The gentle power of Carrie Newcomer
Culture Watch
David Yoo 9-01-1996
'Don't fall asleep. Don't fall asleep." A mother's warning prodded a young K. Connie Kang as she fought off drowsiness on a bitter winter night in 1951. As Kang sat perched on the rooftop, a train packed with people and goods chugged its way from Seoul to the southern tip of the Korean peninsula. Rope formed an umbilical cord around Kang's waist, with the other end tightly gripped by her mother who prayed and hung on for dear life. Thankfully, mother and child survived the harrowing ordeal, but war and its cruelties brought dislocation and loss, setting into motion a series of migrations for Kang and her family that eventually led to the United States.
So begins the autobiography of K. Connie Kang, veteran journalist with the Los Angeles Times, who chronicles the moving saga of her personal and family history. Though the narrative begins with the war, Kang moves backward in time to her ancestral village of Boshigol in northeastern Korea. Family stories, no doubt idealized over time, are fondly recorded and speak to the prosperity and prominence of the Kang family.
Readers are seemingly transported to a very different time and place and yet also witness how personal history is intertwined with the tremendous changes taking place in Korea. Just after the turn of the century, Kang's great-grandfather becomes an early convert to Christianity and to "modern" ideas that accompanied the American missionaries. Myong-Hwan Kang, Connie's paternal grandfather, fought the brutal oppression of Japanese colonialism, suffering torture and imprisonment. Sharing about Christianity, modernization, the colonial period, and the Korean War, Kang not only discusses key events in modern Korean history, but touches upon the experiences that continue to shape the lives of many Korean-American immigrants today.
Rodolpho Carrasco 9-01-1996
When I showed a friend Haunted Marriage: Overcoming the Ghosts of Your Spouse's Childhood Abuse, he perused the book jacket and laughed, saying, "I guess everybody really is a victim." It was an insensitive comment, but one that is understandable, given our warped popular culture. It can be tiresome distinguishing which new categories of abuse and their associated healing strategies represent legitimate advancements, and which ones were crafted by the hacks behind Jerry Springer and Ricky Lake. But read Haunted Marriage and there is no doubt into which category this important book falls.
Authors Clark Barshinger, Lojan LaRowe, and Andres Tapia raise the specter of "spouses of sexual abuse survivors." Using Tapia's own marriage as a book-length case study, Barshinger and LaRowe—a husband-wife team of psychotherapists with 25 years of counseling experience—make the case that the abuse-surviving spouse isn't the only spouse in need of attention and healing.
In particular, Haunted Marriage makes clear that the abuse survivor's crisis often triggers a crisis for the spouse. Four years into their marriage, Tapia's wife Lori uncovered repressed memories of being sexually abused as a child. Hers was a painful and dark path of recovery. But not long after Lori began her process of recovery, Andres discovered great needs of his own:
In the same way that Lori projected onto me her unresolved feelings about her abuser, I was projecting onto her my unresolved feelings about my parents....As Lori and I tried to find each other in the haze of her healing process—and my growing realization of the process I needed to embark on for myself—we kept bumping into relational ghosts from our past.
Demetria Martinez 9-01-1996
In The Price You Pay: The Hidden Cost of Women's Relationship to Money, Margaret Randall writes:
It is much easier, in today's United States and across class and cultural lines, to talk about sex, religion, or politics, than it is to truthfully tell one another how much we earn, need, spend, save, have—about how certain monetary customs hurt us, about the shame we were made to feel as children if we 'cost too much.'
Or the shame we feel as adults because we have too little or too much, or because we lack control over what we have. Because we have been manipulated by power wielded through money. Because we manipulate others, using money as bait or as a currency of domination.
How is it that money, once associated with goddesses of abundance, wounds individuals and generations of families? What creative financial arrangements are couples and communities undertaking to achieve healing and justice?
To answer these questions, Randall interviewed hundreds of women from every walk of life. The result is an immensely readable, brilliant work of social analysis that will make you weep (and sometimes laugh) with recognition.
"I knew 1,001 ways to make hamburger," says one woman, recalling her husband's compulsive spending on "expensive toys" such as cameras and motorcycles. Others tell childhood stories of abuse and lies associated with money and how these carried over into adult relationships—in everything from separate bank accounts to fights over finances and secret purchases.
Cynthia J. Martens 9-01-1996
"There was never yet an uninteresting life," wrote Mark Twain. This statement could not be more true about Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker and lifelong advocate for the poor.
Entertaining Angels, the soon-to-be-released cinematic portrayal of her life, focuses on the 20-year span between 1917 and 1937. Dorothy is introduced as an ardent socialist and suffragette. She's young and idealistic, while smoking cigarettes and talking tough.
Dorothy's life progresses from protesting for women's rights at a demonstration to arguing against social injustices at the newsroom of the The Call, the socialist newspaper where she works. She hangs out at Hell Hole, a smoky Bohemian saloon, bantering with bawdy friends and colleagues, including playwright Eugene O'Neill. And an ill-fated love affair with Lionel Moise ends in a heart-wrenching abortion and depression.
Then Dorothy turns to a simpler life, living in a small beach house on Staten Island. This healing period includes a common-law marriage to biologist Forster Batterham, and the birth of their daughter, Tamar. Interspersed throughout this time is a growing attraction to, and conflict with, the Catholic Church. While living on Staten Island, she meets Sister Aloysius, a dedicated disciple of Christ who ministers to the poor and needy. The relationship between these two develops as each recognizes the intelligent, compassionate, and street-smart woman in the other.
Bob Hulteen 9-01-1996
For generations which begat generations, the Bible has been translated into the languages of the people. Soon to follow were commentaries to aid in interpretation. Since the "language" of our day—the medium of communication—is visual, the popularity of biblical resources on video cassettes is not surprising.
What may surprise us is the quality. Excellent at setting the context and naming the basic principles of scripture, the following two video series should be viewed by clergy and lay alike.
Bill Moyers and Public Affairs Television are offering a gem, a pearl of great price if you will, this fall. Genesis: A Living Conversation is a tremendous social contribution to biblical studies, both in substance and in style.
Each one-hour segment of the 10-part series opens with a relevant introduction by Moyers and a retelling of the Genesis story discussed in the section—Cain killing Abel, Sarah mistreating Hagar, Jacob stealing from Esau, Adam blaming Eve—by expert storytellers (and actors) Mandy Patinkin and Alfre Woodard. The discussions—with Sojourners' contributing editors Roberta Hestenes, Eugene Rivers, and Walter Brueggemann featured prominently—are driven by their diversity. Difference of opinion, and even civil conflict, are viewed as a positive, and so open the possibility for creativity to emerge. In several instances the participation of people of different faith traditions brings new clarity for all involved. For instance, the Muslim view of Potiphar's wife in the Joseph narrative allows the discussion to take a step further for all those of Christian or Jewish background.
Margaret Hoven, David Earle Anderson 9-01-1996
"The songs of the working people have always been their sharpest statement," wrote novelist John Steinbeck, "and the one statement that cannot be destroyed....Songs are the statement of a people. Listening to their songs teaches you more about a people than any other means, for into the songs go all the hopes and hurts, the angers, fears, the wants and aspirations."
Whether it's the turn-of-the-century "Hard Times in the Mill," describing how "cotton mill boys don't make enough/To buy them tobacco and a box of snuff," or a "A Miner's Life," with its warning of both natural dangers ("watch the rocks, they're falling daily") and exploitation by the bosses ("Keep your hand upon the dollar/And your eye upon the scale"), working people have turned to music to limn their experience, protest their conditions, heap scorn on oppressors, celebrate heroes, and rally one another in the cause of organized labor.
Sometimes the writers and composers of these songs are known, as in the case of Florence Reece. After a band of deputy sheriffs broke into her cabin looking for her husband, Sam, a union organizer, she tore off a page from a wall calendar and penned what perhaps is the most famous song to come out of the coal fields: the defiant, decision-demanding "Which Side Are You On?"
Woody Guthrie, of "This Land is Your Land" fame, is perhaps the most famous balladeer of 20th-century working-class life. Taken on their own, his hundreds of songs provide almost a complete history of 20th-century working life—songs like "So Long, It's Been Good to Know You" (on the migrants of the Great Depression), "Union Maid" (a song of praise for the courage of union women), and "1913 Massacre" (the story of the death of 72 people, mostly children, during a Christmas party of strikers in a door-rushing panic initiated by "copper boss thugs").
Danny Duncan Collum 9-01-1996
The Atlanta Summer Olympics descended upon media-mad America like a vast mind-numbing, soul-sapping fog. The Olympic telecast, in any season, is like the Deep South heat so much discussed at the Atlanta games: It is there, and it won't go away. Mere mortals are powerless over it.
The other Leap Year staples—the Democratic and Republican political conventions—were once like this, too. The coverage was gavel-to-gavel and wall-to-wall for at least four days per party on all three networks; even political junkies got sick of it. Now the conventions get, maybe, an hour of prime-time per night. This is all part of an inexorable process that will lead to the banning of all not-for-profit activities by the year 2020.
The word from the sales department is that politics doesn't pay, at least not over the counter, in public. So the conventions are off the screen. There is no commercial payoff to Jefferson's ideal of an informed and enlightened electorate. Like all other values without price, that ideal is out the window in the Free Market Era.
The Olympic Games used to carry an aura of unsightly non-profit, touchy-feely ideals. The Games were inherited from the ancient Greeks. Every four years their best athletes climbed to the home of the gods, Mt. Olympus, to offer the finest of human performance.
The Games were revived at the turn of this old century with a lot of mush about international brotherhood and something called "amateurism." That was supposed to mean running the race or playing the game for the pure love of it. Excellence for its own sake and perfecting a skill simply for the joy of a job well done were suitable goals.
Karen Lattea 9-01-1996
The myths about blues music—that it's outdated and all sounds the same—are dispelled by The Alligator Records 25th Anniversary Collection. Alligator is recording the variety and vitality of the blues, present and future. The myths are history.
This double-CD collection lets you hear 38 different artists, and the liner notes indicate countless more playing backup (Stevie Ray Vaughan with Lonnie Mack, for instance). Three cuts are previously unreleased, which is a treat in itself, and the rest are available on complete collections from each artist. It's like having your own listening booth to check out Koko Taylor's soul, Son Seals' baritone, Cephas and Wiggins' Piedmont picking, or Michael Hill's lyrics.
The spectacular music on this collection isn't the only reason to buy it: The reputation and history of Alligator Records are worth supporting as well. In 1971, Bruce Iglauer, a white guy from Cincinnati who fell in love with the blues as a university student in Wisconsin, recorded and then pressed 1,000 copies of Hound Dog Taylor and the HouseRockers with a $2,500 inheritance check. (Iglauer's first contact with the blues was hearing Mississippi Fred McDowell in 1966.) As the first album sold, Iglauer was able to record the next one (Big Walter Horton); as it sold, the next one came out (Son Seals), and so on.
Until 1978, Iglauer only recorded Chicago blues musicians. Albert Collins was the first from beyond the Chicago scene, and zydeco musician Clifton Chenier's 1982 I'm Here! won Alligator its first Grammy award (though not its first nomination). Johnny Winter's decision in 1984 to return to his blues roots brought Alligator's first listing in Billboard's "Top 200" with Guitar Slinger.
Mark Gauvreau Judge 9-01-1996
In a moment rife with both sorrow and synchronicity, last June I was sitting down to write a tribute to Ella Fitzgerald when I heard that the 79-year-old jazz legend had passed away. Stunned at the odd coincidence, I forgot about my tribute, figuring that in the upcoming weeks plenty of Ella commemorations would crowd the airwaves and the newspaper columns.
They did, but unfortunately most of the coverage either ignored or dismissed what I consider some of Ella's finest work. Most critics emphasized her work in the 1950s, particularly the famed songbook series in which Fitzgerald interpreted the best of American pop music. Ella's early years were remembered as the time that spawned "A-Tisket A-Tasket" in 1938, the million-seller that put Ella and her band, the Chick Webb Orchestra, on the map. Most critics noted that as a result of the hit single, Ella was forced to record what The Washington Post's Richard Harrington called "pop ditties and novelty tunes," and that this didn't change until she switched labels in 1955.
This is quite true, but it ignores the fact that before "A-Tisket A-Tasket" Ella had been recording with Chick Webb for three years (Webb's band had been together for 10), and that the songs recorded during this time are some of the finest in pop. This is evidenced in the 1995 compilation Ella Fitzgerald: The Early Years. While there is indeed post-"Tisket" treacle like "Chew Chew Chew (Chew Your Bubble Gum)" on the collection, there's also "I'll Chase the Blues Away," "When I Get Low I Get High," the gorgeous "Starlit Hour," and "A Little Bit Later On," a song about revenge with enough bite to go against Green Day.
Aaron McCarroll Gallegos 9-01-1996
If no man is an island, as the adage goes, then no nation is either. Even while Indonesia and most of the rest of the world remain in denial, books like Matthew Jardine's East Timor: Genocide in Paradise continue to connect the atrocities committed in that small corner of Southeast Asia to the rest of the world.
The dearth of media coverage in the 21 years since Indonesia invaded and occupied East Timor—during which time more than 200,000 East Timorese died—makes it necessary for activists continually to educate the public about the basics regarding the region. With less than 100 pages and an introduction by well-known intellectual Noam Chomsky, East Timor was written to be widely read and to keep the East Timorese struggle for survival from falling off the screen of peace and justice activists.
Jardine manages, in a few pages, to offer a fairly thorough history of East Timor (though perhaps skipping a little too quickly through the murky period between the end of Portuguese colonization and the Indonesian invasion, when competing political factions in East Timor fought a brief civil war). He stresses that the ongoing genocide of the East Timorese would not be possible without the acquiesence of the United States and, to a lesser extent, Australia, Japan, Canada, and Great Britain.
The United States provided Indonesia with 90 percent of the arms used in the initial invasion in 1975—the same weapons that killed 60,000 East Timorese in the first two months. In 1977, after two years of slaughter threatened to deplete Indonesia's arsenal, Jimmy Carter's "human rights" administration authorized a 2,000 percent increase in commercial U.S. arms sales to the country, allowing the killings to peak in 1978.