mitchell's classic 1975 song "The Hissing of Summer Lawns" into the papier-mâché piece you see in the video.

The idea came to me when I saw local artist and fellow poet Valentine Pierce on Facebook showing off a wig head she'd covered with newspaper via papier-mâché. She did it for practical reasons--to show off hats at the French Market that she's created , but her photo caused me to recall seeing wig heads covered that way when I was a child. And then I remembered making a paper mache duck with my mother when I was bout 8 years old. She was an elementary school teacher.

One of the restrictions for the project was to not do anything you've mastered. We had to do something that we've never done before or had not done in a long time. Paper mache fit the bill for me. Previously I had thought about turning the song into a movie poster, but my drawing's rusty, and the 3-dimensional aspect of the head appealed to me.

Mitchell's song is about a woman enduring psychological abuse and control-freak tactics, so I curated tweets from the #WhyIStayed Twitter campaign launched by Beverly Gooden last year and typed them up, printing them on the laser printer. Later I pasted then on the top of the head. Throughout the piece I also used Joni's lyrics handwritten on different types of paper (newsprint, construction, printer, tissue) and some of the psychologically crippling words I've heard or read before.

The head represents a woman trapped by mental abuse, one who doubts herself, and fears leaving her abuser for whatever reason. That could be financial fears, fear of losing social status, fear for children, or fear for her own life. Sometimes it's all of the above.

Instead of using Joni's actual song, I used the karaoke back-up because I don't want her people to get on me. :-)

Teacher Dances with Students to Hot "Uptown Funk"

As friends and family know and as my previous blog post confirms, I adore Mark Ronson's hit "Uptown Funk" featuring the lovable Bruno Mars. I watched the video the same day it dropped, immediately fell in love with the its "tip of the hat" to old school jams, and saw "hit" all over it.

I can add to my adorable list this performance of the song by theater students at A. Maceo Smith New Tech High School in Dallas.

The school's theater arts teacher, Scott Pankey, who's front and center dancing with his students, organized the project, according to the Today Show and other news sources. In the video, he leads students through the school's halls shaking to the infectious tune. The Dallas Fox affiliate adds, ". . . the video was all done in one take and it culminates with a large number of students and Pankey dancing together . . ."

In an interview posted below with Pankey and some of his students, he says that he's not a dancer but he told the kids if they would do it, he would do it. He also says that the student filming them was on a library cart. They say they didn't expect the video to go viral, but so far it has more than three million views on YouTube.

Dallas News | myFOXdfw.com

I've seen comments on Facebook about this video such as, "I wish I had a teacher like that when I was in high school." Don't we all?

Hat tip my friend and fellow blogger Babz at A Life In Transition for sharing this video on her Facebook page.

This father-son rap time will melt you're heart (2-year-old Khaliyl Iloyi video) - Hope for the future.

Khaliyl Iloyi - 2 year old rapping with his daddy on MUZU.TV.

FEROmedia presents Khaliyl Iloyi rapping at 2 years old with father Femi aka Smooflow of Hip Hop group Royal Priesthood.

Yes, the kid, only two years old, is so cute. I mean sooooo cute rapping with his father. But I am equally happy (smiling ear to ear) to see another example of a young Black father spending time with his child. At the end they start counting, so he's modeling other things than rapping, in case you're wondering.

Quote of the day: From Ta-Nehisi Coates's The Blue Period

Jacob Lawrence, The Library

-- a giant swath of humanity and history. I don't think a human gets to see all of this before dying. But I want to see as much of it as I can. And here is the key thing--it thrills me to see it. I love seeing it. I love knowing. The knowing is its own reward. The ability to frame the question is it's own gift--even if you can't quite name the answer.

I think now, four years after watching that video, and having read A History of White People, that I am a writer. And that is not a hustle. And this is not my "in" to get on Meet The Press, to become an activist, to get my life-coach game on. I don't need anymore platforms. I am here to see things as clearly as I can, and then name them. -- Ta-Nehisi Coates writing at The Atlantic, April 2, 2014: "The Blue Period: An Origin Story."

Coates opens his article with a video of Nell Irvin Painter discussing her book The History of White People and moves on to an examination of his own feelings and attempt to understand and reckon with the past and future of racism, of white supremacy.

King Hugh Laurie and the Human Jukebox: Bacchus Fun (video)

First, here's Southern University's famous marching band during a lull in the Bacchus parade on St. Charles Avenue, New Orleans. They played for the crowd and danced also. The Southern University Baton Rouge band is also known as "the human jukebox." It's carnival time y'all.

Next, in case you missed it, here's Hugh Laurie as King of Bacchus 2014: VIDEO.

Who has a wider audience, Beyonce or Alice Walker and Toni Morrison Combined? Well, for starters, it's hard to ban music.

In the last three weeks I've published a post in which a rap expert explains the lyrics of Jay-Z's rap in Beyoncé's "Drunk in Love," and I've also published a post about a prominent male writer who misrepresents what Nobel laureate Toni Morrison said about Pulitzer Prize winner Alice Walker.

Beyoncé's recently been lauded for making history as the first woman to hit number one with her first five albums. However, both Walker and Morrison made history by being the first African-American women to win either of those prizes for literature, and their fiction, activism, and critical essays have helped shape societal views.

I suspect the answer to the question I posted in the title of this post is Beyoncé, but I haven't validated my suspicion. Nonetheless, can you guess which posts gets more hits according to my stats, the one about Beyoncé or the one about two literary greats? It's always been that way from what I've observed over the course of more than ten years blogging.

Which of the two links above are you most likely to click?

Is it possible that the younger Beyoncé fans of today will be the Walker and Morrison connoisseurs of the future? I'm trying to remain hopeful here, but my mind keeps returning to a disturbing thought. The problem is not that today's younger people may be more interested in sex, rap, and reality shows (that's kind of expected, right?), but that many of our schools may be the agencies that keep the next generation from ever being more than consumers of sex, rap, and reality shows.

Often it's school boards, supported by fearful parents, preventing younger generations from being exposed to Morrison and Walker's work. As this article at the Guardian discusses, "book bannings are on the rise" in the United States.

So, young potential readers will bake under the predictable rays of pop culture with little exposure to the literature that helps them think critically about the world or to have empathy for the other.

I have nothing against  Beyoncé or her husband Jay-Z. I own some of their music, and I'm curious about what pop culture is saying about our changing world. Nonetheless,  I wonder what it is that some people think they protect children from by banning books, particularly teens who already get exposed through television and the Internet to most of the "bad things" book banners aim to curb.

Are the book banners "protecting our young" or are they protecting themselves from having to tackle tough topics in the classroom or answering hard questions at home? And what will be the final outcome for the minds of tomorrow?

Young Target Employee: Statia-what! Stationery?

My cousin. L.C. of Texas (pre-Katrina of New Orleans), shared this funny story on Facebook about a true experience she had in Target. I think her story comments on a technological divide between generations:

The strangest thing happened to me this evening. . . . I went to Target to purchase a stationery set and had trouble finding any. So, I asked this twenty-something year-old for assistance. I described what I was looking for as a stationery or writing set, to write letters. She looked at me as if I were speaking Greek.

The security guard along side her replied, "It's old school. You know these little colorful sheets of paper with pretty matching envelopes that are sold together in a set? People used them at one time to write letters."

The young lady then replied, "Reeeally? Are you serious? I've never seen anything like that. OMG!"

I walked the heck out of that store and went to Barnes & Nobles, where there was a SELECT few sets available. Are we that technology driven that we no longer consider writing a simple letter? This encounter makes me glad I turned down the GPS in my rental car to make use of a "paper" map. @-@

This story makes me think of all the things today's teens and twenty-somethings may have never heard of or seen that people over 35 have at least heard of someone using, carbon paper for instance (assuming they have not seen carbon checks). So many things have become obsolete in the last 20 years.

I'm in graduate school and most of my classmates are younger than my children. One of them, a young writer, questioned in class one day why typed manuscript pages are considered to be 250 words when that never works out for MS Word pages.

I said, "That's based on typewriters using the Courier font. If you double-space, have one-inch margins, and type in courier, a page will come out to 250 words."

Not only did she not believe me, she rolled her eyes as though I had said something obscene. The artsy types often don't like Courier, but seriously, she looked disgusted.

In any case, in the spirit of my cousin's no-stationery-for-you story, I am sharing this article from the New York Times, "The Fading Art of Letter Writing." I found it last year when I required my Freshman English students to include a letter with their final writing portfolios.

And while I'm at it, I should also say that bookstores may be on the way out as well, especially big chain bookstores such as Barnes & Noble, where my cousin took refuge.

Studies Show Low Recidivism Rate for Prisoners Who Receive Formal Education in Prison (Video)

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On her show today, Sunday, Nov. 18, MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry featured Sean Pica, the executive director of Hudson Link for Higher Education in Prison. His organization provides educational services to men and women in four New York state prisons, according to MHP's MSNBC notes.

MHP said in the introduction to the video segment that "the national rate of recidivism within three years of an inmates release is more than 40 percent, but for the 260 Hudson Link graduates, that number is zero."

In the video, Sean Pica, who went into prison witho only a ninth grade education, talks about his 16 years in prison and how helping his fellow inmates learn to read changed his life. Sensing a purpose, he earned his GED as well as undergraduate and graduate degrees while in prison. The video also features other former inmates who have completed the program and turned their lives around. Pica said education transforms inmates and that most of them enter the social service field and help others after they are released; they begin to give back to their communities.

I saw a similar report on CBS's 60 Minutes a while back. The prisoners in the program featured on that program were receiving a liberal arts education through the Bard Prison Initiative. One prisoner in that report said a liberal arts education did more for prisoners than vocational training because a liberal arts education teaches them how to think: "That's a problem that a lot of men in prison have that they're not thinking, you know, they're reacting. A vocational education might give you the skills to have a job, but it's not going to give you the skills to have a life," he said.

You may watch that video at the BPI website.

Anderson Cooper Puts J.C. Penney on The RidicuList

Yes, I, too, heard about J.C. Penney's sale of the disturbing T-shirt for little girls with the slogan, "I'm too pretty to do homework, so my brother has to do it for me." At BlogHer.com, Shannon L.C. Cate wrote about the controversy expressing the same concern that women and some men all over the Internet voiced as soon as news of the T-shirt broke.

The department store has since pulled the T-shirt from the shelves, but I decided to post Anderson Cooper's commentary on the matter anyway since in it he shows other sexist T-shirts marketed to youngsters that give stifling messages about gender roles. The CNN anchor added J. C. Penney to his RidicuList last night.

A Brand New Day

I will be moving this blog away from discussions of politics and race toward something less controversial, mythology perhaps. Something less personal, too, but what I do not know because existence is personal, is it not? Suddenly I am aware of the many reasons a woman should confine her own freedom of speech to the abstract or less threatening and yet even that decision is political. How will I go on?

Obama Surprises Memphis High School Graduates

My aunt in Memphis told me about President Barack Obama surprising students at Booker T. Washington in Memphis, Tenn., on May 16, She said it made her cry. CNN posted a longer video of his surprise visit on YouTube. Obama later spoke at their graduation.

S.O.S. Day Protests Jindal's Cuts to Higher Education in Louisiana: The SUNO-UNO Merger

On April 26, 2011, the Louisiana Legislative Black Caucus held a rally on the steps of the Louisiana State Capitol in Baton Rouge to protest Gov. Bobby Jindal's cuts to higher education. The most urgent matter on the minds of the speakers was Jindal's push to merge Southern University of New Orleans with University of New Orleans, SUNO with UNO.

The event was hosted by the Southern University System and called an S.O.S. Day at the Legislature. SUNO is a historically black university, and while African Americans fought for integration and the right to attend the University of New Orleans years ago, many in the African American community still believe that SUNO and the Southern University System serve a need for students of color that the state's historically white colleges and universities cannot.

Senator Cynthia Willard-Lewis (District 2) speaks passionately in the video, invoking the name of Frederick Douglass, and Senator Edwin R. Murray (District 4)follows her. He urges rally participants and everyone else to contact their legislators and let them know that they do not support the merger nor do they support cuts to higher education, k-12, and hospital services.

As of May 9, the Times Picayune is reporting the following:

"A bill to merge the University of New Orleans and Southern University at New Orleans continued moving through the Legislature Monday, when a second House committee gave its approval despite uncertainty about how much it will cost the state. "

You may watch the full video of all the speeches at the Orleans Parish School Board's Vimeo page.

The video on this page also includes music and pictures related to the history of African American literacy and education in America. I had not planned to make the video, but I changed the TV channel accidentally on the remote while I was under the weather in bed Tuesday morning, heard Cynthia Willard-Lewis's fiery speech, and the next thing I knew, I was putting something together.

Male Student Sent to Principal for Wearing High Heels: Principal Heilmann, You Are Doing it Wrong

A male student at Riverview High School in Tampa Bay Florida was called out of class to the principal's office because he wore high heel shoes to school, reports Tampa Bay's Fox station. School principal Bob Heilmann decided it was best if the student not where the shoes and told him to take them off. See video below.

A teacher notified the school principal and said that the boy’s high heels were distracting to the classroom. ... Heilmann reports there was name calling, so he instructed the young man to remove the shoes.

“As a principal of a high school, I have to take the paternal side as well, I have to make sure he’s going to be okay,” Heilmann told Fox, adding he was worried the student would be subjected to bullying. “Anytime anyone goes out from, quote, ‘the norm,’ or anytime anyone wants to make a statement, you have to be willing to take what comes with it.”

Does Heilmann even realize what he's saying? If he has children of his own, then I feel sorry for them since his "paternal side" apparently encourages him to tell young people who are exploring sexual orientation or gender roles to "Stop that! People won't like you or be nice if you do that. Conform or die!"

In essence, Heilmann is in the namecallers' corner, empowering bullies rather than students who are bullied. He's punishing the student who wore the high heels instead of calling in the students who ostracize their peers and having a talk with them, or better yet, opting to send the bullies to some kind of counseling to explore why they believe they have the right to call another student names. It's probably too much to ask of a school in Florida also to discuss with those students societal constructs of gender and grand narratives about sexuality framed by heterosexual privilege. He missed the higher ground of this teachable moment.

A friend of the student, per the local station says the young man is "proud of who he is, but embarrassed now." Sad.

Apparently Heilmann doesn't keep up with social issues such as bullying or campaigns such as "It Gets Better." Consequently, he'll be remembered as a symptom of the disease students must "get better" from.

Props to the Tampa Bay Fox station for putting this story in context of the little boy whose mother was criticized for letting him dress up as Daphne from Scooby Doo for Halloween. That mother shared her perspective on BlogHer.com this past November.

Dallas Willard on Nietzsche v. Jesus Christ

Nietzsche v. Jesus Christ from The Veritas Forum on Vimeo.

The video above features Dallas Willard lecturing at Stanford University in 2002 on objective versus subjective constructs. He is comparing and contrasting the teachings of Jesus Christ to those of Nietzsche. From a description from the video's sponsor, the Veritas Forum:

"I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life," Jesus said. "God is dead," claimed Nietzsche, thousands of years later. How can we make sense of these two prominent figures in intellectual history? Which really represents the path to the truth? Join Dr. Dallas Willard and explore two of history's most influential people in the world of ideas.

Willard is a Christian scholar and philosphy professor, per Wikipedia.

In one of my classes we're reviewing postmodernism, a set of ideas that's prompted scholars to reevaluate society's grand narratives and to question whether there is any one ojbective, eternal truth. When I came across this Nietsche v. Jesus Christ video, I thought it related to my studies, decided to listen and then decided to share with you.

What is a Closet Drama?

In some ways this blog is a commonplace book for me, and so, as I am researching closet dramas and their relationship to Plato and the dialectic or dialogue, I'm storing this definition or summary of closet dramas from The Columbia Encyclopedia of Modern Drama, Volume 1. Wikipedia is good starting point, too.

Did Paulo Freire Write Poetry? "I Like Being Human"

Let me say at the outset that the verses that follow are by Paulo Freire, but in their original form they are presented as prose not poetry in his last book Pedagogy of Freedom, Chapter 3, "Teaching is Not Just Transferring Knoweldge." (The video at the end of this post is one of his last interviews before his death in 1997)

As I read this book, I am struck increasingly by how his philosphy had become as much a spiritual message as a political-pedogogical philosophy. I see in his final book, much more so than I saw in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, the view of him presented by bell hooks in Teaching to Trangress in which she associates his thinking with that of Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh.

From Pedagogy of Freedom by Paulo Freire:

"I Like Being Human"
(reset from prose into a traditional poetic form by N.A.)

I like being human, being a person,
precisely because it is not already given as certain,
unequivocal, or irrevocable that I am or will be
"correct," that I will bear witness to what is authentic,
that I am or will be just, that I
will respect others, that I will not lie
and thereby diminish the value of others
because of my envy or even anger of their
questioning my presence in the world.

I like being human because I know
that my passing through the world is not
predetermined, preestablished.
That my destiny is not a given
but something that needs to be constructed
and for which I must
assume responsibility.

I like being human
because I am involved with others
in making history out of possibility,
not simply resigned to fatalistic stagnation.
Consequently, the future is something
to be constructed through trial
and error rather than inexorable vice
that determines all our actions.

I like to be human
because in my unfinishedness I know
that I am conditioned. Yet,
conscious of such conditioning,
I know that I can go
beyond it ...

Paulo Freire (September 19, 1921 – May 2, 1997)

I am learning that like most visionaries, Freire was a polarizing figure. His Marxist leanings have caused some to discount his pedogogical philosophy, I think, and never to read it with an open heart.

Removing "N" Word from Huckleberry Finn is More Southern Revisionism Gone Wild Not Political Correctness

Related: Linguist John McWhorter: Sanitizing Huckleberry Finn Insults Black People

I just read about the exceptional foolishness of a misguided southern publisher. At CNN, a Mark Twain biographer, Ron Powers, calls NewSouth Books' decision to strip the word "nigger" from Mark Twain's classic Huckleberry Finn, "vapid, smiley-faced effrontery ... (that) corrodes the foundations of respect for American literature." I agree with Mr. Powers and also commentary at the Washington Post, and I report sadly that I always knew the misunderstandings about political correctness would come to this.

While PC speech has some benefits, it was inevitable that mishandling its purpose would eventually spawn idiots who butcher the works of brilliant creative writers. I say mishandling because I don't think this attack on Huck Finn is political correctness as much as I think it's another example of the South's attempt to rewrite itself.

So, to my fellow African-American Boyce Watkins, who thinks it's good to cut the word from Huck Finn's adventures, I say, "You, sir, are wrong!" Parents, even black parents, would do better to teach their children about the history and times of Mark Twain's book than to coddle them by creating the illusion that no one has ever used the word "nigger." The book teaches us something about people and America even as it supplies bittersweet moments (See PPR_Scribe's "My Nigger Story.").

Yes, I have indulged the pleas of a cute child who asked us to "ban the 'N' word," but that's as far as I go; I'll weep for a moment with a little boy while I recall the first time the "N" word was used against me and then I will stand strong. Oh, if I'd had a gun back then, I would have struggled not to pull the trigger, but it was a person who used the word and had he not known that word, then he would have used another insult. His intent was to do harm.

BTW, some folks are already trying to ban the word "Negro." How far will this go? That other "N" word story surfaced this time last year. Maybe we're now on an annual "N" word controversy schedule.

People who can't abide the word "nigger" under any circumstances regardless of context, usage or intent, who would censure literature perhaps in lieu of politicians and poor role models in everyday life or who think humans are too stupid on their own to learn how and how not to use words, are themselves boneheaded. And I say this after considering how the "N" word is used and has been used and after speaking out against racism often. And no, I do not believe that in order to stop white people from using the word as an insult, black people must not use it as well. Folks who want to hurt or misguide you with words have alternatives. (See Russell Peters Mondays jokes). Plus, black people should have the right to code switch the same way other people do, and white people should be bright enough to know that they are not us.

I wouldn't dare call a white single mother from a mobile home in Slidell, La., a slip of poor white trailer trash no matter how often I heard others define her that way or how many times she might call herself the same. If I know not to do that, then white people should know not to use the "N" word.

Furthermore, I do think when people misuse the word in the name of their own insecurities or as a racial slur against people of color (See John Mayer, some black rappers, and some whites and soldiers who indulge calling Arabs "sand niggers"), they should be confronted. I expect them to know better and think they are smart enough to know they should not speak to people or of people in a certain way. I expect them to know this the same way a man knows if he wants the female bank loan officer to look favorably at his loan application, he can't roll up to her desk saying "bitch." What we all know is that if you don't use a word when you need a favor, then you probably shouldn't use it when you don't.

When it's convenient to them, white people—make that all people—know when they're leveraging racist language to impress, intimidate, or divide as can be seen in this clip of white conservatives taking another conservative to task about his racial word shenanigans. And we also know the difference between the technical definition of racism--the belief that one race is superior to another--how that belief is preserved in our institutions and the blatant racism practiced and promoted by groups like the KKK. We know the difference between the facile ignorance of people who deny they benefit from white privilege and the undiluted hatred of card-carrying, cross-burning racists. We know it all creates chaos and inflicts pain in myriad ways that surpass use of the "N" word.

Nevertheless, far more times than not there is rarely an excuse for speaking this word in mixed or even segregated professional company. And yet, there may be compelling reasons to use the "N" word in fiction or poetry and sometimes even music.

I have a huge problem with a publisher changing Mark Twain's words in the same way I would have a problem with a publisher changing the words of Zora Neale Hurston. In Jonah's Gourd Vine, a story based on her parent's courtship and marriage and that reflects accurately lifestyles of African-Americans in the late 1800s and early 1900s in Notasulga, Ala., and Eatonville, Fla., she has lines such as "... Booker T. Washington. Nigger so smart he et (ate) at de White House. Built uh great big ole school wuth uh thousand dollars, maybe mo.'"

Not only a writer but also a trained anthropologist and ethnographer, Hurston knew how to write and speak in Standard English but indulged writing in dialect, a fad during her time when writers were sometimes obsessed with reflecting regional speaking styles accurately in dialogue. A folklorist, she also believed in showing how people speak in ways that reveal heritage, culture, and social circumstance. Hurston was a product of her time as was Twain. Consequently, their writings reflect their worlds, and if we assault their works, sanitizing them for our own vanilla sensibilities, we will lose not only the flavor of the nation's old literature but also find we have tampered with perceptions of history.

I am not saying anything I haven't said or suggested before. When I heard in 2007 that New York City wanted to symbolically ban the 'N' word, I wrote the following:

How I relate to this as a writer.

As a writer, I have other feelings about using the word as addressed in my post "Speaking Out on the 'N' word." In that post I have some examples of artists/poets using the word.

Writers use a character's language to give readers insight into a character's nature, to make characters three-dimensional. For instance, if my character were a racist, would it seem odd that he never used the word "nigger"? If the character is from an environment, even a black character, that uses the word frequently, would my character seem less authentic if he and the other characters around him never used the word?

Should the writer edit dialogue to censor his character's speech, and does such editing detract from the story? Does the story suffer or benefit if the word is eliminated? I ask myself these same questions when I create characters who would naturally curse and curse often.

And so, I would not even agree with stripping the word "nigger" from a piece of fiction written today.

In addition, I think this move of a white publisher in Alabama of all places wanting to strip the word "nigger" from Huckleberry Finn seems like too disingenuous an act to be approved on face value. It reminds me of those Texans rewriting history and social studies textbooks, or Mississippi's Gov. Haley Barbour's attempt to redefine the racist Citizens Councils of his youth, and Virginia textbooks teaching that thousands of black people fought for the Confederacy because a writer was so desperate to fulfill that state's requirement to teach about the rebels in a more favorable light that she goofed. It's all an attempt to scrub history and lift up the South again to smell like roses. The motive is to distort reality and make us forget the evil things done.

Why must we go to extremes? Why can't adult humans of all races embrace the knowledge that lets them understand context and intent? Sometimes we behave as though we are incapable of comprehending language enough to know when we've heard an insult or of manipulating language in ways that either enlighten or deceive. Instead we pursue banning words to the point of censoring creativity.

And what's next, to strip from Shakespeare insults to short people or to rewrite his Merchant of Venice and forget it ever contained elements of antisemitism? Shall we edit Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels so no words in the text disdain women, obscuring the battle of the sexes, concerns about women controlling consumerism, and the fears that males would lose the power of science during his time?

I think we should speak civilly to each other. However, I also think that if our teachers aren't skilled enough to teach Huckleberry Finn as is and explain historical context and cultural influences on a period's race relations, if teachers can't illuminate the significance and meanings of difficult texts and American students are too daft to grasp shades and styles of writing, then why do we have schools at all?

Notes on Audience and Criticism, No. 1

I'm using my blog now partly as a commonplace book. Last night I came across this article or series of articles at the New York Times about why criticism matters. Since the one I read discusses in part how the Internet has changed views of audience in fiction and writing, I decided to bookmark it. Stephen Burns writes:

While (Alfred) Kazin could complain in 1960 that “the audience doesn’t know what it wants,” with the advent of Amazon reviews and other rating sites the audience is abundantly vocal. A sensitive membrane has evolved from the historical transactions between author, critic and reader. Though online reviews inevitably vary in quality and insight, their very existence no longer makes it possible to imagine that there is not an engaged general-interest audience out there consuming and thinking about literary works. The audience now talks to itself.

I've been mulling over these kinds of thoughts and concepts in contemplation of my graduate thesis.

On page two of his piece, Burns discusses how the changing role of the critic (influenced by amateur reviewers blogging on books who are more fair) may result in freeing professional critics to reevaluate genre boundaries and the evolution of the novel and may spur them to be less narrow-minded. I can applaud that.

His ending resonates with me:

Stepping aside from the culture of opinion, delving deeper into open-minded analysis, critics might fulfill their most important function: locating major works that are not always visible in mainstream networks.

I hope so. I have been saying for a while now that while social and digital media make it easier for writers to see their works published and distributed, it also means we'll see a rise of writers who don't necessarily write well but self-market well. If only the writers who have a knack for self-promotion come to our attention--their adept manipulations on Twitter drowning the quieter voices of writers who focus creative energies on writing--we are doomed indeed.

You may also listen to this NYT Book Review podcast about criticism and critical writing.

Neil Gaiman for the New Year

I'm currently reading American Gods by Neil Gaiman, a book that I've been saying I will settle down and read for at least five years now. He entertains with provocative turns of phrase and vivid description as well as compelling character development. His sense of humor is worth a study all by itself. I know I'll do a lot of thinking as I read it and after I finish it.

It's 2011, which will be the year of reading voraciously for me, and it will include lots of writing since I'm still in graduate school. So, I decided why not kick off 1/1/11 with video interviews of Gaiman, a writer I expect to read more often. He also looks like one of my favorite former English professors from many years back in the picture on the left. Maybe that's some kind of omen. Maybe I'll learn something about narrative craft as I read his work.

In this first video, Gaiman talks about how he writes. He says he likes to borrow friends' houses for weeks at a time to crank out a chapter, and sometimes he writes in special journals. It all depends on the work, he says.



I'm wondering if any of those friends' houses are in New Orleans. I've heard that he likes to sneak into town here because he loves the city. Really, there are few places better than New Orleans to get stoke the imagination of a science fiction and fantasy writer.

In this next video he gives advice to young writers and it is the same I've heard elsewhere and often: writers must write if they want to get better and read a lot. He adds that no elves will come in the night to finish your work.



In the next video he talks about writing what you know and how that applies to him. He says something pretty funny near the end about Snow White.



Finally, here he is on FORA TV reading his poem "Instructions." Consider it advice for fairy tale survival.