seen?

o, my poor little blog, i know how terribly i have neglected you. if you were a real kid, i would certainly have been declared unfit by now. i still love you though.

i am currently in save money mode, so that means i haven't bought any music or books lately. well, except for my alice smith cd, for lovers, dreamers & me, which is brilliant, and btw, she is a brooklynite.

but that's it, and in life i'm trying to step my cd buying game. i don't really care about mp3's so much, i buy them sometimes but i don't have an mp3 player, plus i like cover art and linernotes, plus i like having a shiny little slice of the artist i can hold in my hands. but anyway, as i said before, i am in save money mode and i have not been buying much music. but these are the albums that are on my radar to buy when i should suddenly become flush with cash:

amy winehouse - she has a great name, and i like her sound. i got my hands on a free copy of ghostface killah's more fish album (which came out quietly (i think) last year after fishscale) and their duet, "you know i'm no good" is on there. very soulful, i like.

regina spektor - is there anyone who doesn't like that one song of hers? "fidelity?" if there is such a person...evidently, they have been defeaned by the brainless pop machine (of course, not all pop is brainless, but the brainless variety is quite defeaning).

k-os - supposed to be the truth. i don't know much about him, but i'm willing to give him a listen. i hear he's west indian- canadian from toronto, and we all love our west indian-canadians (that one's for my very lovely mother).

amel larrieux - where was i when her 3rd album was released? obviously, i was asleep, but i will need to get up on that.

nas - yes, yes, i know i'm late, yes, yes, yes, yes...

the hidden beach "unwrapped" series - heard one of the volumes (there are 4) one night at fashion 40. very lovely. jazz type covers of popular hip hop songs.

that's all i can think of at the moment. as for books, i'm finishing up reading for whom the bell tolls...long, i guess it's trying to illustrate one of it's main conceits, the idea of a full and entire life lived in a few days, cuz it surely does use 200 some odd pages to cover three days...i do, however, really appreciate hemingway's phrasing - his characters are mostly spanish-speakers, and though he writes mostly in english, his english syntax and diction imitates spanish as though it were a literal, word-for-word translation. for instance, a character asks, "did you divert yourself last night?" (from the spanish verb divertirse) for "did you have fun last night?" i think it's really great, and a good way for a writer to really inhabit a character.

Labels: literature, musica

Posted by call me aja at 5:23 PM | Permalink | Comments

so i've been wondering what to read. i am open to suggestions. in fact, i crave them, so if you have any, please leave them.

currently, i'm reading the latest novella by gabriel garcia marquez, memories of my melancholy whores. the coworker leticia loaned it to me. i saw it sitting on her desk, and i thought it had a beautiful cover, but i couldn't read the title or the author from where i was standing. when she told me the author and the title my first reaction was: what a magnificent title. my second thought was, when did that come out? she offered to let me borrow it, and i jumped at the chance.

the cover art reminds me a lot of the cover of edward p. jones's latest book, all aunt hagar's children. see:



and see again:



similar color schemes, the random plant leaves, only difference is that one has a naked woman on it, and the other has a house. i guess this is a trend, a bit the way that the cover font from jonathan safran foer's books pops up in the hp comercials.

anyway, memories of my melancholy whores is about an old man who wants to spend the night with a young virgin on his 90th birthday. and he finds one, but he finds that living a life of lust has made him miss out on a life of love...and now he's trying to find that life of love. and he just might be falling in love with this girl...although they've never spoken and all he's ever done is watch her sleep...despite the title, despite the sound of the initial premise, lolita this is not; it's not a tale of sexual exploitation, it's a meditation on figuring out how to spend one's days. and the small things that can change one's outlook on life. i'm about halfway done, and i'm rather enjoying it. garcia marquez is, of course, a bit of a literary genius.

Labels: literature

Posted by call me aja at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Comments

zadie smith has, over the course of a 3 novel career, developed a devoted following.

i am not one of those devotees.

i bought her first novel, white teeth, and read it over a long period of time. i am the kind of person who does not put a book down until i finish it. i found it to be clever, imaginative, but not terribly compelling.

her second novel, the autograph man, got by me without me noticing it. had never even heard of it until i began to hear the buzz about her third novel, on beauty. which i saw at target on black friday, when i went to go buy my lovely new microwave (stainless steel, yay!). i bought the book, because i wanted to give her a second try. because i could see she had writing talent, because i was wondering if on beauty might make a greater impression on me.

it did not. on beauty, though it received rave reviews, was ultimately unconvincing to me as a story. on beauty tells the tale of two families: the liberal belseys, white english father, (southern) black american mother, and their three young adult, american born and raised children (2 boys and a girl); and the conservative kippses, a (caribbean) black english father & mother, a son, and a daughter. zadie smith is a biracial, caribbean, englishwoman herself, so she certainly has some insights into varied worlds.

but there was nothing american about her american characters. their dialogue and thoughts read like what she imagines americans speak/think like. which is to say, it didn't sound american. and much of the action of the book takes place in the u.s. it would be one thing to write an american tourist family as secondary or periphery characters in london...then i could relegate the authenticity of the american characters to a secondary or periphery place. but these were main characters...the belseys occupy the lion's share of the narrative, so it seemed to me that they should be as authentic as possible. their vocabulary, their phraseology, the way they interacted with each - particularly with their parents - did not seem american to me. yet the narrator made sure to frequently comment on their americanness. this disconnect was jarring. after all, the back cover summary says the book is supposed to be about the culture wars that define our age. the culture should, i would think, be more accurately captured.

for instance, an argument seen between the belsey daughter and carl thomas, a young black from "the wrong side of tracks" (to use the words of papa kipps in the novel). daughter belsey has been doing her best to get carl's attention through lobbying for him to be able to take classes at the university she attends. but carl's not paying the kind of attention to her that she would desire. she brings up all her lobbying efforts, and he says:

"am i meant to be grateful?"

a young, black american man, from "the wrong side of the tracks" as they say, would not ever respond in such a way. it may seem a little quibble, but when the characters sound the same, it ended up undermining the idea of a culture war. mama belsey did not, to me, exhibit the southern woman qualities that the narration assured me she had. and although she was supposed to have broken away, somewhat, from her roots, the moments she was supposed to have returned to them rang false to me. except for one scene at the end...

it also seemed curious to me that the young belseys did not all seem interested in claiming their biracial identity. they either seemed to claim no racial identity at all, or they claimed blackness. growing up privileged (their father an art history at a presitigous new england college, attending prep school and prestigious colleges themselves, spending time in various cities around the world) , it would seem that this would logically present itself as more of an internal issue for them.

as for the plot itself, it wasn't unbelievable. it was a lively, entertaining read, and certainly ambitious. just not terribly spot on, as the british say.

Labels: literature, so opinionated

Posted by call me aja at 5:28 PM | Permalink | Comments

just purchased all aunt hagar's children, the new collection of short stories by edward p. jones. jones also wrote the known world, a rather interesting and beautifully written book, set in antebellum virginia, about the seemingly unlikely topic of black slaveowners and their black slaves. the known world has received all kinds of critical acclaim, and was named one of the most important books of the century (or something like that) by the new york times.

i'm only on the first story of all aunt hagar's children, but it, too, seems to have the same beautiful style. i know writers don't often want their work to be described as beautiful, fearing that a compliment of their aesthetic means that their substance leaves nothing to be complimented, but jones's aesthetic is impossible to ignore. his sentences are finely crafted, each word seems to be chosen with great care and attention, and though his structure is simple, unornamented, not flowery, it's just...well, beautiful. but he's also deeply exploring his characters and their world: all of these stories are set in washington d.c.

well, i'll write more when i finish it. and i'm very much looking forward to finishing it.

Labels: literature

Posted by call me aja at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments

don't you? due dates, the overpowering smell of books, fines, those library demon-people who give you the evil eye if you breathe too loud, recalls, lost books, books shelved in the wrong place...

with that said, i've decided i could benefit from organizing & building my personal library. and i found this website, librarything.com, where i am currently working on cataloging books that i have read and books that i own. and it's pretty fun. i've got 129 books on the list so far, i own most of them, and they are all books that i have chosen to read. (the majority are my leisure reads; the ones that were school related - well, i chose to read them, cuz there were certainly a lot of school related books that i chose not to read. [ahem, st. augustine, adam smith, fyodor dostoevsky...yeah, yeah, i should have, i know...])

and it's got pictures of the covers! check it out my lil library here:
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/ajab

and here is my author cloud as of today - the bigger the author's name, the more books by him or her that i've read
Chinua Achebe Edward Albee Louisa May Alcott Monica Ali Isabel Allende Julia Alvarez Maya Angelou Anonymous Jane Austen James Baldwin W. E. B. Du Bois Gwendolyn Brooks Claude Brown Dan Brown Octavia E. Butler Fox Butterfield Albert Camus Mayotte Capecia Truman Capote Alejo Carpentier Forrest Carter Aime Cesaire Veronica Chambers Patrick Chamoiseau Charles W. Chesnutt Tracy Chevalier Sandra Cisneros Maryse Conde Edwidge Danticat Junot Diaz Frederick Douglass Rita Dove Dave Eggers Duke Ellington Ralph Ellison Laura Esquivel Jeffrey Eugenides William Faulkner Zlata Filipovic F. Scott Fitzgerald Jonathan Safran Foer Anne Frank Cristina Garcia Henry Louis Gates Giovanni Nikki Giovanni Arthur Golden Ernesto Che Guevara Nicolas Guillen David Guterson Alex Haley Lorraine Hansberry Robert W. Harms Joseph Heller Ernest Hemingway Zora Neale Hurston Aldous Huxley Kazuo Ishiguro George Jackson C.L.R. James James Weldon Johnson Edward P. Jones Leroi Jones James Joyce Randall Kenan Jack Kerouac Ken Kesey Sue Monk Kidd Jamaica Kincaid Barbara Kingsolver Bakari Kitwana Gerda Weissmann Klein E.L. Konigsburg Milan Kundera Jhumpa Lahiri Nella Larsen Harper Lee Federico Garcia Lorca Audre Lorde Adam Mansbach Rita Marley Gabriel Garcia Marquez Paule Marshall Tony Martin Mark Mathabane Cormac McCarthy Frank McCourt Rigoberta Menchu James A. Michener Margaret Mitchell Anne Moody Toni Morrison Vladimir Nabokov Pablo Neruda Niane Anais Nin Tim O'Brien Scott O'Dell Christopher Okigbo George Orwell Helen Oyeyemi ZZ Packer Suzan-Lori Parks Katherine Paterson Alan Paton Okot p'Bitek Alexandre Dumas pere Miguel Pinero Sylvia Plath Scott Poulson-Bryant Patricia Powell Mary Prince Mario Puzo Alice Randall Jean Rhys Philip Roth Sonia Sanchez Sapphire Assata Shakur Tupac Shakur Ntozake Shange Curtis Sittenfeld Zadie Smith Suzanne Fisher Staples John Steinbeck Harriet Beecher Stowe William Styron Jonathan Swift Lalita Tademy Amy Tan Piri Thomas Wallace Thurman Monique Truong Sojourner Truth Mark Twain Alice Walker Rebecca Walker Robert Penn Warren Timothy White Tennessee Williams William Carlos Williams George C. Wolfe Virginia Woolf Richard Wright Shay Youngblood

Labels: aja, literature

Posted by call me aja at 8:13 PM | Permalink | Comments

today, i found out that this week is banned books week. too bad i find this out so close to the end of the week, otherwise i'd have been celebrating. the purpose of banned book week, according to the american library association, is to celebrate intellectual freedom by looking at all of the books that have made a controversial splash in the last century or so. the tagline is, "free people read freely." i have had a great, great interest in book banning in the united states ever since i wrote my 8th grade thesis on mccarthyism (yup, i had to write an 8th grade thesis).

i noticed, while looking at the list, that i had read a quite a number of them. i also noticed that these books were often banned from libraries & schools, and or burned or publicly decried, for being: "racist," "sexist," "misogynistic," "sexually explicit," "profane," "blasphemous." books so denoted included i know why the caged bird sings, the color purple, invisible man, bridge to terabitihia, and to kill a mockingbird.

the outcry against such books honestly tells me that folks just don't read. obviously, these books contain objectionable themes, child abuse, racism, violence...but what should be offensive to these readers is the fact that these things exist in society, and that these books reflect society. to call to kill a mockingbird racist? the book, in totality, takes a clear stand against racism, but you'd have to read it to know it.

and to paraphrase jay-z, i just ask: do you fools read books or just skim through them? judy blume, roald dahl, and toni morrison also made more-than-frequent appearances on the list. the chocolate war. i read many of the books on the banned/challenged list when i was an elementary or high school student, and i can't say i went to especially "liberal" schools. lolita also came up on the list. i was closest to understanding that book...it's obviously about pedophilia, and yet it is brilliant. absolutely brilliant prose, and in that case it's seductive, the reader gets completely engrossed, and the narrator glosses over the ugly parts...then again, it is brilliant, and while i wouldn't recommend it for kids, an adult with a developd sense of right and wrong...well, reading it is a personal decision, and should not be the decision of a library board or government.

freedom of expression, freedom of the press. unfortunately, in the not to distant past in this country, it was not uncommon for books to be burned. the mccarthy era wasn't so very long ago. and for that matter, for my black people, it wasn't so very long ago that black people were forbidden to read, were denied full citizenship on the basis of literacy, so yeah, reading isn't to me as much as choice as it is a responsibility. one that i enjoy fulfilling. anyway, more about banned book week here:

http://www.ala.org/ala/oif/bannedbooksweek/bannedbooksweek.htm

civil disobedience folks! read a banned book. make up your own mind.

Labels: literature

Posted by call me aja at 8:10 PM | Permalink | Comments

i have this wonderful conspiracy theory about why local branch libraries in brooklyn are always closed at the most (in)convenient times. so i was pretty well delighted to learn that this saturday is the first ever brooklyn book festival.

to be held downtown at borough hall, and with events running from 11am to 6pm, obviously i am honor bound to be in attendance. i personally wanna check out the poetry readings, of course, and see if there are any interesting literary journals to pick up. i mean, if "they" decide it's a good idea to make a stab at getting folks to appreciate literature of all sorts...well, that's pretty much part of my mission in life.

http://visitbrooklyn.org/events.html

Labels: brooklyn, events, literature, poetry

Posted by call me aja at 12:35 PM | Permalink | Comments

now, i know that it sounds a bit conspiratorial, but it seems to me that the powers that be don't want brooklyn to read. every try going to a library in brooklyn? on a saturday afternoon? if you have, i wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't open. branch libraries in bk are never open when i have free time.

one saturday afternoon from my college days, i remember going on a long, crazy trek to near the last stop on the j-train in bk in search of coxsone dodd, legendary reggae producer, whom we wanted to interview for a class project. we weren't sure what time he would be in his shop, so we just went--and when we got there, we found he wouldn't be in for a few more hours. no problem, we thought, we'll just go to a library and do some work on the project and then go back and talk to him...and when we located the library, we saw that it had closed about an hour before. it was 3pm. we wandered the streets till coxsone came in to his shop, and then spoke to him, and he was as nice as could be.

the point is, it's not just that branch. i also have failed to happen upon a branch near me that is open when i am not working or otherwise occupied. the only library that i know how to locate that is open on saturday afternoons is the central branch...and it's not like that's especially convenient. nevertheless, i made the effort and went out there saturday afternoon...3 trains later, i made it to grand army plaza and entered the library. and got a brooklyn public library card, since the brooklyn public library and the new york public library apparently don't like each other well enough to share a common card. its a lot of work to read when you don't have money to always buy new books, are not inclined to spend much money on books you might not like, and live in brooklyn. anyway, i navigated the system and checked out 3 books...

prep - other than going to the library, i spent the better part of the weekend in bed, fighting/nursing a cold. prep is the story of a girl from the midwest who wins a scholarship to an exclusive boarding school in massachusetts. the rather long novel is all about how she never EVER finds her niche (sorry if that's too much of a spoiler.) while it perfectly pictures many of the stereotypes of prep schools, i'm not really going to debate any of them now, except one: this scholarship girl never EVER finds her niche. from my own experience, i have to say that its highly unlikely that a scholarship student never finds something to excel in at prep school--either you excel academically, or your good in sports, or art, or debate, or something, something, anything. a scholarship student is not permitted to be mediocre, why would a prep school countenance a mediocre student whose parents aren't paying for their education? not saying that an unexceptional student on finacial aid would be put out...i'm saying the administration would put all its effort into helping that student find something to excel in. you may not contribute much to the financial health of the school, but you will find something to contribute to its reputation.

the human stain- i've never read a philip roth novel before, so i thought i'd jump in with this one. i also have the movie on my netflix cue, and apparently wentworth miller is in it. the main character in the book, coleman silk, is a professor at a small college finds himself at the center of a scandal when he's accused of racism by two students. apparently, wentworth miller, when he was at princeton, also found himself at the center of a scandal when he was accused of racism based on a cartoon that he drew for a student publication. wentworth miller plays the young coleman silk. for my columbia alums...sound like an incident we know much about? can't say much more about the book, i'm only a few pages into it.

asphalt-by carl hancock rux. picked it up because i've not read anything about him, but i know that he is supposed to be one of those noteworthy young black writer/performer/artists. felt like i should try and get to know his work.

Labels: brooklyn, literature

Posted by call me aja at 5:46 PM | Permalink | Comments

so it isn't exactly last night as i said it would be when i continued this post. sorry. but about marita bonner, i've decided this is the quote that i really love:

At least you know what you want life to give you. A career as fixed and calmly brilliant as the North Star. The one real thing money buys. Time. Time to do things. A house that can be as delectably out of order and as easily put in order as the dollhouse of "playing-house" days. And of course, a husband you can look up to without looking down on yourself.

the quote comes from "On Being Young--A Woman--And Colored," originally published in 1925. and what is immediately striking is how relevant it still is.

relevance: anybody read that article in forbes advising men not to marry career women? the definition of career woman, according to the article: college educated, makes over $30,000 a yearworks 35 hours or more outside of the home. why, according to this article, shouldn't men marry career women? simple: career women are, evidently, more likely to not want children, to be unhappy if the have children, be unhappy if she makes more money than the man, make the man unhappy if she makes more money, more likely to cheat, more likely to not cook and clean, more likely to finally divorce the man.

that someone would harbor such vitriol, and the publish it in forbes of all places, means that women are still looking for men that they can look up to without looking down on themselves. in truth, when i first heard of the article i just knew it could not be serious. now, i am quite afraid that it is serious.

what is perhaps most unfortunate is that this article seems to imply that happiness, for a man, is a person, a woman, who will have his babies and clean his house and ask him for money. is that what happiness is? shall we all set the bar so low?

i hope not. but if a man cannot, by definition, be happy with a successful woman, its the man who is not happy with himself in life. and perhaps the ego boost of being in control of a woman fools him into believing he is happy.

of course, what do i know? and according to the forbes definition of a career woman, i suppose i am a career woman. so i dunno, if this is what men are thinking then i guess i better really love my books.

o, but i actually do believe men are smarter than that.

Labels: literature, so opinionated

Posted by call me aja at 7:34 AM | Permalink | Comments

i'm re-reading this book that i stole from the library when i was about ten...well, i think my mother eventually paid all the fines on the book, so i guess, technically, i bought it...but it's called bearing witness, edited by henry louis gates, jr.

what's funny is that i now work for the television station which helped produce his superstar documentary, african american lives. anyway, bearing witness is a collection of excerpts from black autobiography in the 20th century, ranging from fannie barrier williams to itabari njeri. yes, this is the kind of book i stole from the library when i was about ten.

since i only just started re-reading it today, i've only gotten up to the second excerpt by marita bonner. and i'm wondering why schools and study and academia don't make more of marita bonner? her style's so modern and so insightful even though the piece i'm reading is from 1925. I'm at work right now, so i won't blatantly pull out my copy of the book and so that i can post the quote i really want to write about, but i will do so this evening.

o yeah....and today i attend grad student orientation at bk college. i'm....nervous. yeah.

Labels: literature, never forgetting

Posted by call me aja at 10:32 AM | Permalink | Comments

the netflix rundown and what i'm reading.

manderlay- i loved it. it got some spotty reviews, but i put it on the queue cuz of the premise: a plantation in 1933 where the slaves had never been freed. a woman passing thru stumbles upon the place and undertakes the task of spreading liberty. quite provocative.

dogville-so manderlay is the second movie in lars von trier's meditative trilogy on america. so yeah, i watched them out of order...manderlay first. then i got dogville, and i watched half of it, and then the dvd stopped working. sigh. what i will say is about the lead character, grace - she was played by nicole kidman in dogville, but by bryce dallas howard in manderlay. kidman's grace was much more tentative about life; howard's was much more authoritative. unfortunately, i haven't been able to see the end to see if there is a reason in the plot for the difference.

do the right thing- this movie came out when? 1989? yeah, still soooooo ridiculously relevant. i recommend it to everyone, all those folks who politic about gentrification, all those folks who have no idea what it is, all those folks who want to see vintage spike lee, all those folks who wouldn't know spike lee if he wore a nametag. plus, the action takes place on the hottest day of the year, and it's been HOT round here lately.

and what i'm reading: on the road by jack kerouac. a classic, that i have read many many times. i confess, i really wanted to (re)read junot diaz's drown, but my copy of the book seems to be missing. and it's autographed...i hope it turns up.

Labels: film, literature

Posted by call me aja at 8:08 PM | Permalink | Comments

i'm at work right now, so this one will be brief.

now reading: i bought helen oyeyemi's the icarus girl on saturday, and i just started reading it today. i'm only 10 pages into it so far, but it promises to be just as brilliant as all the reviewers say it is.

movie reviews: the squid and the whale - i just didn't get the point.
monsoon wedding - maybe i'm (actually) a sucker for a happy ending. loved the movie.

Labels: film, literature

Posted by call me aja at 12:23 PM | Permalink | Comments