I’ve been writing and thinking a lot about the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some of you know this from an earlier post. As a result, my reading list is unending. Yesterday’s New York Times has also spotlighted this latest trend of war literature written service men and women, first person narratives of current wars:
The writers say one goal is to explain the complexities of the wars — Afghan and Iraqi politics, technology, the counterinsurgency doctrine of protecting local populations rather than just killing bad guys — to a wider audience. Their efforts, embraced by top commanders, have even bled into military reports that stand out for their accessible prose.
It’s certainly an intriguing development (definitely not surprising), and the bibliography noted at the end of the article is a good start. Mullaney’s The Unforgiving Minute lives on my Goodreads ‘to read’ list. Yet, this list neglects to mention Shoshana Johnson’s memoir, I’m Still Standing, released this month. It’s almost comical, if not ironic. The omission compounds Johnson’s point about her story noticeably absent from mainstream discourse, vibrating just below the radar. For the uninitiated, here’s a clip of her going tete a tete with another veteran. Also absent from the mainstream media narrative is the rising number of women veterans, some who are becoming the fastest growing homeless population. Additionally, in the under-reported category, here’s a link about the effects of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT) policy on African American women in uniform.
I’m also reading The Photographer, the harrowing tale of the late French photographer, Didier Lefèvre, who chronicled the conflict in Afghanistan in 1986 while traveling with Doctors Without Borders.
Speaking of soldiers, during my internet wanderings, I stumbled on DJ Stylus’ recap of the listening party for the highly anticipated Sade album, Soldier of Love. The album comes out today. He also links a few little gems there. Then there’s the soldiers for justice, the late and great Bayard Rustin is the featured profile on my friend Al Letson’s NPR program, State of Re: Union. The episode is also available as a podcast on iTunes.
Lastly, some blog love for my former classmate Stacia Brown (aka slb on postbourgie.com) She’s been writing deeply moving inquiry of family, love, life and baby while she’s on her journey to motherhood. Soldier on, Ma.
December 18, 1954 – February 6, 2007.
Photo taken at the intersection of West 120th Street, Frederick Douglass Boulevard and St. Nicholas Avenue for the April 20, 2000 issue of New York Magazine.Ta-Nehisi Coates touches on something that I’ve been stuck on too with respect to the ‘freeze’ and POTUS most recent comment about his presidency:
Andrew also notes that it’s largely a symbolic measure, but has faith that Obama will eventually move to the hard choices around defense and entitlement. I don’t know. I think the way Obama has evidently decided to fold on health-care leaves me with little faith that he’ll actually do the hard work.
It is, potentially, like this with all presidents. And I heard his point the other day about being happy with serving as a great one-termer. But I’m struggling to understand what he deeply, truly believes in. What he believes must be done right now. What he’d fall on his sword for. Again, maybe it’s this way with all presidents, and maybe my larger beef is with electoral politics. I’ll sort it out over the next few weeks.
I feel a lot of ambivalence too. On one hand, I really hope that the freeze is a strategic boondoggle, symbolic as Andrew Sullivan says, to weather the midterm election season. Yet, I know that this ’strategy’ won’t necessarily yield any substantive results in deflating the Right’s objections to the Democratic Party’s governance. A freeze on discretionary spending won’t silence POTUS most vehement objectors. I’m not sure if anything will. If this is in fact a fake pass, that will allow POTUS to effectively quarterback the real work of governance -creating policies that support job creation and restore some balance to our economy– by canceling out aspirations for a second term, we’d be lucky. It’s a leap of faith in taking that tact.
I’m not sure what Obama’s doing right now. Junot Diaz wrote a piece for the New Yorker last week bemoaning the loss of story in Obama’s rhetoric as he moved from Candidate to President. And although there’s some validity to that in terms of connecting the message of candidate and man capturing the imagination of the electorate (election platforms are aspirational), governance is an entirely different beast. I don’t need Obama to tell me a story to tuck me in at night. I need him to reform the banking system. There’s nothing inspirational about debating the merits of Glass-Steagall. I need for him to reform the banking system so my friends who run small businesses can secure loans to build and grow and hire people (ahem, job creation). I need for him to push for diplomacy that will inevitably lead to our military withdrawal out of Afghanistan and Iraq, which would reduce defense spending. There isn’t a pretty story for that. I need him to put a foot up the ass of the leadership of the Democratic Party to pass. the. damn. bill. already. Jeez.
This question about the state of our democracy, the state of our union, is invading my dreams. A couple of nights ago, I dreamed I had 8 missed calls from David Plouffe? And the only meaning I can derive from that is that these guys need our help.
As I read/edit submissions for an upcoming project that I’ll announce at later time, I’ve come across an assortment of interesting items on the internets.
- A blog devoted to the Best American Short Fiction collections.
- A response to photo work of Pieter Hugo’s Nollywood series via Amy Stein.
- A how-to guide to book trailers.
- A thoughtful blog about photography.
- The awesome new website for poet Jeanann Verlee as designed by poet/designer David Ayllon.
- This video-essay and photo stills.
- Insight from Paul Lisicky, courtesy of Saeed Jones.
- And because it’s Sunday, I never get tired of hearing this. ‘It’s all about the Hamiltons baby!’
I think that’s enough procrastination for now. *smile* Go Jets!
Warning: This is an extremely meta post.
In response to a recent NYT article in which I was quoted, a very clever reader I assume, googled me, found my Facebook profile and proceeded to send me the following message:
Speak for yourself. Asian and Indian men are raised pretty much by doctors and engineers, and doctors and engineers only. They get married relatively young, don’t cheat, don’t even look at other women, do more household chores than anyone and everyone, and expect their women to be equal (if not greater) partners who achieve at a similarly high level.
There are a lot of things problematic about this statement. One, I AM speaking for myself. Two, that generalization is sort of racist.
I feel like I grabbed the third rail of some conflict I’m not sure how to define. The Pew Report is interesting, however, as a culture, our response to its findings is fascinating. And not in a good way. At all. Some people are downright Catty McBitchy.
Others are misogynistic:
This is a disastrous trend. Can anyone name one society in history that has been dominated by women and which has prospered and survived. I can’t.
Others are comedians:
Big buff dude, who is for some reason shirtless in a library (who may also be carrying an axe in order to appear lumberjack manly): Hey babe, are you done with the microfiche?
Syreeta (turning slowly, flicking her hair, pushing her glasses down to the tip of her nose): Why yes, yes I am? Say, you wouldn’t happen to have a passport handy now would you?
Others just think I’m bitter:
‘I read the article in the Times that you were quoted in and looked you up online. Were You quoted correctly? “With men of any ethnic group, it’s a little intimidating for them to encounter smart women.”
Really? All men? All ethnic groups? The stereotypes that you generate are worse than the stereotypes than men generate about women, but you went to Sarah Lawrence, so I know that you are a bitter, angry, unbalanced and unpleasant young lady who will spend most of her life contriving ugly things to do and say about men (how’s that for a stereotype?)’
Um, WOW. And regardless of whether or not I was quoted correctly, or because I went to one school over another and that says how I feel about everything is also a bit ridiculous. I also love the internet for encouraging some seriously bold assaults from people who wouldn’t dare say any of this to my face. Many of whom are women. Seriously. I’ve had more women assault me with vapid commentary about what they *think* I meant rather than engage me seriously about the conversation. People were angry, cynical, bitchy, frustrated, bitter or assumed that I and my lot are. *kanye shrug* 
The first words of a Martin Luther King speech I learned is from a speech he gave the night before he was murdered. My father knew this speech from memory. And on one cloudy January Saturday afternoon in 1982, he wrote it down and made me sit with him to memorize it.
There’s always a story that comes with a gesture like that. This is my father’s: he was 14 years old in 1968 and lived in Memphis. He had joined the sanitation workers march earlier in the week. He heard MLK give this speech at the Mason Temple in Memphis. The rest… is history. I can assure you at 7 I didn’t fully understand the weight of these words. I knew they were important. I knew my father’s story in relation to those words were important. My father tried to teach me MLK’s intonation and inflection in his turn of phrase. In my little person voice, he wanted to evoke as much as possible the language and moment. So some weeks later, LP recordings of Martin Luther King’s speeches surfaced. I remembering listening to The Drum Major Instinct often.
I haven’t thought about those lazy Saturday afternoons in years. Or even the essays and speeches I wrote from elementary to high school for the Milwaukee Public School’s annual MLK Speech and Essay contests (yeah, just when you think it couldn’t get any nerdier in my past, booyah). But today, I’ve read some great posts from other writers about the other words he said beyond I Have A Dream that you can read here, here and here. I’d also point out that the arc of the I Have A Dream speech in our sanitized canonization of King ignores the a key detail about the March on Washington. The 1963 March was called the March on Washington for JOBS and FREEDOM. That was not a mistake. A. Philip Randolf, a prominent union leader, was also a keynote speaker that day as well (something I also learned from recorded LPs of great black men in history courtesy of dear old dad) and according to some stories I’ve heard, was a better speech than King’s. Yet, in King’s speech, he also clearly made an argument that not only addressed racial inequality, but also quality of life for workers. Civil Rights and unions have long history in mobilization and action. A fine detail one discovers in college seminars or documentaries.
I got the title of this post from a lesser known King speech given in the weeks before his death. It still carries a profound resonance today:
We are not coming to engage in any histrionic gesture. We are not coming to tear up Washington. We are coming to demand that the government address itself to the problem of poverty. We read one day, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” But if a man doesn’t have a job or an income, he has neither life nor liberty nor the possibility for the pursuit of happiness. He merely exists.
We are coming to ask America to be true to the huge promissory note that it signed years ago. And we are coming to engage in dramatic nonviolent action, to call attention to the gulf between promise and fulfillment; to make the invisible visible.
All of this is a longer way of saying, if you haven’t read his other speeches, please do. The social justice agenda is a common thread in all of his writings and speeches and worked in concert with his philosophy regarding racial inequality and human rights. The call to action and the deep understanding that change takes great effort and perseverance.
A few months back this earworm invaded my mental mind and prompted me to post it as a stub. Today, it’s my writing prompt as I re-read Pygmalion and think about the code/switch.
For the uninitiated, here is a sampling of X-Clan’s tome to the complexity of black identity in the black and white imagination:
Let me tell you about blackness,
Grits and cornbread how can you act this?
I exist on a plane, where the jar is my brain, I’m livin’ to retrieve
cells,
Antenae my stick, picture bigger, made of liquor, figure,
The pull of the trigger goes zoom not boom,
Not a bunch of sissies, but saviors braver,
The red, black, and green,
It’s just so much more than red, black, and green,
You ask what I mean, but yet the sundial shades on lights and dreams,
Watch too late, oops, upside your head!
You drop through abyss like lead,
Where you goin’, what’s your speed, what’s your pleasure, what’s your
need,
Trees to branches, roots to seeds, forwards, backwards many
degrees,
Questions answers, what’s the sum?
We have come.
