msbehave

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/04/opinion/04chiles.html?ex=1294030800&en=997ab850303cd2b8&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

In Elle mag that I happened to flip through while I sat down for a coffee yesterday, I caught this article that featured Miasha, the urban lit’s recent biggest selling author, in more negative tone than a celebratory one. Or put it simple, she was featured in the article’s to be criticized as to be responsible for the current ghetto glamarizing, poorly written Afro-American urban literature and its dumbing nature of the phenomena. I gawked at this, for this was not Essence after all. Miasha was introduced and discussed in the mainstream mag even though she was nitpicked and condescended for undeserving her fame and fortune. All the more, it was a noteworthy crossover.

As for the line of publication, so-called urban lit, I once attempted to read Sista Solja (spelling unknown), in vain. But I am fully aware of the genre’s offspring,  its own pretext and history. There also should be a positive side of it as well as the more recognizable negative, and there are many things to think and discuss about this undeniable change in the book industry. Still, the current phenomena obviously have problems that are working against the community unfortunately, such as they are promoting and glamourizing the worst state of life, criminality, and those criminally unedited texts.

The street lit phenomena in a way have achieved almost an independent publish industry for Black audience, mostly female youth; the books found the alienated readership from the mainstream distribution and publishers and cultivated them by issueing the low—therefore accessible— literature. Now we see the ads in subway selling off the main stream borderline erotica with sensationalism lower ed even than The National Inquirer, commonly put in between those religeous or selfmotivational shady publications.

What disheartens me is that the genre does not seem to have any ambition more than just selling what sells. I never read Miasha’s book but I knew her books and her name by those ads that I wound up reading in the subway rides.

As soon as you hit Miasha’s website, there is an Italian car on the top page. No book or anything to read. You still ‘ENTER’ her world in confusion, to recognize how this author is now more promoted for glamour, wealth and fame she achieved than for her books. You found synopsisses finally, to be disturbed more by the apparently unproofread and unprofessionally represented for her famous six novels.

I do not want to sound condescending, but she is now employed to justify this sort of dumbing down lit in the name of the embodiment of survival and ‘keep-it -real. The depiction of her childhood of being neglected by crack addicted parents is titillating her presence as if to support her stardom from ghetto to ‘rich’ as real as 50 cent.

Why aren’t her readers conscious of the fact that selling books like hers is such a crime against the real poverty stricken communities? Appreciating Miasha’s promotion of the neglected urban communities as the nest of crime, and the only way to get out of it is to ‘outcrime’ the environment would possibly tie the readers to the deadend. To educate readers might be beyond someone like Miasha at this stage, but you can’t expect readers to be enlightened or positively inspired by Miasha’s works in seach for a way out.

The only positive that I can name here is that this indie publication created a new line of business for the black folks. If real professional editors with conscience help the authors edit, or even more carefully proofread, the situation could get a little bit brighter. But I don’t think a lot of professionals initially aspired to seek a away out would not go back to where they had done everything it would take to leave.

http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/awards/sana_krasikov_wins_100000_sami_rohr_prize_112178.asp 

Now that people finally start talking about Krasikov, and most importantly because SHE GOT THE PRIZE OF A HUGE AMOUNT OF MONEY, not because her nice collection got the recognition that it deserved, I thought I might say something, mostly good about this author. Sadly that is a fact of life, though, especially now when the world is collapsing in terms of economy; all they can see is money, as if they suddenly recognized that there is this business called ‘book industry’ and some people don’t mind spending on books, even in this backward time when most people only care about food. The crass implication of thsi new is wow, it’s got to be good to be Jewish?

Anyhow, I gave this author Krasikov some credits when I read her collection of short stories, One More Year in the galley a while back. My primary interest was what kind of job Spiegel and Grau did, and I picked the galley without intending to read it through. The next thing that I knew was it was almost impossible to put it away. Now I would like to read more of their —S and G—work. Needless to say Krasikov’s second work.

As she mentioned somewhere ealier in an interview that she was an unlikely Iowa MFA author, Krasikov was a pleasant surprise in the year 2008 to me.

The collection mostly dealt with female immigrants from former USSR, including  Georgia where the author herself immigrated to US from when she was at the age 8.

The noteworthy  point of the whole collection was that it depicts the almost visceral struggle of the characters as well as joy and solace even when they’re at it. Most of them are stripped off of any privilages they had back home and often undocumented in new environments where they are invisible to ‘Americans’.

Some of them are directly and remotely victimized of ‘the New World Order’, which equates trafficking like brokerage of labor forces and they are often engaged in covert or overt transactions that involve exploitative bartering, including sex and marriage.

One of the questions this collection raised to me was if immigration became an answer to these women’s lives. I would not spell it out just as the author did not draw any obvious conclusion to the question. But  it obviously epitomizes the current world after the collapse of USSR and how it has impacted people in life, especially women’s.

There already were fictions that handled immigrants, especially female and their peculliar predicaments, such as Persepolis or Ludomila’s Broken English, but none  surged in this depth as Krasikov’s observation that I found in One More Year.

Well, who still says you don’t mind converting if you could get a 100.000 award? I told you, Idid not! 

I don’t know what, but wordpress somehow takes forever to process text. When it comes to editing, it becomes almost dangerous.

That has been the major reason that I have posted veeeeery infrequently. This is really discouraging.

As someone who has got this rule, not to brew coffee at home so that I would not consume it no more than one cup, which I occasionally break, the news of today’s entry title made me think. Having a couple of cups of coffee a day keeps you from developping Alzheimer’s disease? How trustworthy is it?

I wonder if I should risk myself—I originally kept coffee away form my place for I developped a disease for having too much coffee—for the unreliable possibility of lessening Alzheimer’s potential? I heard that it is quite a condition to live with it. However.

I am not the kind who romanticizes Jamaica or reggae. I even can’t help feeling some aversion against those who do.

So how could I explain the fact that I cried over the movie Rockers that I saw again after a long time the other night? For I literally cried so loudly, it alarmed my boyfriend, who had apparently had no hang up about glorifying the time and the place—70’s Jamaica—and loves it there eternally.

I knew what came over to me, though.

I must admit that I was the one who had my hair dread and wore an overall denim on my skin as a teenager because of the adoration that I had about the music, the culture and everything about Jamaica. I actually was blown away by the attires and the energy of  those who show off in the movie of the club scene where was nothing more than a dimly lit parking lot with a crowd dancing on the music. The movie reminded me of how scarece any part time job employment opportunity became due to the hair do and the fasion that I got into then as a midteenager. But still it was worth for it because that was probably the first time when I learned what fasion would mean politically and what kind of conflict and struggle it would create. To top it all off, I wanted to represent the dignity they —Jamaican—incorporated.

The movie Rockers was more or less a sequal of the Harder They Come, just more commercially conscious, which was very natural given the time—70’s, when the Reggae was in its prime and before it was taken over by the capitalization of Bob Marley.

Now one of the reason that I didn’t feel like calling myself a reggae rocker  was because it became at some point associated with the very capitalized Bob Marley and commercialized state of Jamaica,  none of which I don’t want to be caught affiliated with.

The interesting discovery in the revist this time was how powerful and complete the theme song was, so much so that all the rest was offered just there to add details. Therefore, ultimately, the movie never seemed to surpass the power and the thoroughness the theme song had. And guess what. It seemed completely fine. Because that was the very essence of the movie; the celebration of Jamaican life, which could equate reggae, their music, thier life.

The detailed descriptions of how people lived explaine the poverty people lived then in Jamaica. After three decades in regards of poverty, it does not seem any different. But I really have to examine the utterly marvelously dignified life.

I hardly knew that this movie was rediscovered circa 2000 and it inspired an MTV program and a clothing line was made to promote it. Even though it sounded already the over commercialized reggae as I raised above, I can’t entirely knock it for I understand where it came from; I went crazy as a kid when I fist saw those who are DRESSED UP in the craziest clothes ever come up with such as knit vests on top of training suits etc. and all was uniformly dignified and magnificently handsome.

I still can’t get over the fact that Englander’s publicist is Sloane Crosley. Scroll the below down focusing on the event section. At the very bottom, you’ll find the secret code to ask for meth cake and (wonderful) Englander at once.

http://www.nathanenglander.com/

Body Politics refers to how something outside of our control, namely our physical being– the color of our skin, the shape of our body, our genetic make-up—can impact the quality of our daily existence. That is the body piece. The politics piece of it really links to what happens when external forces impose, pre-suppose, or characterize who we are. If there is synergy between our body image and the external political forces that impact us, chances are, there is little internal conflict. If, on the other hand, there is some dissonance between what we feel and what we experience, life can present challenges and complexities that are important to grapple with. The Body Politics narratives speak to both ends of this spectrum.

Since I had heard someone mention ‘body politics’ as in a negative connotation, I was meaning to study what it was about. The quote above was from UMassAlmerst Women of Color leadership web site. As it turned out, this was different from something that I was vaguely prepared to take a side for or against. This was just a recognition of the reality that we are in the society. If you are non-white, this is something you can’t avoid even for a day. But I did not see anything further than the statement as above. I would just go, ‘So?’ I am not sure about the conflict part because it would not disappear so easily just because you elevate your awareness. But anyway, the concept that is brought up is somehting so premised that it basically is not saying anything beyond the basic  recognition. So I just have to say, ‘SO?’

http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,4600589-99930,00.html

http://www.powells.com/fromtheauthor/ali.html

Although it was six years ago, on top of it, even the movie based on this novel came out two years ago, Brick Lane did cause trouble in Muslim communities in England and everywhere else. As a novel, it was only one of those that rushed out after September 11 by female authors of the kind. One of the reason that the novel, and the movie later on, were opted out with the strong aversion was, as I was analyzing, Ali herself was not really the insider of the community; most of what was written was based on her research on the community with her own outsider’s point of view, which would not get to justify its exploitative nature when it was pointed out. This would not have raised an argument that much had it not for the time and the subject. Consequently, the real people from the real community Ali deicted took offense of her representation of gender and political struggle as unfolded in the novel. Although Ali is half Desi herself, her sense of belonging was not one of those as the people who objected her take on their ethnic and religious identities; they saw her as an invader and someone who exploited them as she was masking with her Muslim name. I guess she just wrote it as one of novels she would theoretically get to write, and it hit the spot: Brick Lane became the literally success for it responded to the mainstream’s curiosity to peek in the Muslim wold in England, especially seen and narrated by a female point of view. That does not mean Ali had meant to represent the community of Bangladeshi, or Muslim women etc. unlike people thoughtlessly expected her to. The Bangladeshi /Muslim community was one subject she tried out to write on, and no more intention than that. Her next book was not anything even remotely related to it. I personally believe this is more crucial point to take care of than an author’s initial success based rather on the situational judgement beyond what he/she has written, in other words, the literary tokenism. This might be the very predicament that any minority author is destined to face, and struggle to get away with provided that the literature industry today no longer employs the view and the attitude that 19th centry literature held to evaluate one’s work. I remember how the movie version of Brick Lane stirred the negative sentiments even more recently among the Muslim communities. I am coming to understand why when I read those guardian archives that I have retrieved above.

Courtney Love has begun getting exposed to media for finally getting off crack and having her second solo album Nobody’s Daughter ready to be released. As far as I read around and piecing things together, she finally got back in the shape due to her new discovery of  SGI practice.  I reckon this to be what US crack scene is epitomised: I know a lot of people who finally got off, got clean and sober for a year or more because of it. The funny thing about it was that it finally reached her. Let’s just hope she is sober enough or not too damaged by the long term use to know what she is at.

In the current issue of Heeb, on which she is the cover, she touches upon so many interesting things, if all too fleeting, such as if women can’t play music as guys do, it is because they are conditioned socially not be able to endure and focus time alone practicing and/or living in an unglamour life too long. Or too many distractions are there and they are wired, rather socially than biologically, just unlike people want to think.

I also find her practical and deliberate choice of stop taking antidepressant meds so interesting in the creative process of the album so that she would get ANGRY perpetually. So guess what they do when she is on them.

Coincidentally this reminds me of Evelyn Lau, who made a remark of  the same nature: she chose not to take those no matter how she got depressed because she was fundamentally afraid that she would not get to write, particularly poems, if she were on meds that ultimately are to soften her views of the world. Ditto.