VIDEO: Living in the End Times According to Slavoj Zizek

Slavoj Zizek

Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek, akaThe Elvis of cultural theory, is given the floor to show of his polemic style and whirlwind-like performance. The Giant of Ljubljana is bombarded with clips of popular media images and quotes by modern-day thinkers revolving around four major issues: the economical crisis, environment, Afghanistan and the end of democracy. Zizek grabs the opportunity to ruthlessly criticize modern capitalism and to give his view on our common future.

We communists are back! is the closing remark of Slavoj Zižeks provocative performance. Our current capitalist system, that everyone believed would be smoothly spread around the globe, is untenable. We find ourselves on the brink of big problems that call for big solutions. Whatever is left of the left, has been hedged in by western liberal democracy and seems to lack the energy to come up with radical solutions. Not Zižek. 

Interview: Chris Kijne
Director: Marije Meerman
Production: Mariska Schneider /Pepijn Boonstra
Research: Marijntje Denters/Maren Merckx 
Commissioning editors: Henneke Hagen/Jos de Putter

 

OP-ED + VIDEO: Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist - An Undocumented Immigrant

Pulitzer Prize Winning

Journalist Reveals He Is

An Undocumented Immigrant -

Will He Be Deported?

Wednesday Jun 22, 2011 – by Leslie Pitterson

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Jose Antonio Vargas is coming out. And his revelation could get him deported from the country he calls home.

Vargas revealed today that he has been living in the United States illegally since he was 13 years old. Originally from the Philippines, Vargas says his mother put him on a plane to Silicon Valley to visit his grandparents with a man he had never met before and told him he was his uncle. It was only when he turned 16 and went to register for his license did he realize the green card he had been carrying was fake. After he returned from the DMV, Vargas says his grandparents confirmed they had purchased a counterfeit green card.

Photo Credit: New York Times

In an article set to run in Sunday’s issue of New York Times Magazine, Vargas says that knowing he was an undocumented immigrant meant “living a different kind of reality” and “going about [the] day in fear of being found out.”

I decided then that I could never give anyone reason to doubt I was an American. I convinced myself that if I worked enough, if I achieved enough, I would be rewarded with citizenship. I felt I could earn it.

I’ve tried. Over the past 14 years, I’ve graduated from high school and college and built a career as a journalist, interviewing some of the most famous people in the country. On the surface, I’ve created a good life. I’ve lived the American dream.

But I am still an undocumented immigrant. And that means living a different kind of reality. It means going about my day in fear of being found out. It means rarely trusting people, even those closest to me, with who I really am. It means keeping my family photos in a shoebox rather than displaying them on shelves in my home, so friends don’t ask about them. It means reluctantly, even painfully, doing things I know are wrong and unlawful. And it has meant relying on a sort of 21st-century underground railroad of supporters, people who took an interest in my future and took risks for me.

Vargas’ revelation has put the media, especially outlets that hired him in the hot seat. Most, like The Huffington Post have disclosed the details of what they knew:

Vargas used a fake driver’s license when he first became a staff writer at The Washington Post. That license protected him for years; he even used it to get into the White House. Vargas also used fake documents during his employment with The Huffington Post.

Vargas told ABC’s Dan Harris that he is making the risky decision to admit his undocumented status as a way to fight for immigrant rights, as well as the passage of the DREAM Act, which would help undocumented children gain citizenship if they join the military or attend college.

Source

 

Vargas’s interview with ABC is set to air on Thursday and Friday.  The journalist says that no matter what people call undocumented workers, he calls himself an American. He writes:

There are believed to be 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. We’re not always who you think we are. Some pick your strawberries or care for your children. Some are in high school or college. And some, it turns out, write news articles you might read. I grew up here. This is my home. Yet even though I think of myself as an American and consider America my country, my country doesn’t think of me as one of its own.

What do you think of Vargas revealing he is an undocumented immigrant? Do you think he will be deported?

__________________________

My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant

Ryan Pfluger for The New York Times

Staying Papers The documentation that Vargas obtained over the years — a fake green card, a fake passport, a driver’s license — allowed him to remain in the U.S. In Oregon, a friend provided a mailing address.

Photograph from Jose Antonio Vargas

Pre-Flight In the Philippines with his mother, who was supposed to follow him to the United States but never did.

Photograph from Jose Antonio Vargas

Benefactors Vargas with the school officials Rich Fischer and Pat Hyland at his high-school graduation.

Photograph from Jose Antonio Vargas

After his college graduation with his grandfather, Lolo, who provided most of his resources for his journey to America.

Above A doctored version of this card has helped keep Vargas in the United States. The magazine has blurred his number in the photo.

Readers' Comments

My mother wanted to give me a better life, so she sent me thousands of miles away to live with her parents in America — my grandfather (Lolo in Tagalog) and grandmother (Lola). After I arrived in Mountain View, Calif., in the San Francisco Bay Area, I entered sixth grade and quickly grew to love my new home, family and culture. I discovered a passion for language, though it was hard to learn the difference between formal English and American slang. One of my early memories is of a freckled kid in middle school asking me, “What’s up?” I replied, “The sky,” and he and a couple of other kids laughed. I won the eighth-grade spelling bee by memorizing words I couldn’t properly pronounce. (The winning word was “indefatigable.”)

One day when I was 16, I rode my bike to the nearby D.M.V. office to get my driver’s permit. Some of my friends already had their licenses, so I figured it was time. But when I handed the clerk my green card as proof of U.S. residency, she flipped it around, examining it. “This is fake,” she whispered. “Don’t come back here again.”

Confused and scared, I pedaled home and confronted Lolo. I remember him sitting in the garage, cutting coupons. I dropped my bike and ran over to him, showing him the green card. “Peke ba ito?” I asked in Tagalog. (“Is this fake?”) My grandparents were naturalized American citizens — he worked as a security guard, she as a food server — and they had begun supporting my mother and me financially when I was 3, after my father’s wandering eye and inability to properly provide for us led to my parents’ separation. Lolo was a proud man, and I saw the shame on his face as he told me he purchased the card, along with other fake documents, for me. “Don’t show it to other people,” he warned.

I decided then that I could never give anyone reason to doubt I was an American. I convinced myself that if I worked enough, if I achieved enough, I would be rewarded with citizenship. I felt I could earn it.

I’ve tried. Over the past 14 years, I’ve graduated from high school and college and built a career as a journalist, interviewing some of the most famous people in the country. On the surface, I’ve created a good life. I’ve lived the American dream.

But I am still an undocumented immigrant. And that means living a different kind of reality. It means going about my day in fear of being found out. It means rarely trusting people, even those closest to me, with who I really am. It means keeping my family photos in a shoebox rather than displaying them on shelves in my home, so friends don’t ask about them. It means reluctantly, even painfully, doing things I know are wrong and unlawful. And it has meant relying on a sort of 21st-century underground railroad of supporters, people who took an interest in my future and took risks for me.

Last year I read about four students who walked from Miami to Washington to lobby for the Dream Act, a nearly decade-old immigration bill that would provide a path to legal permanent residency for young people who have been educated in this country. At the risk of deportation — the Obama administration has deported almost 800,000 people in the last two years — they are speaking out. Their courage has inspired me.

There are believed to be 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. We’re not always who you think we are. Some pick your strawberries or care for your children. Some are in high school or college. And some, it turns out, write news articles you might read. I grew up here. This is my home. Yet even though I think of myself as an American and consider America my country, my country doesn’t think of me as one of its own.

 

My first challenge was the language. Though I learned English in the Philippines, I wanted to lose my accent. During high school, I spent hours at a time watching television (especially “Frasier,” “Home Improvement” and reruns of “The Golden Girls”) and movies (from “Goodfellas” to “Anne of Green Gables”), pausing the VHS to try to copy how various characters enunciated their words. At the local library, I read magazines, books and newspapers — anything to learn how to write better. Kathy Dewar, my high-school English teacher, introduced me to journalism. From the moment I wrote my first article for the student paper, I convinced myself that having my name in print — writing in English, interviewing Americans — validated my presence here.

The debates over “illegal aliens” intensified my anxieties. In 1994, only a year after my flight from the Philippines, Gov. Pete Wilson was re-elected in part because of his support for Proposition 187, which prohibited undocumented immigrants from attending public school and accessing other services. (A federal court later found the law unconstitutional.) After my encounter at the D.M.V. in 1997, I grew more aware of anti-immigrant sentiments and stereotypes: they don’t want to assimilate, they are a drain on society.They’re not talking about me, I would tell myself. I have something to contribute.

To do that, I had to work — and for that, I needed a Social Security number. Fortunately, my grandfather had already managed to get one for me. Lolo had always taken care of everyone in the family. He and my grandmother emigrated legally in 1984 from Zambales, a province in the Philippines of rice fields and bamboo houses , following Lolo’s sister, who married a Filipino-American serving in the American military. She petitioned for her brother and his wife to join her. When they got here, Lolo petitioned for his two children — my mother and her younger brother — to follow them. But instead of mentioning that my mother was a married woman, he listed her as single. Legal residents can’t petition for their married children. Besides, Lolo didn’t care for my father. He didn’t want him coming here too.

But soon Lolo grew nervous that the immigration authorities reviewing the petition would discover my mother was married, thus derailing not only her chances of coming here but those of my uncle as well. So he withdrew her petition. After my uncle came to America legally in 1991, Lolo tried to get my mother here through a tourist visa, but she wasn’t able to obtain one. That’s when she decided to send me. My mother told me later that she figured she would follow me soon. She never did.

The “uncle” who brought me here turned out to be a coyote, not a relative, my grandfather later explained. Lolo scraped together enough money — I eventually learned it was $4,500, a huge sum for him — to pay him to smuggle me here under a fake name and fake passport. (I never saw the passport again after the flight and have always assumed that the coyote kept it.) After I arrived in America, Lolo obtained a new fake Filipino passport, in my real name this time, adorned with a fake student visa, in addition to the fraudulent green card.

Using the fake passport, we went to the local Social Security Administration office and applied for a Social Security number and card. It was, I remember, a quick visit. When the card came in the mail, it had my full, real name, but it also clearly stated: “Valid for work only with I.N.S. authorization.”

When I began looking for work, a short time after the D.M.V. incident, my grandfather and I took the Social Security card to Kinko’s, where he covered the “I.N.S. authorization” text with a sliver of white tape. We then made photocopies of the card. At a glance, at least, the copies would look like copies of a regular, unrestricted Social Security card.

Lolo always imagined I would work the kind of low-paying jobs that undocumented people often take. (Once I married an American, he said, I would get my real papers, and everything would be fine.) But even menial jobs require documents, so he and I hoped the doctored card would work for now. The more documents I had, he said, the better.

While in high school, I worked part time at Subway, then at the front desk of the local Y.M.C.A., then at a tennis club, until I landed an unpaid internship at The Mountain View Voice, my hometown newspaper. First I brought coffee and helped around the office; eventually I began covering city-hall meetings and other assignments for pay.

For more than a decade of getting part-time and full-time jobs, employers have rarely asked to check my original Social Security card. When they did, I showed the photocopied version, which they accepted. Over time, I also began checking the citizenship box on my federal I-9 employment eligibility forms. (Claiming full citizenship was actually easier than declaring permanent resident “green card” status, which would have required me to provide an alien registration number.)

This deceit never got easier. The more I did it, the more I felt like an impostor, the more guilt I carried — and the more I worried that I would get caught. But I kept doing it. I needed to live and survive on my own, and I decided this was the way.

Mountain View High School became my second home. I was elected to represent my school at school-board meetings, which gave me the chance to meet and befriend Rich Fischer, the superintendent for our school district. I joined the speech and debate team, acted in school plays and eventually became co-editor of The Oracle, the student newspaper. That drew the attention of my principal, Pat Hyland. “You’re at school just as much as I am,” she told me. Pat and Rich would soon become mentors, and over time, almost surrogate parents for me.

After a choir rehearsal during my junior year, Jill Denny, the choir director, told me she was considering a Japan trip for our singing group. I told her I couldn’t afford it, but she said we’d figure out a way. I hesitated, and then decided to tell her the truth. “It’s not really the money,” I remember saying. “I don’t have the right passport.” When she assured me we’d get the proper documents, I finally told her. “I can’t get the right passport,” I said. “I’m not supposed to be here.”

She understood. So the choir toured Hawaii instead, with me in tow. (Mrs. Denny and I spoke a couple of months ago, and she told me she hadn’t wanted to leave any student behind.)

Later that school year, my history class watched a documentary on Harvey Milk, the openly gay San Francisco city official who was assassinated. This was 1999, just six months after Matthew Shepard’s body was found tied to a fence in Wyoming. During the discussion, I raised my hand and said something like: “I’m sorry Harvey Milk got killed for being gay. . . . I’ve been meaning to say this. . . . I’m gay.”

I hadn’t planned on coming out that morning, though I had known that I was gay for several years. With that announcement, I became the only openly gay student at school, and it caused turmoil with my grandparents. Lolo kicked me out of the house for a few weeks. Though we eventually reconciled, I had disappointed him on two fronts. First, as a Catholic, he considered homosexuality a sin and was embarrassed about having “ang apo na bakla” (“a grandson who is gay”). Even worse, I was making matters more difficult for myself, he said. I needed to marry an American woman in order to gain a green card.

Tough as it was, coming out about being gay seemed less daunting than coming out about my legal status. I kept my other secret mostly hidden.

 

While my classmates awaited their college acceptance letters, I hoped to get a full-time job at The Mountain View Voice after graduation. It’s not that I didn’t want to go to college, but I couldn’t apply for state and federal financial aid. Without that, my family couldn’t afford to send me.

But when I finally told Pat and Rich about my immigration “problem” — as we called it from then on — they helped me look for a solution. At first, they even wondered if one of them could adopt me and fix the situation that way, but a lawyer Rich consulted told him it wouldn’t change my legal status because I was too old. Eventually they connected me to a new scholarship fund for high-potential students who were usually the first in their families to attend college. Most important, the fund was not concerned with immigration status. I was among the first recipients, with the scholarship covering tuition, lodging, books and other expenses for my studies at San Francisco State University.

As a college freshman, I found a job working part time at The San Francisco Chronicle, where I sorted mail and wrote some freelance articles. My ambition was to get a reporting job, so I embarked on a series of internships. First I landed at The Philadelphia Daily News, in the summer of 2001, where I covered a drive-by shooting and the wedding of the 76ers star Allen Iverson. Using those articles, I applied to The Seattle Times and got an internship for the following summer.

But then my lack of proper documents became a problem again. The Times’s recruiter, Pat Foote, asked all incoming interns to bring certain paperwork on their first day: a birth certificate, or a passport, or a driver’s license plus an original Social Security card. I panicked, thinking my documents wouldn’t pass muster. So before starting the job, I called Pat and told her about my legal status. After consulting with management, she called me back with the answer I feared: I couldn’t do the internship.

This was devastating. What good was college if I couldn’t then pursue the career I wanted? I decided then that if I was to succeed in a profession that is all about truth-telling, I couldn’t tell the truth about myself.

After this episode, Jim Strand, the venture capitalist who sponsored my scholarship, offered to pay for an immigration lawyer. Rich and I went to meet her in San Francisco’s financial district.

I was hopeful. This was in early 2002, shortly after Senators Orrin Hatch, the Utah Republican, and Dick Durbin, the Illinois Democrat, introduced the Dream Act — Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors. It seemed like the legislative version of what I’d told myself: If I work hard and contribute, things will work out.

But the meeting left me crushed. My only solution, the lawyer said, was to go back to the Philippines and accept a 10-year ban before I could apply to return legally.

If Rich was discouraged, he hid it well. “Put this problem on a shelf,” he told me. “Compartmentalize it. Keep going.”

And I did. For the summer of 2003, I applied for internships across the country. Several newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe and The Chicago Tribune, expressed interest. But when The Washington Post offered me a spot, I knew where I would go. And this time, I had no intention of acknowledging my “problem.”

The Post internship posed a tricky obstacle: It required a driver’s license. (After my close call at the California D.M.V., I’d never gotten one.) So I spent an afternoon at The Mountain View Public Library, studying various states’ requirements. Oregon was among the most welcoming — and it was just a few hours’ drive north.

Again, my support network came through. A friend’s father lived in Portland, and he allowed me to use his address as proof of residency. Pat, Rich and Rich’s longtime assistant, Mary Moore, sent letters to me at that address. Rich taught me how to do three-point turns in a parking lot, and a friend accompanied me to Portland.

The license meant everything to me — it would let me drive, fly and work. But my grandparents worried about the Portland trip and the Washington internship. While Lola offered daily prayers so that I would not get caught, Lolo told me that I was dreaming too big, risking too much.

I was determined to pursue my ambitions. I was 22, I told them, responsible for my own actions. But this was different from Lolo’s driving a confused teenager to Kinko’s. I knew what I was doing now, and I knew it wasn’t right. But what was I supposed to do?

I was paying state and federal taxes, but I was using an invalid Social Security card and writing false information on my employment forms. But that seemed better than depending on my grandparents or on Pat, Rich and Jim — or returning to a country I barely remembered. I convinced myself all would be O.K. if I lived up to the qualities of a “citizen”: hard work, self-reliance, love of my country.

At the D.M.V. in Portland, I arrived with my photocopied Social Security card, my college I.D., a pay stub from The San Francisco Chronicle and my proof of state residence — the letters to the Portland address that my support network had sent. It worked. My license, issued in 2003, was set to expire eight years later, on my 30th birthday, on Feb. 3, 2011. I had eight years to succeed professionally, and to hope that some sort of immigration reform would pass in the meantime and allow me to stay.

It seemed like all the time in the world.

 

My summer in Washington was exhilarating. I was intimidated to be in a major newsroom but was assigned a mentor — Peter Perl, a veteran magazine writer — to help me navigate it. A few weeks into the internship, he printed out one of my articles, about a guy who recovered a long-lost wallet, circled the first two paragraphs and left it on my desk. “Great eye for details — awesome!” he wrote. Though I didn’t know it then, Peter would become one more member of my network.

At the end of the summer, I returned to The San Francisco Chronicle. My plan was to finish school — I was now a senior — while I worked for The Chronicle as a reporter for the city desk. But when The Post beckoned again, offering me a full-time, two-year paid internship that I could start when I graduated in June 2004, it was too tempting to pass up. I moved back to Washington.

About four months into my job as a reporter for The Post, I began feeling increasingly paranoid, as if I had “illegal immigrant” tattooed on my forehead — and in Washington, of all places, where the debates over immigration seemed never-ending. I was so eager to prove myself that I feared I was annoying some colleagues and editors — and worried that any one of these professional journalists could discover my secret. The anxiety was nearly paralyzing. I decided I had to tell one of the higher-ups about my situation. I turned to Peter.

By this time, Peter, who still works at The Post, had become part of management as the paper’s director of newsroom training and professional development. One afternoon in late October, we walked a couple of blocks to Lafayette Square, across from the White House. Over some 20 minutes, sitting on a bench, I told him everything: the Social Security card, the driver’s license, Pat and Rich, my family.

Peter was shocked. “I understand you 100 times better now,” he said. He told me that I had done the right thing by telling him, and that it was now our shared problem. He said he didn’t want to do anything about it just yet. I had just been hired, he said, and I needed to prove myself. “When you’ve done enough,” he said, “we’ll tell Don and Len together.” (Don Graham is the chairman of The Washington Post Company; Leonard Downie Jr. was then the paper’s executive editor.) A month later, I spent my first Thanksgiving in Washington with Peter and his family.

In the five years that followed, I did my best to “do enough.” I was promoted to staff writer, reported on video-game culture, wrote a series on Washington’s H.I.V./AIDS epidemic and covered the role of technology and social media in the 2008 presidential race. I visited the White House, where I interviewed senior aides and covered a state dinner — and gave the Secret Service the Social Security number I obtained with false documents.

I did my best to steer clear of reporting on immigration policy but couldn’t always avoid it. On two occasions, I wrote about Hillary Clinton’s position on driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants. I also wrote an article about Senator Mel Martinez of Florida, then the chairman of the Republican National Committee, who was defending his party’s stance toward Latinos after only one Republican presidential candidate — John McCain, the co-author of a failed immigration bill — agreed to participate in a debate sponsored by Univision, the Spanish-language network.

It was an odd sort of dance: I was trying to stand out in a highly competitive newsroom, yet I was terrified that if I stood out too much, I’d invite unwanted scrutiny. I tried to compartmentalize my fears, distract myself by reporting on the lives of other people, but there was no escaping the central conflict in my life. Maintaining a deception for so long distorts your sense of self. You start wondering who you’ve become, and why.

In April 2008, I was part of a Post team that won a Pulitzer Prize for the paper’s coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings a year earlier. Lolo died a year earlier, so it was Lola who called me the day of the announcement. The first thing she said was, “Anong mangyayari kung malaman ng mga tao?”

What will happen if people find out?

I couldn’t say anything. After we got off the phone, I rushed to the bathroom on the fourth floor of the newsroom, sat down on the toilet and cried.

 

In the summer of 2009, without ever having had that follow-up talk with top Post management, I left the paper and moved to New York to join The Huffington Post. I met Arianna Huffington at a Washington Press Club Foundation dinner I was covering for The Post two years earlier, and she later recruited me to join her news site. I wanted to learn more about Web publishing, and I thought the new job would provide a useful education.

Still, I was apprehensive about the move: many companies were already using E-Verify, a program set up by the Department of Homeland Security that checks if prospective employees are eligible to work, and I didn’t know if my new employer was among them. But I’d been able to get jobs in other newsrooms, I figured, so I filled out the paperwork as usual and succeeded in landing on the payroll.

While I worked at The Huffington Post, other opportunities emerged. My H.I.V./AIDS series became a documentary film called “The Other City,” which opened at the Tribeca Film Festival last year and was broadcast on Showtime. I began writing for magazines and landed a dream assignment: profiling Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg for The New Yorker.

The more I achieved, the more scared and depressed I became. I was proud of my work, but there was always a cloud hanging over it, over me. My old eight-year deadline — the expiration of my Oregon driver’s license — was approaching.

After slightly less than a year, I decided to leave The Huffington Post. In part, this was because I wanted to promote the documentary and write a book about online culture — or so I told my friends. But the real reason was, after so many years of trying to be a part of the system, of focusing all my energy on my professional life, I learned that no amount of professional success would solve my problem or ease the sense of loss and displacement I felt. I lied to a friend about why I couldn’t take a weekend trip to Mexico. Another time I concocted an excuse for why I couldn’t go on an all-expenses-paid trip to Switzerland. I have been unwilling, for years, to be in a long-term relationship because I never wanted anyone to get too close and ask too many questions. All the while, Lola’s question was stuck in my head: What will happen if people find out?

Early this year, just two weeks before my 30th birthday, I won a small reprieve: I obtained a driver’s license in the state of Washington. The license is valid until 2016. This offered me five more years of acceptable identification — but also five more years of fear, of lying to people I respect and institutions that trusted me, of running away from who I am.

I’m done running. I’m exhausted. I don’t want that life anymore.

So I’ve decided to come forward, own up to what I’ve done, and tell my story to the best of my recollection. I’ve reached out to former bosses  and employers and apologized for misleading them — a mix of humiliation and liberation coming with each disclosure. All the people mentioned in this article gave me permission to use their names. I’ve also talked to family and friends about my situation and am working with legal counsel to review my options. I don’t know what the consequences will be of telling my story.

I do know that I am grateful to my grandparents, my Lolo and Lola, for giving me the chance for a better life. I’m also grateful to my other family — the support network I found here in America — for encouraging me to pursue my dreams.

It’s been almost 18 years since I’ve seen my mother. Early on, I was mad at her for putting me in this position, and then mad at myself for being angry and ungrateful. By the time I got to college, we rarely spoke by phone. It became too painful; after a while it was easier to just send money to help support her and my two half-siblings. My sister, almost 2 years old when I left, is almost 20 now. I’ve never met my 14-year-old brother. I would love to see them.

Not long ago, I called my mother. I wanted to fill the gaps in my memory about that August morning so many years ago. We had never discussed it. Part of me wanted to shove the memory aside, but to write this article and face the facts of my life, I needed more details. Did I cry? Did she? Did we kiss goodbye?

My mother told me I was excited about meeting a stewardess, about getting on a plane. She also reminded me of the one piece of advice she gave me for blending in: If anyone asked why I was coming to America, I should say I was going to Disneyland.

Jose Antonio Vargas is a former reporter for The Washington Post and shared a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings. He founded Define American, which seeks to change the conversation on immigration reform. Editor: Chris Suellentrop (C.Suellentrop-MagGroup@nytimes.com)

 

PUB: Wells Festival of Literature

2010 Results

The 2010 competitions are now over.  Prize-giving and the lunch for the four winners in each competition was on Sat 9th October in the Bishop's Palace.  There were some excellent entries, and we look forward to hearing from all entrants again  - and more - for 2011.

The names of all short-listed entries are posted on the website. The four prize-winning entries in 2010, for each of the poetry and short story competitions, will be shown in full until superseded by the results of next year's competition. 

 

 

2011 Competition

Preparations for the 2011 competition are now complete and we are very pleased to say that Peter Wyton (poetry) and Maria McCann (short stories) have accepted our invitation to act as judges. 

How to enter.  Leaflets are available through local libraries and a national writing magazine, and you can print an entry off this website.  Postal entry is available as usual, and you can now enter on line.  

Please note new format for announcing winners.  All entrants to the competitions are invited to attend on Sunday 16 October - Open Sunday.  There will be opportunities for you to read your own poem to an audience, to buy a booklet of the short-listed poems, and to vote for the one you like best.  Only at the end of the day will the judges announce the results - including the Festival's Favourite Poem - and award the prizes.

Please keep an eye on the website for developments and updates.

Prizes will be as last year.

  • 1st Prize, £500
  • 2nd Prize, £200
  • 3rd Prize, £100
  • Wyvern Prize, £100.  (Reserved for entrants who live within the postal codes beginning BA, BS, and TA.)
  • Fee per entry (i.e. single poem or short story) will be £5.  So if you submit, say, 3 short stories or poems, the total fee will be £15.
  • Closing date for receipt of entries will be Sunday 31 July 2011.
  •  

 

PUB: Call for submissions - Canon & Chorus: Black Poets in Prose

Canon & Chorus: Black Poets in Prose

Forthcoming from Willow Books in 2012—Canon & Chorus: Black Poets in Prose is a collection of essays by emerging and established poets, from the African Diaspora, focusing on what poets write, that which gives them the impetus to write and the larger job of being a poet. Essays might consider themes such as the poet’s purpose in the world philosophically; his/her approach to language and how this approach
fits into the larger poetic landscape. An essay may explore the spiritual aspects of form, or consider written or unwritten “texts” that provide a metaphor for poets of all walks of life. We are not looking for literary criticism, research papers or dissertations. Limit essays to 5000 words. Work not previously published encouraged. Format essay and bio in Times New Roman, 12 point in Word (single-spacing after punctuation and .3” tabs/indents) and send as an attachment to: Niki Herd at <canonandchorus (at)aol.com> (replace (at) with @ in sending e-mail).

Deadline: August 15, 2011

About the Editor:

Niki Herd grew up in Cleveland and earned degrees in Creative Writing from the University of Arizona and Antioch in Los Angeles. Nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize, she is the recipient of fellowships from Cave Canem and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her work has been supported by the Astraea Foundation and the Arizona Commission on the Arts, and has appeared in several journals and anthologies. Her debut collection of poems, The Language of Shedding Skin, received honorable mention for the Benjamin Saltman Award chosen by Nick Flynn. In that same year, it was also a finalist for the Main Street Rag Poetry Award and was published by the press.
 

PUB: Fiction Contest Rules - Memphis

RULES AND GUIDELINES FOR THE 2011 MEMPHIS MAGAZINE FICTION CONTEST

The winning story will earn a $1,000 grand prize and will be published in our annual Culture Issue, which runs in June. (The 2011 winner will appear in June 2012.) Two honorable mention awards of $500 each will be given if the quality of entries warrants. Below are contest rules:

1.    Authors must live within 150 miles of Memphis.
 

2.    Entries must be postmarked by August 1, 2011.

3.    You may submit more than one story but each entry must be accompanied by a $10 entry fee, with checks or money orders payable to Memphis magazine.

4.    Each story should be typed, double-spaced, with unstapled, numbered pages. Stories should be between 3,000 and 4,500 words long.

5.    Stories are not required to have a Memphis or Southern theme.

6.    With each story should be a cover letter that gives us your name, address, phone number, and the title of your story. Please do not  put your name anywhere on the manuscript itself.

 7.    Manuscripts may be previously published as long as previous publication was not in a national magazine with over 20,000 circulation or in a regional publication within Shelby County.

8.    Manuscripts should be sent to Fiction Contest, c/o Memphis magazine, P.O. Box 1738, Memphis, TN 38101. Please do not send  faxes or emails. Authors wishing their manuscripts returned must include a self-addressed stamped envelope with each entry.

Winners will be contacted in mid-to-late September.

This contest is cosponsored by Burke's Book Store and The Booksellers at Laurelwood.

If you have further questions, call Marilyn Sadler at 521-9000, ext. 451, or via email. We look forward to receiving your stories.

 

EVENT: Johannesburg, South Africa— Jozi Book Fair

Dear Readers, Writers and Publishers

 

The third edition of Jozi Book Fair will be held on 6, 7 & 8 August 2011. JBF 2011 promises to be one of the best and spectacular shows ever, with all its main projects including the Writers, Childrens, Readers and Small Publishers Projects playing an active and significant role through a variety of events and activities in the month leading to the annual event in August 2011 to make it a success.

 

The Small Publishers Project is planning to host a Roundtable focusing on Public Libraries Procurement processes on 01 March 2011. The Roundtable will also coincide with the official opening of registration for Jozi Book Fair 2011.

 

The Childrens Project will be opening a drop-in corner on 12 March 2011 which will be housed within the Setsi Sa Mosadi – Women's Advice Centre which will also be officially be opened on the same day at Khanya College's House of Movements.

 

The Writers Project will continue to run writing skills training workshops and encouraging emerging writers to organise themselves into writing circles, with the aim of creating and building a culture of writing throughout the country.

 

The Readers Project whose aim is to help create a culture of reading for leisure and pleasure will continue to assisting groups of organised readers in the form of Book Clubs, Study Groups and all forms of Reading Circles and enourage the formation of new ones where none exists.

 

It is the aim of Jozi Book Fair that the energy from all this four(4) projects feeds into the annual event in August 2011 and help bring the hundreds and thousands who participates in their activities and programmes to the fair to be held in Museum Africa.

 

 

The registration for Jozi Book Fair 2011 will open on the 1 March 2011.
 
Details will be available on the Jozi Book Fair website: www.jozibookfair.org.za, and in the press. We invite and welcome feedback that will contribute to improving the Jozi Book Fair, and to making Jozi Book Fair 2011 an even greater success.
 
Please send any comments to jozibookfair@khanyacollege.org.za, or post comments on our Facebook page.

Looking forward to seeing you at Jozi Book Fair 2011!

Regards,
Molefe Pilane
Co-ordinator, Jozi Book Fair

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ACTION + VIDEO: Alice Walker—Breaking the Blockade - Sailing To Gaza

“Color Purple” Author

Alice Walker Sailing To Gaza

In Protest Of Israeli Blockade

Wednesday Jun 22, 2011 – by Leslie Pitterson

In her 1983 novel, “The Color Purple,” Alice Walker took readers on a literary journey of a lifetime and now the Pulitzer Prize-winning author is making news setting out on a journey of her own.

Walker, along with a group of 34 other Americans, is planning to sail to Gaza despite the Israeli blockade surrounding the Palestinian territory. The group will be sailing in a boat named “The Audacity of Hope.” Clearly lifted from the title of the book by President Obama, the group hopes to make a political statement. Many within the group heading to Gaza have likened their journey to that of the 1950s Freedom Riders, whose bus rides to the southern parts of the United States to challenge segregation.

In a letter to CNN International today, the 67-year-old Walker explained why she is choosing to sailing to Gaza as part of the flotilla. She writes:

Our boat, The Audacity of Hope, will be carrying letters to the people of Gaza. Letters expressing solidarity and love. That is all its cargo will consist of. If the Israeli military attacks us, it will be as if they attacked the mailman. This should go down hilariously in the annals of history.

And what of the children of Palestine, who were ignored in our President’s latest speech on Israel and Palestine, and whose impoverished, terrorized, segregated existence was mocked by the standing ovations recently given in the U.S. Congress to the prime minister of Israel?

As adults, we must affirm, constantly, that the Arab child, the Muslim child, the Palestinian child, the African child, the Jewish child, the Christian child, the American child, the Chinese child, the Israeli child, the Native American child, etc., is equal to all others on the planet. We must do everything in our power to cease the behavior that makes children everywhere feel afraid.

It is justice and respect that I want the world to dust off and put – without delay, and with tenderness – back on the head of the Palestinian child. It will be imperfect justice and respect because the injustice and disrespect have been so severe. But I believe we are right to try.

That is why I sail.

Walker and the group face a dangerous situation entering the diplomatically tense waters surrounding Gaza. A year ago, nine people were killed in a Turkish boat after Israeli commandos raided their ship in international waters of the Gaza coast. Israel first issued the blockade on the Palestinian territory after Hamas took control of it in 2007.

With Egypt’s help, Israel has maintained the blockade; only loosening the land blockade after international criticism ensued following the incident last spring. Last week, Israel agreed to allow the construction of 1200 new homes and 18 school in the territory.  Still many in Gaza remain without access to critical resources and one the economic consequences is that nearly half of the population there is unemployed.

Speaking to The New York Times, Leslie Cagan, the group’s leader was critical of the United States’ inaction on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza:

“We’re sending a message to our own government that we think it could play a much more positive role in not only ending the siege of Gaza, but also ending the whole occupation” of Palestinian land, she said. “The phrase does capture what we believe, which is that it is possible to make change in a positive way, and that’s a very hopeful stance.”

Source

News of the flotilla was first reported in the Times on June 1st when organizers were still readying the details of the trip. While they spoke to the paper about their voyage, organizers refused to identify the port they would be embarking from only disclosing that passengers from Span, Canada, Ireland and Switzerland would be traveling with the group as well.

The international flotilla will be carrying 1,000 passengers in 10 boats in all when it approaches the Gaza’s shores.

 

__________________________

 

Alice Walker:

Why I'm sailing to Gaza

By Alice Walker, Special to CNN
June 21, 2011 -- Updated 1324 GMT (2124 HKT)
tzleft.alice.walker.jpg
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
  • Our boat will be carrying letters of solidarity to the people of Gaza
  • I am indebted to Jewish civil rights activists who came to the side of black people in the South in our time of need
  • I see children, all children, as humanity's most precious resource
  • If Israel attacks us, what is to be done?

 

 

Editor's note: Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker will join an international flotilla of boats sailing to Gaza to challenge Israel's blockade of the territory. Here, Walker, best known for her 1983 novel "The Color Purple," explains why she will be taking part.

Why am I going on the Freedom Flotilla II to Gaza? I ask myself this, even though the answer is: What else would I do? I am in my sixty-seventh year, having lived already a long and fruitful life, one with which I am content.

It seems to me that during this period of eldering it is good to reap the harvest of one's understanding of what is important, and to share this, especially with the young. How are they to learn, otherwise?

Our boat, The Audacity of Hope, will be carrying letters to the people of Gaza. Letters expressing solidarity and love. That is all its cargo will consist of. If the Israeli military attacks us, it will be as if they attacked the mailman. This should go down hilariously in the annals of history. But if they insist on attacking us, wounding us, even murdering us, as they did some of the activists in the last flotilla, Freedom Flotilla I, what is to be done?

There is a scene in the movie "Gandhi" that is very moving to me: it is when the unarmed Indian protesters line up to confront the armed forces of the British Empire. The soldiers beat them unmercifully, but the Indians, their broken and dead lifted tenderly out of the fray, keep coming.

Our boat will be carrying letters to the people of Gaza. 
--Alice Walker

Alongside this image of brave followers of Gandhi there is for me an awareness of paying off a debt to the Jewish civil rights activists who faced death to come to the side of black people in the South in our time of need. I am especially indebted to Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman who heard our calls for help - our government then as now glacially slow in providing protection to non-violent protestors-and came to stand with us.

They got as far as the truncheons and bullets of a few "good ol' boys'" of Neshoba County, Mississippi and were beaten and shot to death along with James Cheney, a young black man of formidable courage who died with them. So, even though our boat will be called The Audacity of Hope, it will fly the Goodman, Cheney, Schwerner flag in my own heart.

And what of the children of Palestine, who were ignored in our President's latest speech on Israel and Palestine, and whose impoverished, terrorized, segregated existence was mocked by the standing ovations recently given in the U.S. Congress to the prime minister of Israel?

I see children, all children, as humanity's most precious resource, because it will be to them that the care of the planet will always be left. One child must never be set above another, even in casual conversation, not to mention in speeches that circle the globe.

One child must never be set above another, even in casual conversation, not to mention in speeches that circle the globe.
--Alice Walker

As adults, we must affirm, constantly, that the Arab child, the Muslim child, the Palestinian child, the African child, the Jewish child, the Christian child, the American child, the Chinese child, the Israeli child, the Native American child, etc., is equal to all others on the planet. We must do everything in our power to cease the behavior that makes children everywhere feel afraid.

I once asked my best friend and husband during the era of segregation, who was as staunch a defender of black people's human rights as anyone I'd ever met: how did you find your way to us, to black people, who so needed you? What force shaped your response to the great injustice facing people of color of that time?

I thought he might say the speeches, the marches, the example of Martin Luther King, Jr. or of others in the Movement who exhibited impactful courage and grace. But no. Thinking back, he recounted an episode from his childhood that had led him, inevitably, to our struggle.

He was a little boy on his way home from Yeshiva, the Jewish school he attended after regular school let out. His mother, a bookkeeper, was still at work; he was alone. He was frequently harassed by older boys from regular school, and one day two of these boys snatched his yarmulke (skull cap), and, taunting him, ran off with it, eventually throwing it over a fence.

Two black boys appeared, saw his tears, assessed the situation, and took off after the boys who had taken his yarmulke. Chasing the boys down and catching them, they made them climb the fence, retrieve and dust off the yarmulke, and place it respectfully back on his head.

It is justice and respect that I want the world to dust off and put - without delay, and with tenderness - back on the head of the Palestinian child. It will be imperfect justice and respect because the injustice and disrespect have been so severe. But I believe we are right to try.

That is why I sail.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Alice Walker. A longer version of this article will appear on Alice Walker's blog.

>via: http://edition.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/06/21/alice.walker.gaza/index.html?hpt=hp_c2

 

 

 

 

 

PHOTO ESSAY: World Refugee Day: One Refugee – Grace Geue > Scarlett Lion

Jun 20
2011
10:51 AM

2011 WRDay poster vertical C2 ENG World Refugee Day: One Refugee   Grace Geue

We are defined by our choices. As a photographer, every choice I make documents someone else’s choices.

No one at the Bahn Refugee Camp had been lead there by easy choices. Post-election violence in Ivory Coast caused over 100,000 people to flee their homes to neighboring Liberia. And in documenting that reality, I too had choices to make. The day the camp opened in February, I woke at 5 am and drove from a guest house in Saniquelle to a border town called Kissiplay. A couple of hundred refugees who had been relying on host villages for support were being transported to Bahn. The morning was subdued . People accepted their fate as they left the border, where they could easily head home should things get better. They headed 50 kilometers away to Bahn. This meant accepting that things were probably not going to get better soon.

20110218unhcr 0132 2 World Refugee Day: One Refugee   Grace Geue

20110218unhcr 0246 World Refugee Day: One Refugee   Grace Geue

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After hours in trucks on dusty roads, we arrived at Bahn. Everyone was exhausted, myself included. The mayor of Bahn town came out to greet the refugees. Staff from UNHCR and other orgs blared out instructions on megaphones as people lined up to be registered and given ID cards.

20110218unhcr 0794 World Refugee Day: One Refugee   Grace Geue

I saw a moment: a young girl, covered in dust from the journey, crying. As a photographer, I knew it was a moment that would resonate visually. But I couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable, making this young girl’s moment a public document.

I took the photo. I justified it to myself many ways: that’s what I was there to do; I would talk with her and her family later and hear their story; that this moment was an important record of a difficult day and of choices she and her family were forced to make.

20110218unhcr 0827 World Refugee Day: One Refugee   Grace Geue

I took a couple of frames and stepped back.

Later, I made sure to get to know her and her family. The young girl is named Grace Geue. When her mother, Elise, started crying, Grace did do. And then, Elise told me later, Grace crying made Elise cry more. Elise cried when she thought of all the relatives she had left behind in Ivory Coast, of the school where her husband Philipe was a teacher, of their new life at the camp, and because she made her daughter cry.

20110218unhcr 0966 World Refugee Day: One Refugee   Grace Geue

Now that the political situation in Ivory Coast has stabilized somewhat, I wonder about Elise, Grace and Philipe. Are they still at Bahn? Have they began the long walk home?

20110220unhcr 1461 World Refugee Day: One Refugee   Grace Geue

I don’t regret taking the photo of Grace crying. It wasn’t an easy decision, and I hope it was the right one. Now Grace is part of UNHCR’s World Refugee Day campaign and her image is being used as an advocacy tool.

I hope that Grace thinks I made the right decision too.

20100322unhcr 0728edA World Refugee Day: One Refugee   Grace Geue

Grace with the High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres and head of UNMIL Ellen Margrethe Løj, March 2011. No tears.