Literary Safari

In September, my friend Ritu moved to Los Angeles to work with Homeboy Industries, an organization that helps at-risk and former gang members become participatory and integrated members of their communities through job training, job placement, counseling, and other services. Homeboy was founded by Father Greg Boyle, a Jesuit priest in the 1980s and although I had read a couple of articles about his work and the organization when Ritu decided to move to LA, I didn’t really understand the magnitude of his work until I read this book, which Ritu sent me for Christmas.

G-Dog and the Homeboys is written by a former Los Angeles Times reporter who started out writing a feature story about Fr. Greg Boyle and his work in East LA. This was in the 80s, around the time of the Rodney King riots, when Los Angeles was a bubbling volcano of unrest, violence, and uncertainly. Celeste Fremon ended up shadowing Fr. Greg and the homeboys for two years and the result is this phenomenal sociological study of a cross section of society that is “monsterized.”

What Fremon accomplishes in 300 pages is two-fold. She takes us into the world and minds of a dedicated and inspiring social activist and of a group of gang members and (1) allows us to hear their voices …(2) and to better understand the forces that enable some to rise up and out of their circumstances while others cannot. Hers is a narrative that asks those who view “gangstas” as monsters to suspend that judgment and examine the triple forces of environment, resources, and public policy.

Father Greg’s motto of unconditional love and discipline is truly inspiring and his philosophy of “Nothing stops a bullet like a job” is one that this book (and his work) proves successful.

These sentences stuck with me at the end of my reading:

“If we wish to solve the illness of gang violence, and in many ways it is an illness, we must look for the right diagnosis–not the easy one. “Gang member as monster” is a bad diagnosis that is guaranteed not to bring us closer to a cure. Harsher laws for juveniles will not keep the next damaged, crazy kid from killing. But wise intervention … before he started … might have saved …”

Fremon quotes Nan Henderson, author of Resilience in Schools: Making it Happen for Students and Educators:

“There are six basic human needs, that are also the main factors that build resiliency: caring and support, high expectation for success, opportunities for meaningful participation, positive bonds, clear and consistent boundaries, and good life skills. If people don’t get these needs met in a prosocial way they’ll get them in an anti-social way–like in a gang. For a kid to find the strength to move out of the gang, these needs have to be met in a healthy way.”

At Homeboy, Father Greg Boyle has put this “resiliency theory” to practice – these are the principles upon which his work–and the work that Ritu is now doing–are based.

“I used to think that the caring adult who pays attention is the most important factor to help a kid succeed. But I’ve now come to believe that the necessary context for that attention is community–meaning a place that reminds you of your goodness and talent each day. That’s what I think we do here at Homeboy. In addition to the jobs, the counseling, and the tattoo removal, we provide a place of ‘no-matter-what-ness,” the place of unconditional love. Ideally, it’s no tjust aperson who offers that, it’s a community of feeling and connection and kinship that becomes a touchstone that you can return to when you hit life’s inevitable difficulties. It’s community that helps a kid discover the truth of who he is, in order that he can inhabit that truth. That’s the kid who will be able to withstand the obstacles life throws at him, and be okay.” — Father Greg

True dat.

… And, can I just add … how proud I am of Ritu for the work she’s doing?

It has been a busy week for me. I’ve been blogging more than usual at work and working on a fun project – a student writing website.

Here are two reviews you can check out:

Book review: Flora Segunda, by Ysabeau Wilce
Update: check out this great review the fantasy novel got in the NYT Sunday Book Review!

Movie review: The Namesake (Mira Nair)
In case you missed my preview musings, they’re here.

While I was writing my review for the readers of Writing and READ, I got to thinking about my relationship with my own name. I know that when I was young, I often wished my parents hadn’t named me Sandhya. Why did they give me such a difficult name, I often wondered, especially when it was butchered by people who didn’t know what to do with the h that came between the d and y. I was called sunday, sanchi, sandy, and sanja – and sun-dah-yaaa too.

It was only when I was in my teens that I finally started to appreciate my name for its sound and meaning — and the story behind it. It turns out that my parents picked my name because it means “the time between night and day; dusk or dawn”. It was the name of Sandhya Sangeet (Evening Songs, 1882) by my father’s favorite poet, the Indian Nobel prize winner Rabindranath Tagore. … My sister’s namesake is also Tagore – she was named Anjali; my father once told me that for him, this name was also inspired by the Tagore’s most famous collection of poems Gitanjali (or Song Offerings).

Now, I feel that my name is one of the biggest gifts my parents could have given me.

Today marks 50 years of independence for my birthplace Ghana. Profoundly influenced by the Indian independence and civil rights movements, the Gold Coast became the first sub-Saharan African colony to attain independence (as Ghana) in 1957.

Having connections to both India and Ghana, I’m always struck by how their break from colonial rule was separated by 10 years – 1947, 1957. Interestingly the movement for independence got serious in August 1947 (when India became free). Leading nationalists founded the United Gold Coast Convention and invited Kwame Nkrumah, who was to become the first president of Ghana, to lead their campaign for self-government. It took another decade to achieve that goal …

Anyway, a full year of celebrations are ongoing in Ghana right now. There isn’t much media coverage here – the NYT today just ran a Reuters story – but the BBC has a great series “Ghana After 50 Years” and WNYC’s Siddhartha Mitter has a wonderful story about the Ghanaian community in New York and its connection to the US civil rights movement.

And, here’s the official website which features a video clip of Nkrumah’s official speech on March 6, 1957.

Here’s to 50 years of growth, development, stability, and representative government.

I can’t wait to read this. Forthcoming: Iowa Writer’s Workshop student Sheba Karim’s debut SKUNK GIRL, about a young Pakistani American girl’s travails at a small-town high school in upstate New York, where she’s trying to fit in but has to contend with being the only Asian, the only Muslim, the younger sister of a Supernerd, and, if that isn’t enough, body hair, to Janine O’Malley at Farrar, Straus Children’s, at auction, by Ayesha Pande at Lyons & Pande. (source: Publisher’s Lunch 2/28/07)

There aren’t enough stories out there about the South Asian Muslim teen experience … this book seems like it will be a welcome addition to the lot. Last year’s ASK ME NO QUESTIONS, by Marina Budhos was a moving story about nation, identify, patriotism, and what it means to be American in a post 9-11 America.

When I saw the deal news in Publishers Lunch, I decided to look up Sheba Karim. My first find was a short story in the Summer 2006 issue of Desilit. “Lizards and Loins” (read it) takes us into the world of a sexually frustrated middle-aged Muslim woman. The story is wonderfully done. I’m not sure why it was placed in the humor section of the magazine though. I didn’t find the overall theme and the predicament of the main character particularly humorous, although there were scenes and images (such as the protagonist furtively reading a cowboy romance about a woman with “a fire in her loins”) that did make me smile.

I also found another story by Karim — “First Love” in Ego Magazine (read it). The main character, Irfan, learns about the tragic death of Parveen Babi, one of the cultural icons of 1970s Bollywood who lived her last years as a schizophrenic. The news of her death triggers a long-forgotten memory of “his first love,” of the actress who took his breath away when he was a lonely adolescent in Dubai – and his betrayal of her for his second love, cricket.

If you’re in the mood for a companion piece, I’d recommend my friend and Pakistani-American poet Bushra Rehman’s “Will Heaven Look Like Zeenat Aman?” ( you can find it online in the Writing/Poetry section of her website.)
So, we all know that the web is a fun maze in which we can all get lost so after re-reading Bushra’s poem, I decided I was in the mood for more of her stuff.

“The Old Italian” is a poignant short story in Pulp Net. It takes us right into the world of a young immigrant girl living in Corona, Queens where the lives of Dominicans, Italians, Afghanis, and Pakistani immigrants intersect. It has a Stand By Me feel to it.

And, “Our Little Secrets” is an essay/interview in Colorlines about an art installation – “Lotah Stories” – that her sister Sa’adia put on a couple of years ago at the Queens Museum of Art.

A Hindustani word, lotahs are water containers used to clean yourself after using the toilet. They look like teapots without covers and are made of metal or plastic. With one hand, you pour the water and with the other, you wash yourself clean. Lotahs are commonplace throughout South Asia, and in many Muslim countries they are used for cleansing yourself before prayer. However, once South Asian and Muslim immigrants come to the United States, the pressure to assimilate forces many of us to make the transition from lotah to toilet paper. But there are some South Asians who refuse to cross over. Instead, they find themselves living double lives, using lotahs-in-disguise.

If I were teaching a multicultural lit class right now that focuses on the South Asian teen immigrant experience, I’d definitely put these last four pieces, beginning with “First Love” together into one unit.