Book Reviews: Contemporary Literature and Culture: Winter 2017

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Tyehimba Jess, Reconstruction 2.0

 The Fisk Jubilee Singers began in 1871 as an acapella ensemble of students from Fisk University, established only six months after the end of the American Civil War.   The university was in need of funds, so the group of 11 students went on tour, singing traditional Negro spirituals.  They did not perform in the traditional minstrel show format made popular after the Reconstruction period; instead, they sang the songs of the black slaves and the newly freed slaves.  As they toured the US, they faced racism, but that did not deter them.  After a show in Chicago, they turned over their small earnings to the people displaced by the Chicago Fire of that same year.  After they had given themselves the name of The Fisk Jubilee Singers, they continued on their tour, eventually earning $40,000 for the University.  The Fisk Jubilee Singers still exist today, but the very first members were never recorded, having set out on their tour only five years after the end of the Civil War, during the time of Reconstruction which brought about more struggle for the newly freed slaves than their time during slavery.  The first recording of the Fisk Jubilee Singers was in 1909, but until that moment history has not heard their voices. "Olio" opens with a Fisk Jubilee Proclamation, a narrative which looks like a poem but breathes witness to the voices of the students still in the waning shadow of slavery. As they navigate their way through a country where Reconstruction is, at the time, nothing more than a social construct directed by the government, they come across racism. It had yet to enter into the hearts of the people.  Tyehimba Jess does this:  he creates a narrative in the form of interactive poetic forms to not only give voice to freed African Americans entertainers during that time of Reconstruction up until World War I but to give shape to the sound of their voices.

Tyehimba Jess did not introduce me to poetry, but he did teach me to like poetry.  His various shapes of a narrative are poems within the voice he gives to those who did not have a voice refreshed my opinion of poetics.  No, I wasn't a fan of poetry, my words need to mean what they say and say what they mean, and punctuation is important.  An odd thing to say for someone who majors in English Literature, but Jess comes from the same cloth.  Instead of maintaining the hard lines of iambic pentameter and the other 49 versions of poems, he manipulates those forms to shape the black experience he formulates as what could be the voices of the silent.  Olio is not Jess's first trip in the world of historical fact, his Lead Belly is the same content, if not as free with the shapes of his narratives within the text, but tells the story of Huddie William Leadbetter, otherwise known as Lead Belly.  Unlike the Fisk Jubilee Singers, Lead Belly was on record during his career, but his story is just as hard as those in Olio.  His story comes closer to World War I instead of the Civil War, and Jim Crow Laws were in effect.  Jess lends his voice to sections of Lead Belly's life where a voice is needed to fill in the facts of the life he leads, and this same premise carries over to Olio. In both works, the prevalent themes are a historical certainty:  the reader can not believe these words created by Jess did not come from the people he writes about, nor the various events surrounding the words.  Together, Olio is not merely a book, but a historical work of word-art.

Olio is more than poems:  there are interviews that leave the reader running for Wikipedia entries to see if the topics discussed are of historical fact.  In the section titled Bella Marie Jenkins, RN, the narrator is interviewing a nurse who cared for Scott Joplin in his last days, but the reader is brought face-to-face with history:

"You got a lot of gumption.  You get that in the war?  You one of the 369, am I right?"

This moment of reality shows randomly within the text, as a sort of separator between the various poems. These interviews read as if steeped in the history of the struggle Blacks had even at wartime. The nurse saying she wasn't allowed to work on white US soldiers has a Toni Morrison taste to it, yet there is disbelief that such a thing could happen, that even a war did not stop the machine of racism and segregation.  There is no hostility.  Throughout the various works, Jess misses the righteous indignation that is expected to raise its head within the various works, but that is part of his theme:  this was a way of life, be it right or wrong.  Black identification within a white structure leaves an empty feeling in the mouth which is not hunger, but a missing taste.  This narrative needs no poetic structure to get to the point. Yes, eventually the interview is about Scott Joplin, but the prose is not needed to shape the effect of the interview.

Olio contains several tear-out sections, furthering its interactiveness to place the reader into tactile interaction with the text. Again, there's history intermixed with the creative process.  In the "Dunbar-Booker Double Shovel" pages, the syncopated verse tears out of the book.  On the other side are two lists, one depicting numbers of black victims of lynching and below that, the 78 "Reasons for Black Lynchings." Paul Dunbar was a poet born in Ohio to parents who were slaves in Kentucky before the Civil War, and Booker T. Washington, a former slave, and educator.  The appendix gives interactive examples of how to form the page into various shapes to see how the two difference voices come together regardless of the shape the page manipulates.  The Black Lynching information, regardless of how the two voices fold, is not affected. This history, set in stone, has no amount of manipulation will make those figures change.  This is Jess at his finest, blending fiction and fact into a page of a verse of black words which remain powerful regardless the shape of the white page.

There is a ticker-tape of information located at the tops and bottoms of the Fisk Jubilee Singer's pages.  The information is simple:  the name of a church, the city, and a year.  The "tape" begins with Mother Emmanuel AME Church, Charleston, SC, 1822.  The tape ends nearly 200 pages later, with the same entry that began the narrative, but the date has changed.  Instead of 1822, the date is 2015. Mother Emmanuel AME Church.  Charleston, SC.  

2015.

This is not the end of the book.  In fact, Jess does not give Olio and official end because there is no end because history and verse are both circulars.  Just like the Dunbar-Booker Double Shovel tear-out-and-manipulate page, words are altered but the history on the back, the Lynchings, stay the same.    What is first is also last.  193 years later, Mother Emmanuel AME Church closes the list of all of the black churches that suffered some vandalism or crime.  This fact, this truth needs to thematic preparation, recorded history does not need a preface because it is seen, heard, felt, tasted.  The 2015 incident at Mother Emmanuel was all over the news for days.  The 1822 incident, when the church was burned down after several trials where various blacks, including Denmark Vesey, a founder, were thought to be part of a slave revolt and executed.

Olio is a wire-tap of the past to bring forward those who were not recorded, interviewed or even considered due to their color. Reconstruction was an idea that failed based on the soul-deep denial for blacks within society, and the pages of Olio give voice to the other side of that denial.

 Works Cited

 "Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church." Emanuelamechurch.org. Emanuel AME Church, n.d. Web. 20 Mar. 2017.

Jess, Tyehimba. Leadbelly. Amherst: Verse, 2005. Print.

Jess, Tyehimba. Olio. New York: Wave, 2016. Print.

Thompson, Ben. "Badass of the Week: Lead Belly." Badass of the Week: Lead Belly. Ben Thompson, n.d. Web. 20 Mar. 2017.

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The Sellout by Paul Beatty Book Review

           Paul Beatty does not consider his award-winning work a comic novel, nor does he consider himself a satirist, but humor is the method to take in his work. Written with a blind eye to things people in polite society say (but might think), The Sellout is not a read for the faint of heart.  

           True, the “n” word use is extensive but even worse than the weight of that one word, sentences ripe with unspoken truths and stereotypes.   The main character, who we know by a nickname his so-called girlfriend calls him and remains, at first, nameless, describes to whom he would sell ostrich meat, “mint-julep-sipping-Kentucky-Derby-trifecta-betting southern belles, who wouldn’t buy black if you were selling the secret to ageless wrinkle-free skin and nine inches of dick.”  The words and stereotype clang together like church bells, the meanings removing the tongue of speech, but the mind to agree once the façade of shock wears off.

           The Sellout is a book for everyone, but discerning who can understand it is not an effort to be taken lightly.  The current culture of obsequious political correctness is no match for the quite colorful cast of characters.  One cannot determine who would be offended by this crazed mishmash of an urban farmer and pot smoker narrator who, after the death of his father by the hands of 4 police bullets to the back, embarks on a type of social experiment to franchise the disenfranchised.   Disenchanted by the so-called gains in race relations, the narrator unwillingly becomes a slave-owner and pushes to segregate the local middle school.  Aided by Hominy, an extra from the Little Rascal’s show, his bus driving “girlfriend” Marpessa, and an impressive collection of black intellectuals and ex-gang bangers, the narrator takes it upon himself to pretend segregation to make a point.  Who wants to admit segregation is a valid reason to boost the marginalized?  Who will admit the narrator is just another disenfranchised negro from a broken home, whose father was shot in the back by the police four times in the middle of the street?  Nothing new here save for another Facebook trending news story with a comment section turned into a stage for political righteousness, hate speech, and ignorance.

           The Sellout reads as satire because it has to. The subject matter is too heavy if considered without laughter.  As a person of the Black persuasion, I find the book to be hilarious because all of the stereotypes and idiosyncrasies are true, which lightens up (no pun intended) the. “They won’t admit it, but every black person thinks they’re better than every other black person.”  This sentence is not a shock to me, as I learned this fact at a young age, but the hilarity of it stems from never seen the words written before. Internal racism has been a blight on black culture since the house slaves thought they were better than the field hands, and that separation has carried on through the Civil Rights Movement.  And Beatty knows this.  He says this book is not satire, he is not a satirist, and he is surprised readers are calling his novel comical.  Even the back cover of the book states the book is the “work of a comic genius”, and the reason why is simple:  under any other genre this book would be unacceptable as a work of contemporary fiction without a comical sub-genre due to the hard language, observations and racial truths: “All it takes is fifteen minutes of Saturday-night television to see that there aren’t many funny black people left and that overt racism ain’t what it used to be.”  Good writing is supposed to make the reader feel uncomfortable, but society isn’t ready for a discourse on race.  Race still makes people uncomfortable because it is not something we see during certain times of the year, like Lent or Christmas.  Race doesn’t give society any vacations, regardless of color, and to read a painfully accurate description of black lives in the outskirts of Los Angeles without humor or at least some irony brings resentment in the color of blame.

           Regardless of what Beatty says about his comic expertise, The Sellout is funny, because the characters cover quite a few of the Black stereotypes in existence.   There is no shame in the humor.  In spite of the “n” word and content, The Sellout brings to focus what racism, slavery and segregation have taken away, something even the narrator looked for over the course of the story:  identity.

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Newspaper Book Review: Proxies by Brian Blanchfield

   “So.  Visiting, Poet?”    The above are the first words spoken by Edmund, father of the author’s significant other, John, upon their first meeting in the essay “On Tumbleweed.”  Those three words, so heavily weighted on their own, hang like a stone when they come through Edmund's mouth, so much, so the implication of the weight is felt on the page.  These three words, with their unspoken judgment attached to them, eloquently sums up the pages within Proxies.  Brian Blanchfield is a poet turned essayist for his book, and it shows.    There appear to be several themes going on over the course of the essays, which are laid out like random points on a map, but if you draw a straight line, they all interconnect.  First, finding academic work as a poet is harder than anyone might think.  In “On Tumbleweed,” Blanchfield describes the term visiting poet as a volatile term, term after term, yet this does not stop him from trying, again and again, seemingly all over the country, to locate and keep steady work.  Academic terminology runs past the reader like billboard signs on the side of the road:  visiting faculty, Visiting Assistant Professor of Poetry, Visiting Poet, Senior Lecturer.  There is nothing secure in the words, although Blanchfield tries to anchor down the reader with a memory of childhood in the South, a random, almost unbelievable reference to Juice Newton.        Scattered about the essays, in symmetry with the various teaching positions mentioned, are past boyfriends, who often fell to the clause of the working academic:  I have to go, there’s a position in Montana.  This yearning of leaving, having nothing to pack up because there was nothing to set down.  Movement is prevalent within the structures of the essays.        In “On Confoundedness” there is family, youth, learning disabilities, and a description of what confoundedness is, so there is no confusion for the reader.  Alas, there is the disclaimer on the very next page, “For a long time nothing went here, in this essay, which is trying to locate its subject.”  Then we are treated to a paragraph about Primitive Baptists.  The back and forth between family history, employment struggle and boyfriends can keep the reader enthralled as the pages go by because you can’t help but ask, “Well, what happened next?”    There is a pretentiousness within the writing:  Blanchfield is a card-carrying poet, and there is a question about his use of white-space.  Does he dare fill in the blanks with his mother’s disappointment of how he turned out to be both gay and a poet, his step-father’s sublime ability to not engage, or an entire chapter on his experience with AIDS? Granted, unless the reader was alive (and old enough) back in those days to witness the social and political onslaught of this new disease, the lessons taught in “On Frottage” will be lost.      The maudlin is tossed out the window, however, with “On the Near Term,” an essay which, like wrapping paper and twine, enshrouds all of the ideas, experiences, objects, and employment possibilities told in the previous 147 pages.  Not unlike a light at the end of a tunnel, but not like it, either.  As it is the last essay, the placement within the selections could be questionable due to the subject matter, but it proves not outdone by claiming the end-spot as the glory of all read beforehand.  We are handed a neat package at the end, which not only gives clarity to the struggle on the previous pages but solidifies the writer as the poet as an essayist.

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Pre-Publication Book Review Project #2

The Woman Who Wasn’t There by Robin Gaby Fisher and Angelo J. Guglielmo, Jr.

           The Woman Who Wasn’t There details the story of Tania Head of the World Trade Center Survivors’ Network.  Her personal stories of survival and loss elevated the Survivors’ Network to celebrity status; her survival from the 78th floor (at the impact line); the death of her fiancé in the other tower, the injuries sustained. This narrative created by Tania Head included her into the long list of names of people who were directly affected by the tragedy, allowing her access to a counter-narrative of a connection to something larger than ourselves, fame, and maybe even hero-worship.    The Woman Who Wasn’t There adds another layer of the counter-narrative prevalent in our Post 9/11 society: inclusion to be a part of the tragedy, to have the ability to commiserate with those affected by allowing a dialogue of personal tragedy that did not happen.  Tania Head was a hoax, and once discovered, she vanished.  The sadness left behind isn’t one of betrayal, as she did nothing illegal, but of her lack of truth behind her story.  Her personal survival narrative gave hope and rest to so many who were directly affected by the tragedy, and to discover it was all a lie allowed for a disconnect for looking at the bright side of things. The book is not about the writing or structure or form but is about the lengths an individual will go to create their counter-narrative where they originally had none.

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Pre-Publication Book Review Project

Look by Solmaz Sharif

“Look” by Solmaz Sharif is a vivid, scattered fragment of poetic verses, lines, and ideas of the effects of the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan by US Armed Forces on civilians.  Military words of the Department of Defense Military Terms Dictionary describe the continual struggle against the notion that all involved/related to the supposed War on Terror should be obliterated.  The terminology is effective yet uninspired as if Sharif is incapable of applying modern as well as civilian language to account the terror she describes. Sharif uses the past as well as the present to give readers a word-laden account of the struggles during the war as the bombs were falling from the sky as well as after when a US Judge wanted to make sure they pronounced a prisoner’s name correctly.  “My job is to agitate and make again and again alive and wife and, well, free the languages we live by”, says Sharif, yet the words used to describe the imageless images tells a small portion of the events. The voices used does not give a direction as to who is speaking, or who is spoken to.  The white spaces left on the pages due to the word structure is plenty and silent as if the reader is merely experiencing a mere fragment of events, similar to watching the evening news, and there is so much more not being described in the fragments of sentences and verses.  The last work, “Coda” is a colon-heavy, period-less work with visuals of bomb shelters, graves, fingers with no hands and newly acquired habits that use white-space the best to signify the end has not ended.