Monday, December 20, 2010

Featuring Asian American Authors: Louis Chu

Louis Chu was born in 1915 in China and immigrated to the US when he was seven years old.  He wrote poetry in high school and graduated from Upsala College in New Jersey with a degree in English. He then got his masters degree in sociology from New York University in 1939.  He began writing fiction while he was serving in the U.S. Army Signal Corps.  He only published one novel: Eat a Bowl of Tea.


Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia of American Literature claims that in Eat a Bowl of Tea, Chu "provides a realistic portrayal of life in New York's Chinatown, portraying well the colloquial speech and the tensions of a world in which all the characters are Chinese."

The book met with a lot of criticism at its time of publication (1961) because it dealt with themes not openly talked about in any literature, much less in ethnic American literature.  These themes include extramarital affairs, prostitution, and impotence.  Because of the book's controversial nature and because of a lack of publicity available for literature written by ethnic Americans, the book received very little acknowledgment.  However, in 1974, Frank Chin, along with Jeffery Paul Chan, and Lawson Fusao Inada included it in Aiiieeeee!!! An Anthology of Asian American Writers. Because of its inclusion in this groundbreaking anthology, the book was republished a few times and is now considered an essential text for Asian American and multicultural literature courses.

For more information about Louis Chu, please see the articles in Literature Resource Center including the full text Asian American Writers. Ed. Deborah L. Madsen and part of the Dictionary of Literary Biography series. Or check out Eat a Bowl of Tea from Burling Library:

Eat a Bowl of Tea (1961)
Burling 3rd Floor PS3553 .H776

What are you reading? Let us know by emailing bookreview@grinnell.edu

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Featuring Asian American Authors: Frank Chin

Frank Chin was born in 1940 to a Chinese immigrant father and a fourth-generation Chinese American mother. He attended University of California at Berkeley and in 1959 he left Berkeley for a fellowship at the Iowa Writer's Workshop.  He ended up graduating with an English degree from University of California at Santa Barbara.  He also worked as a brakeman on the railroad.  He emerged in the literary scene in 1970 when he was published in the anthology 19 Necromancers from Now (1970).   The criticism he received for his controversial work pushed him to respond with his own substantial body of literary history and criticism.


Chin has written plays, novels, short stories and criticism. He has also been the editor of Asian American literature collections. Here is a selection of titles held at the Grinnell College Libraries:

Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian-American Writers / edited by Frank Chin ... [et al.]
Burling 3rd Floor  PS508.A8 A4 1991

Born in the USA: A Story of Japanese America, 1889-1947 / edited by Frank Chin
Burling 2nd Floor E184.J3 S84 2002 

Bulletproof Buddhists and Other Essays
Burling 2nd Floor E184.C5 C473 1998

Donald Duk: A Novel
Burling 3rd Floor PS3553.H4897 D66x 1991

Gunga Din Highway: a Novel
Burling 3rd Floor  PS3553.H4897 G86 1994

 Submitted by Kelly Musselman '11

What are you reading? Let us know by emailing bookreview@grinnell.edu

Featuring Asian American Authors: John Okada

John Okada was born in Seattle in 1923.  His family was moved into the internment camps during WWII.  He joined the army and served in army intelligence, broadcasting requests for Japanese soldiers to surrender. He was discharged in 1946 and earned his bachelor's degrees in English and Library Science, and earned his masters from Colombia University in English.  He couldn't find enough time to write while working in libraries, so he worked as a technical writer.  He died of a heart attack in 1971.


No-No Boy is Okada's only published work and it did not become popular until after he had died.  At his death, there were still unsold copies of the 1500 copies in the first edition.  But Jeffry Paul Chan found a copy of No No Boy in a San Francisco bookshop and he and Frank Chin included an excerpt from the book in the first Asian American literature anthology Aiiieeeee!  The entirity of the novel was republished in 1976.

No-No Boy is about a Japanese American man who, when drafted, answered 'No' to two key questions:

--"Are you willing to serve in the armed forces of the United States, on combat duty, wherever ordered?"
--"Will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United States of America and faithfully defend the United States from any or all attack by foreign or domestic forces and forswear any form of allegiance or obedience to the Japanese emperor, to any foreign government, power, or organization?"

The main character doesn't know why he answered "no" but he was put in jail for two years because of it.  No-no Boy begins with Ichiro Yamada's return from prison and the detainment camps at the end of the war and deals with themes centered around family, faith and loyalty. 

For more information about John Okada, please see the articles in Literature Resource Center including the full text   Asian American Writers. Ed. Deborah L. Madsen and part of the Dictionary of Literary Biography series. Or check out  No-No Boy from Burling Library:

No-No Boy (1979)
Burling 3rd Floor PS3565.K33 N6 1979

Submitted by Kelly Musselman '11

What are you reading? Let us know by emailing bookreview@grinnell.edu

Monday, November 8, 2010

Featuring Asian American Authors: Carlos Bulosan

Carlos Bulosan was born in Binalonan, Pangasinan, in northern Luzon in the Philippines in 1911. He came to the United States in 1930 just as California was restricting Chinese and Japanese immigration. Raised attending English language schools with American teachers Bulosan was fluent in English thus becoming one of the first Asian Americans to document his immigrant experience in the language that would allow for a wide audience.

Bulosan authored several important autobiographical works including The Laughter of My Father (1944) a collection of short stories set during the transition from Spanish to U.S. colonialism, and America is in the Heart (1946), in some respects his autobiography, but more broadly a narrative that incorporates the experiences of the Filipino immigrants in California and the Untied States. Bulosan's earliest publishing efforts were as a poet. In the early thirties he published in local Filipino papers, and then later started his own newspaper, The New Tide, a bimonthly radical literary magazine. This effort brought him into a wider circle of writers including William Saroyan, William Carlos Williams, Sonora Babb, and Richard Wright. His first two books of poetry were Letter from America (1942) and Chorus for America (1942). In all of his writing Bulosan brought the attention of the reader to the working class, the poor, the under represented and the marginalized.

Bulosan also worked as a union organizer and was implicated in the "red scare." He may have been a member of the  Communist Party and did write for some periodicals using the vocabulary of Marxism. Bulosan's manuscripts are still being discovered, edited and published.

For more information about Carlos Bulosan, visit Literature Resource Center including the full text   Asian American Writers. Ed. Deborah L. Madsen and part of the Dictionary of Literary Biography series. Or check out one of the books by Carlos Bulosan in Burling Library:

America is in the Heart: A Personal History
, 1946
Burling 3rd Floor PS3503.U5627 Z5

"The Story of a Letter" and "How My Stories Were Written," in Bold Words: A Century of Asian American Writing, 2001
Burling 3rd Floor PS508.A8 B65 2001

"Hymn to a Man Who Failed," Portraits with Cities Falling," and "The Romance of Magno Rubio" and more! in Brown River, White Ocean: An Anthology of Twentieth-Century Philippine Literature in English, 1993.

Burling 3rd Floor PR9550.5 .B76 1993

The Cry and the Dedication, 1995
Burling 3rd Floor PR9550.9.B8 C79 1995

On Becoming Filipino: Selected Writings of Carlos Bulosan
, 1995
Burling 3rd Floor PR9550.9.B8 A6 1995


Submitted by R. Stuhr

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Featuring Asian American Authors: David Mura

Poet, memoirist, novelist, playwright, and essayist David Mura graduated from Grinnell College in 1974 and received an honorary degree in 1997.

Submitted by R. Stuhr

Through poetry, memoir, and fiction, David Mura has sought to unravel the complicated tangle of threads that make up his identity as a third generation Japanese American, including the threads of race, sexuality and history.  His writings cover topics ranging from the long term consequences of the interment camps  on those interned and their children, to contemporary Japan, to the history of Japanese Americans in America. He has won numerous awards including the Lock McKnight award for achievement in prose and the Minnesota Book Award for memoir.

For more information on David Mura see the entry in Asian American Writers available in Literatrue Resource Center or visit his web site.

The following books are available at Burling Library:

Famous Suicides of the Japanese Empire: A Novel
Burling 3rd Floor PS3563.U68 F36 2008

Angels for the Burning: Poems
Burling 3rd Floor PS3563.U68 A84 2004

From Where the Body Meets Memory: An Odyssey of Race, Sexuality, and Identity
Burling 2nd Floor E184.J3 M7844 1996

The Colors of Desire: Poems
Burling 3rd Floor  PS3563.U68 C65 1995

Turning Japanese: Memoirs of a Sansei
Burling 2nd Floor E184.J3 M784 1991

After We Lost Our Way: Poems
Burling 3rd Floor PS3563.U68 A35 1989

Male Grief: Notes on Pornography and Addiction: An Essay
Burling 2nd Floor HQ471 .M85 1987

For Mura's essays and poems in anthologies, check the libraries' catalog:

Featuring Asian American Authors: Maxine Hong Kingston

Grinnell College Libraries begins a series of blog entries featuring Asian American Authors.

Submitted by R. Stuhr

Maxine Hong Kingston came to literary prominence with her first novel Woman Warrior published in 1976. It is significant for its role in opening the door for ethnic-American literature. Kingston combined autobiography with myth and fable to interpret her own childhood in particular and, more broadly, first generation Chinese American identity. Kingston is notable for her feminist approach and has stirred controversy over her use of Chinese mythology.

From Contemporary Authors:

"Kingston is best known for The Woman Warrior (1976), which chronicles her struggle to confront and synthesize her dual heritage as a first-generation Chinese American woman. A collage of genres and influences, The Woman Warrior combines myth, fantasy, and memoir in formulating a hybrid culture that bridges Chinese and American history as well as competing gender, cultural, and linguistic structures. A National Book Critics Circle Award winner, The Woman Warrior remains, according to a 2008 essay written by Helena Grice, "the most widely read title in American universities today," considered seminal for its unconventional form and language, influence on theories of feminist criticism, and generation of a mainstream audience for ethnic literature. While The Woman Warrior represents Kingston's endeavor to comprehend her mother's alien character, China Men (1980)--also a winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award--constitutes her attempt to define her relationship with her silent, angry father. Kingston's later works also delineate the cultural and political conflicts of Asian Americans. However, they more fully represent her activism on behalf of civil rights, pacifism, and social responsibility, abiding concerns for which she was awarded a National Humanities Medal by President Bill Clinton in 1997."

For interviews, biography, and critical reviews go to Literature Resource Center

Books in Burling Library:

The Woman Warrier: Memoir of a Girlhood Among Ghosts
Burling Library 1st Floor CT275.K5764 A33 1976

China Men
Burling 2nd Floor E184.C5 K5 1980

Tripmaster Monkey: His Fakebook
Burling 3rd Floor PS3561.I52 T7 1989

The Fifth Book of Peace
Burling 3rd Floor PS3561.I52 F44 2003

For essays and poems search the library catalog.

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Grinnell College is reading Mae M. Ngai

Political Science Major and Spoken Word Artist Que Newbill '11 recommends Mae M Ngai's Impossible subjects: Illegal Aliens and The Making of Modern America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004. Burling 2nd Floor KF  4800 N485 2004

In her book, Ngai looks at the "historical origins of the "illegal alien" in American law and society and the emergence of illegal immigration as the central problem in U.S. immigration policy in the twentieth century" focussing on the years 1924-1965.
Find more writings on immigration by Mae Ngai in Burling Library


What are you reading? Let us know by emailing bookreview@grinnell.edu

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Nobel Prize for Literature Winner: Peruvian Writer Mario Vargas Llosa


Ilan Stavans has written an excellent column for the Chronicle of Higher Education on Vargas Llosa: "Mario Vargas Llosa: Enlightenment over Barbarism." Visit Literature Resource Center to find out more about Vargas Llosa and to find essays and articles by him. Born in 1936, Vargas Llosa is a versatile writer, he was a Peruvian presidential candidate in 1990, and a socially committed writer.

Books available in Burling Library (in Spanish and in English):

Aunt Julia and the Script Writer (1994)
Letters to a Young Novelist (2002)
The Challenge (1997)
Conversation in the Cathedral (1988)
The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto (1998)
The Culture of Liberty (1993)
In Praise of the Stepmother (1990)
The Feast of the Goat (2005)
Wellsprings (2008)
The Bad Girl (2007)

This is just a small sampling, for more visit Burling Library.

Submitted by R. Stuhr

Saturday, October 2, 2010

Harley McIlrath's New Collection of Short Stories: Possum Trot

J. Harley McIlrath. Possum Trot. North Liberty, Iowa: Ice Cube Books, 2010
Reviewed by T. Hatch

In the interest of full disclosure Harley McIlrath is an acquaintance mine.  He is a dealer of books and I am a junkie.  It is also worth mentioning that historically my attitude towards literary criticism has been quite reactionary, i.e. if you have a problem with a work of fiction, shut up and write your own. Anyway...

Naturally when I picked up my copy of Possum Trot I thought it was about a timid alternative to Joseph Stalin. Instead the eponymous story Possum Trot, which differs from the rest of the included stories in its pronounced surreality, seemed like a synthesis of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and William Faulkner albeit in overalls.



Possum Trot is a collection of short stories about rural Iowa, historical memory, and a sense of dark apprehension associated with the not-so-distant past.  These stories are clearly neither nostalgic nor do they uncritically celebrate a less complicated time on the 'ol family farm. There is no reminiscing about hayrides or the authentic taste of homemade ice cream. The stories are about grandpa suppressing his guilt over the death of his young wife by lashing out, years later, at his grandson; about a boy surreptitiously assisting his abusive father's “suicide”; about a man facing rabies shots because a meth cookers' monkey bit him while sitting in a bar.

It is an oversight of mine that I do not spend a little more time reading short stories.  McIlrath's work is evidence of the continued validity of this genre.

From the Book Review:
You can find more information about this book at the publisher's Web site

If you are in Grinnell, come to see McIlrath read from his new book on November 11, 8:00 p.m., JRC 101.

Thursday, September 9, 2010

Hornets and E-books

Walter Giersbach 61, avid reader and author is reading Stieg Larsson's Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest (2009). He is also reading the e-book version of Marisha Pessl's suspense novel, Special Topics in Calamity Physics. Viking, 2006.

You can read Walter Giersbach's fiction on the Web:
The Last Person on Earth 
Dreaded Conversation
both at Every Day Fiction

And mentioned earlier on these pages Cruising the Green of Second Avenue, volumes 1 & 2 at Wild Child Publishing.


For more information, visit his blog:

Sunday, August 22, 2010

Libraries III--Not Fiction--Libraries created and enriched from trash

BBC World News America has a short news story about Benedito da Silva, who works sorting garbage in Brazil. Silva describes how he began collecting books out of the garbage and taking them home and eventually building his own library collection. He also donates them to his local public library (Luiz Odair de Sousa). Silva tells the BBC that before he began collecting books out of the trash, he could not read. As he began saving the books, he also improved his ability to read. In this short news story, Silva talks about the volume of trash in Brazil and the world and the problems it creates and the carelessness of such waste. He emphasizes the value that he and others provide sorting through all of the trash. Silva calls for others to view their work with the respect it deserves.

Go to BBC World News America to see this story.

submitted by R. Stuhr

Librarians and Libraries in Fiction II: Rex Libris

Turner, James. Rex Libris: I Librarian. San Jose: SLG Publishing, 2007.

Submitted by R. Stuhr

This is the first volume in a comic books series, with the tag: "The World's Favorite Butt-Kicking, Sesquepedalian Librarian!" I have volume one and two on my bookshelves. The second is Book of Monsters and was published in 2009. Each volume is made up of multiple issues, which can be purchases separately from SLG Publishing. Check out the Rex Libris Web site to read about one of the few vector based comic books in the world. Rex Libris has mythical qualities. When he isn't traveling across time and space, he is the Head Librarian at Middleton Public Library. The library, apparently has generous lending policies, because Rex Libris travels to the "farthest reaches of the galaxy" in search of overdue books, all the while fighting the forces of ignorance and darkness. He wears "super thick bottle glasses" and is "armed with an arsenal of high technology weapons." Zombies as well as recalcitrant borrowers figure into the plot line.

Within these pages you will find your blams, pows, zips, and zings (also thaks, thwopks, and schwifs).

Truthfully, I find slogging through a graphic novel, no matter how creative and how much about librarians not really my first choice of reading. But these have great black and white illustrations by Turner, and enough villains, odd creatures, black market weapons, and references to all the intellectuals of times past you could possibly want. Here is a tiny sample from book 1, I, Librarian:

"Find for the first time in print ever, the tumultuous tales of the public library system and its unending battle against the forces of evil. This struggle is not just confined to our terrestrial sphere but extends out into the farthest reaches of the cosmos ... and beyond! The librarian has faced patrons so terrible, so horrific, they they cannot be described here without the risk of driving readers mad. But enough prattle and preamble! Settle back with a cup of coffe and a donut (or other pastry if you prefer), and prepare to enter the secret world of ... Rex Libris 'I, Librarian.'"

Immediately, the reader is thrown into a confrontation between the librarian and a demanding patron:

"Puny Mortal! I am Kurui-No-Oni, Demon Spirit Samurai! I need no card! I take what I wish! Give me the book, lest I squash you like the sniveling little bookworm that you are!"

(Rex:) "Listen Bucko, the branch administrator sez nobody, but nobody, takes out a book here without getting a card and signing for it. And that includes you, Buster. .... And you're going to have to check that sword at the desk."

So that is just the very beginning--imagine where this winding tale can take you. Join Rex and his roommate Simonides (turned into a bird by Circe--a former villain and now cookie baker), on his travels and investigations (when the Montgomery Reading Room is overrun by vandals, they really are Vandals).

More on Rex Libris

Check out Volume 1 from Burling Library:

1st Floor, Smith Memorial PN 6727. T865x R48 2007

Librarians and Libraries in Fiction I: Some Tame Gazelle

Pym, Barbara. Some Tame Gazelle. New York: Dutton, 1983 (first published in England in 1950).

Submitted by R. Stuhr

Writing about the mobile librarian reminded me of another novel I read recently, this one by Barbara Pym. I am a big fan of Barbara Pym. I suppose I read her the way others read Jane Austen. I like to read and reread her books at intervals. I think of them as miniatures or tiny jewels. Almost all of her novels feature unmarried women. Occasionally the women get married, most are involved in the church, and if not with the church, then they  at least share tea with the clergy. They are generally well versed in the greater and lesser English poets. Most of Pym's novels are comedies. In Some Tame Gazelle, Pym writes about two unmarried sisters, one flamboyant, outgoing, and flirtatious, the other quieter and cherishing a long unrequited love from college.

I bring up this novel now, because of the charcter Nicholas Parnell, friend to the quieter sister (but not the cherished love) and chief librarian at the college they both attended. There are quiet a few funny lines related to libraries and librarians, although, maybe they are funny because I spend much of my time in and thinking about libraries

Nicholas Parnell responds to the reverence he receives, when introduced as the Librarian, "I do not approve of this hushed and reverent attitude towards our great Library. After all, it is a place for human beings, isn't it?" (94). He goes on to explain that the Library now has central heating and a Lady's Cloak Room.

Later tells another character, "She ... introduced me to a charming lady who showed great reverence when the Library was mentioned. It is really rather gratifying. I should be delighted to show her round," he added. "She would find every convenience. The next thing will be to have some kind of a restaurant where readers can take luncheon or tea together. Do you know,"--he tapped his walking stick on the ground--"I have had to have notices printed requesting readers not to eat in the Library? One would hardly have thought it possible" (97).

More references to libraries and this time library patrons while discussing  scholarly pamphlets and popular reading tastes at dinner:

"I'm afraid you're hardly a best seller," said Mr. Mold [the Librarian's no. 2 man] jovially. "Nor even as much ordered in the Library as Rochester's poems . .. "

"I am afraid they are rather naughty," Said Dr. Parnell. "We have had to lock them away in a special place, together with other books of a similar nature. All the same, they are quite often asked for by our readers."

"Oh, well, I suppose people have to study them," said Belinda, handing round cigarettes wondering how she could change the subject (p. 117). 

And just one more, Belinda, the quiet sister, describes the Librarian, "Nicholas, is a great connoisseur," said Belinda. "It seems right that a librarian should be, I think. Good wine and old books seem to go together" (115).

Pym writes about expectations, disappointments, small successes, and the routine, often welcomed, of every day life. Her characters are often content with the trajectory of their lives, even when all around them think that they must be wishing for something more.

To dip into a Barbara Pym novel yourself stop by Burling Library.

Mr. Dixon Disappears

Sansom, Ian. Mr. Dixon Disappears. A Mobile Library Mystery. NY: Harper, 2006.

Submitted by R. Stuhr

This is the second in the Mobile Library Mystery series. I posted a review of the first novel, The Case of the Missing Books in March of this year. You can hearken back to that review for my general feelings about mysteries. And yet, I dived into volume two and Sansom still pleases because of his take on libraries and librarianship, for his cast of quirky characters falling into no particular stereotypes, and this time for his representation of churches, pastors, and congregations.

The plot in this novel surrounds the disappearance of the head of a local department store. Israel, the mobile librarian, is implicated because, while he is setting up a display he has created to tell the  history of the department store, he is called in to be of service at the scene of the crime by a panic stricken caretaker. Naturally, being a librarian, he responds to the call, and as he is trying to read the clues--leaves his fingerprints all over the place. It is a ridiculous plot, gets going slowly, and then takes several twists and turns to a satisfying ending. My main objection with Sansom's writing is his dialogue--people rarely finish sentences, and Israel is unnecessarily thick with his inability to follow people's intentions. 

Still! Read up and Enjoy!

Saturday, August 7, 2010

Tariq Ali: The Islam Quintet

T. Hatch

In reading the review on Mueenuddin and Afzal-Khan I was put in mind of Tariq Ali.  Especially his last book Night of the Golden Butterfly which is the fifth of five in his Islam Quintet series. All five books of the Quintet are a wonderful window into Muslim culture covering different historical eras in as many different locations. 

As I watched the Twin Towers collapsing on September 11, 2001 I remember thinking "man, am I woefully ignorant about Middle Eastern history?"  Tariq Ali in the novels of the Islam Quintet, and in his nonfiction works, has been incredibly useful in attacking that ignorance.

I highly recommend the series.

Fiction and Nonfiction by Tariq Ali at Grinnell College Libraries

Novels in the Islam Quintet:

The Book of Saladin. London, NY 1998.
Burling 3rd Floor PR6051.L44 B66 1998

On order:

Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree, 1993|

Stone Woman, 2000

Sultan in Palermo, 2006

Night of the Golden Butterfly, 2010

Shades of Grey: The Road to High Saffron

Fforde, Jasper. Shades of Grey: The Road to High Saffron. New York: Viking Press, 2009.

Reviewed by T. Hatch

As the narrative begins our narrator and protagonist Eddie Russett is being digested by a carnivorous yateveo tree.  Eddie is a Chromatocracy up-and-comer who, because of his 86.7 percent Red perception, is likely a future prefect. His potential up-spectrum social mobility is threatened, and the fact that he is being macerated inside a tree in the first place is because of his relationship with the subversive Jane Grey. She is an anarchist (only in the most positive sense of the word) who infatuates and leads young Russett through a harrowing experience beyond the established boundaries of the Collective.  These actions set the stage for further collaboration in undermining the rigidly enforced hierarchy that is Chromatica.

Fforde who is the author of the Thursday Next and Nursery Crime series has said that reading requires a greater amount of imagination than writing. Little surprise then that Shades of Grey, even more than his previous work, has Fforde - to create a Ffordean trope of our own - becoming the master enabler of reckless invention. Like his previous seven novels, Fforde continues to create a genre of his own which looks to the influence of Swift, Carroll, and Waugh and manifests itself as a satirical mystery wrapped in a solid science fiction shell.  It has been suggested that Shades of Grey is thematically darker than previous works by Fforde; there is a grain of truth in this, if for no other reason than politics and corrupt hierarchies are inherently more sinister than Jack Sprat tracking down Humpty Dumpty's killer.

The world Fforde creates is remarkable both for the copious amount of absurd details that litter the narrative and his ability to manage the life-is-long-art-is-short problem of providing the reader with the necessary information in the beginning of this complex creation.  This is the first of three books thus making the  task even more daunting.  Another wondrous aspect of Shades is the structural integrity of Fforde's created world of Chromatica.  All the details “fit.” 

The first thing about twenty-sixth century Chromatica is that it is a society with an iron-clad hierarchy.  The Colortocracy assiduously follows the Rulebook based entirely on The Word of Munsell and the crackpot prophet's chef d'ouvre, The Munsell Book of Wisdom written four hundred years ago (i.e. circa 2100). Munsell was widely credited with bringing peace to the Collective.  The number seventy-three was forbidden, there was no counting of sheep, spoons were not to be made, and there was absolutely no using acronyms.  Additionally, Gross Impertinence was a criminal charge. Munsell may have his eccentricities but no one can argue with results.

Little is known of the Epiphany which occurred circa 2083 but The Something That Happened was the societal rupture that ended the chaos associated with what came to be known simply as The Previous. The prophet opined that: “Imaginative thought is to be discouraged. No good ever comes of it – don't.” His particular genius (not unlike Glen Beck's philosophical system) was that he made the world knowable to everyone by simply reducing the number of facts.  The prefects who managed society took a dim view of “irresponsible levels of creative expressions.”  Libraries had more librarians than books.  Librarians  fondly remembered what books used to sit on the now empty shelves, acting as oral historians reminiscing about the books there used to be, they were now  consigned to checking out Racy Novels and the Collected Thoughts of Munsell.  A succession of National Color engineered Great Leaps Backward had seen to this. The long-term secular trend in Chromatica was defacting, which made continuous sustainability both safe and possible.

Chromatican society is organized around the hue of it various members.  Chromaticans are required to display prominently the color spot that identifies their hue for all to see.  Their entire existence is defined by what color they are and how much of it they can perceive.  At the bottom of the Colortocracy are the Greys.  About thirty-five percent of the population, Greys are unable to distinguish any color at all. Theirs is a second-class citizenship. Jane (the anarchist in a good way) resists the dominant paradigm. Her chance meeting with Eddie Russett has serious implications for the history of Chromatica.

The most difficult and mysterious character in the book is the Apocryphal man.  A four hundred and fifty two year-old historian who pops in from time to time and only occasionally makes himself visible to Eddie. Even then the only way to get a straight answer out of him is to bribe him with loganberry jam.  The Apocryphal man says he exists because without him no one's life would have any meaning.  It's difficult to say what all of this means.  We will have to wait until 2014, when the second installment of Shades of Grey is scheduled to be published, to find out.

Jasper Fforde at Grinnell College Libraries

Thursday Day Next Lost in a Good Book: A Novel
Burling 3rd Floor PR6106.F67 T48 2003








At Drake Community Library

The Eyre Affair, 2002


Thursday Next in the Well of Lost Plots, 2004

More

Sunday, July 25, 2010

In Other Rooms, Other Wonders and Lahore With Love: A Collection of Short Stories and a Memoir

Mueenuddin, Daniyal. In Other Rooms, Other Wonders. NY: Norton, 2009.
1st Floor Smith Memorial PR 9540 .9 .M84 I52 2009.

Afzal-Khan, Fawzia. Lahore with Love: Growing Up with Girlfriends, Pakistani-Style. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2010.
Burling 2nd Floor HQ1745.5.Z9 L332 2010

R. Stuhr

I have, in the past month, read two books by Pakistani authors. I read Afzal-Khan's memoir at the request of the Multicultural Review and Mueenuddin's collection of short stories because he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist and I was recently browsing through some lists of award winning (nearly award winning) authors. Both books are collections of discreet chapters, connected through time, place, characters, and theme.

Afzal-Khan's book is a memoir of her years growing up in Pakistan with a close circle of female friends. As she and her friends progress through childhood and school, Pakistan's political climate changes ineluctably to restrict the rights of and opportunities available to women. In Afzal-Khan's privileged world, the reality of these changes are slow to sink in. Afzal-Khan recounts the stories of her friends, several of whose lives ended tragically in no small part because of the oppressive conditions under which they lived. Afzal-Khan's life turns out differently, if not without her own inner darkness, in part because of her rebellious nature and in part because she leaves Pakistan for the United States to attend graduate l, ultimately marrying and settling there.

Afzal-Khan does not presume to have the answers; she is humble. She honors her friends and recognizes that she would not be the person she is if they had not been part of her childhood.

Mueenuddin's collection of short stories are all connected through the presence of the character K. K. Harouni, an industrialist and landowner. Mueenuddin writes about a Pakistan where the social heirarchy is a determining factor in one's well being. The wealthy thrive and the less fortunate derive ways to prosper through the largesse and inattention of their wealthy employers and benefactors. Success is as much about scheming and plotting as it is about birth and connections--it must be one or the other. The status of women is a significant aspect of each story. Mueenuddin's women rely on their intelligence and instinct to survive, but also prosper and fail according to the desires and whims of the men in their lives.

Some of the stories revolve around the lives of the servants of K. K. Harouni and others focus on his far flung family and others in the land owning classes. Rich or poor, no one has what they want and disappointment accompanies death. Power and peonage with their attendant and relative privileges and hardships provide a structure to each story.

Both Mueenuddin's and Afzal-Khan's books can be read as a whole or dipped into for a chapter here and there. But, if you start at the beginning, you are certain to want to read both in their entirety.

Afzal-Khan writes on literature and the condition of Muslim women. This is Daniyal Mueenuddin first published collection. His stories have appeared in Granta and The New Yorker.

Thursday, July 15, 2010

The Yacoubian Building

Alaa Al Aswany. The Yacoubian Building. NY: Harper Perennial, 2006.

R. Stuhr

This book is currently on display at Burling Library as part of our display of summer reading recommended by staff. Cecilia Knight recommended this along with the trio of books published posthumously by Stieg Larsson. I just finished this book too, and so these comments are mine. Written about Cairo during the time leading up to the first Iraq war, Alaa Al Aswany touches on the history and politics of Egypt, regional differences, the intensification of Islamic identity that goes beyond nationalism or simply religious ferver, the extensive gap between rich and poor, political corruption, the plight of women, individual hopes and dreams, and dashed hopes and dreams. The author, in his narrative, crosses back and forth among the stories of a range of characters, the privileged and the underprivileged. Although a dark story, it is also romantic and in the end the purest of hearts finds some happiness.

This book, in some ways, also tells the story of the twenty-first century, with one of the shaping factors of this century being the rise of fundamentalist Islam. In reading about the limitations of one society, we can recognize some of the same failings in our own society, the importance of influence (oil, pharmaceuticals two name just two for instance) and money in politics, the treatment and expectations for women, the widening gap between rich and poor... we are all implicated.

Despite my representation, this is definitely a recommended read for summer or anytime. Burling library has both the book (currently on display) and the film (wander down to the listening room).

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Making the Rounds with Oscar

Dosa, David, M.D. Making the Rounds With Oscar: The Extraordinary Gift of an Ordinary Cat. NY: Hyperion, 2010.

Reviewed by Sharon Clayton

Dr. David Dosa was a non-believer. He didn't like cats. He was a dog person. Oscar the cat can't know when a person is dying, he's just one of several strays that lives in a nursing home. But maybe it's true...

Oscar not only comforts dying nursing home residents with dementia, but he also touches the lives of the family members who are left behind as well as the staff at the nursing home where he resides. Dr. Dosa's book documents his quest to find out about Oscar's gift by interviewing family members who lost their loved ones on Oscar's watch. The book also explains the stages of dementia which is very informative for
people who are affected by this debilitating illness.

For more of Sharon Clayton's favorite reads see The Eclectic Review.

Available at the Grinnell's Drake Community Library

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Grinnell College in the Nineteenth Century

Joseph Frazier Wall. Grinnell College in the Nineteenth Century: From Salvation to Service. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1997.

Reviewed by T. Hatch

Manifest Destiny required a group of eleven easy going Calvinists to set out for the frontier of the Iowa Territory to spread a Congregationalist form of Christianity and New England culture. The result of their effort was the opening of Iowa College in 1850. But their openly abolitionist and temperance positions were decidedly unpopular with many in their new home of Davenport; the trustees of Iowa College were soon looking for a new location.

In a parallel development Josiah Bushnell Grinnell, whose goal was to found a Congregationalist community in Iowa, had acted on advance inside information as to where future rail lines were to be constructed. As one of five founders of the town he imagined founding both a religious and an educational community. Starting in 1855 when purchasing land in Grinnell twenty dollars over the asking price went directly to a fund for the founding of a college. J.B. Grinnell “[who] had always evinced ...an interest in both pietism and profits” (p.92) envisioned a full-blown university. Competing with seven other towns the trustees of Iowa College chose Grinnell in 1858. J.B. Grinnell, who designated himself President of the “University” as well as Professor of History, Rhetoric, and Elocution (without the benefit of any students, faculty, or campus buildings) had persuaded a group of authentic scholars to join him in efforts at institution building. In September 1858 the merger between Iowa College and Grinnell University was official. Classes began when Iowa College opened in Grinnell in October of 1861.

While this magisterial book delineates the development of Grinnell College from its founding until the end of the nineteenth century it really does much more. It is possible over a century later to trace backward in time, from the normative ideal of “truth, understanding, and shared endeavor,” to those anti-slavery, pro-temperance, pro-suffrage forbearers who set the trajectory on which Grinnell College now finds itself. Additionally, there are a number of narratives that are both compelling and stand on their own.

John Brown, whom Abraham Lincoln in an Obamaesque moment referred to as a “misguided fanatic,” visited Grinnell in February of 1859. Fresh from a raid in Missouri where he had killed a slave owner while liberating his slaves, Brown was warmly welcomed by J.B. Grinnell and allowed to use his large wool-storage barn to house his company of followers. The people of the town were both eager and enthusiastic in their welcoming of Brown who spoke at the Congregationalist church on Sunday and visited the local primary school on Monday before leaving town. This was to earn both the town and its eponymous founder a reputation for radicalism around the state. Legend has it that before he was executed, John Brown requested that one of the pikes used in the Raid on Harper's Ferry be sent to J.B. Grinnell who, as long as he lived, used it at the head of the academic Commencement procession.

Professor Leonard Parker was to Grinnell College in the nineteenth century what Paul was to the New Testament. In his dual role of the superintendent of Poweshiek County Schools and later as a professor at Iowa College (it did not become Grinnell College until early in the twentieth century) Parker was in many respects the soul of the institution. He and one of the town's founders Amos Bixby resisted a mob in 1860 that sought to prevent the enrollment of four male fugitive slaves in the town school. After first being denied a leave of absence from his teaching duties he was finally allowed to lead a company of Grinnell volunteers in 1864 for a one hundred day tour of duty. And, what goes down as one of the finest moments in Grinnell history, he published an extensive article in The Grinnell Herald arguing against the imperialistic annexation of the Philippine Islands.

One tradition that did not persist (thankfully for anyone holding a Jello-shot party insulting faculty members) was President Magoun's “Come Forward” program. Any student guilty of an infraction against the code of conduct was required to make a public confession of it during chapel. Maoist self-criticism was based on the same principle and understandably the student body was not sorry to see the practice discontinued.

Perhaps the incident covered in the book that is my personal favorite had to do with finding a replacement for the outgoing President George Magoun. A leading candidate for the position was J.B. Grinnell's son-in-law David Mears. Mears also had the financial backing of Massachusetts shoe merchant Edward Goodnow. The contour of the deal was that if Mears was to become the President of the college then Goodnow would donate $50,000 (about $1.2 million in 2010 dollars). The proposal was further contingent upon the renaming of the college after Goodnow. In a classic response, the trustees declined the offer because “the sum named does not in our view by any means warrant it” and because such an action would potentially make the college the source of ridicule. The trustees, pragmatic to the end, stated: “that should the circumstances ever occur in which some larger gift, say from $150,000 to $250,000 be conditioned on a change of name, that question would be favorably considered” (p.221). Mears, who was angry at the rejection, withdrew his name from consideration and George Gates became the second president serving from 1887 until 1900.

In speaking to a retired Dean of Students who attended Grinnell College in the 1950s I learned that Professor Wall taught a course attended by all freshmen on the history of the school. Is this feasible today? It is undoubtedly more complicated than merely finding someone to write the syllabus with many more matriculates now in attendance than in the middle of last century. However, one seemingly logical addendum to Professor Wall's work would be a work entitle something like The History of Grinnell College in the Twentieth Century: From the Brink of Insolvency to Incredibly Well Endowed.

Burling Library 2nd floor LD2055.G52 W35 1997

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Bomb Power

Garry Wills. Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State. New York: Penguin Press, 2010.

Reviewed by T. Hatch

President Harry Truman referred to the nuclear bomb(s) that the United States dropped on Japanese cities as “the greatest thing in history.” Informing the American public that the Bomb had been used against the Japanese was “the happiest announcement I ever made,” Truman boasted. While Truman naively thought that the U.S. nuclear monopoly was eternal, what was seemingly forever was the way the Bomb redefined the Presidency. Garry Wills argues that it was the Bomb that allowed for a permanent militarization of U.S. society; the government was fundamentally changed to a National Security State; the apparatus of secrecy and control were elevated; the Congress and Supreme Court became constitutionally junior partners.

Any book about the Cold War, or as I like to refer to it “the gift that keeps on giving,” always raises two questions in my mind: Would there have been a Cold War without Harry Truman? And, was the deployment of the Bomb the sine qua non of the Cold War? Clearly these are two hypotheticals we can never know the answer to, but what if Henry Wallace was correct in his assertion that the Soviets were weak at the end of World War II and could best be dealt with diplomatically?

Wills maintains that what made the use of the Bomb inevitable was Truman's fear that if it was not used, the American public would find out about its existence and the great cost ($2 billion 1940s type dollars) to construct it and would demand his impeachment. The National Security State in retrospect seems like a natural outgrowth of Truman's bellicose paranoia. In order to maintain a large military during peacetime and for the executive branch to exercise power in a secretive fashion, the National Security State was essential. Its existence was buttressed by the belief that any gain by the Communists anywhere was a threat to U.S. security. The National Security State was unaccountable to the Congress and the people, was secret and secretly funded, and resorted to subversion, sabotage, and assassination.

If it was not bad enough that the National Security State assumes that the government's secrets are too important to be shared with the public, and that we should simply trust our political leaders to do the right thing issuing them an exemption to democracy, the consolidation of executive power continues unabated. The Congress has made efforts to halt the concentration of power in the Executive Branch, e.g. the War Powers Resolution (1973), the Ethics in Government Act (1978), the Independent Council Act (1978), the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (1978), and the Presidential Records Act (1978), all of which have had little effect in halting the march of the concentration of power in the Executive Branch. The reason that Congress and the courts are reticent to challenge executive power and its propensity to make so many unilateral decisions is the president's power over the bomb. Wills holds that the Commander-in-Chief role has been unconstitutionally elevated, giving the president illegitimate power over civilians.

It is Wills' contention that this concentration of power in the Executive Branch has led to much mischief. He devotes a full chapter to the events that culminated in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Unlike the usual hagiography of the History Channel, Wills places the blame for the near nuclear catastrophe on the Kennedy brothers. Robert Kennedy, then Attorney General of the United States, managed Operation Mongoose. The goal of this operation was to overthrow the Cuban Revolution. RFK stated that, “My idea is to stir things up on [the] island with espionage, sabotage, general disorder." Neither Congress nor Adlai Stevenson, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, were informed about any of RFK's activities with Operation Mongoose. In addition, RFK placed the now historically notorious Colonel Edward Lansdale in charge of directing attacks on Cuba. Wills argues “The direct consequence of Mongoose was Castro's acceptance of the Russian offer of nuclear missiles on his island.” The missiles were intended as a deterrent against a U.S. invasion of Cuba. The U.S., in the wake of the Bay of Pigs incident, was clearly the aggressor. Krushchev, for his part, reasoned that the missiles in Cuba were no more of a provocation than the U.S. missiles in Turkey. Similar to Noam Chomsky's argument the the U.S. is a “rogue state,” Wills avers, “We toppled regimes in a high-handed way, which gave us license to kill those who might uphold dangerous regimes, even democratically elected ones.”

It is no surprise that Wills segues to the war on terror and to the implications that this consolidation of power signifies. In this narrative, Messrs. Cheney and Rumsfeld are seen as leading the counter-revolution through their actions. The Unitary Executive theory was perfectly suited to their purposes insofar as it allows the president to get rid of troublesome regulations and allowed Bush and Cheney to use it as an authorization to set-up military tribunals, wage undeclared wars, deny habeas corpus, order extraordinary renditions (kidnap and torture), abrogate the Geneva Conventions etc. Cheney in particular is on the record saying, “I believe in a strong robust executive authority, and I think that the world we live in demands it.” Cheney's argument is very much like the one that Julius and Augustus Caesar employed two thousand years ago, i.e., you can hardly run an empire when burdened by the unruliness of amateurish and inefficient mechanisms of the Republic.

Wills opines that the legacy of the Bomb makes the president “a self-entangling giant.” This was demonstrated brilliantly by G.W. Bush. The troubling part of all of this is the continuity between various administrations regardless of the party affiliation. In this regard, Barack Obama has displayed a remarkable respect for tradition and an absolute contempt for “change.” CIA chief Leon Panetta has defended “extraordinary rendition,” (a practice invented during the Clinton administration), Solicitor General Elena Kagan (also a potential candidate for the Supreme Court) stated that captured terrorists should be subjected to “battlefield law,” “state secrets” are defended by the Obama Justice Department, and Obama has consistently refused to release torture photos or investigate the criminality of the Bush administration.

Perhaps the tired bromide that “politics end at the waters' edge” is true.

Burling 3rd Floor UA 23 W4596 2010

Monday, May 24, 2010

Will the Real Postville Please Stand Up?

Stephen G. Bloom. Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America. San Diego: Harcourt, Inc., 2000.

Burling 2nd Floor: F630.J5 B56 2000

Mark Grey, Michele Devlin, Aaron Goldsmith. Postville U.S.A.: Surviving Diversity in Small-Town America. Boston: Gemma, 2009

Burling 2nd Floor: F629.P73x G74 2009

Reviewed by T. Hatch

The small northeastern Iowa town of Postville has a knack for drawing attention to itself. The kosher slaughterhouse operation that was raided by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in May of 2008 is now reopening under new ownership while the former CEO of Agriprocessors, Sholom Rubashkin, awaits sentencing on eighty-six counts of fraud, mail and wire fraud, and money laundering. Issues of racism, religion, and rural reactionaries aside, Postville is yet one more example of how there are no “and they lived happily ever after” stories involving the meatpacking industry in Iowa towns and cities. Unfortunately, this point largely eluded the authors of both of these deeply flawed and disappointing books.

Stephen Bloom's book was chronologically first, widely read, and marketed by a well known publisher. Bloom was a recent arrival at the University of Iowa in the Journalism Department in the mid-1990s when he set out upon a journey of discovery. A secular liberal Jew he was intrigued by the tales of the community of a couple of hundred Lubavitcher Hasidim who had moved to Postville starting in 1987 when the closed former animal rendering plant was purchased by Aaron Rubashkin of Crown Heights, Brooklyn and reopened as a glatt kosher processing plant.

Bloom traveled repeatedly to Postville from his home in Iowa City and interviewed both Postville locals and members of the Orthodox Jewish community there. One of the charges of Bloom's critics is that he litters the countryside with ridiculous stereotypes. There is some validity to this accusation. In the first chapter of the book, Bloom provides the reader with some local color of how life is in Iowa. He avers that in Iowa “the concept of road rage didn't exist.” People “drove ...ever-so-slowly, almost never over the speed limit” (p.7). Further, I learned something about Iowa grocery stores from Bloom. “Here the local grocery store stocked pigs' ears that customers picked out of a big wooden crate”(p.15). I lived in Iowa City for almost thirty years and have absolutely no idea of where this grocery store with the pigs' ears might be. But, I heartily approve of perpetuating stereotypes of this nature. In fact whenever I travel out of state, and because I see the ideal population of Iowa as being no more than three million people, I regale all listeners with tales of livestock running wild in the streets.

While I lack standing and expertise in matters relative to Orthodox Judaism, Bloom serves up a number of stereotypes relating to the Hasidim of Postville that strain credulity. Are all Jews in Postville really lousy drivers? (p.47) Do the Lubavitchers all fail to mow their lawns and shovel the snow from their sidewalks? (p.48) Viewing an on line picture of Sholom Rubashkin's house it appears that the yard is up to acceptable standards of suburban lawn care.

The focus of Bloom's book is the political fight that the city council of Postville had with Agriprocessors over the issue of annexation. The proposed annexation would include the slaughter facility which had been outside city limits and therefore beyond the reach of local taxation. The annexation issue came to be viewed as a referendum of the presence of the Hasidim in Postville. Sholom Rubashkin had threatened that if the town's people were to vote in favor of annexation then Agriprocessors would pack up and leave. This turned out to be a bluff as annexation passed by a ten percent margin with only fifty-seven percent of all eligible voters taking part in the vote.

Bloom is up front in telling the reader that he sided with the Postville locals and hoped that annexation would pass. This brings us to the not so sub textual crux of the issue. The real clash of the cultures here was between a secular Jew and his Orthodox counterparts. While Bloom's book is entertainingly colorful in its descriptive splendor it is not a work of analysis and explains almost nothing. Yet it is the better of the two Postville books.

Postville U.S.A. By Mark Grey, Michele Devlin, and Aaron Goldsmith is a self-conscious and tendentious effort to stake a claim to “authenticity.” Two things immediately come to mind in reading this book. In the first instance “to err is human but to really f@#k up requires a committee.” And in the second instance, since it is unclear which author has written what, it is possible to establish a literary form of plausible deniability.

The second Postville book was written in the wake of the Immigration and Customs enforcement raid. As such, it left the reader flat. The authors contend that “In many respects, Agriprocessors revitalized Postville, bringing hundreds of new jobs and a sizeable payroll”(p.6). While this is one description of events, it is at least as accurate to say that Agriprocessors concentrated, and exploited, undocumented immigrant labor flouting a variety of labor laws daily. This environment of exploitation occurred in part because Agriprocessors made sure no union got near the place. The low wages paid the immigrants made those jobs less attractive than jobs at the local Walmart. While the authors recognized that Postville was emblematic of issues swirling around immigration, globalization, and migrant workers' rights, and they correctly placed the community with the rest of rural America riding the wave of demographic change, they spent little time explaining how this came to pass. It is almost as if the immigrant laborers were anonymous.

Not that I expected the authors to become Philip Foner, but their two page abstract description of the beatdown of labor in the 1980s during the Reagan counterrevolution was totally inadequate. How was it that hundreds (and, with turnover, thousands) of immigrant workers just happened to find their way to Postville? What a stroke of good luck for an employer paying minimum wage to workers to debone cows.

By far the most tiresome part of Postville U.S.A. was the endless prattle about the diversity industry. Lacking the sophistication to realize there was such a thing (at first glance I thought it might be what the guys in Human Resources of some corporation call themselves to sound cool) after reading the book I was totally indifferent to the hustle of the diversity specialists. The authors positioned themselves as running the gauntlet between the politically correct progressivism of the diversity industry on one side and ahistorical, ethnocentric conservatism of the racists and xenophobes on the other. They are the selfless ones who spoke for the gemeinschaft that is Postville; geist that can only be judged by itself and not by any “outsiders.”

I frankly expected that there would have been more space devoted to the day-to-day struggles of the townspeople after the government raid on Agriprocessors. Not only was the reader disappointed in this, the authors several times complained about members of immigrant families that were left behind and thus adding to the economic strain that the community already felt. Frankly another lesson that might have been derived is that a smaller community with a single dominant employer is at the mercy of the vagaries of a vicious postmodern capitalism.

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

The Long Way Home: An American Journey from Ellis Island to the Great War

Laskin, David. The Long Way Home: An American Journey from Ellis Island to the Great War. New York: Harper Collins, 2010.

R. Stuhr

It is interesting to read this book about 12 men who immigrated during the great 19th century wave of immigration in light of current debates on immigration and especially recent legislation in Arizona. Laskin's book is about the interesting path these men took to the United States, looking for opportunity, perhaps even seeking to avoid mandatory service in their native countries' armed forces, only to be drafted into the U.S. forces. We know this, we should know this about the ourselves and the population of our country, but this book serves as a reminder that the United States is made up of immigrants, that, in fact, this is what is special about our country--there is no specific ethnicity associated with being an American. The same people passing anti-immigrant legislation law in Arizona or passing English only laws have, somewhere in their not too distant ancestry a relative who came to this country speaking a language other than English (and English is such a rich expressive language because of its incorporation of words from all over the world).

Laskin's history looks back to the early lives of each of his subjects in their homeland and the reasons for their immigration. Most had a father or other relative living in the United States, some witnessed their villages or towns emptying out as the inhabitants left for America, all left expecting to find great opportunity--streets paved in gold. Most arrived in the United States to find opportunity but on a meager scale. They experienced discrimination, crowded and decrepit accommodations, minimal opportunities for work--often heavy and dangerous labor, and, for comfort, they gravitated toward small communities of those whose origin and language they shared.

A few of Laskin's subjects joined the army voluntarily as a viable employment option, others were drafted as the United States entered World War I. Laskin reports that the army was an army of recent immigrants, filled with soldiers who did not speak English and many were setting out to fight their own countrymen.

Although some of the immigrants whose stories are represented in this book went on to be decorated soldiers who established themselves with thriving families and successful careers others, Laskin writes, were killed in action, "[s]ome drifted. Some lived on the margins. Some never recovered from war wounds, whether physical or psychic" (327) in no small part from the trauma of war and the effects of poison gas. Not withstanding the contributions of immigrants in the war, as the war ended the Ku Klux Klan was having a resurgence and a building national fear of Communism led to the Emergency Quota Act of 1921 and the Immigration Act of 1924 which restricted most immigration and banned Asian immigration altogether.

This book serves as a social history of the First World War, as a tribute to the immigrant generation who served in the armed forces, and, sadly, as an always necessary reminder that we are a nation of immigrants. As I write this review, according to surveys, 51% of the U.S. population believe Arizona's legalized racial profiling as a means of identifying illegal aliens is "about right" (http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20004030-503544.html). A Long Way Home is a thoughtful, somewhat sentimental history. Laskin's attachment to his subject allows him to provide an intimate perspective on an aspect of American history that provides context and illumination in our own dark times.

On order for the Grinnell College Libraries

Other books by David Laskin in the Grinnell College Libraries:

The Children's Blizzard. New York: HarperPerennial, 2005
Burling 2nd Floor F595 .L37 2004

Partisans: Marriage, Politics, and Betrayal among the New York Intellectuals. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000.
Burling 2nd Floor PS255.N5 L37 2000

Saturday, May 1, 2010

Japanese Crime Novelist, Miyuki Miyabe

Japanese books! Novels by Miyuki Miyabe

Submitted by Deborah Iwabuchi

Burling Library is home to a complete set of the mystery novels of Miyuki Miyabe currently translated into English. Miyabe is a prolific Japanese writer who has sold millions of books in Japan, but is not quite as well known in the US. Mixing mystery, history, youth and some paranormal activity, as well as her own commentary on modern society, almost everyone in Japan has read a Miyabe novel at some time or another.

The titles available to you at Grinnell College are (in order of publishing date):

All She was Worth A straight mystery and the best known Miyabe novel in the English-speaking world; the search for a woman who has disappeared in an attempt to hide from the mess consumer financing has made of her life.

Burling 3rd PL856.E856 K3713 1999

Shadow Family This is also a “strictly in this world” tale that takes place in a single day at a Tokyo police station. In an effort to find a murderer, in the presence of the real family of the victim, police question his “shadow family”, a group of people the murdered man met online as part of a role-playing game.

Burling 3rd PL856.I856 R213 2004

Crossfire A series of murders take place in Tokyo, and all of the victims have been burned to a crisp. In this fantasy-plus-police procedural, Miyabe unfolds a tale that looks at victims of injustice in modern society, and examines the question of whether or not passing judgment on criminals should be left to the police.

Burling 3rd PL856.I856 K8713 2005

The Devil’s Whisper A young man loses his parents and ends up living with his aunt and her family. He finds himself involved in the investigation of the deaths of four young women that ultimately leads him to the story behind the unraveling of his own family.

Burling, Smith Memorial PL856.I856 M3513 2007

For a fuller review of this novel, see the blog entry in the Grinnell Book Review


The Sleeping Dragon A teenager on a bicycle and the death of a young boy in the middle of a storm rope in an unwilling magazine reporter with a past of his own. The solution to all of the mysteries are in the hands of two young men: one who claims to be a psychic and the other who insists he is not.

Burling 3rd PL856.I856 R9813 2010


Tuesday, April 6, 2010

National Library Week April 11-17

April is many wonderful things, including National Poetry Month (more about that later), but also National Library Week. Our Governor Culver has seen fit to recognize the week ahead through a formal proclamation. You can view it at:
http://www.statelibraryofiowa.org/ld/tell-library-story/Props/10nlwproc

But, for you who prefer not to follow links, here are a couple of interesting details noted in the proclamation:

Iowa has 543 public libraries, 79 academic libraries, "more than'" 1,400 school libraries, and 63 special libraries. Iowans made 18,744,559 up 41% from 1999 and 2/3rds of Iowa's citizens have an active library card.

Celebrate next week by making a visit to your local public or academic (or school or special) library, and enjoy the helpful library professionals and services you will find there.

Monday, April 5, 2010

The Rooster goes to Wolf Hall

And the voting is in--really! The judging is a fun (and thoughtful!) read and a nail biter to boot--check out the championship round at the Morning News Tournament of Books. And that is all until next year.

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

More Tournament of Books

Since our last entry on the Tournament of Books, much as happened. The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker, The Book of Night Women by Marlon James, and the Big Machine by Victor Lavalle, all made it on to the quarter finals. Since then, the quarterfinals and semifinals have happened leaving only the zombie and championship rounds to go (April 1 & 2). Barbara Kingsolver's The Lacuna, beat Colum McCann's Let the Great World Spin and Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall beat James's The Book of Night Women. Reading isn't such a passive activity is it?

Look here for the champion title, or visit the Tournament of Books yourself--lots of good reading about reading.

When We Get There

Seliy, Shauna. When We Get There. New York: Bloomsbury, 2007.

Submitted by R. Stuhr

In her first novel, Shauna Seliy, writes about a coal mining community in Pennsylvania, set some time before today, but after the Viet Nam war. As you can imagine, it is hard times in the community with both tragic accidents from the coal mines in its past, and economic decline as the last coal mines close in its present and future. In many ways, this community is shielded from time and the outside world. The Eastern European backgrounds of the members of this community transcend politics and pop culture. Seliy focuses specifically on four generations of a family, the first generation of which came from Russia and Hungary. 13 year old Lucas has lost his father in a coal mine accident and his mother has disappeared. He is being cared for by his grandmother. The family's patriarch, Lucas's great grandfather, goes into a steep decline as he loses control of the family and in particular, as a symbolic pear tree is set on fire by someone outside the family. As the great grandfather sickens, it becomes clear that he expects young Lucas to take some responsibility for the farm. Lucas is more intent on finding his mother than doing anything to keep the family together, but as the novel progresses, Lucas gains insight into his family and his place within the family. The novel is colored by the use of bits of Russian language and elements of Russian and Orthodox culture. Seliy includes a tinge of magical realism -- enough to add to the outside the rest of the world character of the setting, but not so much as to overcome the delicate progress or message of the novel.

Burling Library, Smith Memorial. PS 3619 .E465 W47 2007.

Ms. Hempel Chronicles

Bynum, Sarah Shun-Lien. Ms. Hempel Chronicles. New York: Harcourt, 2008.

Submitted by R. Stuhr

This short novel is almost like a series of short stories, all dealing with a different event or time in Ms. Hempel's life. Each chapter reveals some new detail of her life. Ms. Hempel is a young (under 30) middle school teacher who is figuring out teaching, her students, and herself. All of it is confusing for her, her ambitions, her lack of ambitions, her responses to her students, her relationships with friends and family. In some ways the book is frustrating, because, since the the main character lacks much insight into herself, so do we, the readers. On the other hand, Bynum's narrative style is unusual and trying to absorb the sudden revelations gives the reader the opportunity to work just a little harder (in a gratifying way). Ms. Hempel doesn't have everything figured out, she has not developed deep insights, she is muddling her way through as do many of us.

Burling Library, Smith Memorial PS 3602 .Y58 M74 2008.

Bynum
is also the author of Madeleine is Sleeping. Harcourt, 2004.

Monday, March 15, 2010

The Case of the Missing Books

Sansom Ian. The Case of the Missing Books. NY: Harper, 2005.

submitted by R. Stuhr

Mystery is not usually a genre I'm excited about reading, but how could I pass up this particular mystery? The main character is Israel Armstrong, the Jewish-Irish London raised underemployed librarian who has so far found work in a mall bookstore. Israel finally finds a bona fide librarian position at a public library in Ireland, only to find out that the library has been closed. He still has a job, but his new library is mobile, in fact his new library consists of an old book mobile or "mobile learning center." He is convinced by the local bureaucrat to take the job on at least temporarily to get the mobile library started up. Israel soon discovers, however, that all of the books are missing. This not too intense mystery unravels as Israel gets to know the local library constituency and has encounters with chickens, mud, and angry citizens. He may or may not solve the mystery, but the local readers are well served before the novel ends.

This is fun reading and the author knows something about libraries and city councils.

Burling 3rd Floor PR 6119 .A575 M66 2006b

This is the first in a series, so if you like this one, you are in luck!

The Tournament of Books continues

The opening rounds are taking place at the Morning News Tournament of Books. Here are the pair offs and the winners so far:

Round March 9 :
Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin (Smith Memorial PR6063.C335 L47 2009) The Winner!
Nami Mun, Miles Nowhere (on order at Burling Library)

Round March 10:
John Wray, Lowboy (Smith Memorial, PS3573.R365 L69 2009)
Katheryn Stocket, The Help (3rd floor, PS3619.T636 H45 2009) The Winner!

Round March 11:
Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna (3rd floor, PS3561.I496 L33 2009) The Winner!
Bill Cotter, Fever Chart (on order for Burling Library)

Round March 12:
Kamila Shamsie, Burnt Shadows (3rd floor, PR9540.9.S485 B87x 2009) The Winner!
Richard Russo, That Old Cape Magic (on order for Burling Library)

Round March 15:
Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall (on order for Burling Library) The Winner!
Apostolos Doxiadis, Logicomix (on order for Burling Library)

Follow the links to read the comments for each pair off.

More to come

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Music History Recommendations from Eastern Pennsylvania

Lewis Baratz, harpsichordist, musicologist, and computer scientist living in a scenic corner of Pennsylvania along the Delware River is reading and loving Mr. Langshaw's Square Piano: The Story of the First Pianos and How They Caused a Cultural Revolution by Madeline Goold. New York: BlueBridge, 2009.

On order for Burling Library

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Los Angeles Times Festival of Books

The Los Angeles Times recently announced its 30th Annual Book Prizes and its April Book Festival held at UCLA April 24th & 25th. This year they have two new prizes, The Innovator's Award, awarded to Dave Eggers, and the Graphic Novel Prize (the first specifically designated prize in the United States according to the LA Times).

2009 Robert Kirsch Award goes to Evan S. Connell

The rest of the awards (including the Graphic Novel Prize) will be announced at the book festival in April.

Here are the finalists:
Biography Finalists
  • Kirstin Downey, The Woman Behind the New Deal: The Life of Frances Perkins, FDR’s Secretary of Labor and His Moral Conscience (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday)
  • Linda Gordon, Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits (W.W. Norton & Co.)
  • Michael Scammell, Koestler: The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth Century Skeptic (Random House)
  • Melvin Urofsky, Louis D. Brandeis: A Life (Pantheon)
  • Kenneth Whyte, The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst (Counterpoint Press)
Current Interest Finalists
  • Dave Cullen, Columbine (TWELVE/Hachette Book Group)
  • Dave Eggers, Zeitoun (McSweeney’s Press)
  • Tracy Kidder, The Strength in What Remains (Random House)
  • Nicholas D. Kristof & Sheryl WuDunn, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide (Knopf)
  • T.R. Reid, The Healing of America: The Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Healthcare (The Penguin Press)
Fiction Finalists
  • Jill Ciment, Heroic Measures (Pantheon)
  • Jane Gardam, The Man in the Wooden Hat (Europa Editions)
  • Michelle Huneven, Blame (Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
  • Kate Walbert, A Short History of Women (Scribner)
  • Rafael Yglesias, A Happy Marriage (Scribner)
Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction Finalists
  • Petina Gappah, An Elegy for Easterly (Faber & Faber/Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
  • Paul Harding, Tinkers (Bellevue Literary Press)
  • Philipp Meyer, American Rust (Spiegel & Grau)
  • Daniyal Mueenuddin, In Other Rooms, Other Wonders (W.W. Norton & Co.)
  • Wells Tower, Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Graphic Novel Finalists
  • Gilbert Hernandez, Luba (A Love and Rockets Book) (Fantagraphics Books)
  • Taiyo Matsumoto, GoGo Monster (VIZ Media)
  • David Mazzucchelli, Asterios Polyp (Pantheon)
  • Bryan Lee O’Malley, Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 5: Scott Pilgrim vs. the Universe (Oni Press)
  • Joe Sacco, Footnotes in Gaza (Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt & Co., LLC)
History Finalists
  • Richard Holmes, Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science (Pantheon)
  • Martha A. Sandweiss, Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line (The Penguin Press)
  • Kevin Starr, Golden Dreams: California in an Age of Abundance 1950 – 1963 (Oxford University Press)
  • Amy Louise Wood, Lynching and Spectacle: Witnessing Racial Violence in America, 1890-1940 (University of North Carolina Press)
  • Gordon S. Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic 1789 – 1815 (Oxford University Press)
Mystery / Thriller Finalists
  • Megan Abbott, Bury Me Deep (Simon & Schuster)
  • David Ellis, The Hidden Man (Putnam)
  • Attica Locke, Black Water Rising (HarperCollins)
  • Val McDermid, A Darker Domain (HarperCollins)
  • Stuart Neville, The Ghosts of Belfast (SOHO Press)
Poetry Finalists
  • Gabrielle Calvocoressi, Apocalyptic Swing (Persea Books)
  • Amy Gerstler, Dearest Creature (Penguin Poets)
  • Tom Healy, What the Right Hand Knows (Four Way Books)
  • Brenda Hillman, Practical Water (Wesleyan University Press)
  • Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, }Open Interval{, (University of Pittsburgh Press)
Science & Technology Finalists
  • Marcia Bartusiak, The Day We Found the Universe (Pantheon)
  • Graham Farmelo, The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom (Basic Books/Perseus Book Group)
  • Bill Streever, Cold: Adventures in the Worlds’ Frozen Places (Little, Brown & Company)
  • Richard Wrangham, Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human (Basic Books/Perseus Book Group)
  • Carol Kaesuk Yoon, Naming Nature: The Clash Between Instinct and Science (W.W. Norton & Co)
Young Adult Literature Finalists
  • James Cross Giblin, The Rise and Fall of Senator Joe McCarthy (Clarion Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
  • Frances Hardinge, The Lost Conspiracy (HarperCollins)
  • Deborah Heiligman, Charles and Emma: The Darwin’s Leap of Faith (Henry Holt Books for Young Readers)
  • Elizabeth Partridge, Marching for Freedom: Walk Together Children and Don’t You Grow Weary (Viking Children’s Books/Penguin Group)
  • Shaun Tan, Tales from Outer Suburbia (Arthur A. Levine Books/Scholastic)