Our October Author: Peter Akinti (Forest Gate)

This month we are reading Forest Gate by Peter Akinti. Kicking off our supplemental links this mont, Akinti introduces his book in this video:



The book comes with a supplemental essay and interview.  If your edition doesn't have them, check here.  The Bookbag has an interview,

BB: For this ex-Londoner, Forest Gate draws some very painful parallels between war-torn Somalia and life on some of London 's streets. Yet Armeina defends London. Why does she?


PA: When I wrote Forest Gate one of my aims was to provide a snapshot of young black people in London, to try to paint a truer picture of their mixed identity and or culture. I wanted to show what life was like under the full effects of constant migration; how much globalization is affecting us in ways we are yet able to fully grasp. I didn't want to compare London and Somalia. I wanted to compare two lives that clash in London; to show how very different two young black people living in London might be, the causes and effects of that interaction.

And  SoulCulture asks about the reality behind the fiction,

SoulCulture: The book contains a lot of difficult but compelling chapters vividly describing sexual abuse and violence. Was this a realistic representation of their stories or extreme content needed to make a certain point?

Peter Akinti: Some of it is definitely to make a point. There’s a point where two boys get stopped and searched by the police and someone asked me what I thought about stop-and-search. They thought it was me trying to say something about stop and search but it wasn’t, it was much more to do with an experience I had with my niece.

One of her friends got involved in something crazy and I took her to the police station and I took a statement and they were really rough with her, and when she came out I said ‘what did you think of that?’ and she said she never wanted to do anything like that again, it felt like abuse. And that struck me. That’s where it came from, that first one.

So a lot of the things that happened aren’t me trying to be clever; a lot of these things really happened. A friend of mine had a younger brother who jumped off a tower block in East London and that’s where that came from. I just wanted to show that’s how a lot of people feel once they’ve had that experience, especially the Metropolitan police – they’re really rough with young, black people.

In addition to those two interesting interviews, Akinti has a couple pieces in the Guardian you may want to check out:  Looking back on New Labour and Why London is no place for a young black man.

For December: The Protest Singer by Alec Wilkinson

For December, we have chosen The Protest Singer: An Intimate Portrait of Pete Seeger by Alec Wilkinson:

A spirited and intimate look at American icon and activist Pete Seeger, and his life and his accomplishments. Pete Seeger transformed a classic American musical style into a form of peaceful protest against war, segregation, and nuclear weapons. Drawing on his extensive talks with Seeger, Alec Wilkinson delivers a first hand look at Seeger's unique blend of independence and commitment, charm, courage, energy, and belief in human equality and American democracy. We see Seeger, the child, instilled with a love of music by his parents; Seeger, the teenager, hearing real folk music for the first time; Seeger, the young adult, singing with Woody Guthrie. And finally, Seeger the man marching with the Rev. Martin Luther King in Selma, standing up to McCarthyism, and fighting for his beloved Hudson River. The gigantic life captured in this slender volume is truly an American anthem.

For January: No God but God by Reza Aslan

For January, we have chosen Reza Aslan's No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam,

Though it is the fastest-growing religion in the world, Islam remains shrouded in ignorance and fear for much of the West. In No god but God, Reza Aslan, an internationally acclaimed scholar of religions, explains this faith in all its beauty and complexity. Beginning with a vivid account of the social and religious milieu in which the Prophet Muhammad forged his message, Aslan paints a portrait of the first Muslim community as a radical experiment in religious pluralism and social egalitarianism. He demonstrates how, after the Prophet’s death, his successors attempted to interpret his message for future generations–an overwhelming task that fractured the Muslim community into competing sects. Finally, Aslan examines how, in the shadow of European colonialism, Muslims developed conflicting strategies to reconcile traditional Islamic values with the realities of the modern world, thus launching what Aslan terms the Islamic Reformation. Timely and persuasive, No god but God is an elegantly written account of a magnificent yet misunderstood faith.

Our September Author: Dan Everett (Don't Sleep, There are Snakes)

This month's author, Dan Everett (Don't Sleep, There are Snakes) has his own webpage at Illinois State University, (although a note there says he has taken a position elsewhere, so the page could vanish at any moment). He does have quite a bit there to explore. This section is a good place to start. My favorite file is this song.

Here is a bit of spoken Pirahã:



As a supplement to the book, I highly recommend this New Yorker profile: The Interpreter. It will give you some idea of how others in the field of linguistics view his work. If you don't have the time for that, try this NPR profile which also contains a nice demonstration of whistle and hum speech or this Guardian profile which includes a couple sound files as well. The hardcore language buffs among our Esteemed Readers will want to check out this article and Daniel Everett/Steven Pinker exchange.

Here's a talk for courtesy of Fora.TV:




There is a documentary about Everett, it seems with no release date as yet. More info and trailer can be found here.

Other fun stuff:

Further reading--

The Last of the Tribe: The Epic Quest to Save a Lone Man in the Amazon. Interview with author Monte Reel here.

Recent NYT article, Does Your Language Shape How You Think? by Guy Deutscher author of the new book Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages.




Explore the National Geographic map of endangered languages.

More on indigenous peoples: Survival International and Cultural Survival.

Recent Amnesty International press release: Peru: Missionary defending Amazon tribes must not be deported

Updated: Fresh action today from Amnesty International:

80 members of the Guarani Kaiowá Y’poí Indigenous group in Brazil have been threatened by armed men hired by local farm owners. The group reoccupied farmland they claim as part of their ancestral territory near Paranhos, Brazil, in April. They have been threatened and being prevented from leaving their encampment. This has left them in a critical situation with no access to water, food, education and health.

The Federal Indigenous Health Agency (FUNASA) has not provided care to the community allegedly claiming this is due to lack of security. The community’s children are falling sick due to the lack of medical assistance, water and the dry weather conditions. The community has denounced their situation, but so far no action has been taken.

More info. Take action here.

For November: The Blessing Next to the Wound by Hector Aristizabal

For November, we have selected The Blessing Next to the Wound: A Story of Art, Activism, and Transformation by our good friend and collaborator Hector Aristizabal:

Hector Aristizabal grew up in the barrios of Medellin, Colombia, where he and his siblings had to use all their wit, wiles, and wherewithal to survive poverty, the ever-present allure of cheap drugs and very dangerous money, and the endemic violence from leftwing guerrillas, rightwing death squads, cocaine cartels, and the armed power of the State. As a young actor and psychology student, Hector was seized by the military, held in secret, and tortured. He survived and went on to find meaning in his ordeal as he channeled his desire for revenge into nonviolent activism both in his homeland and during decades of exile in the United States.

While challenging the State-sponsored causes of much suffering in the world, Hector reached out to some of society s most marginalized at-risk and incarcerated youth, immigrants, and many others using his theatrical skills and psychotherapeutic training to help people shape their own stories and identities. He sought to understand his own identity as well as that of one brother who was a revolutionary and another who was gay and how his belief in personal integrity and political freedom might square with the realities of a country under the yoke of toxic ideologies. Hector was forced finally to examine his own motivations and commitments, and begin to heal his own gaping wounds.

Shockingly honest, heartbreaking, and vibrantly told, The Blessing Next to the Wound is a passionate and evocative memoir that, amid enormous suffering and loss, is a full-throated affirmation of life.

Cut This!

Courtesy of the ACLU of Northern California, timeout for a little PSA aimed at our California readership (though the argument is really applicable in all death penalty states) regarding maintaining the death penalty in a time of budget crisis. You can take action at the ACLU's site:

Cut This: The Death Penalty from aclunc on Vimeo.

Bonus inspirational video from Amnesty-France:

Our August Author: Stieg Larsson (The Girl Who Playes With Fire)

It's our mystery month and this time we chose Stieg Larsson's The Girl Who Played with Fire.  I'm not sure who is behind the site, but for a compendium of Stieg Larsson links, you could start with stieglarsson.com or try this Life of Stieg Larsson interactive feature from the New York Times.  In addition, the NYT offers a couple of useful articles on the backstory of the series, The Afterlife of Stieg Larsson and Pippi Longstocking and Lisbeth Salander.

The Daily Telegraph has an account of Larsson's only interview on the series with some tips for further reading...

Every spring and autumn, back when he worked for the news agency, he was assigned to write reviews that summed up the season’s releases of translated crime fiction. “I’d include the top five crime novels at that particular time,” he said. “Some of the writers I’ve praised are Sara Paretsky, Val McDermid, Elisabeth George and Minette Walters. Strangely enough, almost all are women.”

If you'd like to get a jumpstart on the discussion, check out Slate's Culture Gabfest on Stieg Larsson. Otherwise you can dig in and wrestle with some of the issues the book raises:

Is Lisbeth Salander a feminist icon or male fantasy figure? There's no shortage of opinions. Here's a sampler:  Why we should cheer Lisbeth Salander, Stieg Larsson’s girl gang, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo: feminist, or not?, Did Stieg Larsson have a problem with women? Feminist or misogynist?
 
How does Larsson's Sweden match up with the reality? Here is a trio of articles to check out: Millenium's distorting mirror, Understanding Swedish society through Stieg Larsson's popular fiction and Foreign Policy's  We're All Swedes Now, 

The sex-trafficking subplot didn't move sufficiently beyond lecture to where it emotionally engaged me, but the NYT's Nick Kristof is hopeful that the books might raise some awareness of the issue.

A tip of the hat to Larsson's English translator, Reg Keeland who has a blog.

Just for fun you can get a peek at the 'Dragon Tattoo' tour of Stockholm.

And finally, don't miss Nora Ephron's Stieg Larsson parody The Girl Who Fixed the Umlaut in The New Yorker.