Monoliths

Yesterday morning I sat down for my usual hour of Ellen at 11 a.m. and was intrigued to see that Snoop Dogg was on the show with his 8 year olf daughter. Dressed in a sweet quasi-pimp suit of white, he danced with my girl Ellen and talked not about his new album all that much or the "game". He talked about how he can now breath easier now that his Little League Football team won their championship. Snoop Dogg- what a guy.
I was pondering this exchange and was taken aback for a moment- this same man who rapped "Drop it Like it's Hot" is super-dad for his three kids. In the media we hardly ever see these stories- the ones we do hear usually involve a shooting or some sort of brawl between those in the rap world. We don't hear about their families, we don't hear that they are coaching their kids football games- we just hear the negative stereotypes because those are what the media sells. Watching Snoop on Ellen made me think about the ways in which we keep stereotypes in the African American community, and how in Snoop's own life he goes against those. He is not the same guy he was 13 years ago, and he is not the vision of the "ghetto" community we expect from the rap game. He, like African American culture and all people, is not a monolith.
These monoliths, though, are everywhere we go because of categories we create for others. Gordon Allport in his landmark book The Nature of Prejudice discovered that categorization is the "natural propensity for prejudgment"- this is a natural occurence that "helps people to cope with life." We create categories, we put people in stereotypes like we do with Snoop because it's easier for us to brush them aside. Satirists like Paul Beatty subvert these stereotypes to show the falseness of our categories. Snoop is like Tuffy in that way- we expect him to be a certain way, a monolith of the "hip-hop culture" that embodies all the negativity that comes with it. But, Snoop is different, and so is Tuffy.
It is for this reason why Beatty is so powerful in his satire, and he continues to make us think- like Ellen- about the things below the surface that embodies what it means to be African American. The black canon, satire, hip-hop culture, and people all around are not just one thing. They cannot be put into a box, nor can the experience of an African American- or Snoop.

Limited Mobility

It has been quite a while since my last update due to Thanksgiving Break, but during that time of respite and pie I was able to indulge in reading Tuff. At first it took me a while to truly understand the satirical nature of the novel, but once I did I was in for a lot of laughs, a lot of oh-shit-I-shouldn't-be-laughings, and some introspection regarding the ways in which the Black community is seen as a whole. Our other novels focused on the parts of African American culture that we fail to see, but in this novel Paul Beatty hits the reader over the head right away with the scenes we're familiar with. One of the aspects of his satire that I found most profound was the way space was explored to illuminate the true society of East Harlem.
As opposed to the other novels, the scenes in this book are usually all in the same place- in Tuffy's house, front stoop, or on the block with his friends. It's like the ghetto setting of Cheers- everybody knows your name and doesn't give a rat's ass about you either. You're either in a group or your not, and the same goes for Tuffy. The people on his block might have grown up right next to him, but for one reason or another they are not taken to be worthy of his respect. One of the scenes where this is made most apparent is with the Bonilla brothers, the sure-fire caricatures of do-nothing cops who believe their authority is purely in their badge. As Tuffy quickly discards them and their dog Der Kommisar, it becomes apparent that if you're not in with Tuffy, you're not in at all.
Tuffy and his crew seem isolated from the rest of the greater community, a theme present in most African American fiction, but they don't seem to mind it. Beatty knows that most novels' characters are tired of their situation and want to change their isolated existence in for something of success- for Tuffy's crew there's just no use. When the reader sees characters like Tuffy and Fariq wanting to work inside their own world of pain, it dawns on them that this is no longer a joke- this is reality. Beatty's saying that there could be a thousand LBJ's that want to change the way America treats the poor people of color, but if those stuck in the situation are comfortable in their lives, they'll stay there.
And that's not to say that Beatty wants to start a revolution either- for he also shows the "draft-dodging- dashiki-wearing brown-car-driving leather-trenchcoat-in-the-summer-sportin' stuck-on-stupid-played-out-1970s reject motherfuckers" (109), epitomized in Tuffy's father Clifford. The Black Nationalism shown in these caricatures is something that it satirized to the ridiculous as well, shown to be both stale and out of touch with the real problems of the ghetto. They're stuck not in a neighborhood, but in an era.
What happens between both of these scenarios is that there is limited mobility in their situation- both self-induced and society-induced. Beatty uses space in this way to confirm the things that we know about society already, as well as the isolation of space that all people in Tuffy's world inhabit. Beatty's satire of the archetypes of common black characters brings to light the fact that they're all stuck in a space not meant for them- and the will always have limited mobility in that space.

I wish I liked it

At the end of Octavia Butler's book, the first thought, after of course relief, was, "I really wish I liked that book." I wanted to like the book, I really did.
What tripped my up in my enjoyment of the book was the language. For some people, the reason why they connected so well with the writing style was through the accessibility of the langauge, but I found it to be too simplistic and honestly a little adolescent for my taste. Going into a novel I want to be linguistically wowed, inspired to write better in my own life. And Butler for me came up a bit short, especially in the dialogue between Shori and her symbionts. The phrasing didn't pop for me, and the word choice fell a little flat. I guess my cup of tea is a little more Jones-esque, even though at times some people think they're wading in the language. To me, one of the reasons why I enjoy reading is to unpack the language- it's a challenge that I like to tackle.
While I didn't particularly enjoy the way in which the book was written, I can see the ways in which Shori's experience can be extrapolated to a greater African-American experience. At the end of the book, as the diaspora of the Silk family is punishment for the crimes against Shori's maternal and paternal families the parallels with African Americans is clear. The reason why the book connects so well to these issues is because the themes of loss, isolation, and self-definition are made apparent in a strong way. This book has the ability to reach audiences that normally would not come into contact with typical African American themes, and I have to applaud Octavia Butler on that acheivement. Because the genre in which she writes is even more dominated by white males, she truly is one of the only African American voices heard by many readers.
I was less than pleased with my overall enjoyment of the book, but I can't expect to like every single book I read. To be fair, there are just some books for some people, and I can appreciate the themes the book explores. I just didn't feel blown away, but that's alright.

Why Sci-Fi?

When one thinks about African American literature, it is rare that science fiction would be part of the equation. But, if you look at Octavia Butler's Fledgling, it becomes more and more apparent why this genre can be very telling of the African American experience in America. More than anything, the conditions in which Shori's story unfolds can be paralleled with some experiences for the African American community as well as all humans. Using the classic sci-fi elements of utopia/dystopia, as well as the idea of the unknown, many parts of Shori's situation can be seen in America as well. We in this country yearn for a place where we can be surrounded by those that understand us like the Ina understand Shori, and when we see that community as one of acceptance readers want that life to be reflected somehow in this world. But, just like the Ina most of our existence is controlled by fear of someone in greater power taking our livelihood away, just as Shori's family has be systematically destroyed by outsiders. Outsiders come in and destroy many parts of us in all facets of life, as seen in the African American diasporic experience. But, the way in which all humans survive is on one another- through relationships with those that understand you most.
One of the most enticing elements of Butler's story is the idea of "mutualism," the way in which Shori survives, and in many ways the way in which all humans survive. Having a symbiotic relationship between a human at the start, like Wright, eventually changes his aging process so much that he will live forever. One of Iosef's symbiants, Brook, has been changed so much by her relationship with him that she will soon not be able to go back to her real family because she doesn't age at the same rate as humans do. Like Shori, she will eventually live to be hundreds of years old and still look young. This seems like a perk for many women in this age, who are always looking for a cure to aging, but to these symbiants "feedings" are not something that they choose to do on a whim- they have to have the venom of their Ina in order to survive. A chilling reminder to humans to be wary of those feelings and emotions that seem too good to be true. While being in relationship with others is an obvious necessary part of life, these relationships can sometimes turn out to be toxic and addictive, which is what these symbiants feel right now.
These symbiants are representative of many humans because while they enjoy the feedings at first, they are eventually broken down so much that they can't imagine their life without their Ina. They yearn for them like many "adrenaline junkies" of the real world yearn for the next rush. These humans at first like Wright want to continue over and over to have these feedings, not knowing or caring about the harm that it might be doing to themselves. The human symbiants have crossed over to the other side, and will never regain their human physical system again in the same way. In the African American community, this good relationship turned bad is one that is seen in many other novels in different fashions such as this. The black man feels the exhiliration of acceptance in the white world in a business community and wants to keep pleasing his white job, "the man" by doing what he is supposed to. Eventually the man gets sucked into the system so much that he denies the essence of his "blackness" in this relationship that ultimately began with someone outside of himself choosing how he should act. Shori never asked Wright whether he wanted to be bitten by her, nor does the white man in power ask if the black man wants to be changed into a more degraded,whiter version of himself. Eventually these two consciousnesses collide and turn into a self-deprecating feeling- something that possibly these characters might feel. The relationships do have a symbiotic motive for both human and Ina, but it seems more like the Ina simply need these humans to survive, and their emotions get tacked on at a later date.
From this aspect of Fledgling in particular, the genre and theme of a symbiotic relationship can relate to the African American experience and the human experience overall. Just because the "white man" in this scenario might be a quasi-vampire doesn't meant the actions are not applicable to the experiences of humans. By examining in greater detail this relationship, it is both a celebration of a relationship that both parties want to be in, but it is also a warning against those relationships that will change people into "junkies" of any sort. The sci-fi element of different species is another tool for audiences to see that these themes can be taken into many different arenas. Yes, there are vampires; and yes, there are new species of beings. But, there is a greater message in the novel about who to trust, the enemies that always surround us, and the relationships that govern our existence. Even if some people might be addicted to vampire venom.

Body Knowledge

When speaking in an interview, Octavia Butler responds to the interviewer's comment that the greatest deal of her own work depicts the body as the central communicator by saying that the body must be the clearest communicator in literature. "The body is all we really know that we have," Butler answers, and in her book Fledgling her notion of body as communicator is again seen clearly in the protagonist Shori. The narrative is based solely on the discovery by the main character of how her body works and deciphering what her impulses (like the need for flesh) mean in her existence. When Shori awakes in darkness, the scene is described by the way her body feels: "I curled my empty, wounded body tightly, knees against chest, and wimpered in pain...Gradually, I understood that I must be lying on the ground- on stone, earth, and perhaps dry leaves" (1). The visuals are given so clearly that the reader sees something (we don't know that it's a vampire yet) writhing in pain, probably in a dark cave. And we know this because Shori's body and the way she describes her own self is the strongest technique Butler uses to convey scene and message in the book.

More importantly in a critical social commentary, what is striking about Fledgling's narrative is that Shori as a black female vampire is narrating herself. Shori truly is "writing her body" in the Beauviorian sense, and it is inspiring for women reading the novel. Readers have to get over the whole vampire setting at first, but once examined Shori can be seen as example of how the body communicates every message inwardly and outwardly. She knows from her outward wounds that she has been hurt and she also communicates who she is through the physical act of feeding on other people's blood. Her own listening to her body and mind internally is one of the greatest ways in which decisions are made in her life as well as how she socially acts. When people on the outside talk to her, for example about being black, "I was about to protest that I was brown, not black, but before I could speak, I understood what he meant" (31). Internally she knows what things on the outside mean and what those things used to mean to her. Her life is full of those self-realization moments as the first chapters of the book and I suspect most of the book will consist of her finding out who she really is.

And just as she is learning about herself, she also learns everything about others first by feeding off them for her own physical needs. She knows their body- both male and female- by their almost identical response to when she feeds. They all, like Theodora Harden, "moaned- a satisfied little sound" (25) when Shori was eventually done feeding on them. They wanted more, not knowing that eventually they would be hurt by this feeling of pleasure. Her victims, because they were humans, were not fully attuned to their own bodies, so Shori had to make decisions for them. And, as Octavia Butler notes, "Some things we are afraid to know," one of those things being our own bodies. We refuse to oftentimes listen to what our bodies are telling us, instead using reason to make decisions instead of body messages. We work through the pain, rationalize feeling terrible so that we as humans can attain transient goals. It is only in the face of a character like Shori where women, and all humans, can see what we're lacking in "body knowledge."

The discovery of Shori's situation is a radical and relatively abstract way to think about a person defining themselves by a constant search for self. And as Butler notes, the self is the body- end of story. It might behoove humans to think about our own bodies first instead of what we think others want us to do or how to act. For ages African Americans' bodies have been used and defined by someone other than themselves. In fact, Shori is the perfect antithesis to the idea of slavery- she is not only in control of her own body but is able to control others' bodies as well. It is because she has the most body knowledge that she can have continual moments of discovery and survive on her own. One can learn a lesson from this protagonist, and I would venture to say that the world might make a little more sense if people treated their bodies with a little more respect than the work-till-you-drop mentality that so many of us are under. Shori is just surviving because that's what she needs; it might be time for humans to do the same as this vampire.

Learning How to Read

As Lila Mae Watson picks up Theoretical Elevators by James Fulton after all she has learned about his intentions for writing the piece, she looks at it with new eyes. "She is teaching herself how to read," the narrator reports (186). And it is because she finds out that Fulton is black that she is able to look at the "race" word, supposedly about elevators, and find the royal "we" in Fulton's book. She realizes, like the readers of The Intuitionist, that Fulton's book isn't really as much about elevators as it is about creating a new way of looking at the world. "She has learned how to read, like a slave does. one forbidden word at a time" (230). In reading this novel, readers are also able to learn how to read with a different lens on.
When I described the novel to some of my friends they really didn't know what to make of it. Like the Empiricists and Fulton's book, my friends took the plot for face value and disregarded it because of the ridiculousness of Intuitionism. But, by looking at this novel as Colson Whitehead wanted us to- with the allegorical lens on- we see that the elevators are African Americans: and just as elevators are often not seen or thought about by most of Americans, so the African American struggle and existence is often not thought of as well. It is learning how the invisible daily struggle should be seen and dealt with, through a constant unearthing of how this America actually works. Lila Mae sees Fulton as a completely different man once her vision of this one powerful white man was unearthed and seen in another light. Through a constant probing of his true identity and then a reworking of her own thoughts and stereotypes about this man, she is able to identify and truly see why Fulton named her as "the one."
Learning how to read through the eyes of someone else is one of the greatest gifts a novel like Whitehead's is able to do for Americans. We are used to having one way of seeing people, events, and situations in society; and we usually keep those things in our consciousness for less than a month. The way in which people read is so shaped by their experiences, and like Lila Mae we often close ourselves off from the possibility of our notions to change. It is only when we receive startling news, when our world is somewhat rocked by a new idea (which as the older we get is more rare) that we begin to think of the world as something completely different. Fulton in his work didn't intend for anyone to take his "joke" seriously at first, but all the readers were looking at it with the same eyes they looked at every other text about elevators- real elevators. They didn't get it, and the joke became a reality. It ended up being a better and truly theoretical reality, but Fulton didn't know that was going to happen.
Lila Mae was able to see that new and greater theory by looking at the text without walls. Most of the things I read are put into a box of "good or bad", "worthwhile or crap," which only ends up limiting me to things in my own small world of experience. It is learning how to read with a new vision that will give me the most of everything that is good. Whitehead might have taught me how, along with others before him, how to read outside of myself: it might not just be about me.

Angry With New Velocity

Colson's Whitehead's book The Intuitionist is not subtle, it is not a quiet book about a mousy elevator inspector: it is a racially-charged novel set in an absurd profession. Absurd because it is a government job that no one ever really thinks about: and to be honest with you, getting in an elevator is something that many people (including myself) would rather not over-analyze. Since beginning to read this novel I notice everything about elevators and continually think of them as coffins. So thank you Colson Whitehead.

But more than the brilliance with which Whitehead explores an entire new premise for a novel, he is able to ostracize a woman from a profession that is already part of the forgotten of government jobs. The look at Lila Mae and the profession itself is a fresh take on a racial topic, because the main character is not the stereotypical black woman readers would think of. In fact, to most she is the "moel minority." Lila Mae would be the perfect elevator inspector if she only wasn't an Intuitionist- the odds are truly stacked against her. And it is with elevator backdrop that the isolation of one black woman is made more pronounced in an America full of men with the "Safety" haircuts.

Whitehead is able to use the terminology of the White men's haircuts to play up the fact that nothing to about Lila Mae is safe: a woman, a colored woman they call her, an Intuitionist. But, she has overcome it all to become a professional- something that can't be said for her father, or for many black Americans surrounding her. And it is because Lila Mae is removed from the service jobs of most black Americans at the time that she is able to look at the subjugation with a fresh set of eyes for the reader- a new perspective at discrimination. She looks at the black porter: "But we take what jobs we get...Whatever we can scrabble for. She doesn't take to it, being waited on by colored people. This is wrong" (49). She doesn't look at the man in solidarity, she doesn't pity him. Instead she questions the system that put him there. What Lila Mae is able to do in her quiet and respectable defiance of the system is shed light on those who haven't gotten out of it yet. Her defiance and fight is quieter, an individual and solid fight. For she is a solid woman.

It is because of Lila Mae's solidarity that the reader roots for her because she has such odds. Like the counterweight of the elevator, Lila Mae is the counter-everything to the profession and white men that continually want to buck her for one reason or another. After part one, the stage has been set for Lila Mae to finally become enraged in her quiet way. Whitehead has set up the scene for a massive blowout between the Intuitionists and Empiricists, but more importantly he is setting this conflict as an example of a greater fight between progress and reactionism. Lila Mae is in the center of it, and I think she is ready finally to be "angry with new velocity" (33) in this fight for something new, something better. America should always be ready for a new face.

Blindness and the Racial View

In Edward P. Jones All Aunt Hagar's Children, the story Blindsided gives one of the most poignant phrases for the Black experience in America today. In the context of the novel, a little boy Taylor is asking suddenly blinded Roxanne if being blind physically hurts. Roxanne then turns the question on the boy and asks what he thinks:

"I say yes, but Mama say no. It hurt in other ways." (316)

While speaking of the "other ways" in which being physically blind hurts, this gives a fair reflection on the ways in which White privilege in seen at work in Black culture. The hurt of purely de jure discrimination is a thing of the past; quite honestly it would be a shame to see legally sanctioned race discrimination anywhere. But, the other ways in which African Americans feel the sting of racism is present in so many other ways. Much like the pain of blindness Roxanne feels because her existence as she knows it has been taken away, so too is the Black person in our culture prey to the continuing White privilege idea. The problem is no longer the overt racism that is glossed over in public schools, where a student might leave knowing the name of one or two leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. The problem now is the unseen racism that corresponds to the inner hurt of Roxanne. It is seen in the housing market, in the racism of the job market, in the ability to have access to healthcare, the following of a black man in a grocery store by a store detective: these are the hurts that myself as a white woman never have to experience.
Edward P. Jones speaks about these ideas so well because just like the racial issues are not something often seen overtly through de jure discrimination, the racial force is not stated overtly in the stories. Instead of saying, "The racism in America is seen in character X here," Jones is able to integrate the ideas of isolation and separation of Black cultures from White counterparts through more subtle ways. It is in the statement at the beginning of Blinsided:
"The white woman had her ideas about what black people did with their lives, especially on weekends, and just about everything they did in her mind could lead to blindness." (293) While that statement is just a thought from the white woman, the thought is what matters. You can never trust those Black people, the white woman seems to say, and Jones is able to elicit a response from all people when he says a statement like that. Everyone knows that is what some white people are thinking, but it is never uttered; just like White Privilege is merely an invisible bag of things White people can do and get for no reason other than they're White.
What Jones is able to do is show the different kinds of hurt that correspond with being an African American, but showing that there are problems with that idea of White privilege that are unspoken. And even in a black man that still "makes it" like the character of Noah in Adam Robinson Acquires Grandparents and a New Sister, the problem of poverty and abandonment meet him head on through his new grandson with a label on his shirt. These problems continue to occur because of White privilege as well as a host of other things, but it is unspoken to the White girl learning about the Civil Rights Movement in a 9th grade history class.
Through writing people for people, Jones is able to get the affects of White Privilege out in a form that is engaging and thought-provoking without being "preachy". I appreciate his work because he is magnificently talented but pointedly honest about the lives of these people. They all live in the same place, but they all go through different experiences based on how their lives have been affected by racism. It hurts in so many different ways, and through Jones' myriad of types of stories we experience the myriad of racist sentiments seen in the lives of his characters. Because the hurt is much more than just being Black: it is what being Black means to those looking in on Jones' world and characters.

The Curious Alphabet of Our Lives

"In the curious alphabet of our lives I sat behind Herman Franks...The curious alphabet of our lives still placed Sylvia Carstairs, my best friend for life, beside me...In the curious alphabet of our lives, Regina Bristol was one seat down from the front of the class, still in one of the middle aisles." -pg.51, All Aunt Hagar's Children

Edward P. Jones got it right in the midst of the little girl narrator with far too much wisdom when he says that our lives are a "curious alphabet." We humans are all made up of the same stuff- the 46 chromosomes, the hair, the eyes, the smelly morning-breath. But we are constantly changing shapes and lives to fit the moment, much like the alphabet in which the world is made of. As the father of the girl in the story "Spanish in the Morning" believes, "The letter 'M', for example, had no life if it only existed between 'N' and 'L'" (43); and such is the life of all the characters in the eclectic-but-unified stories in Jones work. Jones comments on both the arbitrariness and importance of other humans in our lives of constant contact. When compared solely with the alphabet, one could look precisely to Ferdinand de Saussure and his structuralist method and draw some parallels.
While it is completely unfair to look at humans- a complex web of emotions, actions, and functions- in the same sphere as the signs in our language, we can put humans for a moment into Saussure's schema. Words are arbitrary by and large, and although much of structuralism has changed, this idea remains strong. Something is given a label, much like a name for a human, and all of a sudden value is prescribed to it- not by themselves, but by other signs. That something though, that human has no value innately though. The baby doesn't wake up and know: "I am going to be the type of person who does their laundry on a regimented schedule," or " I am going to be the type of person who wakes up with a different man in my bed almost every morning." Just like signs and words, "The value [of a human]...is determined by its environment."
We are all products of those around us- families, friends, cities; and the people in Jones' book are all connected or defined by the unsaid connections that create value. In linguistics, the value of a sign is made salient by its connections to other signs; "Language is a system of interdependent terms in which the value of each term results solely from the simputaneous presence of the others" (Saussure, Course in General Linguistics). We then are the same way; our value is made salient to ourselves by the presence of others in our lives. And it is a constantly shifting cast of characters, just as Jones' stories shift relatively quickly. This "curious alphabet" model of humanity is ideal because we live within the framework of our lives but at the same time are becoming something different to someone else at any given moment. It is exciting to see in a book like Jones' where the value of the characters are given by their connections with the things outside of their own consciousness, and sometimes out of their control. The soldier with breast cancer and his connection to the power of nature, the psychic connection between Arlene, Avis, and Eulogia, Caesar's connection to the coin tossed by the little girl on the D.C. street. All these connections create value for who these characters believe they are, or who the world believes they are. The alphabet isn't stagnant, and neither are the lives of the characters in Washington D.C. In fact, neither is my life.

Torture: Haiti, Danticat and Bush

While a seemingly unlikely pairing, Edwidge Danticat and President Bush both speak on different sides of the line in regards to one heated issue: torture. In a September 2006 editorial in the Washington Post, the central trauma of the book The Dew Breaker is once again illuminated. At the time, President Bush was proposing to lift some of the facets of the Geneva Convention for the rights of prisoners when those prisoners, especially the ones at Guantanamo Bay, were terrorism-related. While the politically correct phrase "harsher interrogation tactics" was often used in Bush's speech, torture is truly the best word for it. It is in Danticat's book where the result of torture is seen from both sides; maybe a book that Bush should get his hands on.
In this piece Danticat tells the stories of two women who were tortured under the Duvalier Regime in Haiti, as well as Danticat's own research in Haiti regarding the regime that ultimately led her to write the book. In this piece, the question to be asked of President Bush seems to be, "Will anyone ever hear the voices of the tortured and the torturers when this administration is over, when the fear of terrorism hopefully subsides?" She begs that question throughout the piece, but more importantly Danticat urges the readers to understand that no one wins in torture situations, and in fact with these tactics America is coming dangerously close to regimes we purport to be against. "And now, when political leaders in the United States are asking us as a society to consider not only the legal and moral ramifications of torture but its effectiveness, we are brought closer to these regimes than we may think." The question at the time was, as it still is, "Is Bush overstepping his bounds to please right-wingers on the issue of terrorism?" In regards to the legislation passed in 2006, the answer is yes. And yes, torture affects everyone, regardless of whether you obtain the scars or not.
When speaking of the torture of her countrywomen in this piece and how it affected her society, she states that for those Haitians, "torture is not just an individual affliction but a communal one." For the United States, the torture system is something that is the "dirty little secret"; it is a communal secret. On the outside, just like Ka's father in the book, little information is given to the public so new stories about how prisoners are treated are created an glossed over. But those who torture and who are being tortured remember. Soon I feel America will come to the point where it looks in the mirror and remembers the scars of atrocities towards others from this current time in history. America, like Ka's father, will eventually have to "tell a lie, a lie that would further remind him of the truth" (228). Danticat in this editorial is making it known the central trauma of her country's life is running parallel to the way we are now treating prisoners at Guantanamo and elsewhere. This editorial speaks not only to the power of the author as a political force, but it asks the question of the necessity of torture to subdue humans.
It is in this political light where the idea of the novel as a living, moving, life-force is applicable. Novels are not just something to be taken lightly, and in the case of Danticat the only way to truly respect the novel is to understand the pain of the characters contained within it. But more than that, The Dew Breaker is a novel that shows us the issue of torture in the context of history but can be extrapolated to issues today. Torture is real and the characters of Anne, The Dew Breaker, Ka, and Dany (just to name a few) all have parallels in Haiti and around the world today. It is a blessing that a woman like Danticat was able to speak of the violence in Haiti that inspired her book, but also speak towards that violence and apply it to America. America should be scared of the morning dew of ignorance being broken by a woman who wants to expose the truth of torture- because it is real, and America needs to recognize that and fight it.

A link to the article by Danticat: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/22/AR2006092201304.html

Re-Creation in Morrison

A woman becomes a gendered woman, according to Judith Butler, "through the stylization of the body"; performative acts that eventually constitute what this certain woman is. This creation of what it means to be a woman is different for all women, but Butler reaffirms the notion of Simone de Beauvoir that, "one is not born, but rather becomes a woman." "Becoming" is a fluid concept, changing for women mostly due to the impact of prejudice on their lives from many different sources.
In Toni Morrison's Paradise the notion of re-creating what it means to be a woman is one of the strongest themes in the novel, especially when looking at the women of the Convent. They have come broken, drawn to this Convent in one way or another from a place of fear. Mavis, the woman who "wondered what it would be like [...] to have a husband who came home every day. For anything" (24), is caught in the role of a wife who has to constantly hold her family together. Yes, she wasn't the smartest of the lot, and yes, she ran away from her family because of both a warrant and her ensuing paranoia; but she was defined by her acts to be the woman who was continually put down. Gigi came from the culture of violence that seeped into every facet of her life, coming to Ruby as a destination. Because of her context, she was created to be the whore: the only way she was to get anything she wanted was to be the "bitch": it was one of the best ways to deal with the continual vision of the "boy spitting blood into his hands" (64). Coming to the Convent in a way was a place of protection, away from the man that she couldn't be with, away from the violence and loss that continually surrounded her life.
One, if not the, most profound example of those around a woman shaping her life and her "performing" her gender is Seneca. She is the peacemaker and has been since her sister ran away as a child. Abandoned, she's the one who always says, "I don't mind" because, "Otherwise- what? The might not like her. Might cry. Might leave" (130). Heaven forbid she would have to be left again, alone, and have to hitch a ride in the back of another pickup. Her place of sanctuary came in the form of the Convent, a place where slowly she changed to a woman who can say what she wants and who she wants to be.
All the women come to the Convent because it is for some reason the only place they have left to go. Because of Connie's own demons, the change of the girls into free women is slow. It is not until nearly the end of the novel where Connie truly takes the reins and puts the girls' lives under that self-reflecting microscope. The spiritual exercises, a mixture of voodoo and Christianity, were the turning point in the creation of the women's lives personally. Societally in comparison to the women of Ruby, they were already created far differently. But, it is the personal re-creation that is so striking. "Unlike some people in Ruby, the women of the Convent were no longer haunted" (266). The women, through their performative acts of what they believed a woman should be, changed the way they lived. Shackled to their pasts no more. Free to dance in the rain. Like all women should be.