Sunday Salon – Birthday Thoughts and Carrot Cake Recipe

Today is my birthday. I’ve always been a fan of the bittersweet story, of the Blues, and of the Fado (called Portuguese blues by some, the fado is a music genre usually linked to the Portuguese word saudade which refers to the feeling of longing for something or someone that you love, and which is lost). These all seem to be lovely, if maudlin, ways to give expression to a glass-half-empty kind of perspective. Combine that outlook with another birthday, and you get two concepts which I think aptly describe my preoccupations at my present stage in life:

The first is esprit d’escalier. This is the perfect comeback to a comment that you only think of after the opportunity to use it. These are words that only come to you when you’re lying in bed at 3 a.m. and it’s too late to use them. One can accumulate a bunch of these over a lifetime, and one can even extend the concept to apply to a bunch of opportunities one missed by not being ready for them when they presented themselves.

The second is torschlusspanik. This is a German word which has the literal translation “gate-closing panic,” and refers to the fear of diminishing opportunities as one ages. Yes, I can read all the young adult books I want, but I will never ever again be able to experience a first love, or even a young, naive, un-cynical love. I can’t take off for parts unknown without any cares and responsibilities and travel the world or conquer new physical or mental vistas that take years and youth to attain. I can’t study a new subject or feel righteous outrage without thinking, “but what’s the point?”

For I have known them all already, known them all:—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.”

Ah well, as Prufrock concluded:

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.”

But, I’ll say this. As melancholy as I tend to be, reading beautiful words or hearing wonderful music can always make me feel sated and relatively content. And a nice big piece of carrot cake (no raisins, coconut, or pineapple, please) doesn’t hurt, either.

Here is one of my favorite recipes for carrot cake, from The Silver Palate Cookbook, with my own adaptations added in parentheses.

(10 to 12 portions)
Butter, for greasing the pan

3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

3 cups sugar

1 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon baking soda

1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

1-1⁄2 cups corn oil

4 large eggs, lightly beaten

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1-1/2 cups shelled walnuts, chopped

1-1/2 cups shredded coconut 
[I omit this]
1-1/3 cups puréed cooked carrots
 [I use jars of baby food carrots]
3/4 cup drained crushed pineapple
 [I omit this]
Cream Cheese Frosting (recipe follows)

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease two 9-inch springform pans.
2. Sift the dry ingredients into a bowl. Add the oil, eggs, and vanilla. Beat well. Fold in the walnuts, coconut, carrots, and pineapple. [I omit the coconut and pineapple.]
3. Pour the batter into the prepared pans. Set on the center rack of the oven and bake until the edges have pulled away from the sides and a cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean, 50 minutes.
4. Cool on a cake rack for 3 hours. [as if I would wait that long!]
5. Fill and frost the cake with the cream cheese frosting.

Cream Cheese Frosting
8 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
3 cups confectioners’ sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Juice of 1/2 lemon (optional)

1. Cream together the cream cheese and butter in a mixing bowl.
2. Slowly sift in the confectioners’ sugar and continue beating until fully incorporated. The mixture should be free of lumps.
3. Stir in the vanilla, and lemon juice if desired.
Frosting for a 2-layer cake

Diversify Your Reading Challenge

Zetta Elliott, one of my favorite authors and bloggers, cites an article on her blog noting that:

…studies have consistently found that minority-race characters are underrepresented in fiction for children and young adults, and that existing portrayals of minority characters are often riddled with stereotypes or otherwise negative images.”

The source for this quote is riveting research reported in “The Journal of Research on Libraries and Young Adults” published this June. The data that captured my attention the most was from Table One:

As the authors point out, citing Hazel Rochman:

Books can make a difference in dispelling prejudice and building community; not with role models and literal recipes, not with noble messages about the human family, but with enthralling stories that make us imagine the lives of others.”

Book bloggers can help make a difference by requesting books at stores and libraries that reflect more diversity, and by publicizing good books through reviews. All races, ethnicities, and genders can benefit from reading stories about each other and learning that really, we are all alike more than we are different.

If you prick us, do we not bleed?
if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison
us, do we not die?”

(The Merchant of Venice, Act 3, Scene I, William Shakespeare)”

Join the Diversify Your Reading Challenge, win totally great prizes, and help change the world, all at the same time!

Sunday Salon – What Is Erotic to Women Readers, or Why We Love Jack and Mr. Rochester

Mr. Rochester, is of course, the hero of Jane Eyre, and Jack is the hero of the Nadia Stafford series (Exit Strategy and Made to Be Broken, featuring an ex-cop who turned hit woman to help finance her nature lodge). These books feature women in love with Byronic heroes, and both have inspired many, many readers to swoon over these men. Why?

First, it’s helpful to take a look at what makes up the very popular trope of Byronic hero. [Cue up Dating Game music.] He is strong and attractive, yet flawed in ways most notably exemplified in the life and writings of Lord Byron. This hero (nowadays often a vampire) is moody, dark, cynical, independent, masterful, and has a mysterious past that gives him much pain. But he is also absolutely magnetic and sexually irresistible. He can be cruel, too, but who can blame him, given all the grief festering inside him? Not we, surely!

Lord Byron, Brooding

One of the Many Mr. Rochesters, Glowering

Furthermore, we know that only a very extraordinary woman [such as each of us secretly is] can get this guy to open up to her and let himself feel love. And by extraordinary, we don’t mean beautiful; on the contrary, she will not necessarily stand out in a crowd. (Those women already get their unfair share; we need to appeal to the rank and file here.) In fact, Ms. Eyre is the quintessential “plain jane.” This broadens the audience immensely; we may be just schlubby housewives, but we could very easily insert ourselves into these fantasies.

We women have the power to pull him out of the abyss in which he passes his days and long nights, with our comparative virtue as well as our faith in him and love for him in spite of his stern demeanor and dark past. The reward? We are needed by him, maybe more than we have ever been needed by anyone. And we earn his undying passion for us as well as his masterliness in the bedroom.

Pretty Woman: And Then She Rescues Him...

Look at what this fantasy says about the women who find it appealing (and I count myself among that number in spite of my efforts to intellectualize myself out of it):

1. We may want power and importance, but these desires pale besides the appeal of enticing otherwise recalcitrant men and then wallowing in the sexual submission to their uncontrollable desire [think of the very popular scene in “Gone With the Wind” of Rhett carrying Scarlett up to the bedroom, and her happiness the next morning after having sex forced on her].

Get Your Own Rape Figurine!

2. Besides, then we not only realize the power of having broken through the man’s supposedly impenetrable barriers, but we also have power conferred upon us by being his woman (and the one who conquered him!);
3. We consider hidden pasts or mysteriousness with its hint of danger exciting and erotic rather than something to avoid;
4. We can provide redemption for this tortured man because women are selfless, caring, and compassionate. And in spite of our moral strength, we are understanding and forgiving of lapses in the men we love.

The Newest Mr. Rochester, Smoldering

There’s a further benefit: you get occasional swooning moments such as this one delivered by Mr. Rochester to Jane – that is, if you can meet the qualifications:

I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you – especially when you are near me, as now; it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame….”

But do you see that the string is tied to Jane’s little frame? This one word denotes so much: Jane is smaller than he (pretty essential to have that dominance thing symbolized by size); Jane is little in the sense of younger and “child-like” compared to a man of the world such as he (again, the dominance theme); and restated yet another way, Jane may be plain, but she is at least small and diminutive, which can help make Mr. Rochester feel protective and masterly.

Even his head is way bigger than hers!

Nadia is physically smaller than Jack as well, and also needs his protection. Although she is fierce by day, at night, she is beset by nightmares, and it is only when Jack takes her in his strong arms (optimally, with his shirt off, when she notices that he is “lean, hard, and sexy as hell”) and then fixes hot chocolate for her (she brings out the tender-hearted in him) that she is okay again.

Jack too has his own [modern] version of a string speech when he tells Nadia, “Whatever you decide? I’m here. Won’t tell you which way to go. Won’t let you walk off a cliff, either.”

And who doesn’t love all that? But is it a good thing? Where these ideas about what is erotic originate?

First of all, let’s face it: men have controlled publishing and even writing for years, and they have a vested interest in promulgating male privilege and sexual dominance.

Second, as feminist writers such as Elaine Showalter demonstrated many years ago, the so-called literary canon is androcentric, with a damaging effect on female readers. The “hero” has largely been defined by male writers. While Jane Eyre was written by a woman, and Jane shows an independence that was scandalizing for her day, Bronte herself, as a young woman, read Byron and considered him her idol. Thus what Bronte considered to be romantic and/or erotic was defined by her own exposure to male – particularly Bryonic – literature.

Critic Judith Fetterley argues that because of the overwhelming exposure to literature considered “classic” or “great” books written by men – in other words, just by becoming educated – the result is the immasculation of women by men; i.e., women imbibe a accept the male-defined system of values and even learn to agree with the male point of view.

Third, women have absorbed the inculcation that caring and connection are good traits for females to exhibit, and aggressiveness is a bad trait. Some contend this is a positive difference: it makes women “superior” to men. Others counter that women only think this way because society gives them few other choices and so they are trying to attach value to what in fact is not an option. Law Professor Duncan Kennedy maintains:

If women are empathic, it is because they have to be alert to the moods of the dangerous men in their lives; if they are relational, it is because they need solidarity to deal with the constant reality or threat of violence. If they shun abstraction, it is because men control the textual universe of abstraction in ways that disempower and disadvantage them they try to enter it.”

In any event, it allows us to be nurturing to those “bad boys” we love so much.

As for what is “erotic,” a great deal of political and sociological theorization is devoted to its analysis, and the importance of male domination as a turn on for both men and women. I wrote about this in depth in my review of Hush, Hush, so suffice it to say here that American culture pervasively produces images of women portrayed as desirable and sexy who are not dressed in, e.g., clothing appropriate to doing manual labor. Rather, they are garbed in revealing clothing, sky-high stilettos, positions of submission, and “gender-appropriate” occupations. Men can’t resist them, and women want to emulate them.

Two Role Models: Shakira and Beyonce

In fact, according to Peggy Orenstein in her new book Cinderella Ate My Daughter, by middle school, whether a girl thinks she is sufficiently thin, pretty and “hot” has become the single most important determinant of her self-esteem. How to look and be “sexy” dominates the stories in magazines for teens and young women, with many of the articles being written by women. Sexual gratification means pleasing a man, and “faking” orgasms has become a practiced art form. Who cares if you actually have any as long as he thinks you do? Sure, it’d be nice, but it’s not as important as pleasing the male.

As Andrea Dworkin noted, “the brilliance of [this] strategy of dominance is that it gets the woman to take the initiative in her own degradation…”

So what’s everyone’s conclusion? Is Jane Eyre as “feminist” as people want to believe? Or is it just the status quo with a belligerent face? Doth Jane protest too loudly?

Sunday Salon – Reducing Stress in the Blogosphere

There are many blogs I love to visit and take time to read the reviews. But as we know, time is limited, and we all want time to read books too!

I happened to notice that I was secretly happy when the blogs I like to read didn’t post for a day or two. It lessened the amount of time I felt I needed to spend reading other blogs. So I thought, what the heck, if I post less, maybe I’ll make some people happy, and simultaneously lessen the stress on myself to come up with new material! Thus, I am now mostly posting more infrequently.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t remove the desire to visit the blogs I do as often as I do. And yet if I can’t, I don’t feel as guilty.

Does this make sense? Is anyone else secretly happy when blogs fall off for a bit? Does it impact your commenting at all?

What Are Your Criteria for Following Blogs?

I have a lot of blogs in my Google Reader, but generally they are of four sorts, even though there is some overlap.

I follow one set of bloggers because I have come to like them very much personally. Often our taste in books diverges so much that if one of them rates a book a 5/5, I know I will probably not like it at all! But it doesn’t matter to me- I like them. (And no, these are not people I know in “meat-space” – I have not “met” them – they are all virtual friends.)

Another group does seem to have similar tastes, and I can get good reading recommendations from this group.

A third group I follow is one that I created out of my experience rating “best writing” blogs for Book Blogger Appreciation Week. These bloggers read books that my brain and attention span will no longer allow me even to consider, but their writing is so intelligent, and so beautiful and accomplished, I don’t care: I read them for their posts alone.

Finally, the vast majority of blogs in my reader are there for what I might call “review and/or blogger community awareness.” I follow them to keep tabs on what is happening in the community, and what books are being read, and to see if there are any reviews in which I might have an interest. While I read quite a few of them, I only occasionally have time to leave a comment. I wish I had more time to do so.

My folder names aren’t necessarily rationally related to my group divisions. For example, I have “Everyday” and “Periodically” and “Sometimes” (I have no idea what the difference is between the latter two folders), and I have a few folders differentiated by genre, and even some set up to include fellow members of the various Readalongs in which I have participated. (I find that Readalong participants often have more in common than just the Readalong choice, and so I keep the folder divisions because the groups have some ineffable je ne sais quoi.)

Anyone else have similar categories of blogs you follow in your readers? Have you come up with a better system? (This would not be difficult to do!) Are you satisfied with the time you devote to reading other blogs?

Have Whites Accepted A Black President?

Amy Alexander, writing for The Defenders Online, asks “Has Fear of A Black President Driven Some White People Crazy?”

This provocative article cites Alvin F. Poussaint, M.D. of Harvard Medical School, who said in a recent interview with TheDefendersOnline that extreme racism can constitute a form of mental illness.

It is not rational, but [some whites] see America as ‘their country,’ which translates in their minds that this President is not legitimate,” Poussaint explained. “If they are unemployed, if they are struggling to keep their families together, they will blame Obama instead of Bush, even though it is obvious that the Bush Administration was actually in charge when the economy went bad.

“But these folks shouting at the President won’t blame Bush, in large part because Bush is a white man. Obama is black, blacks are inferior and can’t do anything right, so in their thinking, he is to blame for it,” Poussaint said.

Misplaced anxiety and anger over lost jobs, or diminished finances or perceived threats to one’s safety by a political changing of the guard, appear to be exacerbating in those who previously managed to keep racist opinions or beliefs in check, Poussaint said.”

I just got back from Washington, D.C., where you’d think that issue wouldn’t be a problem. But you would be wrong. There are many in the Maryland and Virginia suburbs who have not accepted a black President. And Michelle as First Lady? Denial is the order of the day. Below is a picture of the First Lady doll I spotted on sale in some of the souvenir shops. Finally in a store in Union [train] Station, I could resist no longer and had to take a photo. (I tried to get a better picture so you could see plainly that the sash says “First Lady” but the store proprietor started shouted imprecations, and I was afraid he would take my camera!)

How Do Authors Select Character Names?

Have you noticed how many books lately feature characters with very unconventional names? I have seen an Alaska, a Mississippi, and a Velva Jean, to name a few. I’ve always been fascinated by the selection of character names by authors. Where do they come from? What would I name characters?

There are a couple of fun places to research the issue.

This baby name finder has a section on Tips for Writers.

This baby name finder allows you to search for names by meaning, so you can come up with a name that is appropriate for certain characteristics.

Behind the Name allows you to search for names by etymology. There’s a large list of countries and myths through which you can browse.

There’s also a section for literature. For example, under A you see the name Aramis, and you click on it, and find not only that it is the name of one of the Three Musketeers, which you may have known, but also that Alexandre Dumas based the character on Henri d’Aramitz, whose surname was derived from the French village of Aramits.

But here’s the best site of all: The Baby Name Wizard! If you’ve never tried it, you’ll have a lot of fun with it. You type in a name, and you will get a very close approximation of when the person with that name was born – even a name you might think is relatively common, like Kathy. If you are creating a character born in say, the 1950’s, you might check this site first to see if you choice is off base. You can also sort by region and even politics! Their plain vanilla name finder isn’t so plain or vanilla either. You can look for names by “must start with” or “must end with” or number of syllables or length or even “must contain this letter sequence.” Lots of fun and very helpful, I would presume, for authors.

What about you? If you were writing a book, what would you name your characters?

Sunday Salon – Thoughts About The People of Color Challenge, Bebe Moore Campbell, and Me

Yesterday I posted a review of a memoir by Bebe Moore Campbell in which I wrote that I enjoyed it because we seemed to share so many memories. I didn’t find worth mentioning that Bebe Moore Campbell was black and I am white. Here is why.

So much of what she wrote was about being a little girl. She was a little girl in a household run by a mother and a grandmother. She struggled to make sense of her life when her daddy wasn’t around and when he was. All of these experiences were common to me and I could relate absolutely to what she said and felt and did.

Sometimes, she talked specifically about being black. For example, she lamented that portion of her hair known by blacks as “the kitchen.” As The Nappy-Kitchen Blog explains, “the kitchen” has two meanings for blacks, with respect to hair. One is the reference to the hair at the nape of your neck: “The kitchen is what most Black and Biracial girls fret about the most. They work very hard and futilely to straighten, shave off, or hide their nappy kitchen. The kitchen is the area that is most resistant to straighteners. It is also the first area to, once finally straightened, get nappy again.”

The other meaning of kitchen for blacks refers to the place where black women have gathered for years to straighten their hair with an iron or chemicals (and talk and laugh and share their joys and sorrows).

Well, I didn’t have the first kind of kitchen per se. But I had one chunk of kinky hair on the side that wasn’t smooth, And every Sunday my sister and I would repair to the kitchen to press our hair. That odd area on my head was also the first chunk of my hair to turn white.

But here’s the irony. Now I have a niece: my little sister’s daughter, who is half black, and most definitely has a kitchen! But guess where? It’s exactly where my hair had a problem on the side! So maybe her kitchen is sort of in the dining room because of me, and maybe I didn’t actually cause my own bad chunk of hair to turn white – it was just part of the genetic code for a dislocated kitchen!

Olivia

Here’s a second example. Bebe was very smart and her mother personally made sure she undertook a longer commute to study with the white children who had better schools. (While the classes were integrated, on the playgrounds segregation commenced as usual.) Her mother constantly admonished her that blacks must be extra nice, extra smart, and work extra hard to succeed, because “they” will always be looking for confimation of predjudice.

In my neighborhood, we were a poor Jewish family in among a sea of blonde and redheaded Irish Catholics. I was very dark-skinned compared to them. They threatened to burn crosses on our lawn, threw rocks at me, shook me down in the bathrooms for money, ignored me on the playground, and yelled taunts at me. So my mother too encouraged me to give THEM nothing to talk about. I struggled to be better, and I struggled to find a common language:

(In November, 2006, Adrienne Rich (American poet, essayist, and feminist) was awarded the 2006 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. She has been called “one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the [20th] century.” In The Dream of a Common Language, she wrote:

No one lives in this room
without confronting the whiteness of the wall
behind the poems, planks of books,
photographs of dead heroines.
Without contemplating last and late
the true nature of poetry. The drive
to connect. The dream of a common language.”)

I don’t want to argue that we can gainsay the effect of our historical pasts. Jews suffered throughout history, but they suffered with their families intact for most of the time. They were often persecuted and subjected to periodic massacres, but they still had more freedom while they were alive than blacks did. Jews had “the Holocaust,” and some six million died. Many more blacks died in the passage from Africa to slavery in the United States. Nevertheless, both groups have had tragic pasts that disrupted and distorted their growth. Yet, if we can relate to memoirs from people of other races so strongly as to elicit laughs and tears and a wish to have those people in our lives, I think we have achieved something of that “common language” – one that doesn’t ignore color, doesn’t transcend it, but simply adds it in as another spice into the wonderful stew of what makes us each who we are.

Thoughts on the People of Color Challenge

Susan, of Color Online, is sponsoring a challenge during the month of August to read and review at least three books by authors who are people of color. I joined his Challenge, but finding books to fulfill it is not easy!

Why is it so hard to find books by people of color in libraries and bookstores?

One reason is that these books are marginalized: relegated to separate niche sections to which browsers might not go. As the average white shopper strolls through the bookstore section for Fiction and Literature, does it even occur to him or her that there might be more Fiction and Literature, but located on the few shelves for, e.g., African-American authors, or Books of GLBT Interest? And in the libraries, except for the sports and music sections, do books of interest to African-Americans even get set out when it’s not February? (Not at my library, they don’t!)

Librarians and booksellers cannot be viewed as uninterested gatekeepers of culture and learning. On the contrary, by the choices they make in purchasing, categorizing, arranging, marketing, and creating ease or difficulty of access of books, they not only determine what should be included and what excluded, but they also impose a value system on information. Too often, their decisions reflect the cultural assumptions of the dominant group.

This allegedly value-free organization and structuring of what is relevant affects us as readers (not to mention as members of a wider community).

What can we do about the selection, emphases, and omissions that characterize and direct our reading landscape? Should African-American literature really be considered separate? Should people of color have to self-publish or risk having their black characters portrayed as white by marketers in order to get interfiled in the “white” section? Are white readers likely to take all the trouble (and sometimes it takes a great deal of trouble) to locate “multicultural” books? What can we as readers do to make a difference? Or do you feel the system works best the way it is?

PC World Compares Kindle 1 Vs. Kindle 2

Apparently Kindle 2 is slimmer, has more contrast, features a lot of design changes, but the navigational joystick needs work. Read all the details here.