Author Ernest Gaines comes home to where his ancestors were enslaved

By Wayne Drash, CNN

November 9, 2010 2:59 p.m. EST

Author honors his early heroes

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Author Ernest Gaines dedicates his time to Louisiana cemetery where loved ones are buried
• "We're honoring those people who never had anything," Gaines says
• University of Louisiana at Lafayette recently dedicated the Ernest J. Gaines Center

Oscar, Louisiana (CNN) -- A thick gray smoke shrouds the road. The asphalt turns into gravel, and rocks kick up beneath the car. Sugar cane fields stretch to the horizon.

The fields are being harvested and burned. A crumbled shack from the "quarters," once home to slaves, then sharecroppers, still stands amid overgrown trees and weeds.

This is home to some of the great characters of American literature, from books such as "The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman" and "A Gathering of Old Men." To author Ernest Gaines, it's his home and the home of "my early heroes" -- the aunt who raised him, his brothers, his neighbors, his friends.

"Without them, I would have nothing to write about," Gaines says. "This is my source of writing."

Sacred ground lies in the middle of the cane fields, a tranquil cemetery where five generations have been buried. About 80 vaults sit amid lush green grass. More people are buried here, in unmarked graves. Two giant pecan trees shade the grave sites. A third snapped in half during Hurricane Gustav; its trunk juts into the sky.

Gallery: Author Gaines at home with past

"This is the main job of my life now," says Gaines, 77. "I'm not writing too much any more, but this is my deepest concern now -- that I ensure the graves in the cemetery. To me, we're honoring those people who never had anything but this ... plot of land."

About 50 family members, friends and former students gather in Mount Zion River Lake Cemetery. Some descendants of the plantation are also on hand. They've come for the 13th annual cemetery beautification, held every October on the Saturday before All Saints' Day.

See photos of Gaines at home with the past

Flowers are planted, leaves raked. Some scrape vaults and give them a fresh coat of white paint. Prayers are uttered aloud and silently. One man, placing flowers on the graves of his mother, grandmother, grandfather and best friend, tells them, "''Preciate it."

Gaines and his wife, Dianne Saulney Gaines, saved the cemetery in the early 1990s. They formed a nonprofit organization, and 16 heirs of the plantation transferred ownership.

Back then, weeds as tall as the sugar cane covered the cemetery. Today it breathes of life, of pride, of dignity.

"I was afraid that eventually, if we didn't look after this place, they were going to plow it under," Ernest Gaines says.

When he's alone in the cemetery, he says, he feels close to the dead.

"I still remember the way they sang in the church," he says.

The author of "A Lesson Before Dying" plans to be buried here with his wife -- to be near those he loved most.

"I hope this place will be here forever," he says. "This is my prayer. This is my hope."

Chipping away at the 'myth'

Gaines sits in the library in his home, less than a mile from the cemetery. He picked cotton on the very spot where his home now stands when he was 8 years old.

A portrait of Russian poet Alexander Pushkin stares down from his library wall. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. looks on, too.

Gaines reads a passage from "A Lesson Before Dying." His deep, melodic voice bounces off the books on the shelves behind him.

I felt that if I wrote something that was good and wrote it well, it would outlive the 'Bull' Connors.
--Author Ernest Gaines

"Do you know what a myth is, Jefferson?" Gaines reads. "A myth is an old lie that people believe in. White people believe that they're better than anyone else on earth -- and that's a myth. The last thing they ever want is to see a black man stand, and think, and show that common humanity that is in us all. It would destroy their myth. They would no longer have justification for having made us slaves and keeping us in the condition we are in. ..."

The author smiles. He is descended from the slaves who worked this land. Yet he's seen more success than the heirs of the plantation.

"Chip, chip, chip," he says. He's constantly chipped away.

"What I was trying to do was show that Kilroy was here," Gaines says, pointing toward the floor. "That I was here. My folks were here. My ancestors were here. This is how I tried to chip away at that myth -- by writing and writing well."

He's written more books than were in his home growing up. They had only a Bible and an almanac.

"I remember during the demonstrations here in the South in the '60s, how when 'Bull' Connor and his dogs and his hose pipes and his brutal deputies would go out and bash the heads -- I would promise myself: Today I must write a paragraph or a page better than I did yesterday. I must do it better because I felt that if I wrote something that was good and wrote it well, it would outlive the 'Bull' Connors," he says, referring to the infamous Birmingham, Alabama, official.

Gaines' life has come full circle. It is marked by two pivotal moves -- his escape from the South in 1948, and his return in January 1963, to complete his first major work.

This home still stands on the plantation. As a young boy, Ernest Gaines lived in a home similar to this with his aunt.

His mother and stepfather had moved from Louisiana during World War II and settled in Vallejo, California. They left the young Gaines and his siblings to be raised by his aunt, Augusteen Jefferson, who was paralyzed from the waist down.

"Auntie," he calls her still.

"She used to crawl across the porch, down the steps and crawl over into the garden to work, because she had to put her hand in the Earth," he says. "Yet I never heard her complain a day. And I felt if she can do it, then there's no reason in the world why I should complain about anything."

Adds Rudolph P. Byrd, Gaines' biographer and a professor at Emory University: "She is a person who could not walk, but who taught him how to stand. And I think that says it all."

When Gaines left Louisiana to join his mother in Vallejo in 1948, he was 15. A pocket handkerchief and battered suitcase in hand, Gaines flagged down a Trailways bus to New Orleans, then caught a train to California. Both were segregated. "I was a country boy, never been anywhere."

He'd grown up impoverished -- "although I didn't know it" -- and lived in the old slave quarters. He left behind brothers, sisters, friends and his beloved aunt, to whom he's dedicated much of his work.

In California, unlike home, blacks were allowed in the public library. Gaines buried himself in books. "I read and read and read."

He quickly learned the library's collection had no books by black authors, and that stoked his interest in writing. The Louisiana he knew and the people he loved weren't represented.

"I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to say something about home."

His mother rented a typewriter and, at 16, Gaines wrote his first novel, "A Little Stream."

"He put it in a box and sent it off to a publisher in New York," says Byrd, the biographer. "The publisher responded and said, 'Thanks, but no thanks.' He went out and burned the manuscript. But he kept the story in his head."

By the early 1960s, he'd completed college, served two years in the Army and had won a writing fellowship at Stanford University. His contemporaries included the farmer, poet and novelist Wendell Berry and Ken Kesey, best known for "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."

Many friends were traveling the world, trying to become "great artists." Gaines was headed to Mexico in the summer of 1962 when fate intervened. He told his friends he needed to stay in the States a bit longer, to write.

I had to see and feel and be with the thing that I wanted to write about.
--Ernest Gaines

That fall, while in California, he watched James Meredith become the first African-American to enroll at the University of Mississippi, to the ire of whites, "not knowing whether he would be killed or not."

"I realized then with all the trouble he had to put up with," Gaines says, "I must go to Louisiana if I'm going to write my novel. I had to see and feel and be with the thing that I wanted to write about."

He arrived in Baton Rouge on January 5, 1963. He finished within six months. That novel was a revised version of the book he had burned as a teen, renamed "Catherine Carmier."

One book begat another, which begat another -- six novels, a collection of short stories, a children's book and a collection of lectures.

The Ernest J. Gaines Center at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, dedicated on October 31, will house his permanent collection and foster research and scholarship opportunities in his honor.

"Mr. Gaines has always felt that his fiction as art would be a means to bring about, not only an understanding of the human condition, but it would be a way of facilitating a very important dialogue between blacks and whites of the South," Byrd says.

Critics have accused Gaines of not being "militant enough" in his writing. He says he was "screaming inside," letting his words on paper speak for him in effecting change.

'Home is here'

The acclaimed author could live anywhere in the world. Six years ago, he and his wife moved into their current home, on six acres of the old plantation.

Gaines has moved the church where he was schooled to his property. His grandfather helped build it.

"San Francisco and Vallejo was never home. It was a place to be educated and to spend the rest of my life, but it wasn't home. Home is here," he says.

Out back is the church where Gaines attended services and was schooled for six years. Black children could only attend for five months out of the year, because of the planting and harvesting seasons. There were no desks, just pews. "Sometimes, you'd sit on your knees and use the bench as a desk."

His grandfather helped build the church, and Gaines and his wife moved it from near the slaves' quarters.

The author walks slowly, with the aid of a walker because of a fall down a flight of stairs in 1983. His face lights up inside the church. "I hear the voices and the songs and the stories of the old people," he says.

On the walls are photographs of the plantation taken in 1968. Some are of the people immortalized in his books. And some now lie in the cemetery, surrounded by sugar cane.

Gaines and his wife will keep cleaning it, and hope the next generations will do the same.

 

RELATED TOPICS

• African-American Issues
• Books and Literature
• Racial Issues
• Civil Rights
• Louisiana

"We have dignity," Dianne Gaines says, "because of the independence our families taught us in spite of poverty. ... We had the things that mattered. We had love. We had strong families, and we had families around us that embraced us. And from that, we had dignity."

Gaines was too poor to make the trip to attend his aunt's funeral in 1953. He's not sure exactly where she is buried but says he believes it's somewhere near the spot he and his wife have chosen for themselves.

Why would someone return to the place where his ancestors were enslaved?

It's a question Gaines is often asked, and he has a ready answer.

"That didn't draw me back here," he says. "I came back here because this is where I was born and raised. And Auntie was here. Auntie was here! ... When I die, I want to be somewhere near where she was."

CNN's Robert Johnson and Ken Tillis contributed to this report.

The Next Big Story
Click to order via Amazon

by Soledad O’Brien

with Rose Marie Arce

Hardcover: 336 pages
Publisher: Celebra Hardcover (November 2, 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0451231376
ISBN-13: 978-0451231376
Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.4 inches

“I began life as the child of a mixed-race marriage growing up in a white suburb, treated sometimes as a creature of bad circumstance… Bad things happen until good people get in the way.

I learned this life lesson growing up in Smithtown, Long Island, and I see it almost everywhere I go in pursuit of the next big story… My immigrant parents made sure I had the potential to capture my American dream anyway.

I was handed a life of possibilities. That experience left me with the urge to chart how those around us get their chance at life and whether they go on to share their good fortune with others when the time comes.””
-- Excerpted from the Introduction (pg. 4)

Book Review by Kam Williams

Soledad O‘Brien is the daughter of immigrants, one from Australia, the other from Cuba, who met in this country while pursuing the proverbial American Dream. However because one was white, and the other was black, they had to flee the South after falling in love, since interracial marriage was still against the law down there.

So, the couple moved to New York where they integrated a lily-white community on the North Shore of Long Island. There, they settled down to raise pigs, geese, and a half-dozen kids in a town marked by bigotry and intolerance. Nonetheless, the tight-knit O‘Brien siblings managed to flourish academically, and all eventually attended Harvard University before going on to meet with phenomenal success in each of their chosen professions.

In The Next Big Story, Soledad revisits her challenging formative years in order to illustrate how overcoming childhood adversity perhaps served to shape not only her personality but her compassionate approach to her career as a television journalist at CNN. Whether it was being asked “Are you black?” by a portrait photographer at the age of 11, being teased “If you’re a [N-word] why don’t you have big lips?” by an 8th grader in the hallway at school, or having to hear “Why do I have to sit next to the black girl?” coming from the sister of a friend, Soledad suffered a host of indignities on the path to the peak of her profession.

Fortunately, once in a position to make a difference covering disasters like the Great Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina or the Haitian Earthquake, this intrepid reporter has kept the pedal to the medal in an indefatigable quest to shed light on the plight of the least of her brethren. As for her private life, we learn that this freckle-faced, doting mother of four was an ugly duckling who never dated in high school before blossoming in Boston where she met her husband, Brad.

A moving memoir which does justice to the effervescent spirit and unbridled intellectual curiosity of a truly empathetic soul my faithful readers already know just might be the brightest person I’ve had the privilege of interviewing.

Related Links

Soledad’s Follow-Up Report about the Haitian Relief Effort
http://aalbc.com/reviews/soledad_obrien_2010.html

Soledad’s Eyewitness Report on the Haitian Relief Effort
http://aalbc.com/reviews/soledad_obrien_haiti.html

Soledad O'Brien - The "CNN Presents: Black in America 2" Interview
http://aalbc.com/reviews/soledad_obrien.htm

Over-Hyped CNN Special Fails to Measure-Up to the Buzz
http://reviews.aalbc.com/black_in_america.htm

 

 

 

 

 

 

“He Sleeps Around But He Gives Me A Lot”

While reading Ayana Byrd’s essay “Claiming Jezebel: Back Female Subjectivity and Sexual Expression in Hip Hop,” while preparing for my lecture on women’s bodies and rap videos I came across an interesting quote by and about Foxy Brown  on the “Ain’t No Nigga” era. Byrd writes quoting Foxy,

“At sixteen I was just so happy to have a nice car and a nice home that I didn’t complain about my image,” Foxy said in Essence Magazine. “I had all the influences around me, and I wasn’t always strong enough to come back like no, I don’t want to do that.”

I was tripping off the fact that she was 17 when this joint dropped, and we didn’t blink.

Honestly though, it doesn’t matter if she was 17 or 35, because you know what blood, many of us subscribe to this policy.

“He sleeps around but he gives me a lot” is problematic for two reasons.

First it reduces human relationships to financial transactions.

Second, if he sleeps around and he gives us a lot, then what does that mean to our HIV and various other STD statuses? What if you getting “a lot” means not wearing a condom? Black peoples STD’s statuses are high. This of course has to do with both our choices and access to health care. According to the CDC,

Racial disparities in HIV diagnoses are particularly severe among young people. Overall, blacks made up half (51%) of all new HIV diagnoses between 2001 and 2005. But among youth aged 13 –24, blacks accounted for 61 percent of diagnoses.

Genital ulcers (e.g., syphilis syphilis, , herpes herpes, or , chancroid chancroid) ) result in breaks in the genital tract lining or skin which create a portal of entry for HIV.

Individuals who are infected with STDs are at least two to five times two times more likely than uninfected more individuals to acquire HIV.

On Black women and sexual mixing patterns.

You and I both no that I don’t do puritanical. A ‘tall. There is enough of that in the world all ready. See Tyler Perry. However these questions needs to be asked and the statistics need to be reflected on.

I write this because I am concerned about how we make choices about our bodies and pleasure.

*For Colored Girls Spoiler alert ahead.*

There is a scene in For Colored Girls where Jo (Janet Jackson) learns that she has HIV because her husband, who apparently is a Black man who has sex with men, but doesn’t call himself gay.

Jo knew/suspected, yet chose to stay. In many ways she turned herself into an object.

This gay = AID’s is the bane of my existance because it normalizes the idea that Black women get HIV because of Black men who have sex with men who don’t share this information with us.

Raw dog feels good. Pleasure feels good. I wager that many of us take part in high risk sexual activities, ie having consistent or even sporadic sex with someone without consistently wearing protection and this is how many of us contract STD’s.

This summer Latoya was telling me of a researcher (I forget her name, but will add when I find out) who says that we participate in concurrent sexual networks. I like that idea. Because it shows how people are related.

Raw Dog has consequences. We ain’t gotta lie. I know sexuality is hella taboo, for Black women, but we grown and the girls and boys coming up after us are watching how we handle everything.

Our lives lightweight are depending on it.

Does it matter that Foxy was 17?

Blaming Gay men or Men who have sex with me, because some of us like and engage in raw dog?

Did you know the stats were that high for Black youth?

Alienated affection: Israel relationship is costing the U.S. its alliance with Turkey

by Gil Maguire on November 7, 2010 · 73 comments

Israel and its U.S. lobby’s insistence on unquestioning U.S. support for Israel in its brutal and illegal conduct toward Palestinian and Turkish civilians has cost the U.S. a major, strategic ally, Turkey, and has severely undermined U.S. foreign policy goals, strategy, and power in the Middle East .

President George W. Bush has been accused of having the most disastrous foreign policy in U.S. history. Unfortunately, President Obama’s apparent inability to stand up to Israel’s U.S. lobby may have created a foreign policy catastrophe that exceeds even that of his hapless predecessor by costing the U.S. the loss of Turkey as our main strategic ally in the region, and by drastically reducing U.S. influence and power in the Middle East.

If this sounds implausible, consider the following: Turkey just recently concluded a public but covert military air combat training exercise with the Chinese in Turkey in which the Chinese flew their jet fighter aircraft from China to Turkey, refueling in Iran. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao just made a state visit to Turkey after which both countries concluded a strategic cooperation agreement. China will build a 4500-kilometer railroad to Turkey, along with two high-speed rail lines, plus oil pipeline systems from Iran to Turkish ports. China has agreed to sell military equipment to Turkey, and is also developing a surface-to-surface rocket-launching system together with Turkey. Turkey’s foreign minister is visited China this week, working out details of its new strategic relationship. Turkey has also strengthened its ties with Russia, Iraq, Syria and Iran, and refused to support the most recent UN resolution imposing sanctions on Iran.

Turkey has ceased all cooperation with its former close ally, Israel, including closing its airspace to Israeli planes, ceasing all cooperative military exercises, ending intelligence sharing with Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, and has changed Israel’s status from a close ally to a strategic threat. Turkey has strongly condemned Israel for its brutal conduct against Palestinian and Turkish civilians in Israel ’s December 2008 Gaza invasion, and the recent Gaza aid flotilla incident, accusing Israel of committing state terrorism. Turkey has also accused the U.S., formerly its strongest ally, of supporting an international terrorist (Israel) for failing to condemn Israel’s atrocities, and for its monetary, military, and diplomatic support of Israel’s oppression of Palestinians and illegal settlement activity in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. 

In less than two years, Turkey has changed from being a strong U.S. ally and NATO member to a country pursuing an independent path toward strategic relationships with countries that are either adversaries or potential adversaries of the U.S. How did we get to this point?

 

Turkey’s Importance as a Major U.S. Strategic Ally 

Turkey , a nation of 73 million Muslims, has been a major strategic ally of the U.S. for some six decades since the beginnings of the Cold War, providing the U.S. with military bases and a forward bulwark against Soviet expansionism into the Middle-East and the Mediterranean . Turkey fought valiantly alongside the U.S. in the Korean War, and risked nuclear annihilation during the Cuban Missile Crisis by allowing the U.S. to station nuclear-tipped Jupiter missiles in Turkey , on the Soviet Union ’s doorstep.

Turkey has the second largest military force in NATO and occupies one of the most vital geographic areas in the world, bordering the Mediterranean, Greece, Bulgaria, the Black Sea, Russia, Georgia, Armenia, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. It has the second fastest growing economy in the world, behind only China . Most important, Turkey is a stable, moderate, secular, Muslim democracy and provides a model template for success for the many Muslim nations in the Middle East and South Asia that suffer from instability, autocratic rule, religious extremism, and poverty. 

Turkey also provides the U.S. with an invaluable entrée into the Muslim world and a proven ability to conduct effective diplomacy and mediation among Muslim nations such as Iraq, Syria, and Iran. Turkey permits the U.S. to use a critical military air base and transportation hub at Incirlik, in southeastern Turkey While strong militarily, Turkey has been successfully moving to reduce tensions with all of its neighbors, including traditional rivals such as Greece, Armenia, Syria, and Iraq, and, in addition, has also moved to defuse the conflicts with its minority Kurdish population. It has also taken steps, in part with Brazil , to reduce the conflict between Iran and the West. In short, Turkey , under its strong civilian leadership, has become a major strategic player in the world economically, politically, and diplomatically, and a vital player and asset for the U.S. and its European allies in the Muslim world and in the Middle East and South Asia.

It is difficult to imagine an ally of greater strategic importance to the U.S. in the Middle East than Turkey . Its loss is a major blow to U.S. vital national security interests. 

The Gaza Disasters and the Loss of Turkey

In December of 2008, the U.S. and Turkey remained strong, close NATO allies. Israel and Turkey also had a strong strategic alliance in which they cooperated on intelligence matters, and conducted joint military training exercises; Israel had the use of Turkish airspace for training and operational use; Turkey purchased weapons systems from Israel ; trade and tourism between the two countries was booming. Turkey was also mediating the disputes between Syria and Israel in the hope of resolving their differences and achieving a permanent peace treaty for the two countries.

Israel’s brutal bombing and shelling of civilian noncombatants in its invasion of Gaza in December 2008, and in its violent capture of a Gaza aid ship in May of 2010, in which nine Turkish citizens were killed, at least five execution-style, by Israeli commandos, deeply angered the Turks. These events, coupled with subsequent UN investigative reports that confirmed Israeli atrocities against civilians and other war crimes in both incidents, ultimately caused Turkey to end its close strategic alliance with Israel . The U.S.’ unquestioning support of Israel in both incidents, even after both later UN investigative reports confirmed Israeli atrocities toward civilians, caused Turkey to be highly critical of the U.S., and ultimately caused it to reduce its strategic alliance with the U.S. and seek, or at least consider, new strategic relationships and agreements with potential U.S. adversaries such as Russia, Iran, and, of greatest and most recent concern, China. 

The strength and effectiveness of Israel ’s U.S. lobby in influencing U.S. foreign policy in matters related to Israel was demonstrated by Congress and the Obama administration’s unqualified support of Israel ’s excessively brutal actions toward civilians in its Gaza invasion and capture of the Gaza aid flotilla in the face of worldwide approbation of Israel . An unfortunate and apparently unforeseen byproduct of the lobby’s actions was the loss to both the U.S. and Israel of the support of a critical major strategic ally, Turkey.

The loss of Turkey as a major U.S. ally will change the balance of power in the Middle East and do serious harm to U.S. vital national security interests in that region, and to Israel ’s as well. It is inconceivable that the U.S. would allow a strategic relationship with an ally as vitally important as Turkey to be undermined by supporting brutal and unlawful conduct on the part of a far less strategically important ally, Israel . Yet, because of the overwhelming strength and influence of Israel ’s U.S. lobby on the Obama administration and Congress, that is precisely what has occurred.

The Israel Lobby’s Role in the Loss of Turkey as a Key U.S. Ally

The Israel Lobby, headed by the American-Israeli Political Action Committee, or AIPAC, acts in a variety of ways to protect and promote Israeli interests in this country. Any Israeli action, such as the Gaza invasion or the capture of the Gaza aid flotilla, is immediately condoned and praised, discussion and debate are stifled, and dissent is punished. While it is beyond the scope of this article to address the lobby’s strategy and methods in any detail, these are well-known and well-documented. After the Gaza incidents, letters or resolutions supporting Israel ’s actions were immediately forthcoming from either the U.S. Senate or the House, or both, and were typically signed or approved by astonishingly overwhelming margins, typically 75 to 90 percent.

There is never any debate in Congress or investigations by congressional committees into Israel ’s actions and whether or not they might have a negative effect on U.S. foreign policy interests. Any member of Congress that publicly questions, let alone disapproves, any action taken by Israel , quickly suffers the consequences. For instance, 54 members of Congress, many of whom were running for reelection, were attacked for supposedly being “anti-Israel” because they signed a letter that labeled Israel ’s invasion of Gaza as “de facto collective punishment of the Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip” and pressed for “immediate relief for the citizens of Gaza .” Yet, the charge of collective punishment, a war crime, was later well documented and confirmed by a balanced and competent United Nations investigating committee.

The problem isn’t whether a member of Congress can be criticized for a statement made or action taken, but whether healthy debate about U.S. foreign policy interests is being stifled by the aggressive actions of a lobby that acts in the interest of a foreign government, namely Israel . When Turkey , a major U.S. ally, criticized Israel ’s brutality toward civilians in both the Gaza invasion and the Gaza aid flotilla capture, Congress should have at least debated the issue, particularly since there was widespread televised evidence of the conduct and worldwide universal criticism of Israel ’s actions during and after both events. Instead, Congress showed unquestioning support for Israel , without investigating or even inquiring about the facts related to either incident. 

Later, when two separate UN investigations of these incidents developed overwhelming evidence of Israeli war crimes and atrocities toward civilian noncombatants, Congress again immediately sided with Israel and conducted no inquiry or investigation into the incidents, or the allegations and evidence provided in the UN investigations. The Obama administration also sided with and provided unquestioning support for Israel , describing the investigations as biased. The fact that a major strategic ally and fellow NATO member had suffered the death of nine of its citizens in the Gaza aid flotilla incident, and that the UN investigation described at least six of the deaths as illegal summary executions seemed an unimportant detail to the Obama administration.

The key, critical question is whether Israel ’s U.S. lobby’s actions forcing congressional and executive branch approval and support for Israel ’s brutal and illegal treatment of civilian noncombatants caused Turkey to change its policies toward the U.S. , reduce its commitment to its alliance with the U.S. , and take steps contrary to the vital national security interests of the U.S. The answer, unfortunately, is yes. The public statements of Turkish leaders since these incidents, strongly criticizing the U.S. failure to criticize Israel and support Turkey and the rest of the world in sanctioning Israel, plus the strong actions taken by Turkey that negatively impact U.S. interests in that region, after the U.S.’ failure to provide that support, demonstrates that causal link. Turkey ’s frustrations and disillusionment with U.S. uncritical support for Israel along with its failure to move aggressively toward achieving a two-state solution, had reached a breaking point.

While it would be easy to adopt the Israel lobby’s view that Turkey ’s actions are those of an increasingly radical and Islamic regime, there is little evidence to support such a view. Turkey , in fact, has taken the moral high ground in criticizing Israel ’s brutal behavior toward Gazan and Palestinian noncombatants. Turkey had little to gain by entering this fray, and much to lose, both in its relationship with Israel and with its longtime ally the U.S. Nonetheless, it has taken a strong public position against both Israel’s actions and U.S. enablement and complicity in those actions, and it is clearly not about to back down.

The Consequences of Inaction / Unless the U.S. can reengage with Turkey , allow the UN to sanction Israel for its Gaza atrocities toward civilian noncombatants, and move to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a major, even cataclysmic shift in the balance of power in the Middle East could occur. Turkey , Syria , Iraq and Iran could assume control and assert power in that area in place of the U.S. ’ traditional “moderate” allies of Saudi Arabia and Egypt . Both China and Russia are interested in gaining economic and political influence in the northern Persian Gulf area and are lukewarm toward or unwilling to support strong sanctions against Iran. China , in particular, sees that area as the most important source of oil and natural gas in the world, and would be willing to pay almost any price to gain influence in that area and access to its oil.

For those who remain nostalgic about Israel , our supposed great friend, strong ally, and strategic partner in the Middle East, imagine the following scenario: China offers Turkey billions of dollars in development aid for oil and gas pipelines, ports, railways, and other infrastructure projects. In return it receives a long-term exclusive lease for Incirlik air base and a major naval base on Turkey ’s Mediterranean coast. Turkey then withdraws from NATO and improves its trade ties with Iran , Iraq , Syria and Russian and forms an alliance with these countries, and perhaps including Lebanon and even Jordan . Such an alliance would control much of the oil resources in the Persian Gulf . Russia and China would both benefit from this arrangement, China most of all by gaining access to Iranian and Iraqi oil and natural gas resources. China would also gain a significant strategic position in southern Europe, the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf with a major air base and naval base in Turkey . 

The U.S. and NATO would be suddenly faced with a major strategic competitor in what had been largely their own private Mediterranean lake. With the loss of its Incirlik air base, the U.S. would no longer have easy air access to its conflicts and interests in the Middle East and South Asia . European Union countries would be facing a potential loss of Persian Gulf oil and gas resources. Israel would be even more isolated strategically, now facing the might of Turkey against any incursion it might contemplate against Lebanon , Syria , or Iran . The U.S. would be in the unenviable position of having to defend Israel against not only Turkey but potentially China and Russia as well.

While the above scenario may not be imminent or even likely, the reality is that Turkey has become so disillusioned by the U.S.’ inability to fulfill its role as the dominant player in the Middle East that it has decided to forge its own path, independent of the U.S. and its NATO allies. Turkey clearly sees U.S. Middle East policy as feckless and dominated by Israel and its U.S. lobby, and unlikely to change. It no longer views the U.S. as a strong, reliable, trustworthy partner and ally, but as a weakened giant unable to control small allies like Israel even when its vital national security interests are under threat. That view of the U.S. , as a feeble, declining giant, unable or unwilling to defend its vital interests, may well increasingly be shared by many of our allies and potential adversaries. If so, that is a dangerous trend indeed, and one that we need to stop.

Clearly the U.S. desperately needs to reevaluate its foreign policy goals and relationships in the Middle East . Faced with the loss of a Turkey , a foreign policy disaster of epic proportions, it needs to do so immediately. President Obama should begin his post-election administration by conducting a major reevaluation of U.S. Middle East policy, beginning by appointing an independent, bi-partisan commission of distinguished elder statesmen and states women to review U.S. Middle East policy and the effect of Israel and its U.S. lobby on influencing that policy. Continuing down a byzantine path of a U.S. Middle East policy influenced or even directed by Israel and its U.S. lobby is a recipe for further foreign policy disasters and a cataclysmic decline in U.S. influence in the world. This is an outcome that even Israel and its lobby should fear.

This post is similar to a post by Gil Maguire at his IrishMoses blog.

Cassandra Wilson - Silver Pony (2010)

 

by Nick Deriso

Cassandra Wilson, who consistently defies convention as this restless chanteuse, doesn't disappoint with Silver Pony -- issued today on Blue Note as the long-awaited part-in studio, part-live followup to her celebrated Loverly.

She has the vocal phrasing, the dusky intellect, of Charlie Parker and the elastic intuition of Betty Carter. Yet, Wilson is no throwback. She writes her own music, and surrounds herself with top-shelf improvisers. Even when including songs from the canon -- here, that includes "Lover Come Back to Me," and "St. James Infirmary" -- Wilson has always approached them with a tinkerer's eye for disassembling and reanimating.

She's also taken chances on pop music, in the great tradition of Miles Davis, and uncovered unexpected revelations on "Blackbird," an acoustic Beatles song that takes flight on Silver Pony.

The album was borne out of time spent back home in the Deep South, shuttling back and forth between Wilson's birth city of Jackson, Miss., and a house in New Orleans as her mother fought through a final illness. Wilson then embarked on a 13-city European tour, from which several live cuts are included.

 

That adds an undercurrent of homecoming and of sadness, but doesn't keep Wilson and her intensely talented group of sidemen -- notably the rhythm section of drummer Herlin Riley and bassist Reginald Veal, who've worked with Wynton and Branford Marsalis -- from their appointed duties to swing, to sway, and to surprise.

Wilson makes a growling statement on the opener, a gritty take on "Lover Come Back to Me," signalling that this set will keep a firm grip on the dreams that survive our pain. They have some fun, too: Long-time guitarist Marvin Sewell takes an groovy, angular approach on "St. James Infirmary," reimaging the traditional tune as a riffy funk vehicle.

A portion of Silver Pony was also recorded at New Orleans' Piety Street studios, with producer John Fischbach (who previously worked on Loverly, the 2008 Grammy award-winning standards album). In these more intimate environs, Wilson's voice becomes quieter, darker still -- turning "If It's Magic," for instance, into a moving plea of quiet desperation. Yet, surrounded by that blue-black gloaming, her band doesn't recede so much as begin to more fully assert itself.

Big Easy piano prodigy Jonathan Batiste adds a fizzy, fusion-era Chick Corea-sounding electric piano signature on the completely improvised "A Night in Seville." Percussionist Lekan Babalola, another alum from Loverly, then moves inside and around imaginative torrents of sound by guest saxophonist Ravi Coltrane on "Beneath a Silver Moon" -- a new tune built up from Juan Tizol's "Caravan."

As has become her tradition over an eight-album stint at Blue Note, Wilson again includes a selection of deep-blues standards -- Charlie Patton's "Saddle Up My Pony," presented with a pleasant clip-clop shuffle in concert; and "Forty Days and Forty Nights," closely associated with Muddy Waters.

These songs tie her back to those Mississippi roots, to Highway 51 and cotton fields, to her earliest memories of her family and her childhood. But again, Wilson's not overly careful with them, pulling them inside out and stretching their boundaries -- as she had with dazzling earlier interpretations including Robert Johnson's "Come on In My Kitchen."

 

History of Football – Africa

Posted by Paul Boakye on Nov 4th, 2010 and filed under Football. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

Pele had said that an African country would win a World Cup by the turn of the 21st century. From colonial intervention, poverty and segregation, to independence and dictatorship, this programme measures Africa’s huge potential against its continued failure to succeed at an international level.

Through the eyes of its surviving members, this episode charts the spectacular rise, then fall of the 1974 Zaire World Cup Final team, and tells the story of Cameroon’s memorable 1990 World Cup campaign, when a thirty-eight year old became Africa’s first football superstar.

 

 

Interviews include Roger Milla, Abedi Pele, Thomas N’kono, Neil Tovey, Pierre Kalala and Issa Hayatou.

Segregation was obligatory in colonial times. It was separation. The blacks didn’t have citizen status, so they couldn’t play against teams made up of whites, who were French citizens. So the whites played amongst themselves, and the blacks said to themselves “We will also try.”

So they began their own teams. In Douala, the first indigenous team was Oryx-Douala, which was made up only of black men. In Yaoundé, the first team called the “Grand Superiors.”

The North African Cup was a competition which united all the clubs of North Africa. There was Algeria, Tunisia, Oran, Constantine and Morocco. This competition woke up the African players. Those were unforgettable matches.

The success of this championship and its popularity amongst the Sudanese encouraged the African Federation to organise a tournament on a biennial basis, to be played in a different country each time.

Snag Today Writing Contest

 

18 days ago 0 comments Categories: Writing Contest Tags: writing contest

 

Welcome to the Snag Today Writing Contest.  Any type of original short story, essay or other work of prose is eligible.  Prizes totalling $75 will be awarded including a top prize of $50.

 

Submission Period:  Entries accepted November 1, 2010-January 31, 2011.  (postmark dates). Early submission is encouraged.

 

What to Submit: Short stories, essays, or other works of prose, up to 4,000 words each. There are no restrictions on style or theme. Each entry should be your own original work. You may submit the same work simultaneously to this contest and to others, and you may submit works that have been published or won prizes elsewhere, as long as you own the online publication rights.

 

Prizes and Publication:  First Prize: $50, Second Prize:  $20, Third Prize $5.  Winning submissions will be featured on our homepage and posted in our featured articles section.

 

Entry Fee:  The reading fee is $5 per entry.

 

Eligibility:  Only Snag Today members ae eligible for participation.  Membership to Snag Today is free.

 

Deadline:  All entries must be postmarked by January 31, 2011.

 

How to Submit: Entries must be submitted via mail. To enter by mail, please include a cover sheet with your submission. It should include your name, address, phone number, email address and the title/s of your entry. It is not necessary to provide word counts for your entries. Entries should be typed or printed by computer. We prefer white, letter-size paper. The 12-point font size is ideal. Please avoid fancy, hard-to-read typefaces. Include your fee as a check or money order payable to Snag Today. Entries will not be returned, so please don't send your only copy. Please clip everything together and mail your submission to:

Snag Today
Attn: Editor

Snag Today Writing Contest
8688 Thornbrook Terrace Pt.
Boynton Beach, FL 33473
USA

 

Announcement of Results:  Winners of the contest will be announced on February 15, 2011.  Results will be posted on the Snag Today homepage at http://www.snagtoday.com.  Additionally, all Snag Today Members with a valid email address will receive email notification.

 

English Language: Writers of all nations may enter. However, the works you submit should be in English. If you have written a work in another language, you may submit an English translation.

 

Copyright: If your entry wins any cash prize, you agree to give Snag Today a nonexclusive license to publish your work online. You are free to publish your work in print or online elsewhere, and to enter it into other contests, whether or not you win a prize in this contest.  The author retains all rights to the work submitted.

 

Thank you for choosing the Snag Today Writing Contest.  We look forward to reading your submissions.

 

 

Contest

GENERAL GUIDELINES

• Multiple submissions are acceptable as long as they are submitted separately under separate entry fees.

• Simultaneous submissions are fine, but please be sure to withdraw your submission via Submishmash if it is accepted elsewhere.

• Please update any changes in contact information via your profile on Submishmash.

• No revisions to submitted manuscripts will be considered. The author of the winning manuscript will have the opportunity to make revisions prior to publication.

• Friends, colleagues, and current or former students of the judge — as well as current students of English or Creative Writing at the University of Southern California and recent alumni (graduating years 2005 to present) — are not eligible to compete. This year’s poetry chapbook judge is Carol Muske-Dukes.

• We will announce contest results by email, as well as at http://goldlinepress.com

• Winner receives $500 and 40 copies of the perfect-bound chapbook, 30 of which are sent to magazines and other venues for review.

SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS

• Manuscripts must be 20-30 pages in length (not including the title page and table of contents).

• Manuscripts should be paginated with a table of contents at the beginning, unless the form of the book does not warrant it.

• Include a cover page with title of manuscript only. No identifying material should appear anywhere in the body of the manuscript. Your identifying information will be available to us via our submission manager when needed.

• Please do not include an acknowledgments page.

• Individual poems may have been previously published, but the work as a whole must be original and unpublished.

• The manuscript must be in English. Translations are ineligible.

• $15 entry fee ($18 for applicants outside the US or Canada) includes a copy of the winning chapbook.

• All manuscripts must be received by November 15, 2010.

 

HOW WE READ

We use the Submishmash system for our submissions, which ensures the submitter’s anonymity during review by our editors and judge. To avoid conflicts of interest, editors will recuse themselves from considering manuscripts in which they can identify the work’s author.

 

The judge will select the winner (who will receive $500 and publication) and five finalists (to be listed on our website). The judge may request to see additional manuscripts if necessary. The judge is not permitted to choose manuscripts that present a conflict of interest.

 

Gold Line Press, while not a member of the CLMP, abides by its Code of Ethics:

The Council of Literary Magazines and Presses’ community of independent literary publishers believes that ethical contests serve our shared goal: to connect writers and readers by publishing exceptional writing. We believe that intent to act ethically, clarity of guidelines, and transparency of process form the foundation of an ethical contest. To that end, we agree to 1) conduct our contests as ethically as possible and to address any unethical behavior on the part of our staff, editors, or judges; 2) to provide clear and specific contest guidelines — defining conflict of interest for all parties involved; and 3) to make the mechanics of our selection process available to the public. This Code recognizes that different contest models produce different results, but that each model can be run ethically. We have adopted this Code to reinforce our integrity and dedication as a publishing community and to ensure that our contests contribute to a vibrant literary heritage.

~~~~~

TO SUBMIT TO THE GOLD LINE PRESS POETRY CHAPBOOK COMPETITION, CLICK HERE

Application deadline Dec. 15, 2010 

For May & June sessions 2011

Residency Program

El Gouna Writers’ Residency was launched in February, 2010. El Gouna would host three sessions a year during the months of February, May and June. The length of each session is one month.

During each session four to six writers will enjoy a complimentary stay full month stay at El Gouna. Writers will be inspired by El Gouna’s picturesque setting and will be given a memorable, intellectual opportunity to interact with writers from different walks of life.

Accommodation

Each writer will be invited to enjoy full-board accommodation in a single, tailor-furnished hotel room at El Gouna. All rooms are designed to act as both a bedroom and a private writing space that is equipped with a spacious desk and free wireless internet connection. For further comfort and privacy, each room has a coffee and tea set with kettle and each writer will be provided with two bottles of mineral water. Other drinks may be purchased from the room’s mini bar.

Meals

Writers can enjoy their breakfast at the hotel restaurant any time during breakfast buffet hours, while dinner will be served from 7pm – 8pm at a designated table in the hotel restaurant. Each writer will have a lunch box delivered to his/her room to minimize distraction and help the writers maintain their working schedule during the day.

A gathering between all the writers will take place every day for 1 hour from
6pm – 7pm in the communal room, to encourage additional social and intellectual exchange. During the gathering, the writers will be provided with hot drinks.

Writers are requested to cover any additional food and beverage requests should they wish to enjoy their meals at other times.

Amenities

Upon arrival, an orientation will be organized to acquaint the writers with the town and all the service facilities available, i.e. transportation options inside El Gouna, hospital, super-markets…, etc.

Transportation to and from Hurghada International Airport is arranged for all the writers, as well as hotel pick-up to any planned activity inside El Gouna.

Writers will be granted access to the El Gouna library and all its facilities at all times.

Residency Manager

A dedicated Writers’ Residency Manager will be coordinating all activities and can be easily reached by telephone or e-mail to ensure full comfort and satisfaction of all writers.

Reading Event

Writers will be expected to participate in a Reading Event held at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (Library of Alexandria) branch of El Gouna. The multinational audience invited to attend will include various reporters as well as interested intellectuals residing or visiting Egypt. The Reading Event will be presented in either English or French.

Dates of Reading Events:

• February Session: Friday, February 18th
• May Session: Friday, May 20th
• June Session: Friday, June 24th

Each event will consist of a meeting with the writers followed by the reading session and an open discussion.

• From 7:00 pm – 7:45 pm : meeting with the writers
• From 7:45 pm – 8:45 pm: reading session
• From 8:45 pm: - 9:00 pm : open discussion

Writers Reports

By the end of the residency, writers are expected to provide a report highlighting the development of the literary project they have been working on, as well as any comments related to the El Gouna Writers' Residency.

Disclaimer

The Writers Residency Board of Advisors reserves the right to disqualify any writer who will not comply with the residency program indicated above.

We encourage writers to donate their books to the El Gouna library. All books donated by the writers will be placed in a special dedicated section in the El Gouna library, which is open to the public.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Earl Lovelace: The Future and the Self

Labels: Caribbean Literature, Daily Herald, Literary Profiles, The Weekender, Trinidad and Tobago

PUBLISHED BY THE WEEKENDER SUPPLEMENT OF SINT MAARTEN'S THE DAILY HERALD ON SATURDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2010

Earl Lovelace is one of the giants of Caribbean literature. So much has been official at least since 1997, when his latest novel to date, Salt, merited him the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize. Born in Toco, Trinidad, in 1935, he spent his early childhood in Tobago, before attending secondary school in Port of Spain. After a short spell as proofreader at the Trinidad Guardian, Lovelace worked in the rural depths of Trinidad, in the Department of Forestry and the Ministry of Agriculture for over ten years, from 1954 to 1966. It was precisely during this period that his literary vein developed and, eventually, prevailed, when the manuscript of When Gods Are Falling was selected as the winner of the 1964 edition of the British Petroleum Independence Literary Award. The novel was published by Collins the following year in London, and several of his stories were printed in the Trinidad Guardian: in short, a whole new world of opportunities had opened wide for Earl Lovelace, and he was about to take full advantage of it.

Lovelace’s second novel, The Schoolteacher, was already written by the time When Gods Are Falling was published. Collins continued to support Lovelace and launched The Schoolmaster in London in 1968. Lovelace had given up on agricultural affairs by now and had joined the staff of the Trinidad & Tobago Express as a columnist and reviewer. But soon thereafter he began his career as an academic, teaching at the University of the District of Columbia, acting as Visiting Novelist while completing an MA at John Hopkins University and later teaching at the St. Augustine campus of the University of the West Indies in Trinidad. In 1979 he published The Dragon Can’t Dance, an extraordinary account of life in the destitute area of Calvary Hill in Port of Spain, and in 1982 his reputation was cemented, at least in home ground, with his fourth novel, The Wine of Astonishment.

The Prologue to The Dragon Can’t Dance provides a perfect and concise example of the value of Lovelace’s art: as you would expect, it is a short preliminary note, some five pages long, where the theme and feeling of the novel are put forward both emphatically and appealingly. It begins with the story of a man who asks to be stoned, only to get vexed and demand to be taken down as soon as the first stone hits him. This comical episode is both defining of the place that Lovelace wants to depict (“This is the hill”, he writes, quite literally) and also establishes the arena in which the following 200 pages will develop, an atmosphere that is charged with humor and tragedy, with intense feelings, but that is also self-consciously literary, because the story of Taffy, the man who would be stoned in Lovelace’s The Dragon Can’t Dance is reminiscent of the story of Man-Man in Naipaul’s Miguel Street (1959), a work that Lovelace would, no doubt, have known in detail. As well as The Hill, Lovelace goes on to define Calypso and Carnival in the same manner, through five powerful pages that pick up in rhythm and force the reader to adopt its pace, to race through the lines, to “Dance to the hurt,” to read till it hurts, to read till the prologue suddenly stops, and the rest of the page is blank, and there is no other alternative but to turn the page and start the book proper.

In one of the innumerable interviews to Mario Vargas Llosa that have saturated the print media in the past few days and weeks, he restated his concern that to the new generation, to young writers, it no longer seems as if the final product, the book, were an instrument capable of enacting change, a tool for insurrection, a weapon at the disposition of the masses. For him, he has said, a book had always been more than merely an avenue for entertainment: it had been a meaningful vehicle for protest. Lovelace’s fiction plays a very similar role to that described by Vargas Llosa, which he no longer seems to find on the bookshelves. For Lovelace, the novel is a way to (re)present an unsatisfactory reality in its most trivial (and often comical) detail and to postulate through highly likeable, though hugely problematic, protagonists a way ahead that might in the future redress the wrongs that assail the present. Both The Dragon Can’t Dance and Salt, for instance, close with the protagonists having fallen from their respective status as heroes, with both of them gaining on enlightenment from their experience, and both of them happily reuniting with their ideal partners. Similarly, however, both endings are happy for the individuals only, as the general condition of those around the protagonists have no immediate prospect of improving.

Because the central concern in both of these novels is the quest for the self. Salt could be described, in a simplistic and not immediately evident way, as a bildungsroman, a novel about the coming of age, the life experiences of its protagonist, Alford George, who starts as a silent child who still hasn’t spoken a word at the age of five. The same Alford tells his lover, Florence, “The truth is we don’t know who we are.” Florence herself has previously told Alford that all she wants is “to learn to be me, how to be myself.” And, following a nine year affair in which neither has slept in the other’s house more than once, Florence is ready to leave Alford, because in her eyes he had arrived: he had lost his position as teacher, failed at politics, been ostracized by his party and was marching on his own in an unpopular protest, but “he had arrived at a self.”

The quest for the self of each of Lovelace’s characters is neatly inscribed within an explicitly local environment, richly informed through the writer’s own experiences of the lifestyle and traditions of both the metropolitan area and the countryside in Trinidad. Thus, Calvary Hill, in The Dragon Can’t Dance, is a place where you had to walk between the garbage and dog excrement, where a woman has seven children, with no man either, where girls ripen like a mango rose, where the predominant language is not standard English, but the melodic dialect that is found in the narrative. A place, just like Cascadu in Salt, where the struggle against the established power represents the most evident statement of assertion of the self, the easiest way to identify with, and be recognized by, those around you. Except, of course, such struggle is devoid of meaning – is just an empty performance – if it doesn’t come with the conviction of someone who knows what he is fighting for, not just what he is fighting against. Precisely this is the conviction that Alford George, the protagonist of Salt, defeated in all other senses, gains from “arriving at a self.” And that, in turn, is the condition that each individual must attain by themselves, in order for the collective to move towards a better future.

But Lovelace’s fiction is not only socially oriented and consciously political: his exquisite control of Trinidadian inflection, his great sense of rhythm, an uncanny ability to blend parallel plot lines and a daring development of a narrative voice that reaches phenomenal levels of diversity in Salt, as well as a subtle sense of humor and a restrained knowledge of the literary tradition make Lovelace an absolute joy to read. Not for nothing is The Dragon Can’t Dance a classic of Caribbean literature… and you can quote me on that!