Ariel

Review of “A World More Concrete: Real Estate and the Remaking of Jim Crow South Florida”

When it comes to understanding the physical formation of greater Miami A World More Concrete by N. D. B. Connolly was incredibly insightful. The Magic City, so called because of its transformation from frontier town to urban region was by far the fastest of its time. Marketers of the Magic City sought to advertise it, justifiably so, as a Caribbean city for elites to leisure upon. However at variance from the other islands within the temperate climate band – such as Jamaica, Haiti and Cuba – it didn’t have the preponderance of poor blacks that this class found unsettling. Not that they weren’t present, just that they were visible only as help. White terrorism, apartheid passes and Jim Crow police enforcement kept blacks from coming onto the beaches so favored by economic elites. Contestation of such treatment was limited by this as well as conflict between Caribbean and American-born blacks while cultural expressions of resistance to this – as well as the colonial and slave history, such as the Junkanoo parades in the area that would come to be known as Overtown – were geographically distanced far from major tourist areas.

Connolly examines the economics of segregation and the various forms of legal frameworks used to perpetuate racial segregation. Constitutional language – specifically property rights – was the primary means of perpetuating and expanding Jim Crow and New South government policies. While real estate was also a means of creating a Civil Rights political discourse, for taxpayers ought to have the same access to goods (like beaches) and services (like schools), it was not an inherently progressive framework.
Describing in fascinating detail the rhetorical tropes used to perpetuate Jim Crow, Connolly rejects the simplistic narrative that pits the black struggle for civil rights against a white defense of property rights. He limns why and the manner in which class caused propertied and property managing African Americans to embrace the logic and laws of real estate for their own ends. Connolly’s interpretation specifies the creation of class alliances between ruthless white exploitation and the black middle-class. To varying degrees, entrepreneurs, landlords, elected officials, and self-styled urban reformers all participated in eminent domain and land control schemes through mechanisms such as housing associations that helped to take advantage of the black poor. To what extent were poor blacks ruthlessly exploited? As an investment, from the 1930s to the early 1960s, black housing was the most profitable real estate investment that one could make. While rental housing for white Americans would fetch an average rate of return around 6%, for blacks it was an astonishing 27%! Blacks would often pay per week what whites paid per month for rent and it would be significantly lacking the amenities and quality of construction of the types of homes that whites lived in.

Landlords preyed on the fact that blacks had limited capital available to defend their cases in a court system that had not yet taken much account of renters rights, that tenant organizing could be meet with counter-resistance from better financed, organized and politically connected landlords, that a politics of respectability and conference decision making with community leaders determined policy rather than recourse to democratic procedures and that all class conflict would be framed as racial and thus would perpetuate racial sentiments. Landlords as a category was not limited to native-born whites. Blacks, Cubans, Seminoles, Haitians, and other Caribbean groups all invested in segregation to the point at which home ownership within communities vacillated from 10% to 20%. Whites were clearly the predominant holders of capital investment in real estate, while “credit’s to their race” that engaged in similar investments like M. Athalie Range and Luther Brooks gave a gloss of legitimacy to it.

Historiography on urban racial segregation must be embedded within the larger framework of the history of capitalism. Connolly’s close analysis of primary sources allows the reader to expand their understanding of the close and mutually constitutive relationships among liberalism, capitalism, and racism by placing real estate at the center of all. Conflicts over the value of land shaped Miami, indeed all American cities, in ways that social movements, local policy reforms, and legal arguments could not undo. There is almost a perverse creativity to the opportunistic alliances and deceptive actions that informed the geospatial and georacial composition of modern Miami. Eminent domain could be used to dispossess poor blacks of real estate at a lower than market price desired by whites, to force the government to purchase real estate for a higher than market price for housing no longer seen as a desirable investment and to condemn housing that was seen by white homeowners as existing too close to their neighborhoods.

Connolly’s focus on the enduring power of the racist social order and property rights at the heart of Jim Crow sheds new light on the limits a civil rights movement could have when predicated on property-rights. Unfulfilled economic promises and public-private chicanery was not the outliers but the norm. Capitalism and the profit motive thus not only underwrote urban governance and preserved Jim Crow, but also put real estate at the center of Miami’s race relations. The neighborhood case studies of Overtown, Liberty City, Good Bread Alley, Allapatah, Nazarene, Liberty Square, Railroad Shop, and Para Village show how local entrepreneurs were able to exploit the racism underlying the practices of the Federal Housing Authority, the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, the Home Owners Loan Corporation and the Federal National Mortgage Association for self-enrichment.

Review of “Don Quixote Part 2”

While the first part of Don Quixote was certainly amusing in it’s satire of chivalrous literature, the second part of Cervantes novel fins the comedic duo of the eponymous character and Sancho Panza in a number of more humorous situations. In addition to the normal pickles they find themselves in, there is an added level of awareness in the characters as to their construction as literary personas. This is brought about as in both in real life and in the world of the book there was publication of a “Don Quixote: Part 2”. This is a cause for anxiety on the part of the aged and delusional itinerant knight as well as his squire. A number of times they must combat others false perceptions of them while at the same time combating the apparitions and illusions sent by the “sorcerers”.

Additionally I found a number of other aspects to be superior. For one, while in the first one there is recurrent reference to a number of slapstick events in the patter between master and servant – such as when Sancho was thrown in the air on a sheet after being beaten and when they were both beaten by the men along the river protecting their horse from Rocinante – in the second there is less of this. It wasn’t unfitting for these to be constantly brought up by Panza in their adventures, he was after all trying to maintain some control over his master. They were, less repetition of the past in the one. While there is recurrent emphasis on the fact that Quixote’s Dulcinea has been “transformed,” it does not reach the same level of redundancy. Additionally, I found a number of the adventures that transpire to be more amusing.

The armed combat with the Knight of Mirrors is, when fully revealed, quite absurd and the length to which a Duke and his wife proffering hospitality go in order to amuse themselves on Quixote’s behalf is quite engaging. I found the section wherein Sancho is the governor to be exceptionally worthwhile – for after his character had been established as the near-incarnation of folk knowledge seeming him succeed so well in his role despite the undermining of those around him was positively edifying. Not merely because of Quixote’s written imprecations to Panza, but also the way that he acts unto his own. Also, the sub-plot gave much needed fulfillment to the curiosity I’ve had as to whether or not Panza would achieve the goal he’d set for himself at the beginning of the adventure.

The story of Camacho’s Wedding was indicative of a thread of criticism towards the nobility that I noticed more in this book than in the other. In the case of this tale a poor man fools a rich man into paying for his wedding. In the Adventure of the Distressed Duenna the nobility exclaims that squires and servants are natural enemies of their masters as they see them in all of their human frailty, they “haunt the antechambers and keep an eye on us every minute when we’re not saying prayers, which is often enough, they spend their time whispering about us, digging up our bone, and burying our reputations.” Also, in part 2 Sanco Panza is here much more aware of his master’s madness and while often willing to play along is much less likely to unquestioningly follow him.

Cervantes closes his book stating that his intention with writing it was as follows: “I have had no other purpose than to arouse with abhorrence of mankind toward those false and nonsensical stories to be me with in the books of chivalry.” As to whether tales of this type are no longer told is debatable. It seems to me that a number of fantastic exploits showcasing the valor and temerity of a hero continue to be made and successfully reproduced, however not necessarily in the same form. The superhero genre seems to be a variation of this, which is worth pointing out as I feel that the recent film Bird-Man seems almost as if it is a satire of this particular genre in the same way Quixote was of chivalric books.

Unpacking Happy's Chapter

Ever since I was a little kid I’ve loved gangsta movies. I’d set up fake Colombia House accounts in order to get free VHS tapes of films like Menace II Society, Boyz ‘n the Hood, New Jack City, Juice, Paid In Full, and Deep Cover and watch them over and over again.
Whereas Jesse’s chapter is stylized after Spanish picaresque and German Bildungsroman literature, Happy’s is based on these films as well as a number of original documents and documentaries. _{1, 2, 3}

Rather than merely replicate these narratives, however, I wanted to inverse a number of the tropes that are found in these gangster films/reality to depict a gang that is crypto-socialist, truly consensual work relations rather than that which is strictly primitive-capitalist and based on force.
Now presuming that you’re familiar with the above listed movies, so I don’t have to cite each, here are some of those narrative tropes that I mentioned/inverted.
1. The leader of a group got due to his ruthless violence or a chance encounter with a plug rather than his intellect.
2. The leader of the group stays in power based upon loyalty out of fear and not of love (unless relations are also familial).
3. The capture of power foreshadows similar machinations on the part of someone else within the organization that similarly wants to take over.
4. Wealth created from the criminal venture predominantly accumulates in the hands of those at the top.
5. This wealth created goes primarily towards the administrator’s consumption, which leads to organizational degeneration in some fashion.
6. Money spent is primarily upon luxury goods that are flaunted.
7. This leads to general envy/viewing the criminal enterprise as the best provider for income and entices those willing to do whatever to get it, but this makes community relations poor.
Making an analogy to larger institutions of political economy, as I would like my readers to so, I can say in short hand that the typically depicted criminal association is more akin to an absolute monarchy.
This passage shows Happy’s organization is significantly different and touches upon a number of the problems that will be delved into later in the chapter. Specifically what is the Project; the impact that the investigation into Officer Daniels illegal dealings; who the other person is that Happy is getting information from in the police department; their relationship to the Zoe Pounds; the possibility that some conflict might transpire should a power vacuum be created from several Zoe Pounds members finding themselves arraigned; who are these important people in Atlanta that requires Happy to have to meet them in person, etc.
I’ve still got a lot to write about for this chapter to near completion – but I hope this explanation of a portion of my project and the small section of the chapter convinces you that my serial novel project is worth getting into and you buy Book 1 of Unraveling!

Protected: Opening of Happy's Chapter

The Expanse and Iberian History and Literature

I wasn’t feeling too well and a science fiction aficionado acquaintance of mine posted praise for a new SyFy show called The Expanse. I decided to give it a try and after watching the first episode I found myself thoroughly absorbed due to it’s compelling characters, intricate plot and high production values. I binged it over the next two days without regrets and look forward to subsequent seasons.

While watching it, I noticed a number of things that weren’t necessarily evident to the average viewer so wanted to share the information informing my enjoyment of it. Spoiler alert to those that have yet to see the show – in order to share my perspective, I have to speak in some detail about a number of points.

The ship Tachi has its name changed to Rocinante

It was upon viewing this name change that a number of previous events in the show took on a new meaning. Tachi is the name of the Mars Class ship that allows James Holden, Naomi Nagata and others to escape attack by an as of yet unknown enemy. Following escape from the battle, the ship is piloted to Tycho Station, an area controlled by Fred Johnson and the Outer Planet Alliance.

Now Rocinante is the name of the not so mighty nag of Don Quixote de la Mancha. Besides the fact that both Rocinantes transport people from adventure to adventure, there’s not much similarity beyond the name. It does, however, hint at a number of interesting signifiers that relates Iberian History and Literature which I touch on below.

Don Quixote is plagued by Enchanters, James Holden is plagued by an unknown Forces

In the first episode we see James Holden, the Executive Officer of The Canterbury, and a small crew launch off their main ship on a small craft to investigate a distress signal. Shortly after discovering that the signal was likely designed to get their main ship to stop its path – a cloaked ship destroys the Canterbury.

A number of Don Quixote’s adventures consist of him misinterpreting circumstances around him for situations that require him to intervene. These interventions, however, don’t actually assist those that he imagines in need of help and result in him getting hurt.
Now, I don’t believe that Holden is a variant or new incarnation of Quixote. From what we know of his character he’s not obsessed with knight-errantry or some other sort of fiction. However, following the death of his crewmates on the Canterbury which he blames himself for, he does seem to gain greater moral agency by uncovering and revealing the REAL truth about the Canterbury – which he is not yet aware of.

The viral spread of Holden’s video denouncing the Martians mirrors the publication of Don Quixote part II in Don Quixote Part II

In book two of Don Quixote, the eponymous character learns that the tales of his adventures have been published and he meets many people that are aware of who he is. Quixote does not mind this, but he does take qualm upon learning that a sequel, published by Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda, is also available for purchase at booksellers stalls and that it contains many falsehoods. Don Quixote criticizes this False Quixote and even adjusts some of his behaviors so as to not be mistaken for the fake one.
Holden’s transmits a video denouncing the Martians for their purported blowing up of the Canterbury. This video makes him known far and wide. Upon encountering Martian consumers of the material, however, this fame is turned into infamy. He later realizes that they are not the one responsible and thus tries to correct the false image of him that exists in people’s minds.

Episode 7, titled Windmills, features a copy of Cervantes’ Quixote that is the brief subject of conversation between Holden’s mother and Avasarala

That’s mostly it in the headline. The only additional comment worth making is how it is that here we learn that Holden doesn’t, according to his mother, recognize Don Quixote as a tragedy. While I’d argue that Don Quixote isn’t tragedy – though it does has elements of it – it’s interesting that this comment is made to provide insight into Holden’s character.

The Geographic relationship between the Outer Belt and the Core Planets mirrors that of Spain and the Colonies

Placing the two maps side by side ought to suffice to illustrate this point.

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However I think that it’s worth reinforcing this point through the below one.

The Economic relationship between the Outer Belt and the Core Planets mirrors that of Spain and it’s Colonies

The Outer Planets exist in a relationship to Earth of complete economic dependence. Air and the technologies needed to survive are scarce. Belters lives on the physical and technical periphery of interplanetary trade. It is a large part of the reason that they have organized themselves into economic/political alliance. Why? Because resource extraction seems to be the primary economic activity and thus they are for the most part the suzerain partner to the much larger state. The Belt clearly demonstrates the qualities of a periphery as described in a historical context in Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s Dependency and Development in Latin America and Immanuel Wallerstein’s Modern World Systems series.
While there are numerous allusions to this dynamic within the conversations of the characters I could quote, I found the graphic depiction of this relationship as illustrated following the capture of an OPA smuggler by United Nations forces to be particularly compelling.Chrisjen Avasarala, a powerful UN executive, submits the smuggler to gravity torture. His body is so distorted that literally can’t even stand up on his own – thus drastically limiting the possibilities for occupational development elsewhere. This is the curse of many a export economy, which is unable to develop a middle class due to underdevelopment.

The OPA Symbol is the IWA Symbol

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The International Workers Association, also called the First Internationale, was an umbrella group for Anarchist and Socialist groups organizing in Europe founded in 1864. It was internationalist in orientation, but split into two main factions that disagreed whether or not to engage in parliamentary struggle or not. The faction supporting Mikhail Bakunin – the wing that rejected such struggles and which would later advocate for propaganda by the deed in the form of bombings and assassinations found it’s most numerous and vibrant following in Spain.

*
I don’t mean by the above to put forward an argument that claims that Iberian History and Culture are as influential to The Expanse as Game of Thrones is to the War of the Roses – as shown below – but merely to shows some interesting overlaps that I noticed with an area of my study.

Review of “How to Leave Hialeah”

I decided to pick up How to Leave Hialeah by Jennine Capó Crucet after reading her being interviewed in New Times. Since I’ve been on a run of reading contemporary authors from Florida and since she attended the prestigious Iowa Writers Workshop it seemed a no-brainer. How to Leave Hialeah is a collection of thirteen short stories all set in the greater Miami Metro area that all focus on different aspects of the Cuban-American perspective.

My favorite of the collection was And in the Morning, Work. In this story a Cuban young woman, Marielena, who still lives in Cuba, has recently graduated college. She is trained to be a librarian but is unable to obtain employment in a Havana library after graduation, so she ends up taking a position as a reader for a group of cigar rollers in Pinar del Rio. When exactly this is taken place is not mentioned, however what is clear is that it during a period of economic stagnation. The plot then develops by illustrating the tension stemming from the age and class divide between this young would be city librarian and the cigar rollers. This is shown via her quest to find appropriately compelling reading material and in the attention she is given by one of the older men there. She not only has a limited selection from which to choose, but she must also find something that is not something that they’ve heard many times before. In this she foregoes Martí and other authors that she must read from a Spanish tabloid. This exasperates her itself, and when an old man starts to walk and talk with her on the way home about books, she seems to get even more upset.

This conflict over taste is, to me, indicative of something that’s really interesting. How so? Well, many of the books that Marielena possesses are from relatives who have had them shipped over from the States. As they are “the classics” they were allowed to be delivered. She prefers these works, however the cigar workers do not. The perceived divide by Marielena between her, the intellectual, and those that are assembling cigars is clear. This conflict over taste and the deeper implications that it could have on historical and class consciousness in changing times, however, is glosses over and instead Crucet focuses on relative deprivation and the young girl’s concern that the viejito is attempting to be romantic with her. Given the culture of machismo it’s not unlikely that a man older than her father would come on to her, however it’s also clear that he’s simply trying to be welcoming and help lower her high expectations of what work would be like after college.
The perception of flirtation by Marielena soon vanishes as she comes to realize that he is merely expressing solidarity with her. In the close of the story the old man visits Marielena. A chicken that she was hiding from the Committee in the Defense of the Revolution inadvertently escapes from her room. Noticing that there are neighbors who see this, the viejo states that she should just let it go and they should both walk away not looking at it so that someone doesn’t question them.

Now I find this story interesting for a few reasons. For one the lack of specific time markers as to when this is occurring. Before or after Marielitos? The collapse of the USSR? The only thing that we really know is that this is after “the first years of the revolution”. This seems to me to indicate that the author is not actually that familiar with Cuban history and, like many gusanos, simply views Cuba as some cite of unchanging, ahistorical “injustice against people’s dignity because of a despot” transpires.

The second thing that I find interesting is her choice of cigar assembly facility, arguably Cuba’s most widely known export product, as the site for this sort of ideological conflict. I say this because I believe it was in David Montgomery’s The Fall of the House of Labor that I first learned about the conditions of cigar workers. There I read a quote from Samuel Gomper’s about how his early life working as a cigar roller helped him come to a trade-unionist perspective. Starting at age ten he worked in such a shop and people took turns reading from books and engaging in debates on news of the day. In this regard, by making the workers only able to recite selections of poetry that’s state-sponsored and thus “must be known and liked” and liking tabloid news and Che’s Motorcycle Diaries it seems to me that Crucet is likely misrepresenting what it is like there for the purpose of showing that these people repress the knowledge of their own oppression. While I think that this is her most powerful piece in the collection – it does suffer from these rather glaring omissions. As propaganda I think it’s successful – however as an accurate reflection of Cuban reality I question it’s felicity.

For the rest of the stories I feel like I had to really push myself to get through reading them all. I just didn’t find them all that compelling and the writing style was, to me, often times over-wrought for little payoff. The second criticism is self-explanatory so let me cover the former. While I’m sure that these anecdotes provided mid-west writing teachers and aspiring authors at the workshop lots of fodder to talk about multiculturalism, inclusivity, liberal values and whatnot, I grew up in South Florida and so what others see as “exotic” are often things that I’ve grown up with and don’t find that engaging unto itself as most of the stories seem to present themselves. I’ve lived most of my life in the orbit of the types that populate Crucet’s stories. Most of my long-term female companions have been Latinas – Cuban, Honduran, Colombian, Ecuadorian y Boriqua – so the issues and idiosyncrasies of protagonists, their friends and families didn’t catch me as unusual. For instance the closing line of the first story in the collection, Resurrection, is as follows: “And you, you keep watching her, hardly believing that people like this exist.” You read that after reading about a wild and somewhat weird party girl. My reaction was not, however, disbelief but to nod my head and think to myself Yes I do believe she exists as I have known party girls significantly wilder and weirder than her. The concerns over tradition and class shown in Noche Buena were, to me, more of a reminder of frustrating family drama than insightful narrative and perspective Cuban values and customs. Perhaps someone unfamiliar with Miami might find these sorts of tales to be engaging – I however did not and in the end I can’t see myself suggesting that anyone read this collection.

You can find out more about Jennine Capó Crucet by visiting her website or her Twitter.

On The Historical Echoes of Kanye West’s Notion of Freedom

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My DP1 – History of the Americas students are now reading Reconstruction by Eric Foner and one of them pointed out the above tweet to me by Kanye West. What’s the connection between the two? Well, let me juxtapose it with this quote by Thaddeus Stevens, bold section added by me:

We especially insist that the property of the chief rebels should be seized and [used for] the payment of the national debt, caused by the unjust and wicked war they instigated…

The whole fabric of southern society must be changed and never can it be done if this opportunity is lost. Without this, this government can never be, as it has never been, a true republic…

Nothing is so likely to make a man a good citizen as to make him a freeholder [landowner]. Nothing will so multiply the production of the South as to divide it into small farms. Nothing will make men so industrious and moral as to let them feel that they are above want and are the owners of the soil which they till… No people will ever be republican in spirit and practice where a few own immense manors and the masses are landless. Small and independent landholders are the support and guardians of republican liberty.

To give the above quote by Stevens context. It’s also worth noting that in class we’ve been discussing different conceptions of law – whether it be the preservation of private property or that of justice (however so conceived) and how political expediency plays a major role in the determination of which is used.

Given the discourse that #blacklivesmatters and public intellectuals like Ta-Nehisi Coates have brought up surrounding reparations and the context of the Thaddeus Stevens quote, I thought the connection between the two though rather apt. How so? Well, freed slaves unable to get access to good or significant amounts of land because private property – even if garnered by hook and crook – is considered inviolable means that while they may be legally free (though the Black Codes of the time made this not so) they still exist at the economic whim of their masters and are thus only slightly raised in stature. Having been dispossessed and exploited without recompense, this group was unable to accumulate the capital for communal development in a similar manner to the way that yeoman, plantation, merchant and financier cultures were. Worth mentioning is that this population was also at the mercy of myriad actions subsequent to this particular epoch that had a similar thrust. Kanye here seems to be pointing out that the economic liberty and freedom as propagandized today via capitalism or yesteryear via the Free Labor ideology, is something murkier than such ideologues would suggest. Freedom requires a greater degree of an even economic playing field lest aspirations of Republican liberty turn into the reality of plutocratic tyranny.

From this perspective, the above Kanye quote is spot on and furthermore the Tidal music streaming service that ‘Ye is a founding investor in is not merely a selfish means for obtaining a larger share of profits for his product – though this is true – but also reflects the greater relations of labor in the music industry. Specifically the manner in which large companies like Apple, via iTunes, and Spotify, Pandora, etc. society that capitalizes on the products of black artists/entrepreneurs. They are, in a significantly different way but still comparable nonetheless, the manors of today. Towards this end the demographics of the majority composition of “founding” artists – Rihanna, Nicki Minaj, Alicia Keys, Chris Brown, J. Cole – is significant. Are there some white artists that have joined, yes, but the underlying truth remains the same – music producers are incredibly dependent on the owners of content/distribution and will not get a “fair share” unless they have greater access and strength in the market.

An even deeper reading could suggest that those which have manipulated government policy by forcing them into a formal of capitalist exchange that they are severely disadvantaged in for their personal financial well being are deserving of expropriation. I’m not suggesting that Kanye has become someone who advocates for massive redistribution of wealth, but considering the level of Roaring Twenties level of income disparity in this country wherein 1.5 million households (over 3 million children) live in extreme poverty and the U.S. Debt is as of writing this 16.3 trillion dollars, one can see the argument underlying Kanye’s short tweet.

Source

Thaddeus Stevens, “Thaddeus Stevens Calls for Redistribution of Confederate Land,” HERB: Resources for Teachers, accessed March 2, 2016, http://herb.ashp.cuny.edu/items/show/1533.

Picchi, Aimee, “The surging ranks of America’s ultrapoor,” accessed March 2, 2016,
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-surging-ranks-of-americas-ultrapoor/

Review of The Artist’s Way

A part of the reason that it took me so long to complete the first part of the serial novel book that I’d first conceived of in 2009 was largely because I had a large number of beliefs about creation and writing, not to mention perspectives in general, that wasn’t healthy for an aesthetically productive life. While going through my journals I’ve been able to see that this knowledge wasn’t always lost on me, but I wasn’t always able to incorporate it into my creative practice and my periods of backsliding far outpaced that of my moving in the right direction. I don’t remember who suggested that I read The Artist’s Way, for the list who I had been complaining about my frustrations was quite large, but thankfully someone did and my mom purchased it for me for my birthday. It laid unread for a few weeks besides my bed, where I would pick it up and peruse the first few pages. I was reluctant to give it a try first out of pride – surely I didn’t really need a book to tell me how to be an artist, I AM an artist – and later out of aversion to what I perceived to be a New Agey philosophizing about the artist as a conduit of God. Once I started it in earnest, however, I immediately realized how much I needed it and how much my own conception of the Divine was actually connected to that which Julia Cameron described.

Since reading the book I feel immeasurably more cognizant of the habits of thought and behavior that prevent me from focusing on my work and the need for me to push through. Sickness is a power, and being frustrated is a way of feeling special – as if something going on in one’s life can take a magical form and prevent someone from creative production! Getting rid of that mindset through a number of steps that she outlines allows you to recover and become more aligned with what your hopes are.

One of the recurring instructions throughout the book is to just keep creating in some form and though it might not be exactly what you expect at that moment it will help you to realize it. Cameron here provides the reader with two main practices; morning pages written in a journal that are at least three pages in length and artist’s dates. The latter one writes upon waking. The idea is to help get all of the gunk out of your head so as to help reorganize your life in a manner that is more aligned with your artistic intentions. The latter is a commitment once a week to engage in some sort of aesthetic consumption that takes you someplace – be it an open mic night, a museum, a gallery, a book reading, etc. Going to these and experiencing other people’s art makes you more receptive to creation as well as provides you with a greater stock of material from which to pull.

At the end of each week the book asks you to track how much you followed these directions and also provides a series of steps to deepen the insight experientially. This can be writing a series of destructive thoughts that play in your mind as well as new affirmations to repeat into the mirror to negate them. Since completing a number of the weekly tasks, I admit to not completing them all, I find myself less likely to make myself feel guilty when I get derailed from my work and I’m clearer about my goals.

One of my main stultifying habits was not normally to value product over process, however I came to realize through one of the reflection writing practices that I came to adopt someone else’s perspective of the role of my art. Previously I’d written only because I enjoyed doing it and had no expectations that anyone other than a few friends would experience.
Another bad habit was to allow myself to get caught in a series of images of myself that made it difficult for me to have a clear self-image. What does this mean? Well, during my first marriage my partner, who was wonderful in many ways, encouraged me to go into a professional career despite my ambivalence towards it. I liked the challenge of being a successful lawyer, but it was never something that appealed to me in a deeper level. I began to research law schools, practice for the LSAT, think that devoting time to my creative work was a waste – though it was what I loved – and on and on.

While I frequently mark up my books, The Artists Way is by far my most annotated text. There are long passages of deep insight into a healthier worldview more productive to creativity. These I’d needed to help counter the false axioms and practices that I’d adopted from a number of the various life situations. One of them that I really like was:

“People frequently believe the creative life is grounded in fantasy. The more difficult truth is that creativity is grounded in reality, in the particular, the focused, the well observed or the specifically imagined.

As we lose our vagueness about our self, our values, our life situation, we become available for the moment. It is there, in the particular, that we contact the creative self. Until we experience the freedom of solitude, we cannot connect authentically. We may be enmeshed, but we are not encountered.

Art lies in the moment of encounter: we meet our truth and we meet ourselves; we meet ourselves and we meet our self-expression. We become original because we become something specific: an origin from which work flows.”

This helped remind me and reorient me in way that I knew, which reminds me of a quote by Henry Miller – and I’m paraphrasing – which states that those beautiful phrases which we fall in love with in certain passages don’t always tell us something new but touches upon those parts of ourselves that we’ve allowed ourselves to forget.

I’m definitely going to be rereading this book again and as The Artist’s Way is a trilogy, Walking in this World: The Practical Art of Creativity and Finding Water: The Art of Perseverance the latter two iterations, I’m definitely going to be reading this as well and hope that I can, as Cameron suggests in the back, find others that have read it as well to create a creative cluster. When I think of my most productive times it has been amongst groups of fiction writers and poets that were also drunk in inspiration to produce creatively.

Review of “Drown”

I honestly struggle with how to start talking about Drown by Junot Diaz. To be quite blunt, writing this three months after reading it I had to review the notes on the inside of my book to remember much about it and I think that this reflects poorly on the book itself. The struggles of the characters are all relatable to some extent: how to deal with poverty; how to deal with social ostracism; how the young yearn for the ability to be who they want and the old wish they were young so they can remake themselves; how to deal with unrequited love; how to deal with non-traditional parenting dynamics; how to succeed or fail as an immigrant and how both tracks can be painful; how to, well, you get the picture.

Outside of that, though, there wasn’t much that really stuck with me in the manner that, say, Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned did from the collection of short stories of the same name by Wells Tower did. Or that even Diaz’s other works did. Or that a number of other novellas have. I realize while writing this that it might be a matter of a certain prejudice that I have against short stories, but even then I don’t think that my preference for longer works de facto invalidates my disconnection. This is not to say that I didn’t like it – the stories have their moment. Just that, I guess, they never get to a point at which I find myself enamored with them.

The characters suffer or take pride in their roles, but generally express little agency other than a few primal urges that, even then, they seem to realize as banal. I recognize that this is an effect that Diaz is seeking in his work, an existential ambivalence if you will, but it makes the characters seem like poseurs. “Precisely!” Diaz might respond and I would counter with, Well then so what? Thinking specifically of Edward Limonov’s Memoirs of A Russian Punk, I would say that these similar themes could be interrogated, but in a more constructivist manner. I realize this is again my own aesthetic judgement – but it is nevertheless one I stand by.

There are a number of other things that I found myself dissatisfied with. For one: a not so subtle sexism. To me this was evident in what I would call Diaz’s generally singular portrayal of all men as machistas. I fully recognize that this – that is the categorization of women as sexual objects to be conquered, traditional caretakers of the family that can weather all sorts of infidelities and foul treatment to keep the family unit together or the mothers that protect their sons – is a realistic depiction of Dominican culture, neigh many cultures in general. However the only moment that I read which was in any ways empowering for a woman was in the last ten lines of the short story Boyfriend the girl, Loretta, who is shown to be used by a number of men cuts her hair short and takes pride in “looking fierce.”

Lest I be misconstrued as someone that needs some sort of overarching feminist message in their books to feel myself connected to it I have to point out that I am a huge fan of Henry Miller, who often, I believe, gets derided as a misogynist when I think it’s more proper to call him a libertine imbued with a generalized sexual vitalism. I’ve heard similar charges against Milan Kundera, who I also enjoy and find such categorizations as unfitting. But maybe this is perhaps because they do something more profound with similar characterizations that Diaz just doesn’t.

That said, there are a number of really good lines in the short stories that have just a huge amount of emotional impact within them. Like in Aurora: “I go back to sleep and when I wake up in the morning I’m laying in the tub and I’ve got blood on my chin and I can’t remember how in the world that happened. This is no good, I tell myself. I go into the sala, wanting her to be there but she’s gone again and I puch myself in the nose just to clear my head.” Or in Boyfriend: “ She let him fuck her every time, maybe hoping that it would make him stay but you know, once somebody gets a little escapt velocity going, ain’t no play in the world that will keep them from leaving.” Or in Fiesta, 1980: “Papi was old-fashioned; he expected your undivided attention when you were getting your ass whupped. You couldn’t look him in the eye either – that wasn’t allowed.” Compared to those in Diaz’s other works, however, I found their frequency lacking and the use of Spanglish more much more spurious.

I’ll likely pick this book up again at some point in time to give it a try, but on the whole I was unimpressed.

Review of “Don Quixote Part I”

After I decided to move to Barcelona, Spain in order to study Spanish for a year I Bought a copy of Don Quixote in it’s original language. My intention in so doing was habitual, I enjoy reading the national literature of a country in the place it was produced. I learned that for this work, however, I was not up to the challenge. There was simply too much to see and all my free time was devoted to my young bride-to-be. Four years later I was anxious to re-read or really to start reading it in this fine edition that I got off eBay.
Now as any person with literary inclinations is sure to tell you, Don Quixote is often cited as the first modern novel and is also often named by writers as one of the best novels ever written. Though one may not have read the book, still one knows some of the details – a mad, older man considers himself a knight and then goes on a number of misadventures that includes battle with a windmill. The image of Quixote either with Sancho Panza is iconic, so much so that a good friend of mine even has a tattoo of them on their arm. These generalities aside, having just read the first part, I can understand why. Though with some reservations.

In a more conscious manner than Madame Bovary, Quixote is fixated upon literature. In his case it is not romance novels but tales of knight-errantry and the defunct even-at-the- time-the-book-was-written code of chivalry. Such books have, as those around him often say, warped his mind. This is not the limit of the role of literature in the novel – for throughout there are discussions between Don Quixote and other interlocutors on the values of chivalric literature. Don Quixote sees them as estimable, obviously, while those around him largely do not. They dislike them and it’s effect on him so much that at one point they burn a large portion of Quixote’s library.

One of the components of the book that I enjoyed was its use of multiple forms of writing. Be they letters or, as is more common, poetry and tales told in verse, the novel wends through a number of lives that Don Quixote touches and those that are literary productions. The last poem written by a shepherd that committed suicide over unrequited love, a didactic tale left at an inn by an old boarder the warns about the dangers of tempting virtue, and the tragic story of an offended lover wandering the countryside are just three of the many stories within the work. A majority of these tales of tragedy, however, lead to comedic – both in the telling of them as well as the improbable situations that emerge soon after their vocalization. Another literary element of the book that I liked is it’s meta-awareness. The character debate on what make a book meritorious in such a way that I felt as if Cervantes was laughing when writing it. Some of the lines within the presage purportedly written by the Censor for Spanish Books are hilarious.

For me the book really started to get going around 180 or so pages in. I was a little worried that the book was a paper version of Citizen Cane – something that is oft cited as an innovative stylistically but which has, to me, not aged well. Thankfully I was wrong. Shortly after this point the number of minor encounters introduced in this section starts to mesh together within the plot of Quixote and Panza. Characters that were thought to be passing figures take on a larger role, which allows for greater continuity as lacking them we have only the madmen Sancho Panza and Don Quixote bumping around aimlessly in misadventure. I also found the overwhelming number of quotes of chivalrous tales to be a bit overwhelming – but I can understand that at the time that it was printed his audience would be more informed of this. All in all I have so far enjoyed the book greatly and look forward to reading the second half.