Global News Post: Literature

INDIA: Modernity is a Process to be Imbibed, Not a Product to be Acquired – Vice President

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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 8.0pt;">The Vice President, Mohd.
Hamid Ansari addressing after releasing a book<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 8.0pt;">entitled “Azadi’s Daughter”,
authored by Ms. Seema Mustafa, in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">New
  Delhi</st1:place></st1:city><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 8.0pt;">on November 09, 2012. The
former Chief Election Commissioner, </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 8.0pt;">Dr. S.Y. Quraishi is also seen. Photo © PIB<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">NEW DELHI</span></st1:city></st1:place><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"> (PIB) ---The Vice President of India M.
Hamid Ansari has said that the sub-title “Liberal Muslim” used together,
qualify each other. Besides being definitional or descriptive, they seem to
attribute values and are tending to be used as a sort of social, official or
quasi-official description with an implied if not explicit disparagement of the
anti-thesis: liberal – illiberal; traditional – modern; conservative – radical;
scientific – superstitious; Muslim - other than Muslim, and so on. He was
addressing after releasing a book entitled “Azadi’s Daughter -The Journey of a
Liberal Muslim Woman” authored by senior journalist Ms. Seema Mustafa at a
function here today. The book is both a fascinating account of an intrepid
liberal Muslim woman’s personal journey and a political commentary on a secular
way of life. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">The
narrative of the book covers a number of overlapping and intersecting themes –
autobiography, gender, modernity, social values, and political judgments. Each
is valid in its own right; together they tend to induce what logicians call
‘category mistake’, he said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">         <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Ansari
said that the book portrays vividly the situational backdrop and the personal
endeavour of the author. It shows that modernity is a process to be imbibed,
not a product to be acquired. Rising levels of education and awareness,
particularly amongst women, would further it in all sections of society.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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INDIA: Modernity is a Process to be Imbibed, Not a Product to be Acquired – Vice President

The Vice President, Mohd. Hamid Ansari addressing after releasing a book entitled “Azadi’s Daughter”, authored by Ms. Seema Mustafa, i...

India: Vice President’s Address at Birth Centenary Celebrations of Sachidananda Hiranand Vatsyayan ‘Agyeya’ at Kolkata

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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Kolkata (PIB) ---The Vice President of India  M. Hamiod Ansari has said that Sachidanand Hiranand Vatsyayan ‘Agyeya’ belonged to an era where it was possible to be a master of many crafts. As a towering literary personality, he initiated new and experimental trends in almost all genres of literary writings including poetry, short stories, criticism, novels, travelogues, essays and drama. Addressing at the Birth Centenary celebrations of Sachidanand Hiranand Vatsyayan ‘Agyeya’ at Kolkata today, he said that Ageyaya also ventured into journalism and took up causes of the poor and the oppressed and  was a patriot and a revolutionary freedom fighter on whom Chandrashekhar Azad left a deep impression. He was a polyglot, well-versed in Hindi, English, Sanskrit and Persian. He also had a stint in Indian Army and took part in social movements for the benefit of the downtrodden. His interest also extended into academia, especially the teaching of Hindi. The range of his interests and the deep philosophical underpinnings of his literary output, which at a certain level resonates with Vedantic thought, have established him as a literary figure in the footsteps of Vishwa Kavi Rabindranath Tagore.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">He said that Vatsyayanji struggled to make Hindi a vibrant, volatile, alive and growing language – not a “standard, well regulated and universally accessible form” of Hindi which he felt would only be good for official notifications and regulations. While such a standardized and dry language might be useful for spreading literacy, he felt that the logic of literacy can not be the logic of a national language. He very forcefully argued that a language cannot be an artificial creation like Esperanto but should be a growing, and therefore changing and stable language that grows from the depths of the minds of ordinary men and women.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div> <br />
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India: Vice President’s Address at Birth Centenary Celebrations of Sachidananda Hiranand Vatsyayan ‘Agyeya’ at Kolkata

Kolkata (PIB) ---The Vice President of India M. Hamiod Ansari has said that Sachidanand Hiranand Vatsyayan ‘Agyeya’ belonged to an era whe...

José Marti- The Cuban Poet and Revolutionary

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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">By <a href="http://www.groundreport.com/Dulcinea"><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Finding Dulcinea</span></a>  <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Written by <a href="http://www.findingdulcinea.com/employees/editorial/sarah-amandolare.html"><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Sarah Amandolare</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 8.0pt;"> </span><i><span style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">  <a href="http://www.groundreport.com/includes/ajax/image_popup.php?image=2943889&image_id=1"><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Jose Marti (Patricio Bridges- Creative Commons)</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></i></div></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">GroundReport- </span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">For<span style="background: white;"> most of his life, José Marti moved from place to place, collecting the experiences and knowledge that would influence his work as a writer, revolutionary and educator. He was passionate in every undertaking, whether organizing the Cuban independence movement, fiercely objecting dictatorships and government abuses in <st1:country-region w:st="on">Mexico</st1:country-region> and <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Guatemala</st1:place></st1:country-region>, or studying philosophy and law. His devotion to <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Cuba</st1:place></st1:country-region>’s freedom and his own free spirit resulted in a lifetime of intriguing achievements.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Early Days<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Born in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Havana</st1:city>,  <st1:country-region w:st="on">Cuba</st1:country-region></st1:place>, on Jan. 28, 1853, José Marti had his first foray into political activism at age 15, helping to set up an anti-colonial newspaper that led to his arrest within a year. Spanish authorities convicted Marti of anti-government activity, and handed him a six-year sentence of “hard labor in a quarry,” reports The My Hero Project. He served just three years, however, before being deported to <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Spain</st1:place></st1:country-region>. There, Marti entered the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placetype w:st="on">University</st1:placetype>  of <st1:placename w:st="on">Zaragoza</st1:placename></st1:place> to study law. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">In the years following his graduation from university, Marti’s rebellious, revolutionary ways were revealed. He was banished from <st1:city w:st="on">Mexico City</st1:city>, <st1:country-region w:st="on">Guatemala</st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region w:st="on">Spain</st1:country-region> and <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Venezuela</st1:place></st1:country-region> for opposing military leadership, government abuses, colonialist authorities and dictatorship. But along the way, he honed his philosophical standpoints, working as a journalist and literature professor, and spending some time in <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">New York</st1:place></st1:state>, according to The My Hero Project.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Notable Accomplishments<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Throughout his life, Marti never lost sight of his ultimate passion: promoting Cuban independence. In doing so, he would take on various roles, including teacher, diplomat and poet. His first poetry volume, “Versos Libres” (Free Verses), was published in 1878. More than a decade later, Marti’s “Versos Sencillos” was published, the first poem of which became his most notable work and “an unofficial national anthem for <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Cuba</st1:place></st1:country-region>,” according to Bella Online. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Although he was killed in 1895 during the Battle of Dos Rios in <st1:country-region w:st="on">Cuba</st1:country-region>’s war for independence from <st1:country-region w:st="on">Spain</st1:country-region>, Marti was “remembered as a national hero as well as <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Cuba</st1:place></st1:country-region>’s unofficial national poet.” <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Cuba</st1:place></st1:country-region> was eventually successful in the war, as well, says Bella Online. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Marti is also praised for his varied interests and his ability “to move comfortably in the most diverse fields,” according to the Free Cuba Foundation. His writings reflect that worldliness and display “the universality and timelessness of his thought,” supreme among them that <st1:country-region w:st="on">Cuba</st1:country-region>’s freedom was crucial to the well-being of <st1:place w:st="on">Latin America</st1:place>.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div>

José Marti- The Cuban Poet and Revolutionary

By Finding Dulcinea Written by Sarah Amandolare Jose Marti (Patricio Bridges- Creative Commons) GroundReport- For most of his...

Swedish Poet Awarded 2011 Nobel Prize in Literature

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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLjhjwii7t4pZ2wH1SpqKX9UJt3d_eKahtJWOEFK7wSPlPZx6f78hRaCJMUPsMr92tbyL8PRQj1Tdlhi4pMrMRdri5Q0NGFGXjI8dGbG0xO5hO9BsKlIbFKFw6nZqHm3T9ISlNhzrypgA/s1600/Nobel-Peace-Prizes-230.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLjhjwii7t4pZ2wH1SpqKX9UJt3d_eKahtJWOEFK7wSPlPZx6f78hRaCJMUPsMr92tbyL8PRQj1Tdlhi4pMrMRdri5Q0NGFGXjI8dGbG0xO5hO9BsKlIbFKFw6nZqHm3T9ISlNhzrypgA/s1600/Nobel-Peace-Prizes-230.jpg" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">The <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Royal</st1:placename> <st1:placename w:st="on">Swedish</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Academy</st1:placetype></st1:place> of Sciences has awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize for Literature to Swedish poet Tomas Transtromer, 80.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">The jury said Thursday that Transtromer was honored "because, through his condensed, translucent images, he gives us fresh access to reality." <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Transtromer will receive $1.5 million for winning the Literature Prize, the fourth of this year's Nobel Prizes.<span>  </span>It follows awards for medicine on Monday, physics on Tuesday and chemistry on Wednesday. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">The <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Royal</st1:placename> <st1:placename w:st="on">Swedish</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Academy</st1:placetype></st1:place> of Sciences will name the winner of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday.<span>  </span><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">The Nobel Prizes were created by Alfred Nobel, a wealthy Swedish industrialist who invented dynamite.<span>  </span>An award for economics will be announced October 10. The first Nobel Prizes were awarded in 1901. ---VOA News<o:p></o:p></span></div></div>

Swedish Poet Awarded 2011 Nobel Prize in Literature

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize for Literature to Swedish poet Tomas Transtromer, 80. The jury...

Book Review: Overcoming Speechlessness by Alice Walker

<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">  By <span style="color: black;"><a href="http://www.groundreport.com/HurricaneDean"><span style="color: black;">Dean Walker</span></a></span>    </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">   </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfb5wwzv8X7LEbdW6cB2fxA6Y4LaOnR-VWaauo9UtW5G93Ka2P0ZP-23VoeLx8liuW9o8W1vrr6io_n3m89DshWKrOgDJIoKzcGcV7NJYZ6gDtMwNbEJ5J-JsuoqQLXRIIg_Ds_IY4k3s/s1600/seven+stories.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfb5wwzv8X7LEbdW6cB2fxA6Y4LaOnR-VWaauo9UtW5G93Ka2P0ZP-23VoeLx8liuW9o8W1vrr6io_n3m89DshWKrOgDJIoKzcGcV7NJYZ6gDtMwNbEJ5J-JsuoqQLXRIIg_Ds_IY4k3s/s320/seven+stories.gif" width="201" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Alice Walker’s recent book <i>Overcoming Speechlessness: A Poet Encounters the horror in Rwanda, Eastern Congo, and Palestine/Israel</i>weaves a collection of horrific tales with the lifelong activist’s wisdom and words of hope. This thin 75 page book (or booklet) is published by Seven Stories Press in 2010.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Walker (no relation to me) starts the reader off with an account of her 2007 visit to Rwanda and Eastern Congo. Working for the non-profit organization Women for Women International, Walker went to the war torn area to provide aid to the survivors, write their stories, offer some hope, and pay her “respects to the hundreds of thousands of infants, toddlers, teenagers, adolescents, young engaged couples, married people, women and men, grandmothers and grandfathers brothers and sisters, of every facial shape and body size, who had been hacked into sometimes quite small pieces by armed strangers, or by neighbors, or by acquaintances and “friends” they know.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Walker recalls several accounts of meeting women survivors who openly shared horrible accounts of rape and mutilations. This little book provides some graphic details and is not for the faint of heart. Walker explains, while in her twenties in college, she had written a thesis paper on the “Belgian” Congo. She goes on to provide a brief history of the colonization of the Congo and recounts the tale where King Leopold of Belgian had instituted a policy of cutting off the hands of the enslaved Africans who were unable to fulfill their rubber quotas.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Walker goes on to recount a meeting with a young women who had been made a sex slave during the recent conflict in Congo and had been become limp because she was “forced to carry loads that bent her double.” The poor women had been virtually struck blind, and yet she was still able to smile and openly share her tragic personal story. Walker asks, “How can she smile?”  Walker then explains the realization she gained from meeting her new “Congolese sister.”  Walker writes, “She understood the importance of speech, speech about the unspeakable, and is a source of my ability to share the following story, a story that had propelled me into a period of speechlessness.” This statement becomes a recurring theme in the book.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The other recurring theme seems to come from her Buddhist belief in oneness. Walker recounts another Rwandan woman’s horrific story of rape and murder and the hope that her daughter was still alive and can be reunited with her mother. Walker writes, “My understanding that Generose’s lost daughter belongs to all of us. It is up to all of us to find her; it is up to us to do our best to make her whole again. There is only one daughter, one father, one mother, one son, one aunt, or uncle…that one right in front of you.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">After flying back to the United States, Walker gets an email asking if she would like to go to Gaza with the women’s anti-war group CODEPINK. Walker recalls a time back in 2003 when she found herself side by side with members of CODEPINK as they were arrested in front of the White House while protesting the start of the war against Iraq.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Just days later, Israel began its twenty-two-day bombardment of Gaza.  Walker writes, “Houses, hospitals, factories, police stations, parliament buildings, ministries, apartment buildings, schools went up in dust. The sight of one family, in which five young daughters had been killed, was seared into my consciousness. The mother, wounded and unconscious, was alive. Who would tell her?” After consulting with her partner, they conclude, “The sooner we reach the people of Gaza, the sooner they’ll know not all Americans are uncaring, deaf and blind, or fooled by the media.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The remainder of the book Walker guides her readers as she journeys to Gaza for the first time. During the trip, Walker flashes-back to moments in her life, especially during her twenties and thirties, as a civil rights volunteer and writer. Walker recalls the dark times growing up in the Jim Crow south. While arranging her passport to Gaza, a U.S. embassy official questions Walker as to why the Palestinians couldn’t be more like the civil rights movement in America.  Walker responses with what are clearly the most controversial statements made in the book. Therefore, I will provide an extended excerpt in order to provide the full context. Walker responds:</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“She- a white woman with a Southern accent – mentioned the success of “our” civil rights movement and asked why the Palestinians couldn’t be more like us. It was a remarkable comment from a perspective of unimaginable safety and privilege; I was moved to tell her of the effort it took, even for someone so inherently nonviolent as me, to contain myself during the seven years in Mississippi when it often appeared there were only a handful of white Mississippians who could talk to a person of color without delivering injury or insult. If we had not been able to change our situation through nonviolent suffering, we would have most certainly, like the African National Congress (ANC), like the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), like Hamas, turned to violence. I told her how dishonest it seemed to me that people claim not to understand the desperate, last-ditch resistance involved in suicide bombing, blaming the oppressed for using their bodies where the Israeli army uses armored tanks.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I remembered aloud, we being Southerners, my own anger at the humiliations, bombings, assassinations that made weeping an endless activity for black people for centuries, and how when we would finally get to a courtroom that was supposed to offer justice, the judge would likely blame us for the crime done against us and call us chimpanzees for making a fuss.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">While waiting for her passport Walker looks at a series of illustrated postcards. The first card depicts a few scattered Jewish villages in the Palestine from 1946, prior to the U.N partition. The next, a few years later, after the U.N. had partition the area depicts about half owned by Israel, and after 1967 the Israeli portion of territory had doubled its land mass again. Walker notices that on the back of one of the cards, “were words from former Israeli president Ariel Sharon, known as the ’Butcher of Sabra and Shatilla’ (refugee camps in Lebanon where he led a massacre of the people), where he talked about making a pastrami sandwich of the Palestinian people, riddling their lands with Jewish settlements until no one would be able to imagine a whole Palestine. Or would know Palestine ever existed.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Walker then goes on to compare how in the U.S., during the Trail of Tears, the Cherokee were forcefully removed from their homes. Walker writes, “Just as the Israelis have wanted and have taken by force, Palestinian land. Like Americans they have attempted to hide their avarice and cruelty behind a mountain of myths: that no one lived in Palestine, that the Palestinians are savages, that there’s no such thing as a Palestinian (Golda Meir’s offering), that the Israelis are David and the Palestinians Goliath. Which is ridiculous.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">As Walker boards the bus to Gaza she comments, “I had not been on a bus with so many Jews since traveling by Greyhound to the 1963 March on Washington, where Martin Luther King Jr. John Lewis, and other spoke so passionately of black Americans’ determination to be free.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Walker goes to ask some of the Jewish passengers why they had decided to make the journey. Walker writes, “It was moving to hear the stories of why the Jews on our Gaza-bound bus were going to Palestine. Many of them simply said they couldn’t bear the injustice, or the hypocrisy. Having spoken out against racism, terrorism, apartheid elsewhere, how could they be silent about Palestine and Israel? Someone said her friends claimed everyone who spoke out against Israeli treatment of Palestinians was a self-hating Jew (if Jewish) or anti-Semitic (though Palestinians are Semites, too). She said it never seemed to dawn on the persons making the anti-Semitic charge that it is Israel’s behavior people are objecting to and not its religion.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Once again Walker flashes back to the civil rights movement and recounts the story of the “three civil rights workers” as they have become to be known.  One of the civil rights workers was a young black man, named James Chaney, and the other two were white Jewish men, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, from the North. In 1967, while driving down the back roads of Mississippi, their car was firebombed and the three were beaten, shot and buried under a bridge. For months the young men’s bodies were missing and every week the black churches throughout the country prayed for the three young men.  Walker explains that because of their sacrifice, the white Jewish men and their families had become part of the black community’s family. Walker explains Schwerner’s widow still to this day attends gatherings held civil rights activists.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Walker compares Goodman and Schwerner’s story to Rachel Corrie’s story.  Rachel was a young Jewish activist that attempted to stop Israeli tanks from demolishing Palestinian homes. While wearing a bright orange vest and screaming through a blow horn, Rachel stood in front of an approaching tank. Evidence has shown the tank driver clearly know the Solidarity activist was present. However, he moved forward anyway and crushed Rachel to death. Walker notes, in Palestine, Rachel’s Jewish parents are treated with the same reverence the black community holds for the Jewish civil rights workers.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">As Walker arrives in Gaza she first notices that under close inspection many of the buildings standing are actually in ruins. “I realized I had never understood the true meaning of “rubble.”  Such and such was “reduced to rubble” is a phrase we hear. It is different seeing what demolished buildings actually look like.”  Walker goes on to ask, “Where are the World Parents of All Children? The World Caretakers of All the Sick?”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">In bouncing back and forth between her expressed love for her Jewish brothers and sisters and her love for her new Palestinian brothers and sisters, Walker makes it clear she is not focused simply on the plight of one group over the other. However, Walker has spent a great deal of her life’s activism on the plight of women.  Certainly, one can’t fault her for that.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">One of the main purposes Walker’s trip to Gaza was to visit a Palestinian center for women, on International Women’s Day in 2009.  Walker spends a good deal of the remaining chapters on the book on her conversations with Palestinian women and their tragic stories. Many of the women had lost family members or their entire families to the ceaseless bombardments and siege. One of the most hearts wrenching story comes when Walker finds herself embracing a young Palestinian woman who was holding a photo of her six year old daughter wearing a white tutu and dancing. During a recent bombardment the poor child was hit throughout her body and bleed to death in her mother’s arms.  This is a very powerful scene in the book.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">While Walker’s concerns are clearly focused on humanity, she shows no real affection for Islam as a religion.  In fact, she spends more time praising Christianity, Buddhism, and Judaism than she does on Islam. What she does say about Islam is fairly critical. Walker spends a good chapter in the book on the headscarf. Walker writes, “I have learned of the prophet Mohammed’s demand that his own wives be veiled, to protect them from the gaze of visitors and strangers, and of course the ongoing discussions regarding <i>hijab </i>wearing in England and France have been much in the news. There is also the brutal insistence in some Muslim countries that women cover themselves to demonstrate submission to religious, and male, authority. However, I am curious to know what grassroots Arab women thing about the scarf.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I don’t want to give away the entire book, but some of the women’s responses might surprise Western readers.  Walker’s little book is filled with many powerful little stories like the few I have highlighted in this review. Never does the reader get the impression that Walker feels a sense of self-importance, a person of self realized grandeur on a grand mission to save the world. Rather, one can only conclude Walker’s only mission is to tell the stories of the people who are suffering throughout the world.  Walker seems to want to offer a little bit of hope to each person she meets. She encourages nonviolence, but she is not perplexed by why an oppressed people might retaliate with violence. She knows why, she has lived the experience of being an oppressed person.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Recently, Walker participated in the Freedom Flotilla Two campaign to Gaza. There were several writers that criticized Walker for her participation. Most notably, distinguished writer and Zionist activist Howard Jacobson.  In an opinion piece  Jacobson wrote for CNN:</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“But beyond associating her decision with Gandhi, Martin Luther King and very nearly, when she talks about the preciousness of children, Jesus Christ, she fails to give a single convincing reason for it (flotilla).”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">You may want to argue that had Gaza been treated differently it would have responded differently, but if the aim of the flotilla is to ensure that one child will not be set above another it is hard to see how challenging the blockade will achieve it. All an Israeli parent will see is a highly charged emotionalism disguising an action that, by its very partiality, chooses the Palestinian child over the Israeli.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The Israeli response is thus already an act of unprovoked murder, no matter that the flotilla is by its very essence a provocation.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Another young white writer foolishly went so far as to suggest Walker had delusions of being a Christ figure and quipped, “Actually I’m surprised she needed a ship at all. Surely the waters would part before this modern Grandma Moses as the Red Sea parted before, well, Moses!” This shameful writer is essentially suggesting Walker believes she is a “Grandma Moses” and in some way the leader of the flotilla or a  mass of people and therefore better than the rest. The writer calls Walker “sanctimonious.”  Of course, anyone that knows a bit of the history of the Jim Crow South would know this type of suggestion was also commonly made about civil rights workers by the racist white Southerners. This is essentially known by most people of color in America as the “uppity black” argument.  Walker would call this most foolish statement by, an otherwise talented (intentionally unnamed to protect the ignorant) writer, as a “doofus” moment.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">In one of Walker’s civil rights movement flashbacks, Walker does speak of how the gay civil rights strategist, Bayard Rustin, introduced the Gandhian nonviolence approach to MLK Jr.’s Christian tradition which created the spiritual essence of America’s civil rights movement. However, nowhere in Walker’s writings do you see her claim to be the heir apparent to Gandhi or MLK Jr. Rather, you see Walker consider herself more like a foot-soldier with a microphone. It is obvious to anyone that reads her book <i>Overcoming Speechlessness</i> that Walker is far too concerned with telling the stories of the people she meets, than she is of telling her own personal story.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Finally, as to Jacobson’s point about the flotilla being provocative. Hell yes it was provocative! That was the whole point. Just like the Freedom Riders bus rides into the deep South were provocative. If you don’t know about the Freedom Riders check out this PBS Video. Essentially, during the Jim Crow era which Walker was raised in, blacks had to sit in the back of the bus throughout the South.  However, in 1960 the U.S. Supreme Court began overthrowing the separate but equal laws. To test the South’s adherence to the law, black and white civil rights activists started sitting next to each other on interstate buses traveling in the South.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">In Anniston and Birmingham Alabama  as the riders exited the bus, white mobs, supported by the Birmingham police department,  attacked the passengers on the buses with baseball bats, iron pipes and bicycles chains. Of course, the whole purpose of the Freedom Riders was provocative. It was meant to provoke awareness to the injustice. The fact that the Freedom Riders mission was to be provocative, didn’t give the Alabama police and white mobs permission to brutalize the activists. In fact, most people of good conscious were repulsed by the vicious beatings of the Freedom Riders.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">That is the whole purpose of nonviolent civil disobedience. Being a former employee of Greenpeace, this is something I’m no stranger to myself.  There is a wonderful Christian tradition, strongly supported by the Quakers, known as “bearing witness.” Walker's book <i>Overcoming Speechless</i> is in the tradition of this great Christian value. <i>Overcoming Speechlessness</i> is a must read for all writers and activist who wish to provide a voice for others and, in their own small way, some good for the planet.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Below you will find three videos by Nina Simon.  Songs written before, during, and after blacks were finally given equal rights in America. Nina Simon’s songs express musically the landscaped in which Alice Walker was raised in.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Source: The Ground Report (Published under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.)   </div>

Book Review: Overcoming Speechlessness by Alice Walker

By Dean Walker Alice Walker’s recent book Overcoming Speechlessness: A Poet Encounters the horror in Rwanda, Eastern Congo, an...

New Harry Potter Website Announced, E-Books Out Soon

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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Harry Potter</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"> creator J.K. Rowling has unveiled an interactive website featuring new material about her fictional young wizard. <br />
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The <span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Harry Potter</span> adventures will also be sold as e-books for the first time through the new website, which will appear at the end of July on a limited basis.<br />
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Rowling told reporters in London Thursday she does not intend to write an eighth book in the <span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Harry Potter</span> series, but that she will develop the books' central characters further through new material she will publish on the Internet site.<br />
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The <a href="http://www.pottermore.com/" target="_blank">www.pottermore.com</a> site will open July 31, with access limited to 1 million Potter fans who pass a special test.  Full public access is expected in October, with versions in English, French, German and Spanish.<br />
</span></i><b><span style="font-size: 8.0pt;">VOA News<o:p></o:p></span></b></div></div>

New Harry Potter Website Announced, E-Books Out Soon

Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling has unveiled an interactive website featuring new material about her fictional young wizard. The Harr...

Writer Takes Trans-Pacific Journey in New Novel

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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpiQGvXgCHXlHCAOwkkKccDRpo4PQeL27VR5igtH9b5zkD4JDLFQqJJgOTYXEIOG1NO1yBJB0JOwiF1at_UJBmEkPnq1cRQaWH0AthWyuPfp8xjbZz0yls2U3OYqEshwlR9fJpbVG3Z0w/s1600/DreamsofJoy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpiQGvXgCHXlHCAOwkkKccDRpo4PQeL27VR5igtH9b5zkD4JDLFQqJJgOTYXEIOG1NO1yBJB0JOwiF1at_UJBmEkPnq1cRQaWH0AthWyuPfp8xjbZz0yls2U3OYqEshwlR9fJpbVG3Z0w/s320/DreamsofJoy.jpg" width="212" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 8.5pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The writer Lisa See takes readers on a trans-Pacific journey in her latest novel,</span><i><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> Dreams of Joy</span></i><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 8.5pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">. The book is a sequel to See's 2009 novel</span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> <i>Shanghai Girls</i></span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 8.5pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">, which tells the story of two sisters, Pearl and May, who live through the turbulence of 1930s China and escape the Japanese invasion and occupation of Shanghai.  They reach Los Angeles Chinatown, where restrictions on immigration have led to networks of fictitious relationships, with so-called "paper sons" claiming the right to immigrate based on forged documents.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 8.5pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The relationships often created real bonds as the immigrants formed family groups and struggled to survive in a new country.<br />
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The success of China's communists in 1949 created a crisis for some Chinese Americans.  Many were hostile to the new government, but See says others, especially among the young, were sympathetic. <br />
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“Actually, there were a lot of Chinese going back to the People's Republic of China at that time, 90,000 in one year from Fukien [Fujian] Province alone," noted See.  "But also a lot of other people who weren't Chinese, who were going to China kind of inspired by what was going on there, or even hoping to start a business.”<br />
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Once there, it was not easy to get out, and some who returned to China, both Chinese and Westerners, became victims of the political turmoil.<br />
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In the late 1950s, the government under Chairman Mao Zedong imposed sweeping changes that wreaked economic havoc.</span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 8.5pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br />
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This is the backdrop for See's story, as Joy, the young Chinese American woman, returns to a homeland she has never known against her family's wishes, and her Chinese-born mother, Pearl, follows her.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-align: justify;"><i><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Her delicate eyebrows, pretty nose and full lips register absolute astonishment at seeing me.  Her eyes widen and become even brighter.  Then I see not happiness, sadness or even anger that I'm here.  It's worse than any of those.  The cool shadows of indifference fall over her features.  She stares at me but doesn't say a word.”</span></i><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 8.5pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 8.5pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Lisa See has written several best-selling novels with Chinese-related themes. She says those themes have special appeal for her.<br />
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“I'm part Chinese.  Your listeners can't see me, but I have red hair and freckles, so I don't look very Chinese, but I did grow up in a very traditional Chinese American family.  I live in Los Angeles and today in Los Angeles, I have about 400 relatives, of which the majority of them are still full Chinese, and  then there's this spectrum with me on one end - there are about a dozen that look like me - but this spectrum all the way up to the majority being full Chinese,” noted See.<br />
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See says she is also part Irish and that like most Americans, she celebrates her ethnic heritage.<br />
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“I think all of us here in the United States, we all had someone in our families who was brave enough, scared enough, dumb enough, crazy enough to leave their home country to come here," added See.  "But there is a still a part of us that is tied to our original homeland, and we all share in that feeling no matter where you came from.”<br />
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See is already working on her next book.  It concerns a nearly forgotten part of Chinese American culture from the 1920s through the 1940s, when Asian American entertainers performed at night clubs in cities like New York and San Francisco, popularly known as the Chop Suey Circuit, named after the Chinese dish that became a standard in American Chinese restaurants. <br />
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She says the entertainers were billed as Asian American versions of popular singers and dancers of the day.<br />
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“It's like the Chinese Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, the Chinese Sophie Tucker, the Chinese Frank Sinatra, the Chinese Bing Crosby," See explained.  "They all kind of were billed that way because that was so immediately recognizable to a customer.”<br />
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See says that novel will offer yet another glimpse of the Chinese American experience. </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;"><b><i>(VOANews)</i></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div>

Writer Takes Trans-Pacific Journey in New Novel

The writer Lisa See takes readers on a trans-Pacific journey in her latest novel, Dreams of Joy . The book is a sequel to See's 2009 n...