For June we have chosen Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky,
Beginning in Paris on the eve of the Nazi occupation in 1940. Suite Française tells the remarkable story of men and women thrown together in circumstances beyond their control. As Parisians flee the city, human folly surfaces in every imaginable way: a wealthy mother searches for sweets in a town without food; a couple is terrified at the thought of losing their jobs, even as their world begins to fall apart. Moving on to a provincial village now occupied by German soldiers, the locals must learn to coexist with the enemy—in their town, their homes, even in their hearts.When Irène Némirovsky began working on Suite Française, she was already a highly successful writer living in Paris. But she was also a Jew, and in 1942 she was arrested and deported to Auschwitz, where she died. For sixty-four years, this novel remained hidden and unknown.
Language buffs! Today is United Nations International Mother Language Day. On this date in 1952, students demonstrating for recognition of their language, Bangla, were shot and killed by police in Dhaka, the capital of what is now Bangladesh. Learn more here. The commemoration promotes linguistic and cultural diversity and multilingualism. If you feel like celebrating try this link
for a couple hours of linguistic and musical diversity.
I just wanted to take a moment to note that it looks like the Lake Street Borders in Pasadena will be closing as part of their bankruptcy proceedings and the Los Angeles Times has kindly recognized the store as it's Bookstore-of-the-Week. I just wanted to offer a tip of the hat to our friends at Lake Street, because although we have been very comfortable at Vroman's for some time now, Rights Readers did get its start back in 1999 at Borders when it was a thriving store with a community spirit. Borders hosted an author talk with Mike Males (The Scapegoat Generation, Framing Youth) for our Amnesty International group where I got the idea that the bookstore would be a great venue for on-going discussion about books and human rights. We will always be grateful for their help getting us started.
This month we are reading Toni Morrison's A Mercy. Not surprisingly for such a rich and dense story, every interview and profile has a nugget or three that adds to your appreciation of the book and makes it worth it to take in numerous interviews even with the repetitive bits. This Guardian profile may serve as a good introduction to the author, if this is your first encounter with her.
For starters, I like this clip in which Morrison explains her motivation for writing her first novel, The Bluest Eye, because you can see so clearly how this vision of the black girl and her relationship to society has stayed with her through Beloved to A Mercy:
Also from a Washington Postprofile of Morrison and A Mercy,
And how did this particular narrative start?
"Well, I have this needy girl. She's going to go on a journey. By herself. Usually, guys go on journeys in narratives and the women stay home.
NPR introduces more of the book's themes in this short video:
I initially listened to the audiobook, read by Morrison herself, and while I don't recommend that you rely on it exclusively as it can be difficult to follow the varying perspectives, its worth listening to at least a few samples just to hear her voice purr. Luckily, NPR offers some audio sections online.
If you have a bit more time, there is a Los Angeles Public Library talk, An Evening with Toni Morrison also available for free download from iTunes. Tavis Smiley and Charlie Rose, especially good on the historical context for the novel, also have informative interviews.
In this Nation interview, Obama the writer, and Edwidge Danticat get a nod, and we get this insight into the language of Florens,
You've said that you need to hear your characters' voices before you start to write. In A Mercy there are several mesmerizing characters: the young slave, Florens; the Dutch farmer, Jacob Vaark; his wife, Rebekka, who has fled the poverty, filth, crime and sickness of London. Whose voice did you hear first?
I heard Florens's first, the girl. And she approaches language in a slanted way. She can read and write; she learned from a Catholic priest under scary circumstances. And she's taken someplace else; she doesn't know what they're talking about. When she was with her mother she spoke Portuguese. She knows Latin. So I just put all her language together and gave her an individual voice that was "I"--first person--and very visual. But also, once I realized that I could make her speak only in the present tense, it gave the narrative an immediacy, it made me disciplined in revealing what she thought, and it gave her a kind of innocence and, at the same time, a kind of sophistication.
The Chicago Public Library chose A Mercy as their 'One City, One Book' selection in 2010 and assembled some useful resources including a timeline and suggestions for further reading. One of the books Morrison frequently mentions the book Hubbub: Filth, Noise, and Stench in England, 1600-1770 as one of the sources she used for creating the historical texture of the novel. I can imagine certain Loyal Readers wanting to investigate that one... For a little more insight into the history depicted in the novel try these twoposts from an historian of the period. Morrison also frequently mentions Bacon's Rebellion in interviews about the book. The website for the PBS series Africans in America may be useful to learn more about this event and about slavery in the colonial period. You can watch the whole series here.Slavery in New York is another site worth visiting.
Finally from the past some optimism for the future from this recent Chicago Tribuneinterview,
Q: You're feeling hopeful?
Yes, because I have a history in my head. I remember the way it was. I remember going out in Loraine, Ohio and picking up coal from the railroad tracks and putting it in a bucket. Out there would be Mexican people, Italian people. We were all doing the same thing. Stealing coal was what it was. Poor people were what we were. But if someone had difficulties, they were helped. Children were taken in. It didn't matter where you came from. I know the fiber of the country.
HANSEN: Where do you think this is going now?
Dr. AL-ASWANY: I think now everything is clear. We have one major problem: that Mr. Mubarak has not been convinced yet to resign. I spent two days and even more with the protestors. And I even made some speeches to the protestors. And nobody wants to hear anything except that Mubarak must go.
Robin Wright (Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East) declares, "One way or another, the Mubarak dynasty is toast," and expands on the challenges that lie ahead for Politico and contributes to the discussion at NPR's On Point here. Reza Aslan (No god but God) writes about the Muslim Brotherhood's possible role in a future Egyptian democracy in the Washington Post,
Far from trying to transform Egypt into a theocracy, as Arab rulers and western ideologues predicted they would, the Brotherhood fully embraced the principles of democracy by creating political alliances with liberal intellectuals and secular democrats in the Egyptian to lobby for greater political freedoms, including freedom of religion, assembly and speech. Their actions convinced even their staunchest critics that, given the opportunity, they could become a legitimate political force in Egyptian politics, which is why Mubarak turned so violently against them, rounding up their democratically elected members, jailing, torturing and murdering them inside his dank, sadistic prison cells.
In the early 1990s, the Pasadena chapter of Amnesty International worked on behalf of one of those jailed, possibly tortured, Brotherhood sympathizers. It's long past time to see that era come to an end. Don't forget to check in with Amnesty International USA for appropriate Egypt actions!
From the Pulitzer Prize finalist and National Book Critics Circle Award–winning author of Newjack, an absorbing book about roads and their power to change the world.
Roads bind our world—metaphorically and literally—transforming landscapes and the lives of the people who inhabit them. Roads have unparalleled power to impact communities, unite worlds and sunder them, and reveal the hopes and fears of those who travel them.
With his marvelous eye for detail and his contagious enthusiasm, Ted Conover explores six of these key byways worldwide. In Peru, he traces the journey of a load of rare mahogany over the Andes to its origin, an untracked part of the Amazon basin soon to be traversed by a new east-west route across South America. In East Africa, he visits truckers whose travels have been linked to the worldwide spread of AIDS. In the West Bank, he monitors highway checkpoints with Israeli soldiers and then passes through them with Palestinians, witnessing the injustices and danger borne by both sides. He shuffles down a frozen riverbed with teenagers escaping their Himalayan valley to see how a new road will affect the now-isolated Indian region of Ladakh. From the passenger seat of a new Hyundai piling up the miles, he describes the exuberant upsurge in car culture as highways proliferate across China. And from inside an ambulance, he offers an apocalyptic but precise vision of Lagos, Nigeria, where congestion and chaos on freeways signal the rise of the global megacity.
A spirited, urgent book that reveals the costs and benefits of being connected—how, from ancient Rome to the present, roads have played a crucial role in human life, advancing civilization even as they set it back.
This Martin Luther King Weekend our friends at All Saints Church in Pasadena are celebrating the life of Lydia Wilkins, 1904-2010. I'm not sure when I took this photo of Lydia signing a death penalty petition, perhaps ten years ago when she was a mere 96 years old, but the sight of Lydia with pen in hand was not an unfamiliar one when I was staffing action tables. As the Star-Newsreported, Lydia saw a lot of change in her lifetime, from women getting the vote to the first African-American president and she just kept that pen moving asking for more. More on the gift that was Lydia here.
Keep your pen moving to honor Lydia and Martin Luther King, Jr. The great news out of Illinois is that the state legislature has passed a death penalty abolition bill which now sits on the governor's desk awaiting his signature. You can urge Governor Quinn to sign that bill (and if you live in Illinois, do it early and often!) and take other death penalty actions here.
For a little extra inspiration, check out this clip from a Fox Business News interview with Rights Readers author Sister Helen Prejean (Dead Man Walking) made in the wake of the tragedy in Tuscon where she does a little pre-emptive lobbying against the death penalty for Jared Loughner. (Don't let "Fox" scare you, the interviewer closes by calling her a national treasure - I agree!)
For June we have chosen Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky, 
you'll find more language rarities here. Here is video of a 
to 
as one of the sources she used for creating the historical texture of the novel. I can imagine certain Loyal Readers wanting to investigate that one... For a little more insight into the history depicted in the novel try these 
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and more). For more on what she aims to accomplish in her not uncontroversial writing for children, see this 
For May we have selected 
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) Ted Conover,
For a little extra inspiration, check out 
) made in the wake of the tragedy in Tuscon where she does a little pre-emptive lobbying against the death penalty for Jared Loughner. (Don't let "Fox" scare you, the interviewer closes by calling her a national treasure - I agree!)
