postmodern

I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem

admin — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 16:04:00 +0000

This fascinating novel, which won France's Grand Prix Littéraire de la Femme, offers readers a vivid re-imagining of the life of a historical figure mentioned only briefly in the transcripts of the seventeenth-century Salem witch trials: a slave woman of Caribbean origins, accused of practicing voodoo. Angela Davis, in her foreword to the current edition, asserts the importance of “the retelling of a history that is as much mine as it is hers,” a story of great significance to Black women who are “Tituba's cultural kin.” The first person narrative gives Tituba an opportunity to recount her life as she sees it, to overcome the silence imposed on her by official histories of the period. Maryse Condé, herself born in Guadeloupe, begins by evoking the beauties and horrors of the West Indies—of Barbados in particular—where Tituba is born to an Ashanti woman “as lithe and purple as the sugarcane flower,” who had been raped by a British sailor. Little Tituba flourishes at first in her island home, but her mother comes into conflict with their master and is hanged for striking a white man. At the age of seven, Tituba is taken in by old Mama Yaya and raised in the traditional healing ways inherited from African ancestors. The growing girl learns to respect everything in nature, to make the proper prayers and sacrifices, to devise “potions whose powers I strengthened with incantations,” and to communicate with the spirits, including her deceased mother.

The idyll in the wilderness ends abruptly when the adolescent Tituba falls in love with a merry rascal, a slave named John Indian. She soon moves to the capital, Bridgetown to be with him. John Indian jokingly calls her a witch, because of her special magical gifts, but others suspect her of commerce with the devil even though, as she protests, “Before setting foot inside this house I didn't know who Satan was!” In an interview published in the afterword to the present edition, Maryse Condé describes Tituba as “doing only good to her community” through her relations with “the invisible forces,” and therefore not a witch in the bad connotations of the term, but the bigoted people with whom she comes in contact—especially after she is sold along with John Indian to a Puritan minister, Samuel Parris—do not see her in a positive light.

One of the themes of the book is the unlikely (and, unfortunately, often temporary) alliances that can form between persons divided by race, class, or religion. When Parris moves with his household to Boston, a strong friendship develops between Tituba and Elizabeth Parris, the minister's wife, as well as with her child Betsey, It is one of the ironies of the novel that Tituba's efforts to amuse and aid the girls in her charge at Salem Village arouse the villagers' fears and turn them against her. The Caribbean folktales she tells about sorcerers and vampires titillate everyone and feed their fears of damnation and demonic possession. When Betsey tells her cousin Abigail about the secret magic rites Tituba has used to protect the frail little girl, the situation gets out of control. Condé locates the ultimate source of the hysteria that sweeps through the village as a combination of the repression of healthy sensual pleasures along with the accumulation of small-town jealousies and resentments among the populace, together with unacknowledged guilt at the mistreatment of Blacks and American Indians by the white settlers. The village girls accuse many local figures of magically tormenting them.

Arrested and interrogated in 1692, Tituba at first protests her innocence: she has done no wrong, has not hurt any of the afflicted children. Her husband John Indian advises her to play along with her accusers, to tell them what they want to hear. He even pretends to be possessed, himself. In a controversial sequence criticized by many reviewers, the novel's heroine encounters a character called Hester in prison, clearly based on the wholly fictional heroine of The Scarlet Letter. Certain historians have condemned this intrusion of Romantic literature into a historical novel, yet Condé in her interview defends it on two different grounds: a) that her work “is the opposite of a historical novel,” that her Tituba is an invented “female hero, ... a mock-epic character,” and b) that as a novelist, she felt “there was a link between Tituba and Nathaniel Hawthorne,” persons inhabiting the same region at times not too far apart for comparison. The conversation between the two prisoners gives Condé a chance to explore the social constraints on women and the difficult relations between men and women. Ann Armstrong Scarboro's afterword asserts that here Condé “parodies modern feminist discourse,” but it seems to me that Condé gets to play both sides against the middle in these passages by intermixing humorous and serious notes and leaving it up to the reader to decide how to interpret them.

While Tituba's testimony at trial is quoted from actual transcripts, the additional context Condé provides suggests that the accused woman is merely mouthing words that others are saying, going along with other people's superstitions. As a confessed witch she is sentenced to jail but escapes the death penalty. Thus she survives, while many of the people condemned for witchcraft are executed. The historical note to this edition of the novel states that in 1693 the slave Tituba was sold to pay her prison fees and the price of her chains. It is unclear what happened thereafter to the historical woman, but Condé chooses to have her Tituba purchased by Benjamin Cohen d'Azevedo, a Portuguese Jewish merchant whose wife had died. Benjamin and Tituba slowly become friends and eventually lovers. After a terrible house fire set by Puritan persecutors in which Benjamin's children are killed, he frees her and buys a ship passage back to Barbados for her. There she becomes involved with a group of maroons—wild Blacks who seem to be working towards freedom for the plantation slaves—but even there she finds betrayal and a revolt that fails. She is finally hanged by the British authorities. The epilogue finds the spirit of Tituba still active in the island, heroine of a popular song going about encouraging the slaves to fight for liberty.

I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem is a work I highly recommend to people interested in African-American and Caribbean literature, colonialism and post-colonialism, post-modernism and feminism, as well as to any reader interested in a colorful adventure tale. The additional scholarly materials provided in this edition make this book helpful even to readers familiar with the original French text.

Written by: Kittye Delle Robbins-Herring, June 20th 2010

Western

admin — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 01:01:00 +0000

By Christine Montalbetti, Betsy Wing

Dalkey Archive Press

Nothing is so perfectly amusing as a total change of ideas.
- Laurence Sterne

Anybody that doesn't want to get killed best clear on out the back.
- William Munny (Clint Eastwood), Unforgiven

Christine Montalbetti is the best shot in town. She'll slay you in the street at high noon. So if tender, easily digestible reads are your favorite, best clear on out the back. Jane Austen or Suzie Ormond, Western ain’t. However, if what gets your blood going is a hard gallop across open space with terrain so changeable you could get thrown if you don’t pay strict attention, well, then Western is your mount.

The author of Western is French, a literary critic and theorist, and teaches French literature at the University of Paris. Western was—you’ll need a slug of rotgut whiskey to get this down—written in French. (The translation, by Betsy Wing, corrals the novel superbly in English.) Western is, therefore, nothing like an oater scribed by Louis L'Amour. Well, maybe not nothing.

There are genre tropes in Western. For example: a big sky, horses, tumbleweed, a ranch, a street brawl, and a town, called postmodernly enough, Transition City. Imagine these tropes filtered through phenomenology, Roland Barthes, Proust, Laurence Sterne, Jacques Tati, Lucille Ball, and god knows who or what else. The result is that Montalbetti uses and abuses all these tropes pretty much as she does with one cowboy, name of Dirk, who is so laconic it takes him three pages to say nothing. This expansiveness means Western upends what is a terse action genre and becomes hilariously, verbosely literate while making profound observations and asides. Western, therefore, has huge fun decimating its genre, honouring it, while being amazingly intellectually satisfying and wise.

The novel also takes a postmodern tack in narrative voice. It employs a first person narrator, a “writer” who speaks directly to “you”, as though we, the reader, were walking beside her as she creates the action and characters. At times, she fades off into a third person omniscient, only to pop up again as "I" just when you’ve forgotten there was a first-person narrator.

Many sentences in Western roll, twist, divagate, navigate, hesitate, stumble, detour, and come back on themselves for a page and more. Thank goodness, though some readers may be tempted to throw the book at the wall. Go ahead. You’ll be picking it up in a minute eager to see if the narrative will eventually exit that anthropomorphic ant world you’ve suddenly been dragged into with its hexapod characters’ imaginings—though just a sentence ago another cowboy was rocking on the porch waiting for sunrise. Hexapod characters’ imaginings? Yup.

Summing up this book is like trying to sum up life. Instead of trying, here’s an excerpt to give you some idea of the action-adventure you’re in for in Western. Slow down. Savour. This tiny, defiant memory, which distinguishes itself so clearly from the heap of fragile, scarcely sustained subjects briefly popping up in our man’s mind only to disintegrate immediately (those particular subjects would be just as hard for me to catch, in order to show you, as chasing butterflies with a net held out in front of me—picture it—while tripping over lumps of earth pushed up by moles; likely to lose my Lepidoptera if I start paying attention to the ground I’m walking over, but unable to catch anything as I’m falling all over the place), this thought, more vigorous than the others, no longer forming a single long wave along with them, driving its roller onto the beach, this thought, a sturdy residue rather than foam, though still, well, how shall I put it… Me, I put it like this: tour de force.

Written by: Neil Flowers, November 26th 2009

Things Are Getting Sinister and Sinisterer

admin — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 00:03:00 +0000

By Edie Sedgwick

Dischord

This is perhaps the ultimate postmodern album of the year. Edie Sedgwick—not to be confused with the Warhol muse (or maybe you are supposed to conflate the band and the woman)—records loud, jangly, post-punk melodies, and on Things Are Getting Sinister and Sinisterer, every track is named after a person or film, from Bambi to Rob Lowe to ODB (rest his soul). On some tracks, it becomes difficult to decide whether front man Justin Moyer feels he is speaking about these people or channeling them. Despite the genius in these songs—and the album as a whole—the most interesting commentary is found in the tunes about some of pop culture’s reigning women.

Mary-Kate Olsen, whose name is the title of the album’s third track, is told – or tells us – that she needs “A lesson in control/A lesson in being thin/Don’t eat/Then repeat.” Numbers are then chanted in repetition, and it doesn’t take long to understand this as representing the diminutive starlet’s weight dropping as the verse progresses. The song takes aim at the media as well, but is it really effective to take on eating disorders by calling out Mary-Kate? Or is the joke on us for thinking celebrity media is ever about authenticity, a place to discuss substantial issues? The song feels tasteless on some level, yet that could simply be a matter of feminist opinion and how you choose to analyze these things.

Similar to MK, Angelina Jolie is called out on her family strategy: “Thinking about a baby/Working on a baby/Let’s go get a baby/Black baby.” After calling it a “bourgeoisie lottery” and wondering about “the line between good works and publicity,” I sat with my jaw near my lap, bewildered and amused that someone bothered to make a song about Jolie’s absurd wild-woman-turned-saint transition. Maybe I should be horrified by this irreverent attack on what some view as Jolie bringing necessary awareness to the plight of poor children, but I’m no Jolie fan, and I’m trying to live in a society where we don’t take ourselves too seriously, something I’ve never been personally good at. This song may be harsh, but it fits my cynical worldview.

After a while, the album’s formula does get a bit predictable and feels overextended. If you pay no attention to pop culture, you probably won’t understand the name-drops, but if you are tuned into the world of “Hollyweird,” listen for cop references, questions about whatever happened to the Brat Pack, and about how Sissy Spacek is “Gonna sing about what I’m about/Gonna be about what I’m about.” Things Are Getting Sinister and Sinisterer will make you laugh or dance, or if you’re lucky, both at once.

Written by: Brittany Shoot, November 25th 2008

Feminist Thought: A More Comprehensive Introduction

admin — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 23:24:00 +0000

By Rosemarie Tong

Westview Press

Rosemarie Tong’s Feminist Thought: A More Comprehensive Introduction offers a clear, thorough introduction to feminist theory. With detailed chapters on Liberal Feminism; Radical Feminism; Marxist and Socialist Feminism; Psychoanalytic Feminism; Care-Focused Feminism; Multicultural, Global, and Postcolonial Feminism; Ecofeminism; and Postmodern and Third Wave Feminism, the book presents even-handed coverage of the major schools of feminist thought.

The chapters are on average thirty to thirty-five pages long. The text is, thus, concise enough to be useful in survey or introductory feminist theory courses. The theoretical origins of each school thought are examined, and each chapter also considers supportive and opposing views in relation to the different ‘branches’ of feminism. As such, the book offers a useful dialogue that not only reveals the important contributions of these different feminisms (and the key thinkers from each branch), but also scrutinizes the unexamined assumptions and biases in each approach.

While portions of the book are dry and a bit tedious to wade through, this is understandable given the wide-ranging coverage and the textbook type format. It would be difficult for any author, even one as obviously well-versed in feminist theory as Tong, to share a history of feminist thought that didn’t sometimes tend towards an encyclopedic style. Moreover, even though the coverage of primary sources becomes wearisome at times (especially for readers already well versed in feminist theory), the comprehensive approach that considers the strengths and weaknesses of each theoretical branch is well worth wading through (and particularly useful for those new to feminist theory).

One area that seems missing in this revised addition is a consideration of transnational feminism. An overview of this branch, especially considering its current importance to the field, would have improved the chapter entitled “Multicultural, Global, and Postcolonial Feminism.” Another missing area of feminist thought is sexuality studies and queer theory. Given the explosive growth of these branches of thought, this seems an odd omission. However, in spite of these absences, the book is certainly a very useful introduction to feminist thought. In addition to being useful for survey courses in feminist theory, the book also serves as a great reference text to have on hand, especially given the excellent bibliography.

Written by: Professor What If, October 21st 2008

Bright Shiny Morning

admin — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 10:51:00 +0000

By James Frey

Harper Collins

I have no beef with James Frey. I think he’s a talented writer; a zeitgeist of a generation; a younger and less punctuationally-correct Don DeLillo, of a sort; and I believe Oprah is a mean and deceitful ratings leech. I think memoir is a complicated genre at best, and I tend to believe most (if not all) of the story as told in this recent Vanity Fair article. I have a soft spot for the downtrodden that come out stronger after the fight, and I happen to think straight men with lisps who say “fuck” every third word are wildly underappreciated.

Enter Bright Shiny Morning, Frey’s third book and first in the wake of his much publicized fall from literary grace (also known as being “outed” for writing a memoir with a—gasp!—fictional flare in 2003’s A Million Little Pieces). A rather widely praised follow-up, Frey seemed to have rebounded with relative ease, considering the slander he has endured. I had the good fortune and required five dollars to see Frey in Boston last month, and his in-person readings are much like he writes—mostly stream-of-consciousness and unpretentious—particularly entertaining, even if you weren’t previously a fan or haven’t read anything he’s written. A man not bothered or interested in anyone’s perception of him or his work except his readers, I was excited about the book before I had my own copy, just because I like his no-nonsense attitude about the literati and run-on sentences.

Frey himself has called the novel, a fast moving 500 pages, a “love letter” to Los Angeles, and it certainly is in many ways. It also portrays a series of troubled characters in all their complicated glory and, for me, created mental images of deserted mini-golf courses and seedy motels that I still haven’t been able to shake. The novel haunted me for the week after I speedily read it while stuck in uncomfortable transit zones, like airplanes and airports, and in fact, I suspect I consumed it too fast. Processing a wide range of emotions so quickly made me feel like I’d just gone through all the stages of a serious relationship and breakup in less than seventy-two hours.

Vignettes coupled with four main storylines created a perfect blend of the static and constant, reflecting life as I understand it. These, interspersed with random “facts” and histories of Los Angeles, kept me turning the pages frantically, wondering when my favorite story lines would return, loving the pages that held a single sentence, wondering often what was a true detail about L.A. (despite the publisher’s insistence that not one word of the novel should be taken as fact).

Without giving too much away, Bright Shiny Morning is a novel for postmodern, hopeful cynics, who believe in universal truths and the beauty of sadness. It has my highest recommendation.

Photo credit: Andreas Haugstrup Pedersen

Written by: Brittany Shoot, July 10th 2008

The Graffiti Artist

admin — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 16:54:00 +0000

Directed by James Bolton

Indie Pictures

In a nocturnal urban landscape, The Graffiti Artist takes you on an intimate journey into the world of an underground artist. Nick (Ruben Bansie-Snellman), a postmodern hero, wanders through the city’s wasteland asserting an anarchistic agenda on the endless maze of virgin city walls. Nick’s solo graffiti project is interrupted by a brief friendship with fellow "tagger," Jesse (Pepper Fajans). Their mutual love for graffiti art turns them onto innumerous collaborations that they leave all over the city. Soon their communication becomes less verbal, but more psychical. As we dive deeper into their relationship, political, emotional and ethical issues arise causing their relationship to fade to the point where they both feel alienated from each other. With its compelling themes, sensitive performances, and luscious visuals, this film emerges you into a subculture that most of us have no idea exists. Although lacking in dialog, the characters’ silence seems to add to the film’s appeal. That combined with a truly outstanding soundtrack by Kid Loco more than makes up for it. The backdrop was quite impressive and not overwhelming to the viewer. This is a beautiful, surreal movie showcasing a talented artist who will go to the limit to express himself. Clearly this film’s bottom line is about free speech and survival.

Written by: Beth Hillyard, December 18th 2006