Michael Janairo

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Author: Michael Janairo

  • What “articulate” means

    Many publications are examining Sen. Biden’s “compliments” of Sen. Obama, specifically his use of the word “articulate.” Though this isn’t about a book or author per se, it is about the use of language and worth taking a look at.

    From Black Star News:

    So, a cadre of leaders was called upon to prove that Blacks were sub-human. Pseudoscience mixed with assorted fallacies was used by prominent whites from all walks of American life to debase and dehumanize Blacks. Here are a few examples.

    First, there is that of Francis Galton the so-called father of the eugenics movement. A cousin of Charles Darwin, Galton in his 1869 work “Hereditary Genius” stated that “the number among the Negroes of whom we shall call half-witted men is very large—I was myself much impressed by this fact during my travels in Africa. The mistakes the Negroes made in there own matters were so childish, stupid and simpleton-like.” Galton also said that “the Negro race occasionally, but very rarely, produced men such as Toussaint L’ Ouverture.” Sound similar to Biden’s definition of “articulate” if you ask me.

    The NYTimes:

    When whites use the word in reference to blacks, it often carries a subtext of amazement, even bewilderment. It is similar to praising a female executive or politician by calling her “tough” or “a rational decision-maker.”

    “When people say it, what they are really saying is that someone is articulate … for a black person,” Ms. Perez said.

    Such a subtext is inherently offensive because it suggests that the recipient of the “compliment” is notably different from other black people.

    “Historically, it was meant to signal the exceptional Negro,” Mr. Dyson said. “The implication is that most black people do not have the capacity to engage in articulate speech, when white people are automatically assumed to be articulate.”

    Anna Perez is the former communications counselor for Ms. Rice when she was national security adviser.

    Michael Eric Dyson is a professor of humanities at the University of Pennsylvania.

    From the Boston Herald:

    An articulate African-American?
    “That means sounds white,” says Ralph Martin, former Suffolk County district attorney, now chairman of the Board of Directors of Boston’s Chamber of Commerce.
    “It drives we articulate black people crazy,” says local TV commentator Callie Crossley. “Some people are a little smarter now and they do, ‘well-spoken.’ It’s a whole code thing of, ‘You cleaned up nice and can put two sentences together.’ ”
    “It’s an insult, because if the same exact person was sitting in my chair and was white, no one would say it,” says NECN sports anchor Chris Collins. “It’s almost like they’re surprised, and it shouldn’t be a surpise. I sit at my dinner table and hang out with my friends and I’m not shocked when I can understand them.”

  • Michael Hiser on “Slaughterhouse-Five”

    The following post was sent in by Books Blog contributor Michael Hiser, no doubt celebrating the year of Vonnegut:

    slaughterhousefive.jpg(This is the original book cover of the novel.)
    It shames me to admit that I had not read Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5 -– or any of his other books –- until one week ago. That’s about 36 years too late. For someone who was 15 in 1970 when the book came out, and who has always most enjoyed a bleak-comic-absurdist brand of humor, this is an admission of some magnitude.

    Fortunately, the place at the table for bleak-comic-absurdist brand of humor has never seemed more secure, especially since March of 2003. Maybe I was just lucky: while other people have had to look elsewhere for intellectual relief after these interesting 37 years — after Vietnam, Watergate, Ronald Reagan, the fall of the Wall, Monica, and the continuing tragic unfolding of W’s Mindless War of Hubris -– I, for the first time, got to read Vonnegut.

    It’s the story of the life of Billy Pilgrim, an optometrist from Ilium, New York. We dip into Pilgrims life at different stages, chronologically. Pilgrim involuntarily time travels, or as Vonnegut writes in opening the book, “Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time”. Pilgrim never knows when he is going to walk from one scene to another, say, when he’s a prisoner of war of the Germans in Dresden in early 1945, to the next when he’s getting married, then in a hospital recovering from an airplane crash, and thence even to another planet, Tralfamadore. He’s kept there, fairly happily, in a zoo. Mainly, though, we get his ground zero e view of living through the Dresden fire bombing of Feb. 1945.

    What does the book tell the first time reader who should have read it when Nixon was still scheming to hide the tapes? First, it’s funny. And it’s sad. And it’s absurdist, with it’s description of the time travel of Billy Pilgrim, the actions of the aliens, the Tralfmadores, and the literary leavings of the underappreciated novelist Kilgore Trout. It’s got an air of resignation –- signified by the 214 times that the phrase, “So it goes” is intoned, generally connected with events related to death. But it’s almost a cheerful resignation.

    I was directed to the book after all this time by my 17 year old son’s urging, and also by m recent reading of “Flyboys”, by James Bradley. “Flyboys” describes the air war in the Pacific in WWII. Bradley describes the evolution of the American war policy that at first strongly condemned the bombing of civilian targets, but by the end of the war, had wholeheartedly embraced it. The May 1945 incendiary attacks on Tokyo lead to the deaths overnight of some 100,000 people in huge firestorms. It was the same tactic used in February 1945 in Dresden, with the same grim effect.

    Bradley’s descriptions lay out the facts of these attacks, and he is clear in his criticism of them, especially in noting the hypocrisy adopted by the US to describe the American intent and role. Vonnegut also describes the facts of the attacks, though he lets us come to our own conclusions about the American intent and role. These were events that, in retrospect, seem clear to have been at the intersection of technology gone awry, to the point where man has lost control of it.

    This is not a new theme in human endeavors. A consistent analysis in evaluating the military tactics used in the American Civil War has been that the tactics tended to trail the equipment available. [The corollary is the “generals always fight the last war”]. Thus, even as late as July 1863, in Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg, 12,000 or so massed ranks of Confederates marched across an open field on which they were sitting ducks for rifled shot, artillery, etc. Those tactics of the Napoleonic era did not survive that last gallant effort.

    That seems to be similar to where we are now. We have developed weapons to incinerate beautiful cities and centers of culture either over a period of hours [like at Dresden, or Tokyo] or immediately, as in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Since we had them in our arsenal, we used them. We still have them, and, from the saber rattling toward Iran coming out of Washington, their use is still contemplated . Like our forefathers, we haven’t yet come up with a new military strategy that encompasses the non-use of a military weapon that we’ve created. That next step would be called “peace”. We weren’t there in 1945, or 1968, or 2003, and we’re not there yet. So it goes.

  • Join me in welcoming Michael Hiser

    The conspiracy is growing…
    The Books Blog has a new contributor, Michael Hiser, so be on the lookout for his posts. You know he’s got to be interesting, with a great name like Michael. Here’s a little bit about him:

    I have been receiving AARP’s mail urging me to become a memberfor about a year now, but so far have resisted. My family still find this funnier than I do. I’m entering my 25th year of practicing law, most of the last 15 with the State of New York. In the last few years, I’ve been an occasional free lance contributor. I’m looking forward to fitting in a book blog with more rigorous triatholon training, learning to play the piano, and dealing with the emotional fallout of sending a first child off to college in the Fall. I’m confident of being able to handle at least 3 of these.

    Welcome to the Books Blog, Michael!

  • Interview with Paul Block

    masada.jpgPaul Block, the senior producer at timesunion.com, is also the co-author with Robert Vaughan of the new religious thriller “The Masada Scroll,” to be released today by Forge Books.

    The books blog recently sat down with Paul to talk about his book. Click on the videos below to hear and see the interview, in two parts.

    Part 1.

    Part 2.

    For more coverage, read story from today’s Times Union.

    Keep an eye out on the blog as Paul plans on posting entries about the what it’s like having a new book come out.

  • Black History Month: “The Souls of Black Folks”

    dubois.gifW.E.B. Du Bois The Souls of Black Folks, 1903.
    William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was born in 1868 in Great Barrington, Mass., and by the time he died in 1963 had become one of the most influential black writers ever in America, due largely to the work he is known best for, The Souls of Black Folks.

    The collection of essays in the book is both a seminal work in the field of sociology and in the study of African-American culture. In it, Du Bois coins the term “double-consciousness”

    After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.
    The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife,—this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.

    The complete text of this book is available for free from such sources as Project Gutenburg and Bartleby.com.

    Special thanks goes to Barbara Smith, author and member of the Albany Common Council, for her suggestion.

  • Most requested books for January at UHLS

    pluml.gifFollowing in order is a list of the ten most requested books in UHLS for January 2007 (The UHLS is a cooperative association of 29 libraries in Albany and Rensselaer counties.)

    1. PLUM LOVIN’ by Janet Evanovich

    2. STEP ON A CRACK by James Patterson

    3. STALEMATE by Iris Johansen

    4. CROSS by James Patterson

    5. ABOUT ALICE by Calvin Trillin

    6. SHADOW DANCE: A NOVEL by Julie Garwood

    7. THE GLASS CASTLE: A MEMOIR by Jeannette Walls

    8. THE INNOCENT MAN: MURDER & INJUSTICE IN A SMALL TOWN by John Grisham

    9. THE MEMORY KEEPER’S DAUGHTER by Kim Edwards

    (tie)

    10. ELDEST by Christopher Paolini

    11. NEXT: A NOVEL by Michael Crichton

    This list is courtesy of Philip W. Ritter, Executive Director, Upper Hudson Library System.

  • Books news and updates

    So I take a couple days off, and there’s a load of news.

    Sen. Schumer was at the BookHouse in Guilderland on Saturday.

    There’s a new Web site that’s the official site for Zora Neale Hurston, whose Their Eyes Were Watching God is the NEA Big Read pick (which libraries around the Capital Region are taking part in). (The site, by the way, was created by one of the bloggers at Chekhov’s Mistress.)

    A blogger critiques the NYTimes Sunday Book Review, saying “I really wish the Book Review would spend more time reviewing people’s books instead of their ethnic backgrounds.”

    Here’s 33 reasons why librarians matter.

    The February issue of Words Without Borders is up. (This site dedicated to international literature for an American audience, is hosted by Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.)

    In his blog, poet Dan Wilcox ponders what would Anne Sexton do?

    Meanwhile, Albany Poets is pushing for recognition via Metroland.

    Here’s the link to Metroland’s readers’ picks.

    Speaking of readers’ picks, for best local blog? I’d vote for this one http://blogs.timesunion.com/thewritingcenter/, which is dedicated to kids and writing.

    The Writing Center
    The Writing Center for the Greater Capital Region, Inc. provides a supportive community for students in 6th through 12th grades. What binds us together is a common love of language and a strong belief in the process of writing: that if you lay down a line of words and follow them, you will eventually find the way.

  • Black History Month: “Twelve Years A Slave”

    northrup.jpgSolomon Northup’s 1853 autobiography, “Twelve Years A Slave.”

    In Saratoga Springs, a plaque near the corner of Congress Street and Broadway memorializes the kidnapping of Solomon Northup. In 1841, the Saratoga County man was kidnapped and sold into slavery in Louisiana. A delegation from New York some of them affiliated with Union College in Schenectady was eventually able to get Northup released. He returned to the Capital Region and wrote of his experiences in the book “Twelve Years a Slave.”

    The first chapter of the book speaks of his family’s history, which he traces back to a Northup slave-owner in Rhode Island.

    The second chapter begins innocently enough:

    ONE morning, towards the latter part of the month of March, 1841, having at that time no particular business to engage my attention, I was walking about the village of Saratoga Springs, thinking to myself where I might obtain some present employment, until the busy season should arrive

    Then he relates his abduction and being sold into slavery in New Orleans.

    The full text is available online here.

    Northup’s story was also made into a movie.
    solomonodyssey.jpg
    The film starred Avery Brooks and was directed by Gordon Parks.

  • Events on Monday, Feb. 5

    lisathompson.jpg“Authors Theatre” Will Present Staged Excerpts From the Work of Black Playwright Lisa Thompson, February 5, 2007 Lisa Thompson, acclaimed emerging playwright, poet, and scholar, will answer questions following staged readings of portions of her plays about African American middle class experience on Monday, February 5, 2007 at 7:30 p.m. [NOTE EARLY START TIME] in the Assembly Hall, Campus Center, on the University at Albany’s uptown campus. The event is sponsored by the New York State Writers Institute, and is free and open to the public.

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