Black History Month: February 10, 1927 – Birthday of Leontyne Price

Mary Violet Leontyne Price was born on February 10, 1927 in Laurel, Mississippi. She is one of America’s most beloved and widely recorded operatic sopranos.

Her parents gave her a toy piano at age 3 and she began piano lessons right away with a local teacher. At age 10, she was taken on a school trip to hear Marian Anderson sing in Jackson, and she was inspired by the experience. She enrolled in the music education program at Wilberforce College in Ohio. Her success in the glee club led to solo assignments, and she completed her studies in voice. With the help of an affluent white family as well as Paul Robeson, who put on a benefit concert for her, she enrolled on a scholarship at The Juilliard School in New York City.

Her first important stage performance was in a 1952 student production of Verdi’s Falstaff. Shortly thereafter, she was hired for a revival of an all-black opera, Four Saints in Three Acts. After a two-week Broadway run, Saints went to Paris. Price was also cast as Bess in the revival of George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, and she returned to the U.S. for the opening of the national tour on June 9, 1952. The tour visited Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Washington, D.C, and then went on a tour of Europe, sponsored by the U.S. State Department.

Leontyne Price as Bess

On the eve of the European tour, Price married the man who sung Porgy to her Bess, the noted bass-baritone William Warfield. In his memoir, My Music and My Life, Warfield describes how their careers forced them apart. They were legally separated in 1967, and divorced in 1973. They had no children.

At first, Price had aimed for a recital career, but opera proved a stronger calling. On January 27, 1961, Price arrived at the Met, in a double-debut with the Italian tenor Franco Corelli in Verdi’s Il trovatore, that ended in a 42-minute ovation, one of the longest ever recorded in the Met’s history. She was the fifth African American to sing leading roles at the Met. She was also the first to earn the Met’s top fee. A 1964 memo revealed that she was paid the same per performance as divas Joan Sutherland, Maria Callas and Renata Tebaldi. The following season, in October 1961, she became the first African American to open a Met season, a sign of having arrived as a prima donna.

Leontyne Price as Aida in 1967

Price avoided the term African American, preferring to call herself an American, even a “chauvinistic American”. She once summed up her philosophy thus: “If you are going to think black, think positive about it. Don’t think down on it, or think it is something in your way. And this way, when you really do want to stretch out, and express how beautiful black is, everybody will hear you.”

In her later years, Price’s voice became darker and heavier, but she enjoyed sold-out performances until her retirement from the stage in 1997. One of her post “retirement” projects was writing a children’s book version of Aida, which became the basis for a hit Broadway musical by Elton John and Tim Rice in 2000. She lives in Greenwich Village in New York City.

The video below features the music of William Warfield and Leontyne Price in the roles of Porgy and Bess, recorded on September 21, 1952 in Berlin. They are singing “Bess, You Is My Woman Now,” which is my favorite song ever, and it is accompanied by still pictures from the production.

Moby Dick Mondays – Week 13

Ti of the blog Book Chatter is sponsoring a challenge/readalong to read the classic Moby Dick. On Mondays, we’ll be posting about our progress. I am listening to the unabridged audiodisks for this book.

Last week I told you that there were still 40 chapters to go before Moby Dick himself would appear. For this week, we shall travel with the Pequod all the way to that penultimate moment, saving the meeting between Moby and the crew for the last post on February 15.

When we left off, Ishmael was digressing once again, this time on the legal complications of the whaling industry. He continues his digressions and the Pequod continues its circumnavigation of the globe, running into other whalers now and then. Unexpectedly, Queequeg contracts a fever, and comes “close to the very sill of the door of death.” Worrying that if he died he would be tossed into sea in his hammock (as was the usual custom) – destined as a snack for sharks – Queequeg asks if he might have a coffin built by the ship’s carpenter. He fills the coffin with his things, and even tries it out, but then decides he is not yet ready to die, and rallies. Thereafter, he uses his coffin as a sea-chest.

Ahab gets into the creative mode as well, and has the blacksmith make him a harpoon from the best steel with the sharpest barbs, in anticipation of his meeting with Moby.

But then, in the Japanese Sea, a typhoon strikes. Ahab sets a course into the gale, to look for Moby Dick. The crew wants to sail in the opposite direction! And then they see St. Elmo’s Fire [an electric glow seen on ships during storms, and considered supernatural by superstitious sailors. There are various manifestations of St. Elmo's Fire]:

The crew decides it is a good sign, and Ahab decides it is the sign of the white whale. The lightning continues to strike, and even hits Ahab’s harpoon:

As the silent harpoon burned there like a serpent’s tongue, Starbuck grasped Ahab by the arm—‘God, God is against thee, old man; forbear! t’is an ill voyage! ill begun, ill continued; let me square the yards, while we may, old man, and make a fair wind of it homewards, to go on a better voyage than this.’”

Ahab took up the harpoon as if it were a torch, and turning to the frightened crew, cried:

‘All your oaths to hunt the White Whale are as binding as mine; and heart, soul, and body, lungs and life, old Ahab is bound. And that ye may know to what tune this heart beats; look ye here; thus I blow out the last fear!’ And with one blast of his breath he extinguished the flame.”

The typhoon finally abated after midnight, and Starbuck went down to where Ahab was sleeping to apprise him. But he stopped before the door and considered if he should kill Ahab to save himself and the rest of the crew. He wrestled with himself, and even took up a musket. But in the end, he could not do it. He put the musket back in the rack and went back upstairs.

Starbuck

Tune in next week for the exciting denoument!!!

Just joining in? Catch up on previous posts:

Moby Dick Week 1

Moby Dick Week 2

Moby Dick Week 3

Moby Dick Week 4

Moby Dick Week 5

Moby Dick Week 6

Moby Dick Week 7

Moby Dick Week 8

Moby Dick Week 9

Moby Dick Week 10

Moby Dick Week 11

Moby Dick Week 12

Sunday Salon – Happiness is a Really, Really Good Book: Review of “Marcelo in the Real World” by Francisco X. Stork

Before I tell you about this book, I want to insert a quote from the author’s blog on what it means to love a book, because I truly loved this book. And this post not only tells you what that means, but shows you something of the author’s style, and of his heart:

True Love

Authored by Francisco Stork

I thought I would get philosophical (for a change!) and ask what it means to love a book. I often hear the phrase: “I liked it but I didn’t love it”, applied to a book. It surprises me to hear the word love so selectively applied to a book when it is so easily bandied about otherwise: “I love these potato chips.” It seems that we have more reverence for the word “love” when we refer to a book. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it’s just my own inner desire to save the preciousness of the word by using it only when I believe it to be true love. It seems to me that love for a book entails both the rapture of first love and the commitment of forever love. If that is the case, no wonder I find it hard to love just any book. By “rapture of first love” I mean that recognition of the book’s beauty, its goodness, its literary qualities all of which are experienced in a kind of rapture, a losing of myself in the world of the book. (Sounds very much like falling in love for a person, doesn’t it?). By “Commitment of forever love” I mean that I choose, that I select and prefer this book to the many other books I have read. It means that the book is now a part of me and I a part of it. It means that I don’t want to leave it, that even as I finish reading it, I already want to return it. It means that along with the passion of the initial rapture there is also a peace that is intuitively recognized as lasting. This is true love for me. I only want to add that true love is subjective. There are “classics” that I don’t love and there are what many would consider poorly written books that I love with all my heart. With these last kind there is a recognition of souls that takes places that pierces through the surface. May our hearts be always full of love.

My Review:

This book won, inter alia, New York Times Notable Children’s Book of 2009, 2009 Booklist Editors’ Choice, Horn Book Fanfare Book, Kirkus Best Book of 2009, Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2009 and School Library Journal Best Book of 2009.

Much of the marketing for this book labels it as a book about Asperger’s Syndrome, a high-level functioning form of autism. I think that characterization mispresents the nature of this book. Yes, 17-year old Marcelo Sandoval has been diagnosed with AS, but the story is not about his disability, per se, other than perhaps in terms of the reaction of other people to Marcelo. Above all, it is a beautiful coming of age story about what happens when Marcelo leaves the protected environment of a special school and goes to work at his father’s law firm “in the real world.”

Marcelo’s father Arturo, the head of a rapacious corporate law firm, thinks “the real world” will be good for him. But for Marcelo, in an analogy later explored with his spiritual advisor, Rabbi Heschel, the transition is more than just a change of location. By going from the special school to the law firm, basically he has left the innocence and goodness of Eden and now has to learn about the existence of evil. He even begins to question his faith, which previously had been the bedrock of his sheltered existence. The pain he saw at the special school, he discovers, is nothing in comparison to the pain people inflict on one another outside its confines.

At the law firm, his father arranges for him to work in the mailroom under Jasmine, a girl not much older than he is. She is kind and patient with him, unlike others in the firm, who call him “Gump” or “Retard.” Marcelo and Jasmine discover they share a love of music and of the way it both calms and also elates them.

Wendell, the shallow and callow son of Arturo’s partner, gets Marcelo transferred to his office so that Marcelo can do his work while he hits the beach. He also regularly tries to pressure Marcelo into helping him get Jasmine into a compromising sexual situation.

But while doing Wendell’s work, Marcelo discovers something about a big ongoing litigation case that will ultimately change his life. First though, he must decide how to resolve the moral dilemma he has encountered. He asks Jasmine for her opinion:

Jasmine: I’m not the one playing the piano here. You’re the one that needs to decide what the next note will be.

Marcelo: But how do I know the next note is the right one?

Jasmine: The right note sounds right and the wrong note sounds wrong.”

Rabbi Heschel uses her own analogy: When the sap comes up from the ground and travels through the branches of a tree, it can go up one branch and it is good and bears fruit. Or it can go up another and it is evll and there is no fruit. She says: “You have to make sure it goes up the right branch. It’s up to you.”

Beyond the micro sense of the wrongdoing he has uncovered, Marcelo wonders generally, “How do we go about living when there is so much suffering?“ The process by which Marcelo arrives at a satisfactory answer to both of these questions is one that is so well thought out and riveting that the reader is carried along by his logic and good-heartedness to perform a similar self-analysis.

And the beginnings of young love, so new to someone like Marcelo, are a joy to witness. He wonders why he feels like there are “a thousand butterflies fluttering inside of him” when he is near Jasmine. He also tries to work out what this means, and how it fits in with his other discoveries about the real world.

Evaluation: Did I say enough times how fabulous this book is? It’s not another wonderful book about a disabled person. It’s a wonderful book in which the protagonist (and narrator) happens to be disabled. And yet, by the end of the book, you wonder, along with some of the characters, who the “disabled” people in this story really are. Highly recommended!

Rating: 5/5

Review of “Blankets,” written and illustrated by Craig Thompson

Bloggers have raved about this book, so I put it on hold at the library (as soon as I recovered from my shock that our library even carried it). This autobiography in graphic form is a memorable book in some ways, but it is so overwhelmingly sad I can’t claim that reading it brought me any joy.

Craig grew up in poverty in rural Wisconsin with an evangelical mother and an emotionally abusive father, a school environment full of bullies, a sexually abusive babysitter, and teachers in religious school who berated his creativity as a distraction from worshipping God.

At Church Camp, he meets a girl, Raina, who seems like a soul mate. During the school year they bond further through phone calls and letters, and finally arrange for Craig to spend two weeks at her house in Michigan.

Long distance love turns into a doomed proposition however, and Craig is left once again alone to deal with the demons of his past.

Evaluation: After reading this graphic novel, I was utterly despondent. The drawings are often lovely, and evocative of emotional states, but Craig’s story is pretty tragic. So how do I rate it? It’s a memoir of a horrible abusive childhood with no great improvement later in life. It left me depressed. I guess I prefer books that leave me feeling happy (for whatever reason) after I have read them. This is not to say I can’t read sad books, but there must be something else – a superb musicality of language, perhaps, or a plethora of philosophical insights, that compensates.

The blogosphere abounds with radiant reviews, however. Check them out using the book blog search engine, here.

Rating: 3/5

Review of “A Dog At Sea” by J. F. Englert

This is the third book in the Bull Moose Dog Run mystery series featuring Randolph, “a Labrador retriever with a penchant for literature” (not to mention pigs in the blanket) and his owner Harry, (“dangerously abstract and artistic”) who needs a little secret guidance from Randolph to help solve mysteries.

In A Dog At Sea, the two board the Nordic Bliss for a dog-lover’s cruise (giving new meaning to the term Poop Deck) to Curacao, sponsored by a pharmaceutical company marketing the dog drug SedaDog. Ostensibly this is just a pleasure cruise, but in fact, Randolph and Harry are heading for Curacao in search of Imogen, Randolph’s original owner and Harry’s lady love, who disappeared a year and a half before.

Coincidentally on the cruise are most of the characters from the previous books in the series, including Jackson Temple, Harry’s friend and benefactor, Ivan Manners, a self-styled ghost-hunter, Zest Kilpatrick, a nightly news reporter who has eyes for Harry, and Blinko Patterson, the executor of Imogen’s grandfather’s estate. Blinko warns Harry and Randolph that nefarious agents may be on board seeking clues to Imogen’s whereabouts.

In the midst of all this, on the very first night, Kitty, the wife of “The Dog Mutterer” was seen jumping overboard: an apparent suicide. Randolph suspects murder most foul, and has to come up with a way to communicate this with Harry.

Meanwhile, Harry resists efforts to help Randolph become thin by taking SedaDog, so the ship dog trainer, Jock Johnson, hangs a sign on Randolph: Please Do Not Feed Me. It sounds an alarm if Randolph gets too close too food, providing one more obstacle he must overcome in his quest to solve the crime.

In fact, The Dog Mutterer himself is an obstacle; he seems to have a hypnotic effect on Randolph, and Randolph discovers to his amazement that The Dog Mutterer can understand his thoughts when he barks.

Throughout most of all this, Harry is blissfully unaware of what is transpiring, occasionally swigging down mojitos and occasionally offering them back up in moments of the ship’s turbulence.

By the end the reader learns whether Randolph can stay on a diet; if he can help Harry solve the crime; if the two of them find Imogen, or if the bad guys will find them first.

Evaluation: This book is a diverting and sometimes laugh-out-loud way to pass the time. Some ends inexplicably remain loose, such as: how is it “The Dog Mutterer” can both affect and understand Randolph and other dogs? Nevertheless, much of the book is fun and clever, and Randolph is very endearing.

Rating: 3/5

Note: I sent Randolph an email, asking him about the loose ends. His owner, J.F. Englert, apparently having hacked Randolph’s email account, read my missive and sent a reply. [Reminder to self: send Randolph information about password security.] He addressed some specific questions I had and then observed:

The universe of these books is a playful one and a magical-satirical one (if that is a word). I sometimes think that our pre-occupation with verisimilitude in fiction is genuinely odd since, after all, the very act of reading is so clearly artificial. Certainly any plot, even the most supposedly realistic one, is full of mind-numbing coincidences and trumped up drama (so unlike real life). So much must be left out and so much distorted –in fact, almost without fail those books that are heralded as being most realistic so often strike me as being the farthest thing from reality (I prefer a Dante-reading Labrador any day). While my publisher has framed the books as mysteries first, everything else second, they were never really intended this way since Randolph, as you point out, is the core. That is to say, there is more Evelyn Waugh than Conan Doyle in these books, especially the latest one and Randolph, being Randolph, is not one to do a “Murder She Wrote” summation of every loose end at the book’s conclusion (he’s far too disorganized for this and besides there’s his stomach to think about). I think Randolph might occasionally fancy himself Hercule Poirot, but really the only thing they share is the waddle. Unfortunately, genre can be a strait-jacket and shape our reading experience. This brings me to end on the sensibility question since it is the sensibility that determines how these books are read. The people who will be most disappointed by these books are people who opened them hungering for a police procedural or something like one; the people who will be most delighted by them will be those who accepted it [as with Cervantes] when characters in later Quixote adventures had somehow read the earlier adventures (though this defied the laws of physics and common sense).

R. Englert and J.F. Englert

Black History Month: Review of The Listeners by Gloria Whelan – Ages 6-10

I was attracted to this book because of the artwork (by Mike Benny), which is a little reminiscent of the miraculous Bayou, written and illustrated by Jeremy Love.

Bayou, however, is too scary for young children; The Listeners, which tells a story of what life was like for children under slavery, is quite suitable for children.

Young Ella May and her friends, Bobby and Sue, pick cotton all day. Their most important work, however, begins at night, when they hide under their master’s window, listen for news and information, and run back home to report it. In this way, the adults know what to expect and how to deal with it.

This book has no scenes of horror. Clearly slaves are not free, but young readers will not be burdened with nightmarish scenes sometimes common to slavery.

There are happy moments in the book back at the slave cabins: the joy of family and food and community; dancing to music heard from the master’s house, and the news that Abraham Lincoln has been elected to be President of the United States. Slaves knew what that meant:

Daddy says, ‘Moses is come! We’re going to be free like the children of Israel. It’s the Jubilee for sure!”

When Ella May asks her daddy if that means their listening job is over, her daddy assures us that the listening is just begun:

We see the road, but we don’t see all the way to where the ending is. We got to know how long is that road and how we get down it.”

Evaluation: For an introduction to slavery, I can’t imagine a nicer book. And the illustrations are beautiful. Be sure to check the review at She’s Too Fond of Books, to see how Dawn’s young children reacted to this book.

Rating: 4/5

Review of “Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict” by Laurie Viera Rigler

Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict is the complementary story to Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict. In that first book (reviewed here), Courtney Stone, a 32 year old from the year 2009, wakes up in 1813 Somerset, England in the body of Jane Mansfield, daughter of a gentleman. Rude Awakenings tells what happens to Jane, who wakes up in Courtney’s body in 2009. The books can be read independently but probably flow better in order.

Both young ladies, rabid fans of Jane Austen, wished for different lives, and both hit their heads at the same time. Thus, we presume, some sort of cosmic Karma has enabled this switch. Like the movie “Back to the Future,” these books focus on the humorous confusions that result from dislocations in time. Coming to 2009 from 1813, there is plenty to astound a person, from televisions, computers, telephones, cars, and airplanes to the astonishing change in manners and morality, especially for a young woman. And there is no shortage of opportunity for satire either. One uproarious passage has Courtney’s friends take her to a therapist; after Jane/Courtney goes on about how she is really someone else from the year 1813, lost in the future, and doesn’t know how to get back, the therapist says: “Soooo… how do you feel about that?”

Courtney, ostensibly recovering from a severe concussion, finds herself attended to by Wes (the best friend of her ex-fiance), old girlfriends Paula and Anna, and a new girlfriend Deepa (who speaks with a reassuring English accent). She also finds herself reluctantly feeling responsive to the importunings of the ex, Frank, whom everyone (including Courtney) now recognizes as a scumbag.

It is Anna, who is into “new-age crap” as Paula calls it, who gives Courtney the most to think about when she says:

I believe that each of us has the power to create heaven or hell, right here, right now.”

Reflecting on this later, Courtney, always the Austenophile, says:

Each of us has the power to create heaven or hell, right here, right now. I do not know how I have come to be in this time, in this place, in this body. But I do know that any place where there are six novels by the author of Pride and Prejudice must be a very special sort of heaven.”

When Courtney expresses angst about how to understand what has happened to her, her friend Deepa takes her to see a fortune teller, who turns out to be the same one she saw as Jane back in 1813. The woman tries to teach her that knowledge about ourselves and others is structured by preconceptions. To truly know someone, you need to be open to fresh perspectives. That is to say, like Elizabeth Bennett in Pride and Prejudice, one must let go of ones’ pride and discard ones’ prejudices, not only to know others truly, but also to know ourselves and our true desires.

She also teaches Courtney not to be intimidated by the nature of 21st Century relationships. Even if someone has loved before, it doesn’t preclude loving again:

When you unite with your true love, it will be as if he is your first, and you his. In the eyes of love, there is no past.”

But can Jane/Courtney somehow reconcile her knowledge of who she really is with her new persona, and overcome the mistakes of both of those lives to make a new beginning? Or will she get cold feet and go back, with the help of the fortune teller? In short, will she create a hell, or can she create a heaven?

Evaluation: I liked this book much better than Confessions, in part because this story tended to tie up the lose ends left by the first story (and I do like all the ends tied!). It was also fun to see Jane/Courtney’s reaction to all the modern conveniences (such as toilets!) and watch her figure out how to use them. And looking at such modern wonders (electricity!) through Jane’s eyes helps you appreciate them so much more!

I envied Jane for having the opportunity to create a new life as Courtney, combining their personalities to make a kinder, better Courtney and a looser, more compromising Jane. It’s sort of like having a rewind button but with an editing capability. What a lovely premise!

Rating: 4/5

Guest Blogger Ari from “Reading in Color” Interviewing Author Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich

If you haven’t been to Ari’s blog Reading in Color, you are missing the most amazing voice! Ari is a sophmore in high school, and has only been blogging since June 2009, and you would never guess either of these facts. I can’t pay enough compliments to this teen blogger who reviews YA lit with a special focus on books relevant to people of color. But don’t just take my word for it! Check out this interview that Ari ran on January 12 of this year with the author of 8th Grade Superzero.

Guest Blogger Ari from “Reading in Color”

Today I’m interviewing Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich, author of 8th Grade Superzero, a wonderful debut novel.

Read my review here.

I first ‘met’ (really chatted) with Olugbemisola back in August when I did a post about the lack of contests occurring that featured books about people of color (poc). She generously donated two copies of 8th Grade Superzero, one for me and one to giveaway. I will always be grateful!

Reading in Color: What inspired you to write 8th Grade Superzero?

Olugbemisola: It began as a bit of an accident, I wrote a couple of pages as part of an application for a writing workshop. It was one of those night-before-the-application was due kind of things (a situation that I find myself in often), and I got an image of Reggie in my head and went with it for three pages. Much later on, as I began to seek out Reggie’s real story, I was inspired by people and moments in my life, and some of the teens that I taught and worked with — their desire to tackle big questions, to be thoughtful, and to be activists in many different ways.

RiC: What kind of research (TV shows, magazines, other books, teens?) did you do for this book to help you get into the MG mindset?

Olugbemisola: I didn’t really do any set ‘research’, but I’m always observing and eavesdropping — er, listening. Public transportation is a wonderful thing for writers! I’ve also spent a lot of time working with children and teens, and of course, I’ve been these ages myself, and I think many writers just tap into those memories. While the times may change, the minor heartbreaks that feel like major earthquakes, the daily deaths that spark constant rebirth, and the anguish and elation that characterize the teen years…those are timeless.

RiC: What’s next for you, Reggie, Ruthie and Joe C. (I would love to follow them in high school, just see how they handle it. Maybe Reggie will be a stud and Ruthie will take over the high school and Joe C. will be a master DJ?)

Olugbemisola: I’m working on a YA project in which the Superzero characters are mentioned, and I did start working on a book featuring Ruthie in high school, we’ll see how that goes. She takes a trip to Jamaica and confronts her ideas about identity, authenticity, and revolution. And romance, of course! I won’t say just yet if Reggie is involved! :P

RiC: Which character do you relate to most? least? And how much of your own Jamaican heritage did you put into the story (were your parents like Reggie’s, especially with their ranking of various Caribbean countries!)?

Olugbemisola: Ruthie is my favourite. I love her passion and commitment to justice, her creativity, her comfortable confidence! I relate to something in all of the characters…well, except for Justin, because I have no idea what it is like to be that effortlessly cool, and Mialonie, for similar reasons, and because I hope that I’m a better listener than she is!

My mom was Jamaican; she never ranked the countries or anything like that, though! Some of what’s in the book was inspired by reflections on family gatherings, conversations and observations here in Brooklyn now, etc.. Reggie and Ruthie connect with their Jamaican heritage in different ways, but it is not a problem, or something to struggle with, for either them. It’s who they are, and a part of their identity that gives them strength.

RiC: Why did you decide to write MG and not YA or adult fiction?

Olugbemisola: I didn’t really make a decision either way. I just write. The other projects that I’m working on now would probably be considered YA; I also have some chapter book ideas floating around. And some nonfiction. I just love to write, and hope that I have the opportunity to continue! I think that books labeled as ‘for children’ or ‘young adults’ often offer narratives of transformation, and of hope, that I think are vital. My own childhood and teen reading years are very precious to me; the books that I read were such gifts and continue to be significant forces in my life. In that sense, writing for young people is also an attempt to ‘give back’ in a small way.

RiC: If 8th grade Superzero could be made a movie, who would you want to play the main characters?

Well, this question just gets me started on the lack of presence of people of colour in film and on TV! There is so much tween and teen programming now, especially on television, but there is a real lack of racial and ethnic diversity as well, except for the usual sassy/wacky sidekick of colour. The few actors that immediately come to mind are really more suited to play high schoolers…What do you think? Do you have any ideas? I’m listening!

*RiC Note: I don’t have any ideas either, there is way too few poc on TV! The only actors I can think of are too young or in high school, not suited to play middle school students. Suggestions?)

RiC: Any advice for middle school or high schoolers going through similar situations to Reggie and his friends; friendships ending/beginning, helping others, being uncool and teased, etc.?

I’d remind them (as I have to remind myself daily) that we don’t have to let others define us. And to look for the humanity in each other — not to get stuck on type and stereotype, and the fear that leads us to be exclusionary. The club doesn’t get any cooler when you don’t let others in. It’s just smaller, in a lot of ways. In Superzero, there is a character who has a lot of issues that fuel animosity toward Reggie — this character is jealous of Reggie’s family life, this person saw Reggie’s strength of character long before Reggie himself did — but Reggie will never know all of that, and may have to learn to get over it without that knowledge. I chose to leave out the character’s backstory in large part because I think that while we have little or no control over what other people do or say to us, we can choose how we respond, and those responses can really transform. We all have issues, after all. I don’t excuse the people who act like jerks; I also don’t excuse myself from acting and reacting with dignity. And it’s because of my own complete failure to do that so much of the time, the knowledge that I’ve had countless ’second chances’, that I have to remain hopeful, develop a more generous spirit, and keep trying!

Don’t let the “tyranny of the urgent” overpower the “urgency of the important”** (*those terms are not my own — from a classic booklet on time management by Charles E. Hummel)

Sometimes things seem huge — an argument, an embarrassing incident, who’s popular and who’s not — and they obscure real, precious opportunities in our lives to make change and be transformed.

Keep words like respect, dignity, and compassion in your mental pocket.

Keep a notebook (a real pen and paper kind, that no one else sees). Pay attention, and write things down. Even though I cringe at some of the ridiculous and pompous stuff I’ve written over the years, I think the writing down, the processing, was important. And for me, writing things down, like quotes or passages by others that inspire or provoke me, helps me to remember and use them in real ways in my daily life.

Ask questions. Listen to the answers. Realize that there is often not just one right answer, sometimes there isn’t one at all. Especially to the why questions, but you should still ask those a lot.

Make things, without worrying about being good at it.

Challenge yourself, be uncomfortable regularly.

Smile.

And read. Stories.

RiC: Do you have any websites/blogs that people can go to in order to find more books and reviews of books about poc? And what YA/MG books are you currently reading?

This blog, of course!

Some other favourite sites, blogs, interviews, and articles:

I’d tell everyone to watch Chimamanda Adichie’s talk on “The Danger of a Single Story”

Bowllan’s Blog at School Library Journal

The Happy Nappy Bookseller

PaperTigers

Neesha Meminger’s Blog

Mitali’s Fire Escape

Multicultural Review

Color Online

su[shu]

Fledgling (Zetta Elliot’s Blog)

Brown Girl Speaks African Diaspora Reading Challenge

Social Justice Reading Challenge

Isabel Allende’s speeches and interviews

Pete Seeger and Majora Carter Talking on This Brave Nation

This interview with Junot Diaz

This interview with Edward P. Jones

Esther’s Call Poverty Blog

This interview with Eboo Patel, which includes a fantastic quote by the always amazing Gwendolyn Brooks

This essay by Edwidge Danticat

*RiC Note: These are some amazing links. Chimamanda Adichie’s speech is something everyone, especially anyone who works or wants to work in the publishing industry should watch. I’ve learned about some new blogs as well and great speeches and interviews :)

Currently reading, and in my TBR pile:

Gringolandia by Lyn-Miller Lachman
Purge by Sarah Darer Littman
Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One Before by David Yoo
Return to Sender by Julia Alvarez
The Rock and the River by Kekla Magoon

*RiC Note: Loved Gringolandia and I’m getting ready to start The Rock and the River! I need to read Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One Before. I liked Return to Sender.

Not a YA or MG novel, but related:

Rethinking Multicultural Education: Teaching for Racial and Cultural Justice

(and a bunch of other books that I’ve read already and will read over and over again!)

RiC: Thank you so much for this interview Olugbemisola! You gave some wonderful advice and I’m excited to see what’s next from this awesome author.

You can find more information about Olugbemisola at her website or blog. Also find her cover story here (it was very interesting!) and Writers Aganist Racism post here, it’s great.

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Note from Rhapsody In Books: Can you believe those creative interview questions? And if somehow, you still haven’t been convinced you need to read 8th Grade Superzero, watch the video on Olugbemisola’s blog! (You will also wonder why someone with such a great voice isn’t in radio!)

Black History and People of Color Children’s Literature Month

The month of February (we might note, the shortest month of the year) has been designated as Black History Month. I’ll be publishing a number of posts to highlight this time.

What exactly do we mean by “black history” anyway? Do we mean African-American history or the history of black residents of America? During the 1990’s, some 400,000 black immigrants came to the U.S. from Africa. (Moreover, some 900,000 black immigrants came from the Caribbean!) Their history is quite different from that of blacks who have lived in this country for hundreds of years. And what is the connection, if any, between the new immigrants and the old? Read about this issue here in “The Changing Definition of African-American” by Ira Berlin, Smithsonian Magazine, February, 2010.

Picnic on the Grass... Alone, 1997, by Faith Ringgold

In addition, February has been designated as a time to celebrate people of color (POC) books for children. “28 Days Later” is a celebration of POC children’s literature sponsored by The Brown Bookshelf, a group of 5 authors and illustrators, brought together for the collective goal of showcasing the best and brightest voices in African-American Children’s Literature.

Please stop by The Brown Bookshelf and see what books are being honored this month. Also check out Paper Tigers, announcing today an important new project that aims to put a selected set of multicultural books into the hands of children in areas of need in different parts of the world.

You might also like the blog The Happy Nappy Bookseller, in which you can find all kinds of lists of best books for children, by authors of color or with characters of color. Books by Faith Ringgold (see illustration, above) will thrill both children and adults. For books written by Native American writers, Debbie Reese has an annotated list of books for children and young adults here. Many public libraries have great lists. To cite just two: The Pima County Library in Tucson has some nice annotated lists of books for teens: Native American Voices, Latino Voices, African-American Voices, and Asian Voices. The Seattle Public Library has a similar set of annotated lists here.

There are quite a number of small-press publishers committed to publishing multicultural materials for children, and from which you can place orders online. A sampling of these includes:

Asia For Kids

Bess Press

Children’s Book Press

China Books

DARE Books

Eschar Publications

Groundwood Books

Just Us Books

Lee & Low Books

Oyate

Shen’s Books

Third World Press

Moby Dick Mondays – Week 12

Ti of the blog Book Chatter is sponsoring a challenge/readalong to read the classic Moby Dick. On Mondays, we’ll be posting about our progress. I am listening to the unabridged audiodisks for this book.

Some of you may be wondering: so where are Ahab and Moby Dick already?!!! Here’s the answer: this book has 135 chapters (albeit short ones). Moby Dick does not appear until Chapter 133! So why does everyone think this great classic is about Ahab and Moby Dick? On one level this book is [nothing but] a great treatise on whales and whaling and a philosophical musing about their metaphorical nature. But in fact, throughout the entire book, Ahab and Moby hover in the background like a spectral chorus, guiding the thoughts and actions of the characters, and adding a background chord of foreboding to the music of the book. So if you are waiting for “the action” to start, it in fact already started, from the moment the boys stepped aboard the Pequod. And as for meeting Moby at last, well, we’ve got about 40 chapters to go! … But I digress! (Call me Ishmael – HA HA.)

When we left off, Ishmael had just witnessed the senseless killing of a crippled whale, and then segued into “The Honor and Glory of Whaling.” Next, he speculates on whether the whales spout consists of water or vapor: “surely a noteworthy thing.” Um…. well, perhaps not so much for hoi polloi.

Celebration of the whale’s tale is next, and indeed, a beautiful thing it is.

The two section of the tale are called flukes. As Ishmael notes:

In no living thing are the lines of beauty more exquisitely defined than in the crescentic borders of these flukes. At its utmost expansion in the full grown whale, the tail will considerably exceed twenty feet across.”

The tail is used for propulsion, as a mace when fighting other whales, for sweeping the area in some sort of sensory way (similar to the function of an elephant’s trunk), slapping the water (known as lobtailing; Ishmael interprets this as play, but modern cetologists believe this practice is used to communicate with other whales), and as a positioning mechanism before diving (modern photographers no doubt believe this practice is used for posing).

Meanwhile, the Pequod continues on its circumnavigation of the globe, passing through the straits of Sunda dividing Sumatra from Java. There they encounter a “vast aggregation” of sperm whales. Other whalers are also in the vicinity, since it was known for rich sperm whale hunting. The Pequod’s harpooners send their darts flying, but only one whale is captured. The rest get away.

This leads Ishmael to give us a lecture on the legal complications of whaling: for example, whose whale is it if one ship harpoons it but another picks it up? He cites two rules:

I. A Fast-Fish belongs to the party fast to it.
II. A Loose-Fish is fair game for anybody who can soonest catch it.”

He suggests analogously that there are many examples of the operation of these doctrines in every day life. He asks:

What to the rapacious landlord is the widow’s last mite [a mite is an old British coin worth one-eighth of a penny] but a Fast-Fish? …What was America in 1492 but a loose-fish, in which Columbus struck the Spanish standard by way of waifing [stealing] it for his royal master and mistress?”

Just joining in? Catch up on previous posts:

Moby Dick Week 1

Moby Dick Week 2

Moby Dick Week 3

Moby Dick Week 4

Moby Dick Week 5

Moby Dick Week 6

Moby Dick Week 7

Moby Dick Week 8

Moby Dick Week 9

Moby Dick Week 10

Moby Dick Week 11

Nota Bene: Are you going out of your minds with enjoyment of this book? Get the tshirt! Order this cool shirt from “Out of Print“: