Category: Book Review

Review of “How To Build a Girl”

I wanted to read something light and funny as a break from all of the subject area research I’ve been doing lately and I was not disappointed with Caitlin Moran’s novel How to Build a Girl. Set in the early 1990’s in a small town still within the reach of London’s shadow, Johanna Morrigan is a 14 year old girl who’s upbringing by her wanna-be rock star father and push-over mother has taught her to be audacious in the face of their poverty rather than docile. Following an extremely embarrassing interview televised across England, Johanna decides to reinvent herself as Dolly Wilde and over the next two years we follow her around as she learns the ropes of the burgeoning indie-rock music scene.

The real Dolly Wilde
The real Dolly Wilde

While they may lack the trappings of respectability, Dolly’s home life abounds in encouragement from her mother and father. Her father was injured while working as a union carpenter and supplements his government dole through off jobs and marketing on behalf of his band – which by all accounts had not chance of becoming fmous. While he’s clearly an alcoholic whose lack of present potential for success in the life leads him to fixate on previous accolades he’d been given as a local musician, Dolly’s recognition of this is never tragic, but more melancholic. She wants to help him, but also recognizes there’s only so much she can do.

From the get go there’s something inexplicably charming about Dolly/Johanna. I think part of it is that when I was a teenager I too knew a few girls that reminded me of her. Whether or not they consciously chose to adopt the trappings of a more accepting sub-cultural, goth, as a means of coping with their non-Hollywood bodily development is debatable. What isn’t is that this suddenly gives her some cultural cachet that provides her with easy entry into a number of spaces otherwise prohibited to her – be it music review magazine offices or bars that host concerts. After her reinvention Johanna at first does not yet have the confidence in order to project herself as a sexual object into the minds of those that she desires. As Dolly, however, a “lady sex adventurer”, she throws caution to the wind and after a few drunken missteps seems to gain a greater level of confidence. Whether or not this is genuine is brought up by her boozing, cigarettes smoking and other outrageous behavior that seems to mask her own withering, intermittent insecurity. Dolly is not alone, however, in this as many in her family and in her work life also contain this recognition of the precariousness of their existence and this seems to alternately motivate and depress them. A semi-famous musician that Dolly becomes infatuated with, for instance, that is a model of the charming and self-destructive musician trope.

Morrigan writes a number of scenes that both highlight her self-creation and the “flaws” in her autopoiesis. I found the scene wherein she plasters images of her heroes on the wall in a large collage in the manner typical of procedural cop shows meant to show criminal conspiracies to be especially amusing as not only do I currently have that in my office right now as help for me to visualize the characters in Unraveling but as when I was her age I had something similar on my walls. Another humorous scene has Dolly hosting a party in the bathroom following a particularly trying ordeal. The chord most often plucked stems from Dolly’s fear of a provincial existence. Her perspective towards her parents is benign, but she also clearly does not want to replicate the life that they lived. She is bourgeoisie in her aspirations, but working class in her character.

Issues of class issues are written well into the novel. There’s the expected verbal abuse by Dolly’s father of Maggie Thatcher and familial concern over the rate of the dole. Beyond that Morrigan does a great job of situating Wilde’s world as one of relative deprivation. Dolly must rely upon state aid not only to live but also to help her find gainful employ. After leaving school to become a full time music reviewer, she first exploits the library to obtain the source of her income before coming to find out that the capitalist music enterprises will give out music for free in hopes of garnishing favorable reviews. The romantic triangle that helps Dolly realize that she needs to reinvent herself, for instance, is compelling not only for it’s keen depiction of the conflicting fantasies of teenagers and also for reinforcing just how many barriers there are to the lower classes becoming upwardly mobile. This sounds overly sociological, but the scene is quite humorous and heartbreaking at the same time. Realizing that affections are not-reciprocated is one type of pain, but when this is compounded by the other facets that Dolly faces her rebirth is all the more inspiring.

 

 

Review of “Eric Foner's Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877”

One of the problems that I have with writing short reviews for very long, detailed books like this is that I must avoid the complexities of the content presented. In a few words I could say that Reconstruction: American’s Unfinished Revolution 1863-1877 by Eric Foner describes the post-Emancipation Proclamation world of the Southern United States and how it went through various stages of Reconstruction, wherein Northern rule held varying degrees of control over the South, to Redemption wherein the previous humanitarianism disappeared and Southern rights reasserted their rule via “state’s rights.” To summarize over 600 pages into this sentence is certainly not fair to the wealth of the research that Eric Foner has done nor accurately describes the vicissitudes of the period. But this is – in a few words – what the book is about. Rather than doing so, for this book I’ll post links to some other reviews that go into extensive detail and also post the essay questions that my students could pick from to answer below as the latter, I believe, shows what the book deals with and the former is available for those that would like a more expository understanding of the material the book contains.

Here is an appraisal and analysis of the book from Reviews in American History: http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/omalley/gilded/perman.pdf

And here is a review from the New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/1988/05/22/books/a-moment-of-terrifying-promise.html?pagewanted=all

Essay Questions

Chapter 1

The World the War Made

  1. Justify historians Charles and Mary Beard claim that the Emancipation of American slaves was more than just the end of a particular form of a system of labor.
  2. Examine W. E. B. Du Bois’s claim that it was the blacks that led the drive towards Emancipation.
  3. Compare and contrast the economic effects of the war on the North and the South.
  4. Explain how the Civil War helped consolidate the American state.
  5. Evaluate why Northern military policies would vacillate between progressive and regressive.
  6. Describe the ways that the Civil War was the mid-wife of the revolution.
  7. Discuss some of the black institutional responses to emancipation.
  8. Compare and contrast free labor ideology with slavery and assess the validity of the former’s claims
  9. Describe the role of class in the South’s internal civil war.

 

Chapter 2

Rehearsals for Reconstruction

 

  1. Describe the rationale for the10 Percent Plan described in Lincoln’s Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction.
  2. Discuss how the actions of the new Reconstruction governments helped to undermine the perceived legitimacy of their rule.
  3. Compare and contrast the arguments for and against confiscation.
  4. Identify some of the manners in the Banks system and other laws enforced the interests of Southern property owners.
  5. Examine the various roles and responsibilities of the Freedman’s Bureau.
  6. Explain what made the small Sea Islands experiment so worthy of national attention.
  7. Evaluate with examples the army’s role in the transformation to labor policy formation in the occupied south.
  8. Distinguish the causes for black rural and city delegates disagreements on policy formation.
  9. Analyze reasons for the North’s tenuous commitment to emancipation.

 

Chapter 3

The Meaning of Freedom

  1. Describe some of the manners in which the freed blacks exercised their new freedom.
  2. Contrast black family and social life before and after Emancipation.
  3. Explain the changes that occurred in Black-attended churches following Emancipation.
  4. Identify the reasons for the rise in civil-aid societies.
  5. Examine how land ownership related to the freedman’s desires for economic independence.
  6. Distinguish several manners in which freedman used the new labor conditions to obtain better wages and working conditions.
  7. Compare and contrast the dynamics of farming for self-sufficiency with farming for the market.
  8. To what extent did black political organizations change between 1864 and 1866?
  9. Contrast the waning interest with conventions with the social ferment of the Southern countryside.

Chapter 4

Ambiguities of Free Labor

  1. Describe in detail the economic conditions of the South.
  2. Explain the rationale for planters placing personal life provisions within contracts.
  3. Analyze the conflicts between new northern planters and southern blacks.
  4. Identify the methods by which southern planters and the military now regulated the labor of free blacks.
  5. Discuss the role of the market from the vantage point of freedman, plantation owners and the government.
  6. To what extent did paternalism motivate institutional responses to the conditions in the South.
  7. Identify the limits to the Freedman Bureau’s efficacy.
  8. Examine the role of coercion in the creation of contracts.
  9. To what extent did sharecropping emerge from the post-war economic exigencies.

Chapter 6

The Making of Radical Reconstruction

  1. To what extent do you agree with Thaddeus Stevens claim that the Congress in session in 1866 was “making a [new] nation” and that “technical scruples” ought not to be allowed to prevent them from their statecraft?
  2. Describe in detail the changes sought by the Radical Republicans and their motivations for them.
  3. Compare and contrast the views of Moderate and Radical Republicans
  4. Evaluate the Civil Rights Bill.
  5. Explain the relationship of black and women’s suffrage.
  6. Justify the claims of a number of modern historians that Andrew Johnson was the worst president.
  7. Examine why Eric Foner states that the Reconstruction Act passed by the 39th session of Congress was a “incongruous mixture of idealism and political expediency”.
  8. Define “states rights” and describe how it played a contentious role in the Congressional debates.
  9. Kanye West recently tweeted: “What is your definition of true freedom? There is no true freedom without economic freedom.” Analyze how this relates to the issues surrounding Reconstruction.

Chapter 8

Reconstruction: Political and Economic

  1. Define and describe the four areas Foner cites which limited the Republicans efforts to reshape southern society and establish their legitimacy.
  2. Compare and contrast the qualities of the government positions obtained by blacks and whites.
  3. Analyze the role of graft & corruption amongst the political parties and races between 1868 and 1872.
  4. Explain how new economic legislation provided more power to blacks.
  5. Describe the social and economic effects of blacks entering into the market economy.
  6. Identify the causes that lead to two plantation regions underdevelopment.
  7. To what extent did state-sponsored economic development contribute to financial crisis?
  8. Examine the goals and outcomes of state-sponsored economic development.
  9. Describe the reasons for the rise of the landlord-merchant class.

 

Chapter 10

The Reconstruction of the North

  1. Describe the effects the railroads had on the geography and economy of the North and West.
  2. Compare and contrast the relationship between business politics in the frontier areas with that of freedman in the South.
  3. Identify the reasons for the creation of unprecedented income inequality in the North.
  4. Explain the challenges that technological progress made to the free labor ideology once lauded by the Northern elite.
  5. Discuss the differences between black and white experiences of labor.
  6. Distinguish what is meant by the term “professionally managed politics”.
  7. To what extend and by whom was economic legislation considered “dangerous”.
  8. Identify the reasons why Reconstruction was losing its strength as a political force.
  9. Compare and contrast perspectives on government reform.

 

 

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Also worth checking out is this interview with Eric Foner:

http://nostalgiatrap.libsyn.com/nostalgia-trap-episode-41-eric-foner

 

 

 

 

Review of “Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression”

Several years ago I’d heard on NPR an insightful interview of Robin D. G. Kelley, the author of Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression. My interest in the work piqued, the book sat with the myriad others on my Amazon Wish List until I started creating a Long Civil Rights course track for the IB History classes I’m teaching and from my experience in the classroom I highly recommend it as a companion book/follow up reading to Reconstruction.

Kelley opens by describing the feudal milieu that Communist Party activists sought to change through the Share Croppers Union. Housing settlements are widely disbursed and are not owned by the farmers that occupy them; there are no social centers besides churches that have their preachers vetted by plantation owners; the caloric options from company provision outlets was poor and yet high-priced. Pay rates were also so poor that farmers relied upon home gardens and “odd jobs” to get by. During periods when they were not harvesting or planting, because their housing wasn’t owned, they had to rely upon company welfare – which was often required to be paid back – or government welfare that is cut as soon as planters needs workers. Any attempts at organizing against such living conditions would often mean forced eviction and beatings.

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If living in this sort of economic deprivation wasn’t discouraging enough, there is then the environment of virulent racism that workers and organizers had to live in. The attempt by black share croppers to demand a more just price for their work based upon the actual commodity prices could lead to murder predicated on the defense of Southern Femininity as it was the planter’s wives that often kept the books for the business. Kelley’s narrative abounds with poor black farmers or political organizers that are kidnapped, beaten, shot or hanged by police. The police also give these people over to vigilante squads and fail to prosecute white people for crimes against blacks.

The Communist Party and it’s associate organization the International Labor Defense rouse sentiments and are able to mobilize against such a socially unequal legal order which made no real effort to prosecute lynchings. This activity was all the more heroic as it accomplished with pushback both from white supremacist organizations such as the KKK as well as the “respectable” NAACP. Representing the aspirations of the burgeoning black middle class that saw many poor blacks denial of enfranchisement as just and the confrontational street-politics of the CPUSA as antagonistic to the white allies they hoped to impress, the NAACP red-baited and sought to undermine the organization’s philosophy while the latter group beat and assassinated it’s members. Based upon their defense of the Scottsboro Boys and their role in winning some strikes for better wages and working conditions, however, they managed to seed themselves in the hearts of many Alabamians before and after the Popular Front Period.

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The radical economic changes brought about by New Deal Policies changes everything. Government subsidies are granted to the owners of large agricultural holdings to industrially mechanize. While there was a small amount of resettlement funds itemized allotted to tenant farmers leaving the plantation, they often did not receive it. This army of unemployed mostly made their way into the mining industry next. There they faced racist, dual unions, similar housing arrangements as before and, following the passage of more repressive legislation, a host of pretexts for police to prevent their freedom of speech and organization. Those that were not able to obtain employment, or those that were fired from the mines, had to deal with a patronizing and intrusive system of welfare distribution.

A slew of Communist party organizers and their sympathizers are assassinated while those that live are socially ostracized by the black middle class and white liberals. Kelley breaks down a number of the considerations of the Popular Front and contextualizes the shift to embedding in the CIO as it rises to prominence and additionally gives a number of biographical sketches that gives compelling background to the CPUSA membership. By bringing in their private lives in addition to the struggles faced as a result of political activity that did not always follow CP directives, Kelley humanizes a group that we learn is more maligned because it represented an alternate ideology of modernism and the eradication of racial privilege rather than it’s slavishness as a fifth column for an “evil” foreign power.

This type of first hand account of developing activity on the ground that is constantly adapting to deal with new and often profound exigencies is quite simply an excellent case-study based way for a modern organizer to understand how to obtain true political allegiances and traction within a community by responding to and anticipating it’s needs. The variety of practical considerations makes it an excellent resource for those interested in political organizing. hammerandhoe

Review of “The Seducer's Diary”

It is not enough to conquer, one must know how to seduce. – Voltaire

After twelve years I finally took the suggestion of a good friend and read The Seducer’s Diary. It did not take more than a dozen pages of anticipation for me to start to understand why this was such a formative book for her, for alongside the oft-told tale of a boy wooing a girl was a powerful undercurrent of insightful observations about love and other powerful forces which motivate human action.

One such subject of the book that I deeply enjoyed was Kirkegaard’s description of the gradations of various feelings elicited through various romantic gestures. Each one carries with it a certain psychic energy – if they are receptive objects of affection. From looks to words he describes the way in which different types of can make a young girl blushes. He illustrates a “long game” approach to winning the seducing a young girl considered to be the height of attraction both physically and morally. This approach of her as a specimen to be won is, according to lore, the means that the author used to encourage the quick psychic healing of his betrothed upon his departure and annulment of their pre-marital vows of commitment.

The form of seduction that Kirkegaard takes is a slow one, first insinuating himself into her life through a friend and then through letters and social events gaining greater sway over her mind. This excerpt from Either/Or contains a number of journalistic styled notes and short letters that are voiced as an explanation to his actions or are sent from K to Cordelia. This facsimile of old correspondence or that which was fictionally altered to appear as a document of amorous ephemera provides a compelling form for reflections on life, love and honesty. One of which that Kierkegaard makes that I found especially lovely was his analogy about love:

“When it comes to the labyrinth of her heart, every young girl is an Ariadne; she holds the thread by which one can find the way through – but she possesses it in such a way that she herself does not know how to use it.”

For K, the path to love is not about immediate infatuation based upon sexual desire, something that is repeatedly criticized as it leads the urges to a tempestuous psychic place to be avoided. It is, instead the slow fertilizing thoughts that helps the spirit grow into a recognition of the male’s spiritually directive role. This is resisted on the grounds of pride, and this dynamics informs a dialectical dances between the lovers whose steps are the movements and memories created between the too. Each choice of action and response informs the love created and determines whether or not it is a healthy one or one that is diseased due to excessive reification of the other. Writing this in this format makes the lessons learned seem dry and obtuse – but this distillation of the content of longer, lyric language is a far cry from Kirkegaard’s style. It has many similarities, at points, to two of my favorite writers – Henry Miller and Milan Kundera.

The seduction of Cordelia by K is brought to an end when it seems that K has come to doubt his spiritual fortitude. His quest to win her, what he once wanted, now seems anathema to him. Amusingly enough this seems to give credence to the Taylor Swift lyrics “Boys only want love if it’s torture.” He is of the belief that by breaking things off with her, she will develop to even greater heights of character than were she to remain with him. Being that woman is inherently, to K, a being-for-others she will, upon reflecting on their break up Cordelia can find true freedom. This seems to be because, despite his imbrications against it, he seems to have an aesthetic constitution as it relates to love and wants a certain resistance.

Something else that I found amusing while reading the books were the techniques Kierkegaard uses to win the attentions of his inamorata, Cordelia. While by no means a how to guide aligned with PUA literature like The Pickup Artist, the book nevertheless illustrates some of the methods outlined within. K engages in extended conversation with her Cordelia’s aunt in order to establish his value amongst her community of peers.
There are many things which I enjoyed about it and I have the feeling that this is one of those works that I will read again in a few years and get something new about it.

Review of “Lazarillo de Tornes and The Swindler: Two Spanish Picaresque Novels”

Lazarillo de Tornes and The Swindler: Two Spanish Picaresque Novels continues my study of the titularly named genre. Two young boys follow paths to dissolute lives. Lacking the upward mobility available in economies that weren’t primarily based upon slave labor extraction of mineral resources, their birth in the lower classes itself made certain things impossible in the way of the Spanish World. Apprenticeship would thus not take the form of tutelage under craftsman or artisans but among some of the most dejected members of the lumper-proletariat.

Lazarillo is the tale of a 14 year old young man whose unfortunate mothers leads her to give away her soon to an itinerant blind man in order to be relieved of the effort of caring for him. The seemingly affable despite his misfortunate loss of eyesight demeanor quickly drops once they are far from the house and walking on the way to the next city. The blind man demands him verbally and hits him of the head with his staff. he further abuses him and as he is the one who holds all of the coins received while begging is stingy with how he feeds his ward. Lazzarillo finds a number of ways to out guile the clever man. But he does learn a lot, and through their conversations Lazarillo comes to see a much more skeptical view of the Spanish Catholic’s religious beliefs and practices. They break their relationship, however, after a number of altercations following the blind man’s discovery of the ruses. After Lazarillo picks off enough cash to make it on his own for a while he has the blind man unwittingly jump into a pylon and then leaves him bloody and concussed to look after himself.

He briefly comes under the employ of a provincial noble that is on his way to become a student at a school for the elite. As they enter an inn to find shelter for the night, they are both quickly worked over by a group of smooth talking con-men. Lazarillo only realizes their deceit after his master is forced to pay the bill for all of their food and drink and he has lost all of his money gambling. He is dismissed and is thus forced to begging. It is while he is walking the streets of Maqueda singing pleas that he’d learned while working with the blind man that a priest stops in front of him. He listens briefly and then tells him he is now under his employ and to follow him. His next master is not physically violent like the last, but is strict and like the blind man is stingy with food. As such, like before, he decides he mush rely upon deception in order to supplement his meagre caloric intake. The task of stealing from the bread box is no Oceans affair, but the length at which he carries it on is a testament to his cunning. The descriptions of the Priest getting so enraged over a few crumbs being removed from the bread box and the demands of austerity placed upon Lazarillo is another not so subtle criticism of the Church.

Without getting into every little twist and turn of the novel, I’ll just state that additional deeds of deviousness occurs. The writing style has a a faced based economy of language. It develops quickly from the tradition of writing about a young boys development to a series of deceits enacted upon superiors because of the belief that allegiance to the self is the only true allegiance that one should have if one wants to move forward in the world. The book ends with the patina of a dignified life, and whether the question of whether or not such self-deceit is worth the cost of no longer having to wonder from where he’ll next get his meal and a place to rest his head.

The Swindler is the other story contained in the Penguin Classics pairing. It’s longer the Lazarillo and does not depict a similar transition away from criminality to semi-respectability. As the book’s title, a reference to the protagonist, suggest the plot revolves around someone that is essentially bad. His badness, however, mainly accelerates as a result of his choices to accompany people. This rogue’s gallery isn’t the only one unfavorably depicted, the Church’s isn’t kind to them either. They are, alternately,  schemers, pederasts, tight-wads, delusional in their adherence to certain ungodly practices.

The witches and heretics fair little better. In the opening of The Swindler, the protagonist is advised by his witch, whore of a mother’s Moorish thieving non-Church sanctioned husband: “If you’re crafty, you can get away with anything.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, many years after this exchange he is hung and dismembered by his mother’s brother the hangman. Seeing these pieces hung around the entrance to the city walls as as he comes home to receive his inheritance, shocks him. But he was going to carry on.

The confessor of this tale does not merely seek to shock and amaze with grotesque scenes, he advises that this is also a lesson book, if one so looked at it, to live a life based based upon deceit, swindles, subterfuges, lies, all around craftiness. Unlike Lazarillo, the writer’s character does not always have at least some of our sympathies. From unfortunate circumstances he adopts the wrong lessons and applies them in such a way that while getting admiration from a rotating band of conniving thieves he obtains a correct opprobrium from the well to do class which he aspires by false pretenses to marry himself into. A blow to the head leaves him with a telling disfigurement the exacerbates his willingness to commit criminal acts and live a debauched life. At this point, in no uncertain terms, he is a man that embodies a dangerous form of criminality. He takes a view similar to that of a N.W.A. anthem and goes on a drunk spree that results in a number of complications he must now flee with his whore lover.

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Review of “BMF: The Rise and Fall of Big Meech and the Black Mafia Family”

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Cause nothing says “low-key” like putting billboards of yourself and your gang name around Atlanta.

I’d first heard about Big Meech and the Black Mafia Family via trap songs where his name gets dropped. I didn’t think much about it at the time but when doing research on gangs in Miami for the novel series I’m writing I came across their name again. I watched a video that Big Meech had released shortly before he went to prison and a documentary after and was intrigued. I came across a series of articles that Mara Shaloup had written about them as well as a book length treatment that she gave them titled BMF: The Rise and Fall of Big Meech and the Black Mafia Family, so I decided to read it. I enjoyed the book. It’s light and quick reading and though remembering the names and relationships of people with multiple aliases was a little confusing at first, the chart included in the book helped make things clear.

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Guwop so icey.

The story presented is fascinating and illustrates why Big Meech and the gang he started with his brother Terry became so famous within the hip-hop community. The most obvious manner why he has been so celebrated within that community is his promotion of Young Jeezy at the beginning of his career. While not an official signee to the BMF crew, he clearly gained from being associated with BMF members by gaining a greater aura of authenticity. Shaloup touches upon this and also tells an aside story of the conflict between Jeezy and Gucci Mane that left an associate of the former dead following an attempted robbery. Another reason for Meech’s lionization in the rap community is his attempt at going legit through a record label. While Bleu Davinci, an BMF associate that also engaged in cocaine trafficking, was it’s sole signee – it’s likely that it may have one day been a launching pad for rappers. One of the pictures shown in the book is of a conversation between Meechie and Nelly and his connection with Puff Daddy (Meech employed his cousin), T.I. and other important rappers is also detailed. In a way, this dynamic and these interactions seems like Meech wanted his life to imitate the musical art that he and his crew were so fond of.

One of the aspects of the book that I enjoyed was the description of trafficking craft. How certain hidden compartments in cars were created and opened, pay rates for couriers versus traffickers, means of laundering money, the manner of processing the uncut cocaine for distribution to associated seller, the different types of employee relationships that existed, the wildly excessive partying and extravagant purchases, difficulties felt when trying to “stay off the radar”, how relationships were formed with other crews so that wars were avoided, the relationships forged and destroyed over fear. It makes for compelling reading as even though it’s hard to identify with the people being described one still can’t help but wonder at what point someone is going to get caught. While reading I kept feeling wondrous anticipation as to what it was that would lead to someone’s arrest and, once that was done, wondering if they would snitch.

It’s this, in fact, that makes me feel a little uneasy about the celebrity which Meech has received. Shaloup doesn’t delve into these sorts of reflections, sticking more with the journalists craft, however after reading this and a number of the telephone transcripts available for perusal in the very large prosecutorial file on B.M.F. it’s clear the amount of stress that was felt by the individuals involved in the enterprise. The parties were like over the top cathartic releases for they seemed to all recognize that this was a house of cards and thought they were flying high – such heights meant that like Icarus they’d soon come crashing down. The sole factors involved in the safety maintenance of the operation seemed to be Meech’s code of conduct – No talking on the phone and make your employees love you first and also fear you so they don’t snitch – and a few corrupt people in minor government offices that could provide info or fake identification cards. While not sighting the tails that followed them, they all seemed to recognize – as more bodies of innocents and potential witnesses piled up and as police came to see that people which could potentially testify to crimes would clam up on learning who the suspects were – that greater police attention was being paid to them.

While the greater depth of personal insight into “the game” that I was hoping for was not to be found in the book through quotes or any interview with Meech, I found something of the sort while reading an interview. It seems that after a few years in the pen, when his legal options are dried up, his once boisterous, rebellious energy has disappeared. In his own words he states:

I’m crying inside. I’ve been in the hold on ’23 and 1′ [23 hours in cell and one hour out per day] since June 2011. This SMU sh*t is like a torture camp for real. First, showers are only on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Both me and my celly have to cuff up whether one of us is leaving to go to rec, shower, or medical, or if both of us are leaving. Everywhere we go, our hands are in black box handcuffs behind our back with a C.O. holding our cuffs, walking with us. I’m always trying to get out of my handcuffs first because you never know when your celly may have a bad day and jump you while you still have your cuffs on.
There’s three or four fights or stabbings daily, especially since it’s hot. If you disobey them, you’ll get a heavy dose of tear gas, which has the whole building choking and coughing, eyes burning. Then they’ll put you in restraints handcuffed extra tight with a chain around your waist, shackled. I’ve heard grown men cry crocodile tears from their hands swelling and nerve damage from the cuffs. If that’s not enough, they have another form of punishment called “Four Points” where they put you on your back chained around both ankles and wrists in a very cold room with the lights on. Everyone who reads this should look up Lewisburg SMU online and read about the deaths, disfigurements, and inhumane conditions and brutality that goes on in here. So, my days are like a living hell.

It’s at this point that I start to agree with some of the people in the comments section of a number of Hip Hop news sites that despite his “success” it was all a big waste.

One of the other aspects that I found interesting in the book is the narratives about BMF associates that tried to start successful side business to launder money and to potentially become a platform to go legit. There was the BMF record label, of course, but within the story Mara also accounts for a recording studio, a high-end car dealerships and a number of other enterprises. Ironically but perhaps not so surprisingly, the successes that BMF had selling drugs was undermined by their failures as actual businessmen. Another irony is that despite all of the criticisms made by Terry against his brother Meech, it was the latter’s generous attitude and willingness to engage in opulent conspicuous consumption at strip clubs and night clubs with his subordinates that motivated them to not snitch on him once caught. Not that their testimony would have been the point on which the prosecution’s case would have rested in full – but it’s worth noting: as a means of maintaining organizational morale, it turns out that warmth and affection rather than coldness and annoyance have a significant impact.

Yet another major irony illustrated in the book is that after the capture of the Black Mafia Family, the drug task force which had helped bring them down gets disbanded following the accidental death of an elderly woman that the Atlanta Police Department tried to frame as a cocaine trafficker. While not widely announced in the paper, the presence was common knowledge amongst the criminal elements in the area and following this trade picked up apace and with greater openness. This time, however, it was largely done by Mexican gangs with military backgrounds that made the 270 million brought in by the Black Mafia Family look like peanuts.

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Some of the original notes and articles from which made the book was written can be found here.


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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.

 

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.

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

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.