Election Author Opinion Sampler

Voted already? I have, but I'm still pre-occupied with the election while awaiting the results and can't quite move on to other topics, but I'm tired of reading the same old predictable pundits. So just for fun, let's have a look at what some of our favorite writers have been saying about the issues and candidates:

Kwame Anthony Appiah (The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen) in the New York Review of Books on how our electoral choices shape legacies and lessons learned and at Think Progress about this election and racial identity.

Walter Mosely (Little Scarlet) opines at The Guardian: 'He was like a surgeon given a rusty scalpel'

Stephen Kinzer (Crescent and Star: Turkey Between Two Worlds) in a talk at Northeastern University offers foreign policy advice to the candidates: 'Precisely because we are so powerful, the U.S. desperately needs a more humble attitude as we consider how and whether to intervene around the world'. Video of the complete lecture here.

It can't be too surprising that the preferences of most authors we have read lean Democratic, but there is at least one exception -- Mary Ann Glendon (A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights), a registered independent who is an adviser to the Romney campaign: 'The population is divided, families are divided; it’s like the Civil War when some wore blue and some wore grey and (they) were often brothers.'

Philip Gourevitch (The Ballad of Abu Ghraib) at The New Yorker on Syria, Sandy, and surviving disaster: 'The storm we’re now riding out is beyond any government’s control, but the response to it is not.'

Junot Diaz (Apocalypse: What Disasters Reveal), who made an eloquent case for the importance of a motivating story in critiquing Obama's State of the Union a couple years back, thinks the president has the edge at the moment,  'But as far as the level of storyteller is concerned, I have a far clearer sense of who Obama is during this election, than I do at all of Romney'.

Amnesty International USA put out a bingo card for the debates highlighting human right issues the presidential candidates should be asked about and discuss. Sadly, many of these topics did not get their due. I know I would have liked to hear a stronger human rights narrative from both candidates. You can still play human rights bingo with Amnesty while you await election results, with each square offering up the chance to inform your elected representatives of some human rights priority. Get started on our human rights agenda today.

The Desert of Forbidden Art

PBS Independent Lens is back this week with another interesting documentary this week, The Desert of Forbidden Art,

How does art survive in a time of oppression? During the Soviet rule artists who stay true to their vision are executed, sent to mental hospitals or Gulags.

Their plight inspires young Igor Savitsky. He pretends to buy state-approved art but instead daringly rescues 40,000 forbidden fellow artist's works and creates a museum in the desert of Uzbekistan, far from the watchful eyes of the KGB. Though a penniless artist himself, he cajoles the cash to pay for the art from the same authorities who are banning it. Savitsky amasses an eclectic mix of Russian Avant-Garde art. But his greatest discovery is an unknown school of artists who settle in Uzbekistan after the Russian revolution of 1917, encountering a unique Islamic culture, as exotic to them as Tahiti was for Gauguin. They develop a startlingly original style, fusing European modernism with centuries-old Eastern traditions.  

Stephen Kinzer (Crescent and Star), who discovered the obscure Uzbek museum while reporting for the New York Times, acts as a guide for the film. The LAist is enthusiastic about the documentary with this about Kinzer,

Kinzer is especially energetic, laying out a history of Soviet settlements, archaeological digs, over-irrigation, and how all came together to foster a Russian avant-garde movement

Check out the Independent Lens website for more info and showtimes.

Authors on Libya

What you see here on the blog is just the tip of the human rights literature iceberg. For each book we read there are three or four we have reluctantly set aside.  As it happens, we have yet to read a book about Libya.  We came close twice with Hisham Matar's In the Country of Men and many years ago with Ibrahim Al-Koni's The Bleeding of the Stone.

Matar's father, Jaballa, was an Amnesty International Prisoner of Conscience and the author has been quite visible in recent days.  This very moving childhood reminiscence found on Slate renews my desire to have us discuss one of his books.  The New Yorker provides this interview, with a link to a recent short story and a slideshow of Jaballa Matar,

Twenty years ago, your father, Jaballa Matar, was abducted in Cairo and forcibly returned to Libya. Your family received a couple of letters that had been smuggled out of Libya and, once, a tape recording that your father once managed to make in prison, but you don’t know whether he’s alive or dead. Have you learned anything new in recent days? Do you hold out any hope that he may still be alive?

As soon as the revolution is complete, I will return to search for my father. For years after I lost him I wondered if all of his activism and sacrifice was for nothing. It was a terrible thing to carry around, this resentment. These days I can see that he and people like him were carving with their bare hands the first steps to this revolution. The protesters in the streets have not forgotten them. They carry their pictures above their heads.

Matar also wrote in a recent NYT op-ed, What the West Can Do to Help the Libyan Rebels,

Relatives, some as young as 16, who only days ago ran businesses or held jobs, attended high school or college, are now facing a well-equipped army made up mainly of foreign mercenaries. The Qaddafi forces have tanks and airplanes. All that my cousins have are old hunting rifles and captured artillery. Some rebels are using slingshots, knives and sticks.

He further pleads for medical and food supplies to be sent to rebel-held areas. Hisham Matar has a new novel coming out in August (a smart publisher might move that date up).  I'll be looking for the first opportunity to nominate Anatomy of a Disappearance.

Many years ago I did read Ibrahim Al-Koni's ecological fable, The Bleeding of the Stone and I'm dusting it off for another look.  His novels of desert life are short and not overtly political (although The Puppet looks like it comes close).  If you want a taste, you can read one of his stories in the Words Without Borders Libya issue as well as explore more fiction, nonfiction and poetry by other Libyan writers.

In addition to these fiction suggestions, Loyal Readers might be interested to know that Stephen Kinzer (Crescent and Star) has  weighed in on Libya: see his argument against a no-fly zone in the Guardian and comment on NPR on the problem of dictators' sons.

Be sure to visit Amnesty International's "Mideast Uprising" page for actions on Libya and updates other crisis regions.

Rights Readers Round-up

Rights Readers authors have been busy this summer:

Iran continues to be a major topic of commentary: check out Marjane Satrapi (Persepolis) in the NYT: I Must Go Home to Iran Again. Azar Nafisi (Reading Lolita in Tehran) calls for freeing filmmaker Maziar Bahari (more from AIUSA and action) Message to Tehran: Let our truth-teller go. Stephen Kinzer (Crescent and Star) is optimistic Iran and U.S. 'not fated to be enemies forever' and offers some advice to Obama on a shared birthday.

On the home front, Barbara Ehrenreich (Nickel and Dimed) has three NYT editorials with audio supplement on the how the recession has hit the "already poor," here, here and here, while Hector Tobar (The Tattooed Soldier) has another insightful column on immigration. Walter Mosley (Little Scarlet) offers 10 Things You Need to Know to Live on the Streets, and has an opinion piece in Newseek: America's Obsession with Crime which he also discusses on NPR.

Tracy Kidder (Mountains Beyond Mountains) pays tribute to a local hero he met while writing his latest book (Strength in What Remains) in the NYT: A Death in Burundi. Edwidge Danticat (Brother, I'm Dying) writes an appreciation of Nobelist Wole Soyinka for the Progressive.

Mark Hertsgaard (Earth Odyssey) reports from Burkina Faso on climate change and appears on a FORA.tv panel on food security and climate change. Hertsgaard is preparing a book on the subject, certainly a good candidate for a Rights Read. Kevin Bales (Disposable People) is interviewed about his latest book, The Slave Next Door.

As follow up to our discussion of Caroline Elkins, (Imperial Reckoning), check out the Times (London) coverage of efforts by Mau Mau veterans to investigate torture claims, here and here with analysis here and here. Speaking of Kenya, Michela Wrong (I Didn't Do It for You) can be found promoting her new book, It's Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistle-Blower at openDemocracy (see also interviews with NPR and NYT.) Her pr strategy has some interesting twists.

Muhammad Yunus (Banker To The Poor) was one of the luminaries who received a presidential medal of freedom. Paul Farmer (Mountains Beyond Mountains) will not be heading USAID, but Samantha Power (A Problem from Hell) has been appointed by President Obama to assist refugees of Iraq war. And did you know that in a nod to the late Russian journalists Anna Politkovskaya (Putin's Russia) and her brave colleagues, President Obama gave an interview in Novaya Gazeta on his recent Moscow visit? More from CPJ. Sister Helen Prejean (Dead Man Walking) has some post-papal audience questions for Obama (and the activist community). Meanwhile Jarvis Jay Masters' (Finding Freedom) latest, That Bird Has My Wings is available for amazon pre-order.

Okay, so I should probably post a little more often so as not to make this such a huge link dump... but at least I'm caught up!

Rights Readers Authors on Iran

Checking in with some of our authors on the situation in Iran...

If you haven't heard Robin Wright (Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East) weigh in on matters Iran, you've been on vacation on a desert island. Here are just a few links:

TIME: Lessons For the US As the Iranian Revolution Unravels
LAT: The evolution of Iran's revolution
WAMU 88.5 FM The Diane Rehm Show for Monday June 22, 2009

Marjane Satrapi, author of Persepolis(yeah, I'd prefer a more pictorial response-- maybe later):

Marjane Satrapi and Mohsen Makhmalbaf call on international community

Azar Nafisi (Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books):

Al Jazeera English: Iranian writer on poll result
Video from CNN:

Stephen Kinzer (Crescent and Star and also All the Shah's Men) has this analysis:

Guardian: Democracy, made in Iran

(If you'd like a little more positive news on the democracy front, check out his comments in this interview on Turkish politics: Armies will no longer participate in politics, says Kinzer)

Be informed! Take action!

Amnesty International actions
AIUSA Iran page
The latest on Iran from AIUSA's blog