A.S. Byatt Misses the 1960s

I just finished reading A.S. Byatt's novel about the late 1960s called A Whistling Woman. Like many other people I loved her novel Possession, but A Whistling Woman doesn't quite measure up. The problem with this novel is it's supposed to be about the late 1960s in England but really has little to say about that era. The author so is resolutely anti-1960s one wonders why she wrote about that decade.

The story deals with a group of characters connected with the new University of North Yorkshire in the north of England: the Vice-Chancellor Gerard Wijnobel and his fellow scientisits at the university who want to put on a conference on mind-and-body connections; the rebel youth who set up an Anti-University next door who plan to disrupt the conference; Frederica, a TV personality living in London who has family near the university and whose TV crew will film the conference; and Joshua Ramsden, a very mad spiritual leader of a religious cult holed up in a farmhouse near the university. A. S. Byatt does know how to hook a reader into her plot. I excitedly read on waiting for the long-planned for confrontation between rebel youth and university scientists as well as for the religious commune to blow up. Byatt has some very amusing touches as the owner of the farmhouse where the religious cult lives has a sheep named Tobias who thinks he's a dog.

Another pleasure of this novel as well as Byatt's other work is her love of ideas and literature. She has characters refer to metaphor, 17th century English poetry, Alice in Wonderland--it's great fun to see characters know and love their English literature. So many American novelist seem afraid to write novels of ideas but Byatt seems to revel in ideas. Byatt also includes scientists discussing their work and it's also good to have their ideas, too.

One problem with the novel is none of the characters is very engaging. Joseph Ramsden, the leader of the religious communie, is the most fascinating character. Ramsden when a child discovered his mother and sister just murdered by his father. Byatt describes him as a fascinating mixture of deep religiousness and madness. After Ramsden becomes a spiritual leader, Byatt unfortunately drops him as an important character. Byatt is more interested in her dull bourgeois characters--her scientists and London arty bourgeois like Francesca, a TV personality, and her author roommate Agatha--and avoids going deeply into the really amazing characters whose actions drive the story: the rebel youth of the anti-University and the spiritual seekers in the farmhouse.

Another problem is many of these late 1960s literary and scientific ideas in which the older characters believe--in poetry, in psychobiology, experimental psychology, and English philosophy influenced by Wittgenstein-- were very limited to their time. At one point Byatt talks about professors in the 1960s liking 17th century English metaphysical poets--true enough--but neglects that the younger generation found these poets distant and remote and fled this
literature. The younger generation had little or no interest in the older generations' ideas.

Byatt only takes the ideas of scientists, professors, and media intellectual seriously while the author lampoons the ideas of the rebel youth and the religious commune. The novelist makes the youth sound like idiotic poor-mannered know-nothings. Yet these rebel young provide the novel's most exciting moments when they march on the scientific conference.

Most of the creative ideas by the late 1960s were coming from the youth at the Anti-University and the spiritual seekers like those in the religious commune. 1960s rebels made a real critique of scientists--for example, biologists for mistreating animals--but Byatt also describes the members of the religious commune as following a madman--so the religious people must be fools. Yet the religious ideas of Byatt's "fools" have also influenced Western religious life for the next three decades.

What about the idea of feminism? Byatt is first and foremost a feminist writer, incredibly influenced by the ideas of these late 1960s ideas particularly feminisme. The irony is thatByatt fed off the radicalism of the late 1960s which she is subtly denouncing in this book.

One good example is Byatt's treatment of the three main women characters. Byatt opens the novel with a chapter on Frederica and her young son; they are living with Agatha, another single mom with a career, and Agatha's young daughter. The household seems to work but Byatt always calls it an odd family. Jacqueline, a scientist at the univeristy, is the third working woman; she rejects marriage to a fellow scientist and instead concentrates on her research.

Throughout the novel there is some some blather about "Free Woman" who have careers and and also have romance when and if they want it. By novel's end both Frederica and her roommate Agatha have found mates. Frederica and Agatha are each pictured with new mate and child making a new family. Jacqueline is pictured as lonely nun devoting herself to her science. For a novel about the late 1960s the ending sounds like the 1950s: two good women each find a man while the woman who doesn't is sad, lonley creature. Blah blah blah. Byatt is taking a tiny part of feminism--the man cooks; the woman has a career--and incorporating it into the bourgeois marriage.

Skip this book. Go and read A.S. Byatt's Possession which is a wonderful literary who-done-it about literary scholars unearthing a romance between 19th century poets.

A Must Read: Lolita in Tehran

Azar Nifisi’s memoir Reading Lolita in Tehran is an amazing book, but the American reviews I have read focused solely on Nafisi, the feminist who teaches women in a underground literature class. These reviews miss the more important point: Nafisi is writing a memoir of herself and other secular intellectuals who first supported the Iranian revolution in which Ayatollah Khomeini gained power. Americans should read this book because we know so very little about Iran of the last twenty-five years. We should be wary: Nafisi is a flawed narrator, telling us only part of the story.

After receiving a PhD in English from the University of Okalahoma and getting married Nafisi returned to Iran in the spring of 1979. As Nafisi says, she returned at a crucial moment both for herself and for the new Iranian revolution. She was immediately hired to teach English literature at the University of Tehran. For two weeks in late January, 1979, after the Shah had been driven out, Dr. Shahpour Bakhtiar, a democratic bourgeois liberal was prime minister, but most of the opposition including Nafisi herself had joined up with Ayatollah Khomeini against Dr. Bakhtiar.

Nafisi, whose father was jailed for four years by the shah, had been a student radical in Marxist Iranian student groups in Oklahoma in the 1970s and was all for destroying the “old,” which she and many other young Iranians thought meant booting out Bakhtiar, the liberal reformist. They wanted a revolution. Then Ayatollah Khomeini became head of state. When talking about her student radicalism Nafisi says, ‘”In the seventies—the mood—not just among Iranians but among American and European students—was revolutionary.” Not true. Radicalism among American students had peaked in 1970 and was subsidizing throughout the 1970s into reformism (only a really tiny minority of U.S. students were revolutionary). In the United States most young women in the1970s deserted the American New Left by the thousands to start reformist feminist groups.

What’s fascinating about this memoir is that Nafisi, the revolution’s supporter, started teaching fall semester 1979 at the University of Tehran where many of the battles of the revolution would be played out in the next two years. Nafisi says that at the university the Muslim students were a minority “overshadowed by the leftist and secular student groups,” but over the next two years Khomeini used the Muslim student groups and his militias to take over the university. Nafisi from her vantage point at the University of Tehran describes how the Khomeini government expeled professors deemed anti-regime, killed leftist students in demonstrations, arrested leftist students, jailed them for years and executed them. Khomeini consolidated his power over the country by purging just such leftists as Nafisi and her students.

In the midst of all this one day Nafisi cancels classes to attend a demonstration of women protesting the government’s policies instituting the veil and “curtailing women’s rights.” Her leftist women students followed the line of their Marxist groups denouncing the feminist protest as “deviant, divisive and ultimately in service of the imperialists” and supported the government. At the protest Nafisi saw vigilantes attack the women with “knives, clubs and stones.” That meeting was a turning point.

She herself first ran into problems teaching Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Two powerful Muslim students repeatedly attacked the novel in class as immoral, decadent western literature, so she had her class put the book on the trial. In her defense of the novel in class Nafisi says Gatsby had a dream of the past that ignored reality in present—living in the dream killed him. She then compares her generation of revolutionaries to Gatsby: “What we in Iran have in common with Fitzgerald was this dream [of revolution] became our obsession … this terrible, beautiful dream, impossible in realization, for which any amount of violence might be justified or forgiven ….” She believed that she, her leftist students, and her Muslim students were all being devoured by their dreams just like Gatsby was. Soon she and her two women professor friends were expelled from the university for not wearing the veil.

To me, this section of the book titled “Fitzgerald” is the most moving and enlightening.
When Nafisi first returned to Iran she had been a leftist who wrote her Ph.D. thesis on Mike Gold, the proletarian novelist and literary critic (actually I love proletarian literature as I left the bourgeois feminists to write about working class women in literature). By the time Nafisi was thrown out of the university, she had abandoned the working class Gold for bourgois writers who focused on women—Jane Austen or Henry James with his strong women characters in his novels Daisy Miller and Washington Square or Nabakov’s Lolita—as well as Fitzgerald.

Nafisi does for me the impossible: gets me interested in Henry James, a writer I have always ignored. She does this by showing how the four writers—Nabokov, James, Austen, and Fitzgerald—all opened up democratic space in the novel where women as well as men had liberty, integrity of the self, choices to make, and the right to happiness. Nafisi says what she likes these novels is summed up in a comment on Henry James: He always had a protagonist who desired “to preserve a sense of personal integrity in the face of outside aggression.” Nafisi becomes a celebrant of these bourgeois novelists who give their characters liberty--the right to protect themselves against outside power.

I think Nafisi is a fine literary critic but often this book lacks humility of self-analysis and reads like one long rage against Islamic fundamentalists. The closest she comes to self-analysis is when she analyzes Gatsby and her own use of the dream detached from reality. Did she regret her past actions being in coalition with Khomeini? She eludes to it but avoids dealing with it head on. She never plainly discusses when she ceased supporting the Islamic revolution and instead became a celebrant of the bourgeois novel of civil liberties.

Nafisi’s book isn’t George Orwell’s Homage to Catelonia or Richard Wright’s American Hunger. Both are great books because they have self-analysis showing how the heroes disillusionment with Communist led to their leaving the party. Even after they split with the Communist Party, Orwell was still a socialist and Wright a fighter for civil rights. Their books leave us not with rage but with self-analysis and humility. Nafisi lacks both the self-analysis and humility. Her book misses greatness.

But Nafisi gives us Iran, a country we need to know here in America as we’ve been cut off from any knowledge of them for 25 years. In 1987 Allameh Tabatabi University promised to hire her if she wore the veil. She made the compromise. Some of her former students rejoined her classes, telling her of years of their imprisonment; rapes in jail; execution of their friends. The suffering toughened the Iranian feminists, young and old. We feminists in the United States had a lark compared to them.

Nafisi describes how Iranianwomen students were still continually harassed at their college for being caught wearing pink socks or lipstick. By 1995 Nafisi can’t stand the harassment at work of herself and her students so she resigns to start her underground class.

When she and her women students talk in her underground class, they never have political discussions. They discuss boyfriend jilting them, being sexually harassed, being beaten by their husbands—very intimate topics. I can not believe they never discussed their own political histories. These were women who were had lived gut-wrenching politics—some had been in jail. So why does Nafisi omit their political discussions? Did the leftists students ever re-evaluate their groups’ alliance with Khomeini in 1979-80? Who knows? Her seven women students, as my friend Keiko Amano said, lack character development and tend to blend into one another.

Nafisi gives fascinating descriptions of how she, her friends, her students and family committ small acts of defiance: her husband’s drinking bootleg vodka; her family has satellite TV; one female student wore outlawed pink socks; another young woman having red nail polish she hides in gloves when she walks on the streets. This part of the book shows the culture resistance in the 1990s—a resistance that must contributed to that political opposition by 2000 when ¾ of Iranians voted against their government.

Dear reader, this a book we should all read. Now over half of Iran’s university students are women. Our mass media is so ignorant of Islamic countries that they neglect to show us in Iran fundamentalists are clearly a minority. Maybe Islamic fundamentalists are minorities in all their societies as they are in Iran? Nafisi is surely not alone but part of a larger movement wanting to bring human rights and civil liberties to Middle Eastern countries.

It is who have to learn about them. Dear reader, you still must read this book if you want to understand more about Iran.

Dressing for Global Warming

It's been hot all week here in the West--really hot. I live on the 2nd floor of a two-story apartment so my apartment is hot all day. I need more hot weather clothes. I read in the magazine section about how to avoid heat exhaustion.

Last summer was one long, hot summer with horrble hurricanes battering Florda. Same this summer. More hot! More hurricanes! Scientists say maybe bigger hurricanes are caused by global warming but Bush says no. How about the heat waves? What's the connection to global warming? I bet there's a connection. We also in L.A. might have an energy shortage so we get warnings: "Don't use excess electricity! Turn off computer when not using it!"

So, we need to dress for global warming:
1. Bring water bottle with you at all times. Drink water. More water. Drink some more!
2. Wear a wide brimmed hat that covers your face. Those baseball caps don't cut it. Get a real hat with a wide brim!
3. Use sunscreen with high spf.
4. Don't forget sunglasses.
5. Light colors: white, beige, pastels.
6. Cottons and linens.
7. Wear light colored flowing light weight clothes. No dark. No black. Don't wear those black jeans! Forget about dark blue jeans! Think Arabs in long white clothing!
8. Bermuda shorts are back.
9. For men, tank tops, bermuda shorts, and flip flops.
10. For women, sundresses and sandals.
11. No necktie and no jacket in the office. Only short-sleeved casual shirts. Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and the government started a national "No jacket, no tie" campaign this month. The Japanese government wants public workers to leave their ties and jackets at home so that air conditioning can be turned down to save energy.
12. Don't get carried away with summer clothes in U.K. offices, particularly showing off the tatoos as U.K. bosses are often put-off by tatoos.
13. If it's really hot outside and you have nothing to wear, make instant cut-offs and tank-tops. Just take that pair of long pants and that much-too-big t-shirt you dislike and a scissors!
14. Light weight sarong--you need lessons to learn how to tie it to make five new outfits! Both sexes can wear a sarong in the South Seas so they can it outside of the South Seas, too.

Defending Abortion Rights

Last Friday from 5:00-6:00 I participated in the Progressive Jewish Agenda's pro-choice pro-abortion demonstration in Los Angeles at 3rd and /Fairfax near the Farmer's Market. It was a typical Los Angeles street corner demonstration with about 40 pickets on four corners; most were young women with a few men and middle aged women like me. A lot of cars honked in support, but a bus driver did argue with me, saying he's anti-abortion. Most people seemed supportive or neutral. A woman lawyer came down from the Writer's Guild (Screenwriter's ) across the street and held up a handmade sign. A male colleague of hers from the Writer's Guild office also came down. The woman lawyer asked him, "Are you going to join the line?" He said, "No, it's too noisy. The demonstration is making it difficult for people to work." This was at 5:45 pm Friday.

I carried two signs: one in Spanish and one in English. This made picketing harder work but I wanted to reach everybody so I held up my two signs. The Spanish sign said in Spanish, "Reproductive rights are human rights." Great idea. But if I'd make my own signs, I'd say: "Keep Legal abortion: it protects everybody's rights." I think so. People who are against abortions don't have to have them when it's legal. I respect that 100%.

I'd also have new signs: "Legal abortions save lives" and "Illegal abortion causes 83,000 women's deaths globally." Also true. I want to get across the message that so-called right-to-lifers are, I think, right-to-deathers--causing women's death and injuries by the thousands. I think the term "right-to-life" is absolutely untrue when describing those against abortion. I think we should change the image of the word "right-to-life" so it only applies to those for legal, safe abortion.

If we want to have more signs, we can publicly support national health care for all pregnant woman to save women's lives and reduce infant mortality. Since 50,000,000 don't have health insurance in this country (including a number of my friends) we have the highest infant mortality rates in the industrial world. How about a sign: "Reduce infant mortality: national health insurance for all!"

I think that the Republicans have been chipping away at abortion rights for a long time. We can get too involved looking at the trees--Bush's nomination of Roberts--that we loose sight of the forest--abortion rights are getting restricted over the last decade. In some rural areas, there are no clinics available, so poor women who lack money to travel to a nearby clinic don't have access to safe abortion at all. I think we need a strategy of fighting the Roberts nomination as part of an overall plan to reverse the trend against abortion and restore safe, legel abortion rights and access in this country. Also, Republicans support corporations which offer less health insurance to their employees--raising infant mortality. Republicans have policies which causes more infant deaths.

One way to really save lives is join with others this month in peaceful pro-abortion picket lines. It's empowering. It's envigorating.

Poetry as Revolution: Berkeley 7/17/05

BERKELEY POETRY CONFERENCE
40TH ANNIVERSARY COMMEMORATION

SUNDAY JULY 17TH 2005 10:30AM-5PM
AT BERKELEY FELLOWSHIP OF UNITARIAN UNIVERSALISTS
CEDAR AND BONITA

'POETRY AS REVOLUTION'

10:30 AM THEME STATEMENT
LED BY PAUL SAWYER, MINISTER-POET
12:15 LUNCH DONATION
1:00 PM PETER DALE SCOTT
JACK HIRSCHMAN
DAVID MELTZER
KUSH
ALTA
JOHN OLIVER SIMON
SARAH MENEFEE
AL YOUNG POET LAUREATE CALIFORNIA

OPEN READING WILL FOLLOW THE FEATURED READERS

On the theme "Poetry as Revolution," it will bring together such notable Bay Area poets as Peter Dale Scott, Jack Hirschman, David Meltzer, Alta, John Oliver Simon, Al Young (poet laureate of California) Sarah Menefee, Kush, and others. They will read and dialogue about the responsibility of poets for envisioning and creating a transformed world community.

This Berkeley Poetry Conference celebrates the 40th anniversary of the renowned Berkeley Poetry Conference of July 1965, that brought together such legendary poets as Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan, Jack Spicer, Alan Ginsberg, Ed Dorn, Philip Whalen, Lew Welch, Brother Antoninus, Philip Lamantia, John Wieners, Kirby Doyle and others. Coming from "the New American Poetry " movement, they stressed the spoken word beyond the printed page that engages the world and participates in the cultural revolution, then developing particularly out of the free speech movement in Berkeley.

As Charles Olson said at the time, "Words are value, instruction, action. And they've got to become political action. They've got to become social action. The radicalism lies from our words, alone… Poetics is politics, poets are political leaders today.."

To commemorate the radical spirit of these poets of this event 40 years ago, many of whom are no longer here in the flesh, this Berkeley Poetry Conference is being held Sunday July 17th at the Berkeley Fellowship.
At 10:30 AM, Paul Sawyer minister-poet, a participant in the 1965 conference and former minister of the Fellowship, will develop, along with musicians and other poets, the theme of "Poetry As Revolution" Lunch will be served at 12:15 and featured poets will carry on readings and dialogue beginning at 1PM.

Regaining Bourgeois Paradise in Los Angeles

I have to confess I just read with guilty pleasure Michelle Huneven’s second novel Jamesland. Of course, this is a Los Angeles novel, but for the longest while I read I debated with myself, so what’s so L.A. about this novel?

Set in the Los Feliz district of Los Angeles, the fiction has three main characters: Alice Bloch, a rather lost young woman who is the great-great-granddaughter of philosopher William James; Pete Ross, a fat 46 year old mentally ill former chef who lives with his mom; and Helen Harland, the new minister of the local Unitarian church. These three become friends, bonding over Helen’s Wednesday night seminars where she has different speakers on the variety of religious experiences rather like an ongoing William James seminar—the author, of course, of the Varieties of Religious Experience. Never being fan of William James, I was amused to find myself in Jamesland—at one point the characters even go to séance.

I thought, couldn’t this novel be set anywhere? Helen is a new minister who goes to some small English town trying to bring God and spirituality back to the congregation who want none of it. Of course, I admitted, I did enjoy about reading about Los Feliz district which is near where I live. Like the characters in the book I, too, have gone on hiking dates in Griffith Park and have gone to those meals in nearby Armenian restaurants enjoying eating exactly the same food as the characters in the book. Huneven, who works as a restaurant critic, describes my favorite meal of lamp chops and rice at the Armenian restuarant.

What bothered me about this book is my suspicion is that really it’s about the restoration of the bourgeois paradise in Los Angeles. How could I, a child of the beats, like such a novel? Alice lives in her great-aunt’s expensive craftman house that she will one day inherit, but has let the gardens gone to seed, never used the fine silver and Limoges porcelain. She’s the bourgeois girl gone wrong: wrong job in a bar; wrong man who’s married. Her predicament is, of course, to go right. She needs to get another job so when someone asks her at a party or on a cruise, "What do you do?" she'll have an answer.

Minister Helen’s predicament is she wants to open her congregation of stubborn secular humanists up to religion that they resist. Finally, Pete Ross, a former chef who owned two restaurants before he cracked up, aspires to have a romance with a bourgeois woman. Well aware that the last thing bourgeois women want is a unemployed fat man who lives with his mom, Pete knows that in order to get his woman he needs to regain his bourgeois status as a man with an accpetable job.

Pete start’s cooking for Alice and Helen in regular Friday evening dinners, and in these dinners they all slowly regain bourgeois paradise. I must confess I fell in love with Pete: so rude but such a good cook! I loved following him around shopping for food, adored the menus and the descriptions of him cooking. Yes, I must confess, I was suckered into rooting for Pete as he has to prove himself in his new job as chef for an expensive new restaurant.

What could be more Los Angeles than this fixation on food that Huneven captures so well? The menus! The farmer’s markets! Opening night at the restaurant! Yadada yah! Yes, it’s a Los Angeles novel about this city’s two great obsessions: exploring 8 million different religions and eating good food. Yes, Los Angeles food has improved in recent years. One can even track bourgeois habits of Los Angeles in its differing attitudes toward food over the decades.

In the 1950s L.A. had only a food "good" restaurants specializing in French food, steaks, and Cantonese. Hippies, those great populizers, followed the beats in exploring mystical experiences from around the world and in eating foods from northern Chinese to Japanese to Mexican to North African to West Africa . Let's not forget two other California populizers: chefs Julia Child and Alice Waters

Huneven has perfectly captured post-hippie post-Child post-Waters Los Angeles 1990s bourgeois cooking based on farmer’s markets and multi-cultural French-Mexican-Asian-North African-Middle Eastern cooking. Yes, Alice and Helen love Peter's meals, each one lovingly prepared. Of course, when Peter meets a Persian rug dealer, he gets a new dish from him, a lamb stew, which he cooks. Yes, these meals are healing for all concerned: they cook and eat their way to sanity! Besides having better food, the new L.A. of Jamesland has much more racial and gender equality than segregated old L.A.--a gay minister substitutes for Harland when she's on vacation.

Jamesland is really a Los Angeles novel after all. This new L.A. of Jamesland has bourgeois Angelinos learning about each others religions in Wednesday night seminars and eating each other’s foods on Friday nights. Pete and Alice find bourgeois redemption. I can live with that. Now if only the Helen Harlands of the world, those stubborn spiritualists, can learn to appreciate secular humanists! The novel's flaw is that Helen isn't portrayed as the flawed comic character she is: one can't push one's spirituality onto others. But generally, this novel is a gentle bourgois comedy that ends well.

Happy July 4th!

What's patriotic?

The Ten Original Amendments: The Bill of Rights.

Passed by Congress September 25, 1789. Ratified December 15, 1791.

AMENDMENT I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

AMENDMENT II

A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

AMENDMENT III

No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

AMENDMENT IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

AMENDMENT V

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.

AMENDMENT VI

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

AMENDMENT VII

In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

AMENDMENT VIII

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

AMENDMENT IX

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be con- strued to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

AMENDMENT X

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people

Abortions save lives

Sandra Day O'Connor, a swing vote on the Supreme Court who cast the decisive vote to retain abotion rights in 1992, has just resigned. President Bush gets to appoint a Supreme Court Justice to replace her. This battle over the nominee will probably be heated all this summer.

I know a little about illegal abortions because I had one before 1972 and wound up hemorraghing, needing to be rushed to the hospital to save my life. Since this is so personal an issue, I paid attention to the death of Rosaura Jimenez, a young Mexican-American woman who lived in Texas after abortion was legalized. She couldn't afford a legal one so got an illegal abortion and died. Yes, women do die from illegal abortions even after the procedure was legalized.

What bothers me a lot is the characterization of anti-abortionists as pro-life. I find this untrue rhetoric. For 30 years statistics have shown that the legalization of abortion in 1972 has, according to the Guttmacher institute, improved " the health and well-being of American women. Deaths from abortion have plummeted, and are now a rarity. In addition, women have been able to have abortions earlier in pregnancy when the procedure is safest." The Guttmacher Institute says that rollbacks on abortion rights threaten this improvement in women's health and life.

The Guttmacher Institute gives specific statistics: "In 1930, abortion was listed as the official cause of death for almost 2,700 women—nearly one-fifth (18%) of maternal deaths recorded in that year. The death toll had declined ... to just over 300 by 1950 (most likely because of the introduction of antibiotics in the 1940s, which permitted more effective treatment of the infections that frequently developed after illegal abortion). By 1965, the number of deaths due to illegal abortion had fallen to just under 200, but illegal abortion still accounted for 17% of all deaths attributed to pregnancy and childbirth that year. And these are just the number that were officially reported; the actual number was likely much higher." Again, thousands of women like myself were seriously injured every year by illegal abotions.

Anti-abortionists dispute these figures, and always ignore that the actual death figures could be higher even than Guttmacher Institute says. After all, abortion pre-1972 was illegal, and illegal activities are invaribly undereported. Thousands of women like myself were rushed to the hospital hemorrahging or with bad infections were also underreported because the reason for our hospital stays was covered up as mine was. Since abortion was legalized in California and a few other states beginning in 1967, one should use pre-1967 figures to gage the harm illegal abortion did to women.

Poor women and women of color had the toughest time getting safe illegal abortions. The Guttmacher Institute reports, "In 1962 alone, nearly 1,600 women were admitted to Harlem Hospital Center in New York City for incomplete abortions, which was one abortion-related hospital admission for every 42 deliveries at that hospital that year. ...In New York City in the early 1960s, one in four childbirth-related deaths among white women was due to abortion; in comparison, abortion accounted for one in two childbirth-related deaths among nonwhite and Puerto Rican women."

Finally, even in 1972 with legal abortion many poor women had trouble getting them: "The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that in 1972 alone, 130,000 women obtained illegal or self-induced procedures, 39 of whom died. Furthermore, from 1972 to 1974, the mortality rate due to illegal abortion for nonwhite women was 12 times that for white women" (Guttmacher).

All the statistics show that legal abortions for the last 30 years have saved women's lives and reduced by huge amounts injuries from the procedure. Being pro-abortion is pro-life. It's about time we start saying being against abortion endangers women's health and lives. Anti-abortionists are not pro-life. We should quit calling them that. Having a legal abortion is ten times safer for women than having a baby in the United States. One last fact. According to the World Health Organization, an estimated 80,000 women around the world still die each year of complications from illegal abortion. If anyone want to save lives, one could save thousands of women's lives around the world by getting them legal abortions.

Schwarzenegger gets an F in Education

Schwarzenegger was the commencement speaker June 14, 2005, at Santa Monica College, which he once attended in the early 1970s. Before he spoke, a overflow crowd of faculty, students, and community people went to the Board of Trustees asking the invitation be withdrawn, but the Board of Trustees refused. Then while he spoke about 300 people had a peaceful picket outside including four former mayors of Santa Monica-- Paul Rosenstein, James Conn, Judy Abdo and Michael Feinstein--while many inside the stadium frequently and loudly booed Schwarzenegger.

Since he’s been governor, Schwarzenegger has raised fees on college students, restricted access to public higher education, and cut the education budget drastically. Many Santa Monica College students want to transfer to UC, but Schwarzenegger raised fees 14% at UC (within the last three years fees have already rise from $14 to $21 for the community colleges). This fee raise at UC made it impossible for some students to attend. Keith Mason, a teacher at Santa Monica College and one of the rally’s organizers said, Schwarzenegger’s polices were like a Robin Hood horror film " where the governor 'steals from the poor and gives to the rich.'"

The day before the commencement, Schwarzeneggar unveiled his plan to call for a November special election costing the state over $60 million with plans to reduce the power of that legislature and states’ employees unions. He has specially targeted such “special interests” as nurses whose butts he wanted to kick as well as firefighters, teachers, and policemen. All the while he raises over $50 millions from huge corporations who get tax breaks in California.

Patrick Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, said the state uses “students as cash-cows when finances go bad." Instead of raising taxes, Schwarzenegger raises student fees for higher education. At UC since 2002 fees have gone up 60% for undergraduates (up 14% in fall 2004 for in-state undergraduates). He taxes students, not the rich!

To make matters worse, Schwarzenegger wanted in 2004 to cut UC’s budget 7 percent. Schwarzennegger's cut in UC's budget forced an end to the 40-year historic promise in California that any student who does the work gets into higher education in this state. In the spring of 2004 over 7,000 in-state students eligible for UC were told they couldn’t go. Only by late July when the Democrats forced Schwarzenegger to restore UC’s funding were 7,000 students given places but it was too late for most of them. Those 7,000 students also had their lives disrupted by Schwareneggar’s budget cuts. When community college fees were raised from $14 to $21, over 125,000 students had been already driven out of college even before Schwarzenegger took office. Schwarzenegger continues to disrupt thousands of young people's lives by making even public higher education too expensive for them to attend.

Schwarzenegger also made a deal with the California Teacher’s Association in 2004 to cut the state’s education budget $2 billion, suspending the state's constitution to do so. What impact has the $2 billion cut in education had? Delaine Eastin, former State Superintendant of Schools said, “If you adjust for the cost of living, you can make the case that we are close to last in per-pupil spending in this country.” For example, California’s per pupil spending is around $6500, while New York spends nearly $11,000 per student. Schwarzenegger has the accomplishment of reducing the state's education budget to an ever lower level.

Schwarzenegger’s cuts will harm poor children the most. West Contra Costa Unified School District, an urban area encompassing some of the poorest parts of the San Francisco Bay area, was forced to cut its budget by $28 million over the last three years, eliminating all school sports programs, closing all its libraries and pink-slipping more than 200 employees in March, 2004. According to Shane Goldmacher in the August, 19, 2004, online Nation the cuts amount to nearly $1,000 per student over three years. Taking away students’ libraries is disrupting their lives to an incredible degree!

While rich schools will have parents raising money to make up some of the deficits, poor schools like West Contrast Cost Unified School District lack this parents’ base, so poor children will suffer the most. In other words, rather than raise taxes on the wealthiest (and there’s huge wealth in California), Schwarzenegger makes poor children suffer ever-worsening education. Schwarzenegger picks on poor children to carry the budget on their backs.

Goldmacher reported that "in May 2004, Field Poll, 62 percent of Californians (and a plurality of Republicans) said that taxes will have to be raised to resolve the state's budget deficit, but Schwarzenegger will have none of that." I have students in community colleges who weekly work 30-40 hours and then go to college. For thousands of self-supporting students, UC is now out of their reach. Schwarzenegger's policies make students subsidize the ultra rich in California. He seems to be motivated by shortsighted greed: at all costs never never raise taxes on those who drive $80,000 hummers, send their children to private schools, have 2 or 3 homes.

We should think about tens of thousands of students’ lives in California Schwarzenegger has already disrupted.Schwarzenegger's main accomplisment regarding education in California is to make a bad situation much, much worse. Yes, indeed, Governor Schwarzenegger has flunked education.

Celebrate Kenneth Rexroth!

Celebration of Kenneth Rexroth's 100th Birthday
Sunday, June 4, 4:00, Santa Monica Beach, Santa Monica /CA
behind lifeguard station #24, about 3/4 miles south of Santa Monica Pier parking lot just south of Ocean Park
A reading of his poems, free & open to th public

Worldwide celebration:
January 19th, 6 pm Kaminarimon, Sensoji Temple, Asakusa, Tokoyo, Japan
March 20th, 5 pm, Grey Area, All Areas, Oude Lelierstraat 2, Amsterdam, Holland
June 25th, 2-4 pm, Rexroth Panel, Notre Dame de Namur University, Belmont CA USA
August 22, 4:30, Muhinjuan, Doshisha University, Guest House, Kyoto, Japan
August 28th--all day, Wat Chai Wattanarm, Ayutthaya, Thaland

Kenneth Rexroth more than any other writer created the best in California culture. He was the father of the Beats in San Francisco, Long before Kerouac, Rexroth had hitchhiked across the country, working at odd jobs. Linda Hamalian has said, “Rexroth slipped into the spell of the American West, of the California spaces, the mountains, the forests, the wild terrain, and the Pacific Ocean itself.” He saw the divine in the natural world around him, and his poetry exactly captures the natural world he loved. Long before poet Gary Snyder Rexroth was writing an environmentalist poetry. He was a pioneer translator of Japanese and Chinese poetry into English, paving the way for generations to turn to Asian philosophy and art.

Rexroth was a populist, mystic, and pacifist, participating in radical protests from fighting for workers’ justice in the 1930s to the 1960s where he supported the civil rights movement and was against the Vietnam War. He declared that he was a radical, "a social outcast [who] identified...with the forces striving for a better social system, a system in which humanity and leisure for vital appreciation of the arts would be the common property of all men." He was always ignored by East Coast critics and establishment.

Linda Hamalian has said that Rexroth wrote poetry for

‘all producing classes of the west,’ the workers and the farmers the country depended on, using the words from factories, farms, and trades, as Whitman would have them do. Rexroth was pleading, ultimately, for the recognition of regional literary magazines filled with good writing. More basically, he was stating that in order for people to tap into their creative energy, and to respect, seek and support the art and poetry of others, they had to feel connected to their immediate environment. In a sense, Rexroth was redefining democracy in dynamic terms by asserting that a free country was a country that nurtured and validated an artistic sensibility in all people, a position that Whitman had articulated more than fifty years earlier in "Democratic Vistas."

He took his ideas into action in the late 1940s in San Francisco when he organized a salon at his house for new poets—the beats. In this salon Asian and Native American literatures were respected as much as the European literature. He started reading poetry to jazz. He started a poetry of democracy, of environmental sanity, of equality for all people. Yes, we should all celebrate Kenneth Rexroth.

Upton Sinclair’s Oil!: A High Octane California novel!

In Sinclair's novel Oil! oil magnates giving bribes to politicians in exchange for favors; evangelical preachers crusade; leftists are witch hunted; and Hollywood movies do right-wing political propaganda. Doesn’t that sound like 2005? The novel in question was published in 1927. Oil! brilliantly shows us our modern world taking shape in the 1920s.

Though famous for his novel The Jungle about Chicago’s meat packing industry, Sinclair moved to Pasadena in 1916 and spent over thirty years of his life in Southern California, writing both pamphlets and novels set in California. The best of Sinclair’s California writings is Oil! Lawrence Clerk Powell, former UCLA head librarian, has said Oil is a “novel of high California octane … the largest scale of all California novels.”

The novel starts with thirteen year Bunny Ross and his father Joe Ross, a small independent wildcat oil man, drive in a car hurtling down country roads to Beach City, a fictionalized Long Beach, Ca, as oil has just been discovered. Sinclair is fictionalizing the beginning of the Signal Hill oil field right outside the Los Angeles in the early 1920s. Ross wants to educate his son into the oil industry, and the whole novel is both Bunny Ross’s and our education.

Bunny Ross sees the small folks who had dreams of oil wealth from leasing their land again and again get nothing while his father bribes one politician after another starting with the country superintendant of roads; the elder Ross grows rich from his oil fields. In an early chapter Bunny meets Paul Watkins, a sixteen year old boy who runs away from his fundamentalist Christian poor father farmer and is starving on the streets, so Bunny starts to learn about destitution.

The main conflict is between Dad Ross who wants his son to become an oil tycoon like himself and Bunny who has first developed a conscience and then becomes a millionaire socialist. This is an epic novel, capturing the reader as it hurtles forward showing Dad’s rise from small independent oilman to part of a big oil syndicate, Bunny’s progress through the left, and their conflicts. The elder Ross is not any stereotyped tycoon, but a roughneck and sentimentalist, aruging with Bunny about politics but usually breaking down to give money to get his son's friends out of jail.

Bunny sides with the oil workers in two hard fought strikes, tries to organize a left-wing newspaper while at Southern Pacific University (a fictionalized USC), and gets involved in left factional fights between Socialists and Communists. Bunny is our guide to all classes from the high society parties where wealthy young women are flirting with a oil prince to his USC Jewish socialist friend Rachel Menzies and her garment worker family to the Watkinses, starving dirty farmers who are Holy Rollers. What’s fascinating about the Watkins is the reminder that destitute rural Protestants have turned to fundamentalism in the past.

One fascinating character who reappears is Eli Watkins who becomes a famous preacher like Aimee Semple MacPherson. Though Watkins preaches against immorality, he is seeing a pretty young thing on the side and pulls a good phony disappearance to hide his love affair. The other Watkins, who remain Holly Rollers, also support the oil strikes when the union comes to their countryside. Sinclair’s novel gives hope that if a fighting anti-poverty politics again comes to rural America, many of the blue collar fundamentalists would change their politics leftward.

Upton Sincliar's novel illuminates 2005 and 1925

In his novel Oil! Sinclair wonderfully sketches the Los Angeles of the 1920s: oil tycoons making bribing politiians; a tiny left being witch hunted; and Hollywood celebrities—it sounds just like 2005. A wonderful character in Sinclair’s Oil is Vee Tracy, a Hollywood sex star appearing in an anti-Bolshevik film, who goes after the hero Bunny Ross and gets her oil prince. Here Sinclairgives us celebrity romance as well as shows us an early instance of Hollywood churning out propaganda films like Vee’s anti-Bolshevik epic. Vee, of course, aligns with Dad Ross to try to end his son’s Bunny’s socialist politics

For oil tycoons like Dad Ross it was boom times during the 1920s as the country was switching to automobiles; the power of the Ross and his other Western oil tycoons is seen in their funding Harding’s successful presidential run. Sinclair is fictionalizing history, making it exciting. Dad Ross teaches his son that oil tycoons, unhappy with President Wilson letting European countries get control of the new oil fields in the Middle East, decide spend millions of dollars to elect their choice, Harding, as U.S. president.

After Bunny Ross sees his good friend Paul and other union organizers trying to defend the oil workers were arrested during the 1st Red Scare after World War I, Bunny learns from his college history teacher that the anti-Red scare had a cause: after the Russian Revolution, Russian aristocrats were forced into exile. Displaced Russian aristocrats and U.S. bankers, who had loans to the Czarist government and who were going to lose a fortune if the Bolsheviks stayed in power, made a political coalition that convinced the U.S. government to send troops to Russia in 1918 to try to end the revolutionary government; also the coalition started a Red Scare in the United States that illegally imprisoned trade unionists and deported radicals. Bunny is faced again and again what to do as a person of conscience when his friends wind up in jail during the anti-Red post World War I witch hunts. The question reverberates today: how does a person of conscience act today?

Sinclair is also capturing Los Angeles’s and United States politics in Oil! In the novel oil tycoon Pete O’Reily is a fictionalized Edward Doheny, the Los Angeles oil magnate who was indicted in the Teapot Dome oil scandal for bribing President Harding’s appointees. In the novel as in real the oil magnates paid bribes to government officials and got in exchange cheap leases on navy-owned land which had oil. Sinclair shows how Pete O'Reily, Dad Ross and the oil syndicate are likewise indicted for bribing the president's men. In an amusing chapter the oil magnates flee the country to avoid testifying in front of a U.S. Senate committee. Later in the novel the big oil syndicate’s try to influence U.S foreign policy to countries where they want to drill for oil such as Mosul, Iraq! Well, right now our government has troops in Mosul! Again, the novel focuses on how Bunny Ross reacts? Does he help his friends? Or does he run away?

Sinclair shows us the oil politics of1925 that have ramifications in 2005; the novel allows us the distance to gain understanding of the 1920s as well as our own era. As the Republican Party ends parts of FDR’s regulatory commissions and social safety network, the United States of 2005 more and more resembles that of 1925. How does Bunny Ross and his friends deal with the make-it-rich atmosphere of the 1920s? How do they offer alternatives? The novel is totally relevant to today's problems and world.

In our era Sinclair who didn’t flee to Europe and who had a brilliant understanding of the United States in the 1920s is becoming more relevant.The University of California Press reprinted Oil! in 1997 as part of their fine California Fiction series. In the last ten years there has been a Sinclair revival as part of a increasing sense that Sinclair has important insights into American history and culture. George Mitchell’s 1992 book Upton Sinclair’s Race for Governor of California and the Birth of Media Politics has inspired a musical which was produced in 2003.

Also in 2003 the first annual Uppie [humanitarian] Awards named after Upton Sinclair were held in San Pedro, California, near where Sinclair was arrested for reading the Constitution in support of striking long shore and oil workers. In that same year San Francisco’s Word for Word Theater dramatized the first chapter of Oil! Two years later in 2005 Lauren Coodley published an anthology The Land of Orange Juice and Jails: Upton Sinclair’s California which is a selection of his California writings including Oil! (Heydey Books).

Get Oil! It’s a fascinating read. You’ll learn a lot about California and the United States, then and now.

Wallace Thurman's lost classic novel

I just finished reading Wallace Thurman's novel The Blacker the Berry, a lost classic work of the Harlem Renaissance. After graduating from USC in the 1920s he put out an issue of a black literary magazine in Los Angeles, hoping to start a literary renaissance on the West Coast, but soon moved to New York where he became part of the Harlem Renaissance. In New York he put out a literary magazine with Langston Hughes and Zora Neal Hurston. Besides his novel The Blacker the Berry, he published other novels; had a play on Broadway; and returned to Los Angeles to write two screenplays for films which were released. He died much too young at thrity-two in 1934 from tuberculosis.

Blacker the Berry was controversial in the 1920s because it was the first African-American novel to explore prejudice among blacks. The heroine, Emma Lou Morgan, is born to a middle class "high yellow" family in Boise, Idaho; her family keeps their distance from other darker Blacks as well as puts down Emma because of her black color. They do, however, send her to USC for a college education where Emma futilely tries to win the friendship of lighter skinned Blacks who are polite but think her "too dark" to be their friend. As the author points out Emma herself is a snob, devaluating herself because of her dark color and endlessly wanting to be friends with light-skinned girls and to marry a light-skinned man. After experiencing much loneliness at USC, Emma flees to Harlem.

Thurman has wonderfully portrayed the Harlem of the 1920s, showing Emma at night clubs, rent parties, vaudville shows and dreadful employment agencies. He portrays a whole panorama of characters from black writers to bellboys and maids to college students and schoolteachers as well as white writers interested in Blacks. Thurman shows Emma's heartaches in a romance with a light-skinned black man who uses her, takes her money, and betrays her again and again. The novel revolves around the heroine's illusions about the world and herself like, and her struggles to survive when her illusions are shattered again and again. Thurman has written a novel equivalent to Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice where our heroine struggles with her own prejudices. Black the Berry is a brilliant novel both offering piercing psychological insight and illuminating a fascinating historical time.

Villaraigosa Wins as L.A's New Mayor!

Last Tuesday Antonio Villaraigoisa won as mayor of Los Angeles by 18 points. That was terrific. Two weeks earlier I had volunteered for Villaraigoisa in his westside office on Venice Boulevard. Two older men in their sixties were on the phones in the office where I sat, calling voters asking them who they were voting for and trying to convince them to vote for Villaraigosa. At the same time I input the results that other phone callers had gotten into the computer. After about an hour my wrists were beginning to hurt, and I was afraid of wrist injury as I’m prone to that sort of thing. A young woman reported in who was walking her neighborhood in Westchester for our candidate. There had been a huge grass-roots mobilization for weeks for Villaraigoisa. A couple times a week volunteers would call me.

Mine was just a tiny contribution but I wanted to make it as I think Los Angeles desperately needs a new mayor with a new voice and a new vision: for working people, civil liberties, and the environment. This city has been governed too long by men of little vision who make backroom deals like Hahn's appointees in the "pay-for-play" scandal where people got city contracts after giving Hahn appointees "contributions." I wanted to go to Villaraigosa victory celebration Tuesday nightbut I had to work, but I heard thousands were downtown, listening to gospel, mariachi, and rock ‘n roll in a tremendous party. What’s great is Villaraigoisa got support from voters from every part of the city—an amazing feat.

Actually, the grass-roots mobilization is the culmination of ten years of grass-roots work by trade unions and progressives to change Los Angeles. Over ten years ago progresssives in the LA County AFL-CIO elected Miguel Contreras the first Mexican-American president of the L.A. County AFL-CIO. Contreras made a huge difference, getting union members involved in working to elect progressive pro-trade union candidates for over 9 years. In 1996 I helped woman the phones at the Burbank headquarters of the steelworkers in a drive by L.A. County Federation of Labor AFL-CIO to elect progressives to state legislatures and L. A. City Council and we were successful! Slowly the labor electoral workers elected more progressives to the city council and the state legislators until the LA County AFL-CIO alongside fellow progressives had turned themselves into a political power. Year after year Contreras, the AFL-CIO, and fellow progressives did this electoral work.

We’ve elected state legislators, city councilpeople (we have a progressive majority) and now mayor! Hurrah!

Adrian Louis: Native American Odysseus

Adrian Louis’s book of poetry Among the Dog Eaters published by West End Press in 1992 is one of the best, most moving books of poetry I’ve read in years. I was asked to write an essay about working class poets of the western United States. Since most of the self-defined working class poets I knew lived in California, I searched for poets from other western states and stumbled on Louis who a member of the Lovelock Paiute tribe born and raised in Nevada. I’d read a couple of his poems in the anthology Modern American Poetry and was very impressed. The University of Nevada Reno press in 1999 has included him in Nevada Writers Hall of Fame.

Reading Dog Eaters I was more than impressed: I felt had had just read a major American poet. But I wouldn’t say he’s working class. After working as a journalist for Native American papers, he taught English for a decade at the Oglala Lakota College on the Pine Ridge Reservation of South Dakota. He writes many poems in Among the Dog Eaters about Lakota at Pine Ridge but I wouldn’t define Lakota as working class either, but I’ll get to that later.

Louis begins his first poem “Notes from Indian Country” with a quote from Homer’s Odyssey where Odysseus boasts of his wiles, his fame, and his home. Louis in this poem is also boasting of his wiles in teaching; his pot gut; his can of Bud; his suffering of the “wannabees, squamen and white liberals/who pretend to save Indians by daylight;” and his home on Pine Ridge with its K-mart folding chairs. In this poem he is rewriting The Odyssey. Louis is very funny with dark humor , honesty, and audacity that make these poems a great read. Think Bukowski’s honesty combined with Whitman’s audacity.

Louis has given Nevada fine poetry. Actually, Louis is the first Nevada writer I’ve ever read. I don’t know much about Nevada, and my strongest Nevada memory is that afternoon I was o horrified by Circus Circus casino in Las Vegas praying for an escape. But Louis’s Nevada is very different, evoking that time in Northern Nevada a hundred years ago the Paiute prophet Wovoka started the Ghost Dance religion. In Louis’ poem “A Visit to My Mother’s Grave” he sees his skeletons the Ghost Dancers “dance/in the burnished morning.” and in this amazing, lyric poem he ends it with his singing and praying for “this soil of Nevada/this soil of Wovoka/this song of love/for my people.” He does look to the dance for heroes and moments of redemption and hope in the past of his home.

This book doesn't only look backward but is a book drenched in love and honesty about the present. The honesty sears in the next poem “At the Knight’s Inn in Reno,” an Indian bar, where he and the other Indians seems imprisoned wanting to go home to their mother earth which has murdered but “we helped the white man/do the dirty deed.” Louis is unsparingly honest both about himself and his struggles with alcoholism as well as self-destructiveness of some of his people he loves so dearly. In the Afterword Lakota journalist Tim Giago says, “the poetry of Adrian Louis is a must for all serious students of Indian literature because it grabs the liberal dreamers by the nape of the neck and forces them to look at reality.”

In ar brilliant moving poem “Breakfast at Conoco Convenience Store in Pine Ridge” Louis describes Pine Ridge as a town mixing up desire and defeat: “It is the town I grew up in/and left only to return, forever tethered./I will not scorn it as a world governed by grandmothers, welfare, and wine./It has been my sanctuary. It has been my home.” For Louis Northern Nevada Indian country is the same as Pine Ridge, so in a way these are all Nevada poems because Louis is writing about his “home, his sanctuary” where he constantly struggles with his demons. He can't live there sober but he can't leave Pine Ridge either. Like the Odyssey this book is dominated by the idea of "home."

The poet does talk about leaving home. In the poem “At a Grave in an Eastern City” he’s visiting Kerouac’s grave but one stanza etches out a impoverished childhood in Northern Nevada with a outhouse, a shack with no water, the oldest of twelve kids and then hitchhiking America six times in the cities searching for Kerouac’s catharsis and open roads but those roads always lead back to the Indian territory--home. The poems careen between “Unholy Redemptions" about striving for those moments of redemptions and then “Tombstones” sad funny elegies for friends who ha died. Redemption, tombstones, love, home, drunkenness—Among the Dog Eaters includes it all.

Years ago leaders of the American Indian movement told an audience of white leftists that Marx was another European whose ideas are oppressive to the Indians. Marx like most 19 century European thinkers adopted the idea that humanity has progressed, but for Marx progress was from primitive tribes like the Iroquois to feudalism to capitalism and eventually to communism.

Canadian Peter Kulchyski in his article “Socialism and Native Americans” says that Marx did have some positive insights about Native Americans. Kulchyskis argues that Marx describes ”forcefully in Capital that the dissolution of the bonds between working people and their land was a central moment in the history of capitalism. However, such dissolutions did not take place in a vacuum: they were hotly contested in the old world as in the new.”

Futher, Kulchyski says that many Native Americans, forced into the cities, are exploited as workers and fought back with strikes and unions. But Native Americans are not, particularly those in rural reservations, working class. Many tribes still have the land, which provides subsistence. Native Americans provide another track of resistance to capitalism in their centuries long battles to retain and protect their land, their cultural identity, and their nationhood. Louis is a tremendous voice of this other track of resistance heading straight back to Paiute, Wovoka, the Lakota and Wounded Knee.

In Louis's poems he describes his work as a college teacher/writer alienated by the “white UFOs” who dominate his college. He writes very little about the work done by the Lakota since his focus isn't work. Instead he's a moralist, wanting himself as well as the people around him to improve. He puts himself on the same level as those around him: engaged in the same struggle as the people around him to survive, to resist, and to hope. He tells his stories of his long battles to make his home a better place.

If one reason we look at working class poetry is to see those who the economic system has exploited and how they survived, resisted, and hope--the majority of the North American population-- then it makes to me perfect sense to include those, like Louis and other Native American writers, while not working class, are a parallel resistance tradition. For Louis' story--how he tries to survive, resist, and hope is all our stories.

Healing from the War: Naomi Hirahara's first novel

Naomi Hirahara has written a fine first novel in Summer of the Big Bachi. A former editor of the Rafu Shimpo, the bilingual Japanese American daily in Los Angeles, Hirahara has both written an engaging mystery story and examined the lives of the generation of Japanese Americans coming of age during World War II. So Summer of the Big Bachi has transformed the mystery story into a generation’s story.

The hero, Mas Arai, a 69-year old survivor of the A-bomb blast in Hiroshima, works as a gardener in Altadena/Pasadena area just north of Los Angeles. Mas is one of 500 Hiroshima survivors who were born in the United States and then returned to their native country after the war. Mas’s favorite pastime is gambling at the backroom of the lawnmower shop owned by Wishbone Tanaka, a survivor of the relocation camps.

One of Mas’s best friend isTug Yamada, a member of the 442^nd , the legendary army unit of Japanese Americans that won an amazing amount of Purple Hearts and Silver Stars for their heroism fighting in Italy. Throughout the novel, more and more of these men’s lives from 1945-1999 are revealed. We learn about their wives, their children, their careers, their hobbies, their close friendships—how they made a life in Southern California. Mas’s philosophy has always been, “[Y]ou can’t blame the Bomb, Accept it, go, and forget.” Mas like his friend Tug is a ultimate survivor who went on to create a rich life after the war.

All these men believe in “bachi” of the title”: if you hurt someone, you soon get hurt in return (what comes around, goes around). There is also a mystery involved two men who came separately from Japan. Both the older man Nakane and the young reporter Yuki Kimura are looking for Joji Haneda who was Mas’s childhood friend in Hiroshima.

Despite not wanting to help either man, Mas sends the young reporter Yuki to the house of Junko Kakita, the mistress of Joji Haneda . Yuki arrives to find the mistress has just been attacked. After the police arrest Yuki as the suspected attacked, Mas tries to investigate seriously. Yuki is alone in California, so Mas steps in as a substitute grandfather to help him. So now we have a traditional crime for this mystery to solve, but some of the clues are 50 years in the past. The novel moves between the mysteries of 1999 Los Angeles and the mystery of 1945 Hiroshima.

As Mas investigates, we learn both what he and his teenaged friends had to do to survive in wartime and occupied Japan Some of the bad guys are the Japanese chauvinists who harassed American-born Japanese in Hiroshima because they had English-language books. Hirahara exames the questions of loyalty to country, to friends, and to self. Another bad guy was teenaged Riki Kimura who sold heroin on the black market when Hiroshima was occupied by the U.S. The novel investigates a further mystery: where does evil reside?

Mas doesn’t think like his friend Wishbone that the world owes him because the Americans locked him up during the war. For Wishbone, the Americans are the evil ones. While Mas sympathizes with the Nisei’s suffering, he feels differently after living through Hiroshima: “Once you witnessed that, you saw evil, and it didn’t live in just Americans or Japanese. It lived close by in friends, in neighbors, and most frighteningly, inside yourself.” Finally, the novel concerns itself with forgiving oneself for surviving Hiroshima and not being able to save one’s friends. Hirahara has transformed the mystery novel into a fiction that searches into the mysteries of life itself. She has written a splendid first novel.

Hollywood Boulevard Anti-War March 3/19

It was raining with a slight drizzle when I walked through Hollywood to Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street at noon for the anti-war march commemorating the 2^nd year of the war. I stopped to buy a candy bar at a coffeehouse at Selma and Cahuenga, noticing the two young L.A.P.D. in the front of the room drinking their coffee? Coffee break? Munching my chocolate down Hollywood Boulevard, I saw a couple more L.A.P.D. lounging next to their bikes. Most of the streets were blocked off: Hollywood Boulevard was and most of the side streets were.

Actually this march almost didn’t get its permit because the local businesses thought it would be bad for business, but a deal was cut at the last moment calling the march a “parade,” so it was legalized. Actually, most of the police looked relaxed, hanging out in doorways. The anti-war marchers have proved themselves to be peaceful crowd after two years of marching down Hollywood Boulevard. The drizzle is a little harder as I stand on the southeast corner of Hollywood Boulevard half listening to the speeches. Speeches and songs go on for a while, with a rousing anti-war lesbian demanding both the Iraq War to end and the right to marry her fiancee getting the most rousing applause.

More people kept on arriving in the drizzle until there must have been 5,000 people there—maybe more. It’s hard to tell. I manage to take photos in the break in the rain. The most prominent new banner is for Iraq Veterans Against the War marching near Veterans for Peace. The Iraq Veterans Against the War carried a U.S. flag draped coffin. To me, they were the most moving. It’s good to see they have organized. I also remember the seven year old girl with long blonde hair holding up a huge American flag with a peace sign instead of stars—she marched behind her mother.

I

Top Forty: Los Angeles' Top Forty Works of Fiction

The first part of oldies But goodies, the latest hits plus some obscure numbers you need to know. From Oscar Acosta's radical Chicano lawyer hanging out with the Brown Berets to Joseph Hansen's gay detectives searching for clues during the AIDs plague:

Acosta, Oscar- Revolt of the Cockroach People. – novel of Chicano revolt in1960s by the legendary Oscar “Zeta” Acosta

Adamic, Louis. Laughing in the Jungle. Debunker novel about LA in 1920s-the first fine novel showing poor immigrant struggling to achieve his dreams.

Boyle, T.C. Tortilla Curtain. Novel of the two couples in Topanga Canyon: the wealthy Anglo and struggling Mexican-American

Bukowski, Charles. Post Office .Story explains why a postal worker would go postal.

Cain, James. Mildred Pierce. Brilliant story capturing life of single working woman in Glendale during the 1930s.

Chandler, Raymond. The Big Sleep. – the first, the great, detective novel.

Connelly, Michael. Angel’s Flight. Fine detective work dealing with mid-1990s conflicts over L.A.P.D. and race.

Didion, Joan. Play It As It Lays. The great car story of a alienated actress driving.

Dunne, John Gregory. True Confessions. Corruption and murder in high places in Catholic church in late 1940s L.A.

Fante, John. Ask the Dust. Wrenching tale about poor young man living in Bunker Hill and struggling to have his dream of being a writer..

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Last Tycoon. Fitzgerald’s last unfinished novel describing the last brilliant Hollywood movie producer.

Fitch, Janet. White Oleander- Girl surviving the craziness of the foster care in this tale.

Fuchs, Daniel. The Golden West- lovely short stories and a novella about Hollywood by Jewish-American working class writer who worked a sreenwriter in 1930s-1950s.

Himes, Chester. If He Hollers, Let Him Go African-American fights racism in South Central- best novel written about Los Angeles during World War II.

Hansen, Joseph. Early Graves. Gay detective investigates deaths of gays with AIDs.

The second half of oldies but goodies, the latest hits plus some obscure numbers you need to know, from 1920s exposes of corporate corruption by Upton Sinclair to 2000 exploration of East L.A. by Luis Rodriguez and many points in between:

Hirahara, Naomi. Summer of the Big Bachi. Mystery about Japanese-Americans spanning a time period from war-torn Japan to present-day Los Angeles.

Huneven, Michelle. Jamesland. Funny novel explores L.A's obsessions with eating good food and exploring new religions.

Huxley, Aldous. After Many Summer Dies a Swan- Brilliant satire of Hollywood and its environs in the 1930s.

Jackson, Helen Hunt. Ramona. 1st novel about Southern California published in late 19th century about half-Mexican/half-Native young woman Ramona and her sweetheart having hard times in Anglo era.

Kadohata, Cynthia. In the Heart of the Valley of Love- surviving the horrors of postacolyptic days of 2052 Los Angeles.

McCoy, Horace. They Shoot Horses Don’t They. Classic noir about Depression L.A. marathon dancers.

Morales, Alejandro. Brick People. Magic realist novel about epic struggle between Mexican-American brickyard workers and the Simons family who owns the brick yeard.

Mosley, Walter. Walking the Dog- brilliant novel about African-American ex-con rebuilding his life in Southcentral.

Oates, Joyce Carol. Blonde. Sizzling fictionalized novel about actress Marilyn Monroe.

Ponce, Mary Helen. The Wedding. Novel about working class Chicana’s large wedding.

Rechy, John. The Miraculous Day of Amalia Gomez. One of the best L.A. novels of the 1980s about Mexican-American woman surviving hard times.

Revoyr, Nina. Southland. Searing novel about two generations of blacks and Japanese in Crenshaw district.

Rense, Rip. The Last Byline.Captures the decline of the old time newspapers in California and the rise of corporate journalism

Rochlin, Michael. Cascaron. Wonderful novel about the last days of the Mexican ranchos in Southern California in the 1850s.

Rodriguez, Luis. The Republic of East Los Angeles. Fine stories about East Los Angeles.

Schulberg, Bud. What Makes Sammy Run. Classic noir expose of film industry and a nasty movie executive.

See, Carolyn. Making History. Living with random violence on the Westside.

Sinclair, Upton. Oil. The first strong anti-boomer novel exposing corruption in the oil industry in the 1920s.

Tervalon, Jervey. Understand This- Surviving drugs in a black neighborhood.

Tobar, Hector. Tatooed Soldier. Great work dealing with Guatemalan immigrant on the city’s downtown mean streets during the 1992 riots

Waugh, Evelyn. The Loved One. Brilliant satire on 1930s L.A. from a master.

West, Nathanel. Day of the Locust. Classic noir on down-and-out Hollywood wannabees.

Woods, Paula. Inner City Blues. Mystery with African-American LAPD detective heroine investigating murder during 1992 riots.

Yamamoto, Hisaye. Seventeen Syllables. Dazzling stories about Japanese-Americans in L.A. from through 1930s farms through the post war period.

Top Forty: Los Angeles's Best 40 Works of Fiction

The second half of oldies but goodies, the latest hits plus some obscure numbers you need to know, from 1920s exposes of corporate corruption by Upton Sinclair to 2000 exploration of East L.A. by Luis Rodriguez and many points in between:

Hirahara, Naomi. Summer of the Big Bachi. Mystery about Japanese-Americans spanning a time period from war-torn Japan to present-day Los Angeles.

Huneven, Michelle. Jamesland. Funny novel explores L.A's obsessions with eating good food and exploring new religions.

Huxley, Aldous. After Many Summer Dies a Swan- Brilliant satire of Hollywood and its environs in the 1930s.

Isherwood, Christopher. A Single Man. Fine tale of a single day in life of gay professor--captures Los Angeles of the early 1960s.

Kadohata, Cynthia. In the Heart of the Valley of Love- surviving the horrors of postacolyptic days of 2052 Los Angeles.

McCoy, Horace. They Shoot Horses Don’t They. Classic noir about Depression L.A. marathon dancers.

Morales, Alejandro. Brick People. Magic realist novel about epic struggle between Mexican-American brickyard workers and the Simons family who owns the brick yeard.

Mosley, Walter. Walking the Dog- brilliant novel about African-American ex-con rebuilding his life in Southcentral.

Oates, Joyce Carol. Blonde. Sizzling fictionalized novel about actress Marilyn Monroe.

Ponce, Mary Helen. The Wedding. Novel about working class Chicana’s large wedding.

Rechy, John. The Miraculous Day of Amalia Gomez. One of the best L.A. novels of the 1980s about Mexican-American woman surviving hard times.

Revoyr, Nina. Southland. Searing novel about two generations of blacks and Japanese in Crenshaw district.

Rense, Rip. The Last Byline.Captures the decline of the old time newspapers in California and the rise of corporate journalism

Rochlin, Michael. Cascaron. Wonderful novel about the last days of the Mexican ranchos in Southern California in the 1850s.

Rodriguez, Luis. The Republic of East Los Angeles. Fine stories about East Los Angeles.

Schulberg, Bud. What Makes Sammy Run. Classic noir expose of film industry and a nasty movie executive.

See, Carolyn. Making History. Living with random violence on the Westside.

Sinclair, Upton. Oil. The first strong anti-boomer novel exposing corruption in the oil industry in the 1920s.

Tervalon, Jervey. Understand This- Surviving drugs in a black neighborhood.

Tobar, Hector. Tatooed Soldier. Great work dealing with Guatemalan immigrant on the city’s downtown mean streets during the 1992 riots

Waugh, Evelyn. The Loved One. Brilliant satire on 1930s L.A. from a master.

West, Nathanel. Day of the Locust. Classic noir on down-and-out Hollywood wannabees.

Woods, Paula. Inner City Blues. Mystery with African-American LAPD detective heroine investigating murder during 1992 riots.

Yamamoto, Hisaye. Seventeen Syllables. Dazzling stories about Japanese-Americans in L.A. from through 1930s farms through the post war period.

Michael Connelly Writes LA Brilliantly

Two colleagues of mine have been praising detective writer Michael Connelly for a long time, saying he's their favorite Los Angeles detective writer I've never read any Connelly until one of my students loaned me his novel Angel's Flight. The novel was a gripping read, capturing the period of the mid-1990s in L.A. when the town was split by racial conflict and all attempts to reform the L.A.P.D. were making the slowest of slow progress.

In Angel's Flight LAPD detectives find two dead bodies in Angel's Flight, the much beloved funicular railroad downtown that takes people up to the top of Bunker Hill. One of the dead bodies is the black civil rights lawyerHoward Elias whose specialty is suing the L.A.P.D. over cop brutality. Obiviously, the L.A.P.D. officers he had sued are prime suspects. The white lead detective Harry Bosch and his two black detective partners have to investigate cops as well as any other suspect while the cops resent being looked on as suspects. The city leaders are terrified of another riot like the 1992 one while black churchmen lead protests demanding justice. Angel's Flight captures those racial conflicts in Los Ageles better than any other piece of fiction I've read.

Part of the pleasures of the novel is its use of locations. Besides finding the muder victims on Angel's Flight, the detectives go to the deceased lawyer's office which is in the Bradbury Building which Connelly calls "the dusty jewel of downtown." Then the detectives go to the lawyer's apartment which is one of the new apartment towers downtown as well as his home in Baldwin Hills and then stop by Grand Central Market. The characters really inhabit the downtown streets as well as the corridors of power in Parker Center and the houses of the wealthy in Brentwood in a way similar to how Phillip Marlowe explores the whole town.

Another of the novel's pleasures is the naive hard working hero idealistic Harry Bosch who wants to think well of his fellow white cops as well as investigate them as possible suspects. Bosche is forever getting in trouble with his bureaucratic superiors--the novel does a great job of caputring the experience of working for a large city bureaucracy. Bosch like the other white cops can't believe in Elias's latest case accusing the L.A.P.D. of torturing an innocent black man; it's only later in the novel when Bosch finds that Elias was completely right: his client was innocent and manhandled by the cops. Part of the novel is watching idealistic Harry Bosch who peels away lies including the lies he tries to believe in. The hero has to face his own demons and terrors in his investigation, so Connelly is writing a fine character as hero who goes from naivite to knowledge. At the same time Bosch has to deal with how to keep his integrity while working within this bureaucracy which tries to protect itself.

Another pleasure is Connelly's ability to capture the media frenzy of press on the trail of a hot story at the press conference at Parker Center. He shows us Los Angeles buffeted by conflicts among the L.A.P.D., frenzied media, and community civil rights activtists--his LA is real as today's news story. While other novels might have the place right, Angel's Flight captures both the place, the period of the mid-1990s and the periods intense conflicts. My colleagues were right--Michael Connelly is a brilliant detective writer, a worthy succesor to Raymond Chandler.