Literary Safari

Ever noticed that manhole covers in NYC streets have a “Made in India” stamp? Well, they do. This week, the NYT featured a fascinating article and slideshow (From Ladles of Molten Metal) about the work conditions of foundry workers in India, the very men who make the manhole covers. See “New York Man Hole Covers, Forged Barefoot in India.”

There was a fervent discussion about both over at Sepia Mutiny a few days ago, and it prompted me to remember this lovely poem by Purvi Shah from her book Terrain Tracks (New Rivers Press), a collection that won the 2005 Many Voices Project prize from New Rivers Press, and is a finalist for the 2007 Asian American Writers Workshop Members’ Choice Awards.

Made in India, Immigrant Song #3

(a note from a New York City streetwalker)

Some worker in the sweat

of Madras, some former weaver

from Kashmir, some hand in Ahmadabad‘s dust,

has been pounding iron again.

 

The New York streets swell with feet;

multihued tracks glide over the flat steel

disks which offer entry into the city’s interior

lairs. The writing seeps through our soles

though few fathom the signature, “Made

in India .” These alien

 

metal coins, transported

like my birth, mask

a labyrinth of tunnels

in a city where origin

and destination are confused.

Sometimes I wear the stamp

on myself; sometimes I feel

the wear of a surrounding world erase

the fine etchings. Here the imprint

 

of India is a traveler’s

mutation: the body’s chamber is made

hole, the skin not smooth, circular,

but cloaking a bumpy network

of channels, spirit mobile, expanding.

Copyright © Purvi Shah. Used by permission of the poet. Read more poetry by Purvi Shah here.

These manholes have been a source of much fascination to me for a while. Last year, they inspired a short story I wrote for Kahani magazine, “Made in India.” It began:

On the streets of New York City, there are many cast iron manhole covers that say “MADE IN INDIA.” Whenever I see one, I stand on its giant letters and pretend that I am Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz. I click my heels together and whisper to myself, “There’s no place like India, the home where I was born.” Then I shut my eyes and imagine what would happen if the manhole cover flew off and sucked me in. Would I shoot through the darkness and land in India? Thud! What would I see? [read the full story]

The manhole covers have inspired more than poetry and short stories. In this article from Little India, we learn about artists including Michele Brody who created a line of lighting that transforms the into Mandalas and more!

And, that’s my roundabout poetry celebration of the day. For a full Poetry Friday roundup and a lovely Billy Collins poem, make sure you visit Two Writing Teachers. Have a great weekend. I’ll be back next week!

In this month’s The Atlantic, a fascinating read about Newline Cinema’s on screen adaptation of Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass:

How Hollywood Saved God, by Hanna Rosin (thanks for the tip, Ennis.)

It took five years, two screenwriters, and $180 million to turn a best-selling antireligious children’s book into a star-studded epic—just in time for Christmas.

Despite the studios efforts to wrap the story in a religious cloak, the conservative media is still taking turns bashing the film. More on that here.

I am going to spend most of my day with 30 young writers from the NY area, reading their creative writing and offering editing advice. Young Authors Editing Day is an annual event organized by BOCES NY in Westchester, and spearheaded by the amazingly energetic and passionate middle school teacher and author Cathy Greenwood.

There’s a lot of advice out there for writers, both young and old. On almost the last day of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), I would be lax not to point out their neat young writers program and their grade appropriate handbooks online. (If you’re wishing you’d known about this earlier, hey, there’s always next year to be an official participant, but these tips can always come in handy!)

OK, you say – that’s all about writing. What about editing?

Ah, editing – that mysterious, elusive act that turns writers into sculptors. The simplest advice that I’d like to share comes from George Orwell, whose essay “Shooting an Elephant” I consider a work of genius.

In his must-read “Politics and the English Language,” Orwell breaks this mysterious process down into six basic questions one must ask oneself:

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus:

1. What am I trying to say?
2. What words will express it?
3. What image or idiom will make it clearer?
4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?

And he will probably ask himself two more:
1. Could I put it more shortly?
2. Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

And, I end with this advice from the American historian and Columbia University professor Erik Barnouw that I’ve come across along my personal journey for memorable writing advice:

“Go with your first intuition — if you ruminate too long, you will equivocate and commit an editing error you will regret. Your first instinct is usually the best one.”

A memorial service for Madeleine L’Engle will be held on Nov. 28 at 4 pm at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine (112th St. and Amsterdam Ave.). The event is open to the public. From the press release:

L’Engle, author of more than 60 books including the children’s classic A WRINKLE IN TIME, died September 6 at 88. L’Engle had been the volunteer librarian and writer in residence at the Cathedral since 1966.

“Madeleine’s long relationship with the Cathedral was a strong one. The Cathedral, its staff and ministries informed her work, and in turn she inspired those who knew her with her generosity, spirit, and intelligence” said Dean Kowalski.

“The memorial service will be a wonderful time to gather friends and admirers, family and colleagues to celebrate her life,” said L’Engle’s granddaughter Charlotte Jones Voiklis. “She would have been 89 on November 29th, so this will be a lovely and fitting birthday present.”

Music for the service will be provided by Cathedral organist Timothy Brumfield and Manhattan Transfer founding member Laurel Massé. Selections will include some of L’Engle’s favorite hymns (including the Tallis canon and Dona nobis pacem) and music of Bach. The service will be a traditional requiem mass, with The Right Reverend Mark Sisk, Bishop of New York, celebrant and The Very Reverend James Kowalski, Dean of the Cathedral, preacher. All are welcome. A reception will follow.

In the spring, I had invited Ms. Engle to contribute an essay about the magic of stories to an educational publishing project. From the longer piece, which will be published posthumously, the following passage continues to resonate with me:

When I was a child, story helped me find out who I was in a world staggering from the effects of that war which was meant to end all wars but which, alas, was the beginning of a century of continuing war. Story helped me to accept that human beings do terrible things to other human beings, but that human beings also do marvelous things. Story was a mirror in which I could be helped to find the image of God in myself and which demanded my participation. A reader has an opportunity for collaboration that is denied the television viewer. In television it is all done for you. The images are there. You sit passively and accept them. But the reader must see in his mind’s eye the people and the pieces of the story, must make decision, argue, if necessary, with the author. I argue with authors violently with pencil. “No!” or “Yes!” in the margin. The reader plays an active and essential part in bringing words to life, and the reader, like the writer, must temporarily abandon his control and open himself to the aerial, underwater area of creativity. And this takes courage.

There’s a fascinating piece in the Week in Review section– A Good Mystery: Why We Read, by Motoko Rich, that reminded me of this quote yesterday. And, I came across an interview with Anne Fadiman in the Guardian. I’m always about paired readings, so these are my Monday morning picks.

Enjoy!

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, always a time of year when gratitude and giving take center stage (before quickly giving way to shopping frenzies, my cynical half adds). Every year, around this time, I stop to take stock of how I have managed to give and share my gifts of life with the world – whether that be through time, material things, or merely a sympathetic ear.

I also perk up and take notice of the giving that takes place all around me every day.

Who says New Yorkers aren’t giving, generous, and kindly souls capable of random acts of kindness?

On Monday, just as I alighted the final step at the bottom of the subway entrance the number 1 train pulled into the station. I made it through the turnstile, but missed the train. That was when I realized I had dropped my new, pink cashmere glove! I was despondent – I had really hoped that this year, I wouldn’t lose my gloves.

I turned back and glanced past the turnstile and saw my solitary glove at the bottom of the staircase. If you think New Yorkers don’t pay attention, think again. A woman my age saw the look on my face and noticed the lonely glove in my hand. “I’ll get it for you,” she said, then walked back to pick it up.

The glove, by this point, was no pretty thing. Many feet had trod upon it; it was wet and dirty. But, she didn’t care. She swiped her Metrocard and handed it to me with a smile, then walked to the end of the platform to her chosen waiting spot.

My ‘thank you’ reached her ears, but this is my official thank you note to her.

To the stranger on the subway – Thank you for rescuing my pretty pink glove. It and I – we are both happy to be reunited, and to be warm again. You made our day.

While we’re on the theme of giving thanks, I was inspired by this piece in Sunday’s NYT New York Observer column: “Needle and Thread and the Chinatown Night,” by Kelly Kingman.

She left her friend’s wedding banquet in search of a safety pin to fix the torn strap of her dress. Then the woman from the Golden Unicorn appeared.

It’s a lovely pre-Thanksgiving read. And, if it puts you in the mood for giving, you won’t be alone. If you want ideas, both local and global, for getting started, the following sites provide opportunities and ideas:

The Random Acts of Kindness Foundation features reader stories in its regular newsletter, classroom activity guides, and a community corner.

Global Giving is the companion website to Bill Clinton’s Giving, which is features people and organizations that have made a difference on both small and large scales. It also features a brand new blog called “Global Goodness.”

Kiva allows you to give small loans to entrepreneurs in the developing world, empowering them to lift themselves out of poverty.

One Laptop Per Child. There are only six days (cut off Nov. 26th) left to participate in this promotion where for every ‘revolutionary XO lowcost laptop you buy for a a child in a developing nation, you’ll also also receive one for the child in your life in recognition of your contribution (of $399).

And, without any segue and before I rush off to work, I will use this occasion to ask you: What random act of kindness have you experienced lately?

The NYT’s Janet Maslin reviews Roopa Farooki’s Bitter Sweets in today’s paper, calling it a “boisterous novel” that is both “enjoyable and breezy.”

I was struck by her comment that the back-of-the-book book club questions “demean” the novel. To quote:

This addendum is annoying. More than that, it’s unnecessary. While the novel suits the stereotypical book club’s tastes for soap opera and international exotica, the planted questions demean it. It works quite nicely on its own wit and narrative flair. Ms. Farooki creates the strong suspicion that she is not bound by circumstance and could tell a story about any kind of people, especially when the saris become secondary to the general level of treachery at work here.

Good for Ms. Maslin for recognizing the necessity of moving beyond questions such as “Are your characters representative of the Pakistani and Bangladeshi immigrant communities?”

Because, well, they’re not.

Would anyone ever ask Frank McCourt whether the characters in Angela’s Ashes are representative of Irish immigrant communities? Or, would anyone ever ask Ann Patchett if her characters in Run speak for the Italian-American community?

I rest my case.

—

Related Posts: On the Horizon: Roopa Farooki’s Bitter Sweets, Pus an Observation About South Asian Women Authors Book Covers

Diwali was a week ago. My cousin in Barcelona just sent me this video clip of the local news coverage of the Indian community’s children’s Diwali program. The kid with the cool blue glasses is Nilesh, my cousin’s son, and I’m proud that he actually knows why the holiday is celebrated.

I first heard Garrison Keiller read this poem a few weeks ago on The Writers Almanac, and I liked it so much that I found myself reading it over and over again.

Bullies, playgrounds, childhood. The three are so often inextricable. Add culture, gender, and identity to the mix, as Aimee Nezhukaumatathil did, and you have this memorable poem.

After Challenging Jennifer Lee to a Fight
I hesitate, because what would my father say? My aunts in India
are swathed in sarees, glass bangles and crimson nails.
Their perfect ropes of hair, oiled and glossy black, never
betray them to the wind or the chase of a chicken

in the courtyard. They’d watch my grandmother
shape bricks of dark halva, wrap each one
in tight plastic they’d chill for days.
Always calm, serene.

At least, that’s how my father
tells it, but I know when pressed,
my aunts would have done the same thing.
Jenny Lee called my younger sister

Shrimp in front of the whole group of Bus Kids—
no way I could let Jenny just swing her pink backpack
all the way home. Once the bus pulled away
from our stop on Landis Lane, I tapped her

on the shoulder and, and-we were a mess
of ribbons and slaps. She was easy to scare
from my nail marks drawing tiny pinpricks
of blood on her arms, her puffy cheeks. I told her

the red dots meant she had rabies, that
she shouldn’t tell anyone because then she’d infect
them and most of all, she better say sorry to my sister,
else I’d push her face into the barrel cacti littering

the sidewalks. My first rage, my first fire. Jenny
sniffled Sorry and I was relieved: I wasn’t sure
I could hit much more and my skinny legs
were spent with dust and sweat. My sister

and I walked home in silence. If we wore sarees,
all the yards and yards of shiny sateen would’ve
unwound from our tiny bodies, too light to drag
in the dust, too proud and taken with wind, like flags.

The poet tells me that this piece stems from a true incident: “My mother is Filipina and my dad is from Kerala [South India] so kids in suburban Phoenix didn’t know what to do with us!”

Credit: From At the Drive-In Volcano (Tupelo Press, 2007). Reprinted with permission of the author.

For a complete round up of Poetry Friday posts, please drop in at Big A little a later today. You’ll be so glad you did!

I’m eager to get my hands on Bitter Sweets, Roopa Farooki’s debut novel which had its US release this week. Publisher’s Weekly calls the book a “rollicking debut from [a] former London ad exec” and Booklist describes it as “fresh” and “sparkling.”

Synopsis: The destructive lies three immigrant generations of a Pakistani/Bangladeshi family tell each other. Henna, an illiterate 13-year-old Calcutta shopkeeper’s daughter, is passed off as the educated 17-year-old daughter of a successful businessman in order to marry her into one of the city’s best families. The lie reverberates deliciously through three generations of Henna’s family: Farooki’s witty narrative winds its way over some 50 years, moving Henna, husband Rashid (Ricky) and daughter Shona from Calcutta to Bangladesh, Pakistan and London, where Shona elopes and raises her twin boys above a confectioner’s shop.

So far, I’ve read mixed reviews. While the publishers are comparing Farooki’s voice to Zadie Smith, Jhumpa Lahiri, and even Arundathi Roy, reader reviews here in the US (so far) have been mixed.

The problem, as I see it, is that publishers always want to compare new South Asian authors to an existing star who is either South Asian or writes about South Asians … So, if you pick up a book expecting, well, the voice or sensibility of Roy, you’re likely to be disappointed. I’l

Anyway, l try to report back on this book soon. Meanwhile, as usual, I’m always struck by how covers of books about the subcontinent vary so drastically between the UK and the US. What’s with US publishers needing to have headless sari or lehnga-wearing women on the cover? (Some recent releases that come to mind: The Hindi Bindi Club; The Dowry Bride; and Mistress .) I’ve included the UK cover of The Hindi Bindi Club and the India cover of Mistress, just for comparison.

Some interesting related posts on this topic:

Sari Alert at Ultrabrown
Anatomy of a Genre at Sepia
Buzzword Bingo at Sepia
Cover Hall of Shame at Ultrabrown

When I was a tween, I loved those quizzes in magazines, the ones that told me what my personality type, what type of friend, what sort of food …. I was. When I come across a good quiz, I still get that adolescent thrill, I’ll admit.

Here are two that I enjoyed taking recently:

The left brain versus right brain test. It’s really quick. Not even a minute.

What is the ideal sleeping pose for you and your partner? Take the sleep test, courtesy of Evany Thomas’s book The Secret Language of Sleep: A Couple’s Guide to 39 Positions (another one of those memorable McSweeney’s titles).

Enjoy, and let me know if you think the results aptly reflected you.

Related Posts: Quiz Time I

It’s Children’s Book Week, and the Sunday’s NYT Book Review marked the event with a special children’s section. As I was thumbing through it, I was struck by a few things:

1) Out of the list of best illustrated books of 2007 [see slideshow, thanks Chicken Spaghetti!] , three were graphic novels: The Invention of Hugo Cabret (RB) by Brian Selznick, The Arrival (RB) by Shaun Tan, and The Wall (RB) by Peter Sis, and two of the three are Arthur A. Levine titles. All three were high up on my personal favorites list this past year so I was thrilled to see them acknowledged.

2) Christopher Myers’s fresh illustrated version of Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky (HB) joins the company of the Visions in Poetry (RB) illustrated edition from Kids Can Press. Both have such different sensibilities, but they’re definitely worth a happy pairing. I was intrigued to learn in Patrick Lewis’s NYT review that:

“Myers’s prodigious research on the history of “Jabberwocky” led him to Lewis Carroll’s diaries, where, as he explains in an endnote, he discoverd the world “ollamalitzli,” written in the margin. Its Mesoamerican religious and ritual significance, he tellsus, involves a ‘rubber ball and a stone hoop affixed high on a wall.’ So it’s not much of a stretch to arrive at Myers’s conceit that a precursor of a basketball court is what Lewis Carroll had in mind as a setting for his mock epic poem.” [update: check out the correction about the validity of this in the comments section from a member of the Lewis Carroll society.]

3) The Dangerous Book for Boys (RB) did not make it onto any of the top 2007 lists, but it’s definitely been a force to be reckoned with this past year. One of my colleagues told me that his 9 year old son received 3-4 copies of the book for his birthday!

When I was going through the NYT Review section, I came across the ad for Scholastic’s plug for its copycat series The Boys’ Book and The Girls’ Book (on) How to Be the Best At Everything (SB). I’ve given both these books flip tests at the bookstore and have nothing good to say about them except that they sure came off the press quickly, just 4 months after Dangerous Book hit the US market. The resemblance in cover art is obvious and the attempt to replicate a successful formula …. well, there’s no attempt to even hide that.

I still remain a fan of Hal and Conn Iggulden’s original, which my husband and I have enjoyed reading together … and if I might say, is perfectly suitable for girls and boys, adults and kids … maybe that’s its charm.

When I was in London, I came across the following spawn:

The Dangerous Booklet for Girls (HB). Puke.
The Great Big Glorious Book for Girls (HB). Puke some more.

There has got to be something original and innovative out there for girls, which doesn’t make me sick. I have to find it.

On the other hand, I was kind of excited to find these extensions of the Dangerous Book: the pocket editions (HB) and the yearbook (HB). It’s an empire all right.

4) Finally, in this Sunday’s NYT, there were two separate reviews of Pierre Bayard’s How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read (HB) which is mostly what I’ve been doing above with all my yap-yap about books for boys and girls! The first was in the Styles section, the second in the Book Review. Over the past few months, I’ve read several more pieces about this book in the Times here and here.

One thing I’ve taken away from all these pieces is Bayard’s code, which I intend to start applying to my reading life or my, shall I say, scale of cultural literacy:

UB: book unknown to me
SB: book I have skimmed
HB: book I have heard about
FB: book I have forgotten
RB: book I have actually read

That said, I’m going to go back up and add this scale to all the books I’ve discussed today! This will explain all the parenthetical notes throughout this post.

I’ve taught writing in various capacities over the past several years, and until last May, was editing Writing, a Weekly Reader classroom magazine for middle and high school students. One of the things that has struck me in all my instructional experiences has always been the impact of collaborative writing and peer review on the learning process.

In fact, last year, one of the most exciting projects I worked on was the development of a PDF issue of Writing all about revision, which I think is one of the best areas for students to engage in peer review. (By students, I don’t just mean kids; I mean us adults too. Think writing circles, writing groups, writing buddies. Think Anne Lamott’s advice in Bird by Bird: get “someone to read your drafts”).

Anyhow, I was so excited about our revision issue that I sent it over to the folks over at Google for Educators, and one thing led to another, and pretty soon, there were conversations happening about how this revision issue could be coupled with Google Docs for a special revision project, complete with lesson plans, etc. I worked on these materials several months ago with the Google for Educator folks, and when I left Writing in May, my wonderful colleagues at WR took over. I was thrilled to see that the project went live this week, and if you have a chance, check it out: Teach Collaborative Revision with Google.

You’ll find PDF articles, lesson plan ideas, and the entire range of Google Doc tools with tutorials.

I am a huge fan of Google for Educators’ programs. Having attended their Google Teacher Academy, I can say wholeheartedly that they offer incredible classroom “accessories” and free products that make the learning experience more meaningful. The Academy is based on the teach the teacher model where educators trained in the how-to of Google’s tools go back to their districts and conduct trainings for other teachers on how to bring technology into the classroom in innovative ways.

One of my favorite outgrowths of the Teacher Academy has been Google Lit Trips, where students use Google Earth to embark on virtual literature road trips. There are examples at the site, as well as guidelines on how to create your own.

It’s all free and there’s no advertising embedded, so teachers and students (of all ages) alike have nothing to lose. Spread the wealth.

Related: eSchool News selects the revision feature as its Site of the Week (Jan. 16, 2008)