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orthodoxydaily · 4 years ago

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Saints&Reading: Tue., Apr., 13, 2021

March 31/April 13

Saint Innocent (Innokentii) (Veniaminov), Metropolitan of Moscow and Kolomensk (1879)

Saint Innocent Veniaminov Equal to the Apostles and Evangelizer of North America John Evseyevich Popov-Veniaminov was born August 8, 1797 in the village of Anginsoye in Irkutsk, Russia. His baptism took place in the local church [1]. His father was a church server, so it was natural that John began reading the Epistle during services at an early age [2]. When John was only six years old, his father died. Four years later, John entered the Irkutsk Theological Seminary. In 1817, he married, was ordained to the diaconate, and was assigned to serve at the Annunciation Church in Irkutsk. After his ordination to the priesthood in 1821, he taught catechism to children while serving the parish as its priest [3]. In 1823, Father John embarked on a great adventure. The Bishop of Irkutsk had been instructed to send a priest to Unalaska in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. The clergy all refused to go – all, that is, except Father John. In May 1823, he and his wife, their infant son Innocent, and his mother and brother Stefan began the perilous journey. Fourteen months later they arrived on Unalaska Island [4] where he and his family lived in an earthen hut they had constructed themselves. A multi-talented man, he trained a group of local faithful in construction techniques and helped them build Holy Ascension Church, which they completed in 1826 [5]. Father John made numerous missionary journeys around Unalaska and the neighboring Fox and Pribilof Islands. He frequently traveled by dogsled or canoe, his tiny craft buffeted by storms in the Gulf of Alaska [6]. In 1834, he was transferred to New Archangel, later renamed Sitka, where he dedicated himself to ministering to the Tlingits. He studied their language and customs and produced scholarly notes and a dictionary. Among his other journeys was that he undertook in 1836, when he visited Fort Ross north of San Francisco and northern California’s Spanish missions. In 1838, Father John returned to Russia to report on his missionary efforts. While there, he received the sad news that his wife had died. After some time, he decided to enter monastic orders with the name Innocent, in honor of the sainted missionary Bishop of Irkutsk. Two years later, he was consecrated Bishop of Kamchatka and the Kurile Islands and the Aleutian Islands at the Cathedral of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God in Saint Petersburg [7]. After his return to Alaska as the first resident Bishop in America, Bishop Innocent continued his missionary journeys, during which he proclaimed the Gospel in ways the people could easily understand and remember [8]. During one of his missionary journeys, Bishop Innocent encountered dangerously rough waters off Kodiak Island. Turning in the direction of Spruce Island, where Saint Herman of Alaska lived and was buried, he fervently entreated Saint Herman pray to God for assistance. Within minutes, the waters became calm [9]. His ongoing travels helped him to master local languages and dialects. He also developed alphabets for previously unwritten languages and translated Scripture and other works into Unagan and Yakut [10]. In 1848, Bishop Innocent had the joy of consecrating Saint Michael Cathedral in Sitka, which he used his talents to design and build [11]. The cathedral still serves as the main cathedral for the Diocese of Alaska. In recognition of his exceptional ministry, he was elevated to the dignity of Archbishop in 1850. Archbishop Innocent was elected Metropolitan of Moscow and Kolomna in 1868 [12]. As Metropolitan, he worked diligently to uplift the faithful spiritually and improve the living conditions of the clergy. He fell asleep in the Lord on March 31, 1879 and was buried in the Church of the Holy Spirit at the Trinity-Saint Sergius Lavra in Sergeiv Posad, near Moscow [13]. He was canonized in 1977 by the Church of Russia during the tenure of Patriarch Pimen of Moscow [14].

O Holy Father Innocent, pray to God for us! ■

Source: Orthodox Church of America

The Priest Martyr Ipatios, Bishop of Gangra,

The PriestMartyr Ipatios, Bishop of Gangra, was bishop of the city of Gangra in Paphlagonia (Asia Minor). In the year 325 he participated in the I OEcumenical Council at Nicea, at which the heresy of Arius was given anathema. When Saint Ipatios was returning in 326 from Constantinople to Gangra, followers of the schismatics Novatus and Felicissimus fell upon him in a desolate place. The heretics ran him through with swords and spears, and threw him from an high bank into a swamp. Like the First-martyr Arch-deacon Stephen, Saint Ipatios prayed for his murderers. A certain Arian woman struck the saint on the head with a stone, and he died. The murderers hid his body in a cave, where a christian who kept straw there found his body. Recognising the body of the bishop, he hastened to report about this in the city, and the inhabitants of Gangra piously buried the remains of their beloved arch-pastor. After death the relics of Saint Ipatios won reknown for numerous miracles, in particular the casting out of demons and for healing the sick.

From of old the Priestmartyr Ipatios was particularly venerated in the Russian land. Thus in the year 1330 was built at Kostroma the Ipatiev monastery, on the place of an appearance of the Mother of God with the Pre-eternal Christ-Child and saints that were present – the Apostle Philip and the Priestmartyr Ipatios, bishop of Gangra. This monastery afterwards occupied a significant place in the spiritual and social life of the nation, particularly during the years of the Time of Troubles. The old-time copies of the Vita of the Priestmartyr Ipatios were widely distributed in Russian literature, and one of these entered into the compiling of the Chet'i Minei [Reading Menaion] of Metropolitan Makarii (1542-1564). In this Vita was preserved an account about the appearance of the Saviour to Saint Ipatios on the eve of the martyr's death. The veneration to the saint consists of prayers, words of praise and teaching on the day of his memory. The pious veneration of Sainted Ipatios was also expressed in the liturgical works of Russian authors. During the XIX Century was written a new service to the Priestmartyr Ipatios, distinct from the services written by the Monk Joseph the Studite, contained in the March Menaion.

Isaiah 40:18-31

18 To whom then will you liken God? Or what likeness will you compare to Him?

19 The workman molds an image, The goldsmith overspreads it with gold, And the silversmith casts silver chains.

20 Whoever is too impoverished for such a contribution Chooses a tree that will not rot; He seeks for himself a skillful workman To prepare a carved image that will not totter.

21 Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?

22 It is He who sits above the circle of the earth, And its inhabitants are like grasshoppers, Who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, And spreads them out like a tent to dwell in.

23 He brings the princes to nothing; He makes the judges of the earth useless.

24 Scarcely shall they be planted, Scarcely shall they be sown, Scarcely shall their stock take root in the earth, When He will also blow on them, And they will wither, And the whirlwind will take them away like stubble.

25 “To whom then will you liken Me, Or to whom shall I be equal?” says the Holy One.

26 Lift up your eyes on high, And see who has created these things, Who brings out their host by number; He calls them all by name, By the greatness of His might And the strength of His power; Not one is missing.

27 Why do you say, O Jacob, And speak, O Israel: “My way is hidden from the Lord, And my just claim is passed over by my God”?

28 Have you not known? Have you not heard? The everlasting God, the Lord, The Creator of the ends of the earth, Neither faints nor is weary. His understanding is unsearchable.

29 He gives power to the weak, And to those who have no might He increases strength.

30 Even the youths shall faint and be weary, And the young men shall utterly fall,

31 But those who wait on the Lord Shall renew their strength; They shall mount up with wings like eagles, They shall run and not be weary, They shall walk and not faint.

Proverbs 15:7-19

7The lips of the wise disperse knowledge, But the heart of the fool does not do so.

8 The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord, But the prayer of the upright is His delight.

9 The way of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord, But He loves him who follows righteousness.

10 Harsh discipline is for him who forsakes the way, And he who hates correction will die.

11 Hell and Destruction are before the Lord; So how much more the hearts of the sons of men.

12 A scoffer does not love one who corrects him, Nor will he go to the wise.

13 A merry heart makes a cheerful countenance, But by sorrow of the heart the spirit is broken.

14 The heart of him who has understanding seeks knowledge, But the mouth of fools feeds on foolishness.

15 All the days of the afflicted are evil, But he who is of a merry heart has a continual feast.

16 Better is a little with the fear of the Lord, Than great treasure with trouble.

17 Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, Than a fatted calf with hatred.

18 A wrathful man stirs up strife, But he who is slow to anger allays contention.

19 The way of the lazy man is like a hedge of thorns, But the way of the upright is a highway.

#orthodoxy #orthodoxchristian #ancientchristianity #originofchristianity #spirituality #sacred texts #oldtestament #prophets #wisdom

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victoriagloverstuff · 6 years ago

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40 of the Best Villains in Literature

Villains are the best. We may not love them in our lives, but they’re often the best part of our literature—on account of their clear power, their refusal of social norms, and most importantly, their ability to make stories happen. After all, if everyone was always nice and good and honest all the time, literature probably wouldn’t even exist.

To that end, below are a few of my favorites from the wide world of literary villainy. But what exactly does “best” mean when it comes to bad guys (and gals)? Well, it might mean any number of things here: most actually terrifying, or most compelling, or most well-written, or most secretly beloved by readers who know they are supposed to be rooting for the white hats but just can’t help it. It simply depends on the villain. Think of these as noteworthy villains, if it clarifies things.

This is not an exhaustive list, of course, and you are more than invited to nominate your own favorite evildoers in the comments section. By the way, for those of you who think that great books can be spoiled—some of them might be below. After all, the most villainous often take quite a few pages to fully reveal themselves.

Mitsuko, Quicksand, Junichiro Tanizaki

The brilliance of Mitsuko (and the brilliance of this novel) is such that, even by the end, you’re not sure how much to despise her. She is such an expert manipulator, such a re-threader of the truth, that she is able to seduce everyone in her path (read: not only Sonoko but Sonoko’s husband) and get them to like it. Including the reader, of course. In the end, Sonoko is still so devoted to her that the grand tragedy of her life is the fact that Mitsu did not allow her to die alongside her.

Mr. Hyde, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson

Because the very worst villain is . . . get this . . . actually inside you. Also, you just fell asleep one time and when you woke up it was your evil id and not you? We’ve heard that one before. (So has Buffy.)

Infertility, The Children of Men, P. D. James

Sure, Xan is also a villain in this novel. But the real, big-picture villain, the thing that causes everything to dissolve, and people to start christening their kittens and pushing them around in prams, has to be the global disease that left all the men on earth infertile.

The shark, Jaws, Peter Benchley

A villain so villainous that (with the help of Steven Spielberg) it spawned a wave of shark paranoia among beach-goers. In fact, Benchley, who also wrote the screenplay for the film, was so horrified at the cultural response to his work that he became a shark conservationist later in life.

The kid, The Giving Tree, Shel Silverstein

Take, take, take. This kid is the actual worst.

Professor Moriarty, “The Final Problem,” Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

A criminal mastermind— “the Napoleon of Crime,” as Holmes puts it—and the only person to ever give the good consulting detective any real trouble (other than himself). Though after countless adaptations, we now think of Moriarty as Holmes’s main enemy, Doyle really only invented him as a means to kill his hero, and he isn’t otherwise prominent in the series. Moriarty has become bigger than Moriarty.

Mrs. Danvers, Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier

The housekeeper so devoted to her dead ex-mistress that she’s determined to keep her memory alive—by goading her boss’s new wife to jump out of the window to her death. That’s one way to do it, I suppose.

Vanity, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde

You could argue that it’s Harry who corrupts Dorian, and James who stalks and tries to murder him, but the real source of all this young hedonist’s problems is his own self-obsession. Sometimes I like to think about what this novel would be like if someone wrote it today, with Dorian as a social media star. . .

Uriah Heep, David Copperfield, Charles Dickens

Few villains are quite so aggressively ugly as Uriah Heep (even the name! Dickens did not go in much for subtlety). When we first meet him, he is described as a “cadaverous” man, “who had hardly any eyebrows, and no eyelashes, and eyes of a red-brown, so unsheltered and unshaded, that I remember wondering how he went to sleep. He was high-shouldered and bony; dressed in decent black, with a white wisp of a neckcloth; buttoned up to the throat; and had a long, lank, skeleton hand.” Some Dickens scholars apparently think that Heep was based on Hans Christian Andersen, in which case, mega burn—unless Andersen was into heavy metal.

The Grand Witch, The Witches, Roald Dahl

As “the most evil woman in creation,” she is on a mission to torture and kill as many children as possible, and often uses murder as a focusing device in meetings. She’s also kind of brilliant—I mean, murdering children by turning them into animals their parents want to exterminate? I have to say, that’s smart.

Cathy Ames, East of Eden, John Steinbeck

Cathy Ames is cold as ice—a sociopath who had to learn as a child how to mimic feelings to get by—but soon also learns how easy it is to manipulate, destroy lives, and murder people to amuse herself. Apparently all this is available to her because of her remarkable beauty. In the end, she has a single feeling of remorse and promptly kills herself.

Mr. Rochester, Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë

That’s right, I said it. Mired in self-pity! Sullen and annoying! Dresses up as a gypsy to mess with Jane’s mind! Keeps his first wife locked in the attic! Thinks he can marry a nice girl like Jane anyway! Gaslights her constantly! Whatever.

Zenia, The Robber Bride, Margaret Atwood

In Atwood’s retelling of the Grimm fairy tale “The Robber Bridegroom,” an evil temptress named Zenia steals the partners of three women (among many, one presumes). Roz, Charis, and Tony, however, use their mutual hurt and hatred to form a friendship—and unpack the many lies and revisions of herself Zenia has offered to each of them. But I can’t really put it better than Lorrie Moore did in a 1993 review of the novel:

Oddly, for all her inscrutable evil, Zenia is what drives this book: she is impossibly, fantastically bad. She is pure theater, pure plot. She is Richard III with breast implants. She is Iago in a miniskirt. She manipulates and exploits all the vanities and childhood scars of her friends (wounds left by neglectful mothers, an abusive uncle, absent dads); she grabs at intimacies and worms her way into their comfortable lives, then starts swinging a pickax. She mobilizes all the wily and beguiling art of seduction and ingratiation, which she has been able to use on men, and she directs it at women as well. She is an autoimmune disorder. She is viral, self-mutating, opportunistic (the narrative discusses her in conjunction with AIDS, salmonella and warts). She is a “man-eater” run amok. Roz thinks: “Women don’t want all the men eaten up by man-eaters; they want a few left over so they can eat some themselves.”

Becky Sharp, Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray

A cynical, manipulative, intelligent beauty with many artistic talents and a premium can-do attitude at her disposal. You’ve never met a more dedicated hustler. By the end, the novel seems to judge her pretty harshly—but I’ve always loved her.

Henry, The Secret History, Donna Tartt

Oh, Henry—brooding, brilliant, bone-tired Henry. Some in the Lit Hub office argued that it was Julian who was the real villain in Donna Tartt’s classic novel of murder and declension, but I give Henry more credit than that. His villainy is in his carefulness, his coldness, his self-preservation at all costs. He is terrifying because we all know him—or someone who could oh-so-easily slide into his long overcoat, one winter’s night.

Hubris, almost all of literature but let’s go with Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton

Isn’t it awesome? We can just make dinosaurs! There is no foreseeable problem with this. We can totally handle it.

Arturo, Geek Love, Katherine Dunn

Here’s another novel with multiple candidates for Supreme Villain—should it be the Binewski parents, who purposefully poison themselves and their children in order to populate their freak show? Or should it be Mary Lick, a sort of modern millionaire version of Snow White’s Evil Queen, who pays pretty women to disfigure themselves? I think we have to go with Arturo the Aqua Boy, the beflippered narcissist who grows into a cult leader, encouraging his followers to slowly pare away their body parts in a search for “purity.” (But for the record, it’s all of the above.)

Dr. Frankenstein, Frankenstein, Mary Shelley

It’s true that the monster is the murderer in Shelley’s classic novel—and also, you know, a monster—but it’s Dr. Frankenstein who decided he had to play God and build a creature in his own image without thought to the possible ramifications! Shelley treats him as a tragic figure, but that only makes him a much more interesting villain.

Hannibal Lecter, Red Dragon, The Silence of the Lambs, etc., Thomas Harris

Made iconic by Anthony Hopkins, of course, but made brilliant and terrifying—a serial killing psychiatrist cannibal, come on—by Thomas Harris. “They don’t have a name for what he is.” Also, he has six fingers—though they’re on his left hand, so it couldn’t have been him who killed Mr. Montoya. Still, it puts him in rare company.

Captain Ahab, Moby-Dick, Herman Melville

Did you think the villain was the whale? The villain is not the whale—it’s the megalomaniac at the helm.

Lady Macbeth, Macbeth, William Shakespeare

The villainess of choice for every man who has ever claimed his wife made him do it. But I’ve always found Lady Macbeth more interesting than Macbeth himself—she’s the brains behind the operation, not to mention the ambition. Her sleepwalking scene is one of the best and most famous of all of Shakespeare’s plays. Even this makes me shiver:

Out, damned spot! out, I say!—One: two: why, then, ’tis time to do’t.—Hell is murky!—Fie, my lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?—Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him.

Sand, The Woman in the Dunes, Kobo Abe

It may be the devious villagers who trick the poor etymologist into the sand pit, but it is the sand itself that is the main antagonist in this slim and wonderful novel. The sand that keeps coming, and must be shoveled back. The sand that constantly threatens to swallow everything: first the man, then the woman, then the village—though one assumes the villagers would replace him before that happened. Sand.

Suburban Ennui, Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates

In everyone’s favorite horror novel about America in the ’50s, onetime bohemians Frank and April Wheeler move to the ‘burbs, and find it. . . extremely stifling. But it’s not the suburbs exactly but the Wheelers’ inability to understand one another, their fear, their creeping, cumulative despair, that are the forces of destruction here.

“The book was widely read as an antisuburban novel, and that disappointed me,” Yates said in a 1972 interview.

The Wheelers may have thought the suburbs were to blame for all their problems, but I meant it to be implicit in the text that that was their delusion, their problem, not mine. . . I meant it more as an indictment of American life in the 1950s. Because during the fifties there was a general lust for conformity all over this country, by no means only in the suburbs—a kind of blind, desperate clinging to safety and security at any price, as exemplified politically in the Eisenhower administration and the Joe McCarthy witch-hunts. Anyway, a great many Americans were deeply disturbed by all that—felt it to be an outright betrayal of our best and bravest revolutionary spirit—and that was the spirit I tried to embody in the character of April Wheeler. I meant the title to suggest that the revolutionary road of 1776 had come to something very much like a dead end in the fifties.

David Melrose, Never Mind, Edward St. Aubyn

Fathers don’t get much worse than David Melrose: cruel, brutal, and snobbish, a man who enjoyed humiliating his wife, who raped his young son, and who seemed to doom all those close to him to a life of pain. You could also argue that the British Aristocracy is the villain in the Patrick Melrose books, but . . . David is definitely worse (if slightly less all-encompassing).

Tom Ripley, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Patricia Highsmith

Here’s a villain you can’t help but root for—I mean, sort of. You feel his pain as he tries to insinuate himself into the life of the man he so admires (and perhaps loves), and as he is first welcomed and then pushed away. Less so when he murders his beloved and assumes his identity—but somehow, as you read, you find yourself holding your breath around every corner, hoping he will escape yet again.

Rufus Weylin, Kindred, Octavia Butler

As slaveowners go, Rufus isn’t the worst (his father might rank) but he isn’t the best, either. He’s selfish and ignorant, and (like most men of the time) a brutal racist and misogynist, who doesn’t mind raping women as long as they act like they like it. Actually, the fact that he thinks he’s better than his father actually makes him worse. That said, the real antagonist in this novel might actually be the unknown and unexplained force that keeps transporting Dana from her good life in 1976 California to a Maryland slave plantation in 1815. What’s that about?

Nurse Ratched, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey

Big Nurse rules the patients of the asylum ward with an iron fist. She is addicted to order and power, and can be quite cruel in commanding it. In comes McMurphy, our hero, who wants to undercut her. He does undercut her, in fact, a number of times—but when he goes too far, she has him lobotomized. The end! I know Ratched is meant to be evil, and it’s supposed to be depressing that she wins, but I can’t help but sort of like the fact that after a man chokes her half to death and rips off her shirt in an attempt to humiliate her (because no one with breasts can have power, you see!), she simply has him put down.

The Prison-industrial complex, The Mars Room, Rachel Kushner

Who is really the villain in Rachel Kushner’s most recent novel? It can’t be Romy; serving a life sentence for killing a man who was stalking her. It can’t be the man himself, who didn’t quite understand what he was doing. It can’t be any of the prisoners, nor any of the guards in particular. Nor is this a book with no villain, because the pulsing sense of injustice is too great. It is the whole thing, every aspect, of the American prison system—meant to catch you and bleed you and keep you and bring you back—that is the true villain in this novel (and often, in real life).

Big Brother, 1984, George Orwell

Of course it’s O’Brien who does most of the dirty work—but it’s Big Brother (be he actual person or nebulous invented concept) that really, um, oversees the evil here.

Patrick Bateman, American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis

He’s a shallow, narcissistic, greedy investment banker, and also a racist, a misogynist, an anti-Semite and a homophobe, and also a sadist and a murderer and a cannibal and Huey Lewis devotee. He’s also weirdly pathetic. Can’t really get any worse than that as a person—but as a character, he’s endlessly entertaining.

The General, The Autumn of the Patriarch, Gabriel García Márquez

It’s José Ignacio Saenz de la Barra who is the most bloodthirsty, but the unnamed General (of the Universe) who is the most compelling villain in this novel: an impossibly long-lived tyrant who has borderline-magical control over the populace, and even the landscape, whose roses open early because, tired of darkness, he has declared the time changed; who sells away the sea to the Americans. He is desperately unhappy; he considers himself a god. Luckily, we get to spend almost the entire novel within his twisting brain.

Humbert Humbert, Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov

The genius of old Hum is how compelling he is—that is, despite the horrible thing he spends the entire novel doing (kidnapping a young girl whose mother he has murdered, driving her around the country and coaxing her into sexual acts, self-flagellating and self-congratulating in equal measure), you are charmed by him, half-convinced, even, by his grand old speeches about Eros and the power of language. In the end, of course, no amount of fancy prose style is enough to make you forget that he’s a murderer and worse, but for this reader, it’s pure pleasure getting there.

Ridgeway, The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead

The slave-hunting Ridgeway, Whitehead writes, “was six and a half feet tall, with the square face and thick neck of a hammer. He maintained a serene comportment at all times but generated a threatening atmosphere, like a thunderhead that seems far away but then is suddenly overhead with a loud violence.” He’s a little more interesting and intelligent than a simple brute—in part due to that sidekick of his—which only makes him more frightening as a character. Tom Hardy is a shoo-in for the adaptation.

Annie Wilkes, Misery, Stephen King

Listen: Annie Wilkes is a fan. She’s a big fan. She loves Paul Sheldon’s novels about Misery Chastain, and she is devastated to discover—after rescuing Sheldon from a car wreck—that he has killed off her beloved character. Things do not then go well for Paul, because as it turns out, Annie is already a seasoned serial killer who is very handy (read: murderous) with household objects.

The Republic of Gilead, The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood

The government that has taken control of America in the world of Atwood’s classic dystopia is a fundamentalist theocracy whose leaders have eliminated the boundary between church and state—and worse, have twisted religious principles and political power in an attempt to utterly subjugate all women, erasing their identities and allowing them to exist only so far as they may be of use to the state. It is super fucked up and exactly what I worry about in a country where fundamentalists have any among of political power.

The Earth, The Broken Earth series, N. K. Jemisin

It’s pretty hard to fight back when the thing you’re fighting is the earth itself, which punishes those who walk upon it with extreme, years-long “seasons” of dramatic and deadly climate change. Ah, Evil Earth!

Iago, Othello, William Shakespeare

The worst villain is the one who knows you best—the one you might even love. The scariest motive is the lack of one—what Coleridge called Iago’s “motiveless malignity.” The most interesting villain is the one who has even more lines than the titular hero. He is a fantastic villain, a dangerous trickster, whose character has stumped (and intrigued) critics for centuries.

Judge Holden, Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy

Possibly the most terrifying character in modern literature (or any literature?), Glanton’s deputy is over six feet tall and completely hairless. More importantly, despite the fact that he might be a genius, he inflicts senseless and remorseless violence wherever he goes. The man murders (and, it is suggested, rapes) children and throws puppies to their doom. He might actually be the devil—or simply evil itself. He never sleeps, the judge. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die.

Slavery, Beloved, Toni Morrison

This entire novel is based on a single idea: that a loving mother might murder her baby daughter to save her from life as a slave. Sure, the slavers are bad (and the schoolteacher is particularly chilling). Sure, you could make an argument that the vengeful spirit Beloved’s presence is destructive, splintering further an already fractured family. But these are only symptoms, in this the Great American Novel, of the Great American Sin.

Satan, The Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri

Good read found on the Lithub

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topmixtrends · 7 years ago

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This short story appears in the LARB Print Quarterly Journal: No. 16, Art

To receive the LARB Quarterly Journal, become a member or donate here.

All images are by Lindsay Tunkl, Stills from Is This What Feeling Feels Like – First Attempt, 2013. Images courtesy of the artist. Watch the full video here.

() Amanda 1 hour ago

A person who wants to be destroyed by love is normal. The human wish to be ravished, despite its bearer’s avowed feminist principles and self-possessed public persona, does not present an anomaly. At rare yet foreseeable intervals, erotic desire will offer most mortals an expensive, all-inclusive trip to a magical land where they will engage in mutually confusing flagellations with other reasonable people who are similarly, if temporarily, afflicted.

So, no, it is not strange to want to be bent painfully over a headboard while wailing with happiness. Even famous people like Herman Melville aspired to be slayed like a babbling lamb. Indeed, this ambition proves so common that it often crawls to the depths of banality. Maybe Melville wrote the great Moby-Dick about Nathaniel Hawthorne, but think about the thousands of cliché-flamed films that have been made in passion’s name. Desiring another person to drink from your flagon of life is a well-worn theme in the history of love.

What is strange is articulating this longing in language.

“Grab my ass! Pull my hair! Harder!” goes the mantra.

“Spank me! Say my name!” goes another.

Brandon is a 34-year-old civil rights lawyer I met in a Ralph’s. He is imposingly tall and possesses buoyant pectoral muscles. I am a 38-year-old former performance artist, an aspiring writer, and now a platform strategist for Snapchat. Brandon is half Chinese and half Polish, and likes Star Wars prequels. I am a bisexual Chicana with large eyes and sturdy legs. We have been dating for six months.

When I visited Brandon’s two-bedroom condominium in Culver City tonight, I arrived at its walnut parquet foyer ready to talk. I had been reading Wittgenstein’s late philosophy on the Metro and wanted to ask Brandon about his thoughts on indeterminacy. But then I saw his blue-veined biceps and bloodshot aura of overwork, and became incredibly excited.

“Hi, you look really pretty,” he said, backing into the living room as I threw my recycled canvas Snapchat work bag to the ground and tore at his shirt buttons. “Babe. Baaaaabe. Whoa, this is so exciting. But. Hold on, wait—” Plop we fell on the sofa, which is covered in tweedy wool.

“I am holding on, I am waiting a minute,” I gasped back, until I heard myself yelling “TAKE ME NOW YOU MONSTER! LOVE ME LIKE A STEVEDORE! MAKE ME BEG!”

Etc.

“Oh my God,” Brandon said. “Okay, okay. Okay.”

I love Brandon a lot.

“What’s a stevedore again?” Brandon asked afterwards. We cuddled in his queen-sized bed, in his small blue-walled bedroom with its transom window. “It sounds like something out of Moby-Dick.”

“It’s a figure of speech,” I said, stroking his arm hairs.

“Not one I ever heard.” Brandon pursed his lips to the far right side, as if his mouth were running away from something.

“It’s a compliment.” I laughed.

“Uhhhhhh . . . . “ Brandon lay on his back and looked at the ceiling with eyes that kept widening. “Do I have sex like a postal worker?”

“What do you mean, like, homicidal?” I asked.

“No, like boring,” he said.

I stretched out my legs. “No, you have sex like a lawyer.” Brandon is a lawyer, but I immediately understood my mistake. “A really amazing lawyer. An A.C.L.U. person who fights for justice and stuff like that.”

“Oh, Jesus.” Brandon rolled over and closed his eyes and stopped talking.

“Like Thurgood Marshall,” I said. “That’s good, right?”

Now he is asleep.

I am awake, web surfing. When Brandon started snoring around midnight, I padded out to the living room and retrieved my bag, which contained my Wittgenstein and my laptop. I returned to bed and turned on the small white lamp on the stand next to me. I took out my paperback copy of Philosophical Investigations and read until I reached the last page.

After that, I leaned over and whispered into Brandon’s ear: “You have sex like a superhero.”

He remained unconscious.

“I am fanatically in love with you,” I barely breathed.

Still no response.

“I want you to tie me up like I’m a Victorian femme fatale and you are an evil villain with a mustache and a top hat,” I said.

“What?” he said.

“You’re dreaming,” I said.

Brandon fell back asleep.

I turned off the lamp. I tried to sleep, too. When that didn’t work, I dug through my bag again and this time fished out my laptop. I opened my computer and balanced it on my knees. I started looking at feminist art videos on Vimeo, which is one of my favored distractions during uneasy times. After a while, I found the work of Lindsay Tunkl.

It is 3:01 in the morning.

You have likely never heard of Lindsay Tunkl. You have probably found this Vimeo page in the same way that I did, which is to say, on accident. According to her website‘s CV/Bio section, Lindsay Tunkl graduated from CalArts with a BFA in 2010 and, as of this writing, is attempting to complete an MFA in Studio Practice and an MA in Visual + Critical Studies at California College of the Arts in San Francisco. From her videos on Vimeo, and her still shots on her website, we can see that Lindsay Tunkl is a White woman in her twenties. She has long dark hair, with streaks of early gray in it. She also has a big silver lip piercing, and bears a metal stud below her left eye, which seems painful. Lindsay Tunkl is pretty and large-framed, with fleshy arms and powerful breasts and thighs.

Lindsay Tunkl has made a series of conceptual art perfumes based on the Apocalypse. One of the perfumes is called “Tsunami,” and another is called “Nuclear Blast.” They do not appear to be available for purchase on her website and doubtlessly smell bad.

Lindsay Tunkl has the word “HOLOCENE” tattooed on the inside of her lower lip, as a memento mori. She is in mourning for the Holocene, which has been replaced by the apocalyptic era of the Anthropocene, the age of global warming and atomic annihilation. In 2010, Tunkl took a self-portrait. In this photograph, she sticks out her lower lip so that you can read Holocene on her mouth’s shiny underside. She made this image into a 36 x 48 print, which also does not seem purchasable from her website.

The same year that she made Holocene, Lindsay Tunkl executed a performance called This Is How the iPhone Didn’t Save My Love Life. This is How the iPhone Didn’t Save My Love Life consisted of Tunkl sending plaintive text messages to a lover who never replied to her even once, despite the fact that she sent those texts messages while driving across California to reach her, him, or them in the middle of the night.

I love you and I’m not ready for this to be over, she wrote.

I’m not leaving until you tell me that you’re not coming.

This is all very good, but Lindsay Tunkl’s best work product may be a short video that she posted on this Vimeo page in 2014. It is titled Is This What Feeling Feels Like? – First Attempt. In Is This What Feeling Feels Like?, Lindsay Tunkl wears a blue dress and her dark hair loose. In a wide shot, we see her walk into a white room that hosts a white table with a white enamel bowl on it. The bowl brims with water. Lindsay Tunkl stands before the table and the bowl and stretches out her arms. She begins to yell-sing the Dolly Parton/Whitney Houston hit, I Will Always Love You and periodically dunk her head into the enamel bowl, continuing to screamingly sing while her head remains underwater. Lindsay Tunkl sings I will always love yoooouuuuuuuuu and then jams her head under the water, drowning and hollering.

This video lasts for 1 minute and 51 seconds, and has been played 16 times, mostly by me. Except for the comments that I am now writing, Is This What Feeling Feels Like? – First Attempt has elicited 0 comments. It has not been shared with anyone. It has not been Liked by anyone, nor included in any collections.

Lindsay Tunkl’s work is a study of human solitude. Tunkl craves a whole and healed earth, but sees only destruction and death. She loves, but remains apart. She adores, but is drowning. She cries out for union with her beloved, but feels like she is dying.

Lindsay Tunkl is alone. She is abandoned as a human on a dying planet, deserted as a woman in an affectionless world, and she is also forsaken as an unLiked and unCommented-on artist.

Lindsay Tunkl’s loneliness dooms her to speak in what Ludwig Wittgenstein once referred to as a private language.

Ludwig Wittgenstein studied the problems of private language at the late stage of his career, in his vulnerable old age. Wittgenstein had conceived this idea after an early, more foolish, period: During the Great War, Wittgenstein believed that language mirrored the logic of reality (as he explained in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, published in 1922), and thought that in so mapping existence and its reflectively lucid attendant discourse that he, Wittgenstein, had solved every single philosophical problem that ever existed. “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent,” he wrote.

Wittgenstein was gay, Jewish, and an intellectual during the rise of Hitler, but he would not be persuaded that reality was actually a confusing mess except after he began working as a grammar teacher in Lower Austria in 1922. Wittgenstein did not prove a natural educator. He reviled provincial life and called his pupils “worms.” In 1926, in the municipality of Otterthal, Wittgenstein beat a hemophiliac 11 year old student named Josef Haidbauer, who died shortly thereafter, possibly because of his injuries. Wittgenstein’s family was rich and Wittgenstein did not suffer any consequences for killing this child.

But maybe Wittgenstein did suffer internally. Ten years later, he no longer believed that he had solved every philosophical problem that ever existed. He had moved away to Vienna but returned to Otterthal in 1936 to apologize for committing murder and other student abuses. The people of the region remained unreceptive. They did not look him in the eye, and just said Ja, ja.

After that, Wittgenstein went back to Vienna and repudiated all of his work. He spent the last years of his life trashing his earlier philosophy by writing Philosophical Investigations, which was posthumously published in 1953. In Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein now said that words don’t have any inherent logic, but only derive their coherence from their ordinary vernacular usages. People agree to use words for certain purposes, and in that way create their meaning. Perhaps Wittgenstein was thinking of the ambiguity of Ja, ja when he wrote this. No linguistic significance exists outside of these agreements, which are formed out of elongated human exchanges, Wittgenstein explained. These personal connections, however, are difficult to attain. They require more than refraining from homicide. Relationships also require a feat of the imagination.

“If one has to imagine someone else’s pain on the model of one’s own, this is none too easy a thing to do,” Wittgenstein wrote. “I can only believe that someone else is in pain, but I know it if I am. — Yes: one can make the decision to say ‘I believe he is in pain’ instead of ‘He is in pain.’”

But what if you have imperfect relationships and no one is trying to imagine your subjectivity? What if you are a loner who is obsessed with the Apocalypse? What if, left to your own devices, you spend your afternoons singing I Will Always Love You while drowning and filming it? What if you only have 16 downloads and no one Likes your videos? Does anyone believe that you are in pain? And is anyone hearing or understanding you? To this last question, Wittgenstein might say Not really or Are you joking? He might also say Ja, ja.

“Now, what about the language which describes my inner experiences and which only I myself can understand?” he asked in Philosophical Investigations. Wittgenstein did not answer this question outright, but he suggested that such a language does not bear a “criterion of correctness” and thus would “give no information.” A brief review of his biography also makes us suspect that if we could conjure the spirit of Wittgenstein in a séance, he would additionally warn us that a person with a private language is crazy and likely to beat up a hemophiliac child when in a bad mood.

It is too bad that Wittgenstein did not live in the age of the Anthropocene so that he might watch Lindsay Tunkl videos. Lindsay Tunkl shows us that private languages persist as inescapable parts of life. Indeed, her work reveals that the most compelling of all grammars remains the private language that we are each condemned to speak. This private language does not necessarily evidence murderous craziness, even if we use it to talk about the Apocalypse or to express “babbling lamb” desires for erotic possession. However, this language possesses no criterion of correctness except for its verification of our solitude.

Lindsay Tunkl teaches us that the community of empaths that Wittgenstein alludes to consists of people who speak their own grammars of solitude together. Every once in a while these individuals may understand each other. But a lot of the time, they don’t. “Having a relationship” occurs when a person agrees to continue loving another person despite the fact that their reciprocal comprehension remains sporadic and without guarantee.

Art is like unrequited love.

As a former performance artist, I can tell you that there exists a lot of art that very few people look at. A huge number of artists work without any support at all.

Artists post their art to the web and wait to see if anyone can hear their private language.

Commenting on and liking videos, paintings, stories, and also other comments now form new practices of bridging this unbearable silence in the modern era.

For a short while, the 19th century novelists Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne provided each other with a life-sustaining community that proved even more powerful than that found in web commentary: They both loved and occasionally even apprehended each other. However, though Wittgenstein observed that reciprocal recognition must be manifested by people helpfully imagining each other’s suffering, it should be noted that Melville and Hawthorne’s corporate sympathy did not protect them from pain.

Melville lived near Hawthorne in western Massachusetts in 1850-1851, the same years that he wrote Moby-Dick. Melville was 31 and unknown. Hawthorne was 46, and had just published The Scarlet Letter to much acclaim. Both men were married, but this did not matter. They met often and walked in silence in the Berkshire woods, enjoying the sunbeams, the trees, and the sounds of the birds.

On November 17, 1851, Melville wrote Hawthorne: “Whence come you, Hawthorne? By what right do you drink from my flagon of life? And when I put it to my lips — lo, they are yours and not mine.”

We cannot know for certain the precise right that Hawthorne claimed when drinking from Melville’s flagon of life. Though he wrote many letters to Melville, they do not survive, because Melville burned them. But by studying Hawthorne’s actions and writings, we may discern that Hawthorne and Melville enjoyed some forms of agreement on this aspect of the human condition that Wittgenstein described as the inner experience.

We begin to suspect that that the two men shared some sort of private revelation when we learn that Hawthorne ran away from Melville. In early 1852, he moved himself and his wife, the dark-eyed Sophia Peabody, to the stevedoreless safety of Concord, Massachusetts.

That same year, Hawthorne wrote The Blithedale Romance. The novel concerns the relationship between a young poet named Miles Coverdale and one Holllingsworth, an older fellow with a vocation for penal reform. The men form a passionate attachment in the utopian community of Blithedale, but then have a savage falling-out over a disagreement about the socialist philosophies of Charles Fourier. Coverdale and Hollingsworth’s spat, however, probably concerns more their romantic frustrations than their commitments to the universal laws of social progress. They break up, Hollingsworth taking up with a lady named Priscilla and Coverdale moving to the city, where he begins spying on strange married men.

Coverdale, the novel’s narrator, admits that he cannot cope with his loss of Hollingsworth.

“The heart-pang was not merely figurative, but an absolute torture of the breast,” he says.

Two months ago, in his apartment, Brandon helped me cut and shave my hair. I have an idiosyncratic hairstyle, where I buzz the right side of my head in a circular pattern and grow the left side long and braid it with beads.

Brandon brought a wood stool from his kitchen and put it in front of his bathroom mirror, which hangs above his sink. He took off his white Oxford button-down, and I took off my Quiet Lightning T-Shirt. I never wear a bra. We smiled at each other in the mirror and laughed.

I sat on the stool. Brandon had previously removed his electric razor from the cupboard below his sink counter. He now picked it up off the sink’s ledge and flicked it on. He bent over me, buzzing my hair into the circle configuration. His fingers touched my scalp and my cheeks very gently.

I felt the feathered wings of my spirit terrifyingly expand like the wings of those emotional angels described by Plato in The Phaedrus.

I didn’t say anything. I just looked at him.

My heart beat and beat.

Eight weeks after that, though, Brandon and I “crossed wires.” We sat in his living room, on the sofa covered with the fuzzy fabric. With the aid of his iPad, Brandon attempted to show me a two-minute clip of young violent people dueling with big glow sticks. He explained that he wished me to watch this atrocious preview because he felt very excited about the release date of a film in the Star Wars franchise called Rogue One.

Rogue One, as I quickly learned in enormous detail, is a prequel to the Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia and Han Solo tale. It tells the doomed love story of two attractive interstellar Resistance Fighters who waste a lot of time misunderstanding each other’s private languages via interminable debates over a primordial, tech-savvy version of Fourierism that requires the subservience of individualism to the greater good. The female eventually submits to the ideology of the male, which causes them to deeply and hysterically fall in love. The female and the male then perish demi-in flagrante while getting planet-bombed by the Empire.

“Here, look,” Brandon said, pressing the iPad up to my face.

I have already mentioned Brandon’s physical attractions. The chest muscles and the tallness, etc. These gorgeous temptations prevented me from caring about Rogue One. All I wanted to do, as Brandon leaned close to pressure me to watch interstellar decapitations, was nuzzle my mouth into his warm, musky neck, and to bite him and maybe lick and also perhaps in my enthusiasm leave a hickey.

So, instead of admiring the iPad, I pressed my mouth directly under his jaw. I tried to kiss the tender flesh next to his thorax. This stimulus caused Brandon to swiftly jerk his shoulder up so that my face, briefly if brutally, smushed between his head and shoulder. Brandon then snapped his head away, leaving me squish-eyed and politely smiling as I sat stiffly next to him.

“No, come on, watch it,” he said.

“Okay,” I said.

Nodding, I observed the space murder.

“See?” Brandon said, raising his eyebrows. “Can’t wait.”

My eye hurt.

“That’s really neat,” I said.

I cannot say for certain what exactly Brandon had in mind when he said See? Can’t wait. I suspect that he attempted to communicate to me a hope that we shared similar cultural and aesthetic values that would bode well in our future together as man and wife and the parents of a small, intelligent brood of children. He also, of course, could have simply meant that he felt impatient to see the film.

I can say for certain, however, what I meant when I said That’s really neat. I did not mean that’s really neat in the least. I actually meant: I cannot believe that you are more interested in watching fucking television than you are in me.

For a moment, I also meant: I sort of hate you right now.

What had passed between us to explain this deterioration? What sin had we committed to fall from our psychic declarations of love in the bathroom to the depths of our mutual ignorance in the living room?

Earlier in our relationship, when Brandon had cut my hair, our Plato-like passion to fuse into one person had impregnated every moment with agreed-upon meaning. But then, love cooled. And once this horizontality began to dissipate, a creeping hierarchy of affection started to reveal discrepancies, that is, the existence of our separate private languages.

On the sofa, we had a choice to endure the risks of empathetic imagination, as Wittgenstein teaches us. For example, I could have submitted my ideology to the male’s, like in Rogue One. Or, Brandon could have seen a look of disappointment flash across my features and said, This heart-pang is not merely figurative, but an absolute torture of the breast, like Hawthorne wrote in semi-code about Melville. Or, we could have stared into each other’s eyes and said I will always love you, like Lindsay Tunkl sang as she drowned in a bowl of water in Is This What Feeling Feels Like?

None of that happened, though.

Ste·ve·dore /ˈstēvəˌdôr/ noun

1. a person who loves you by fucking you so blindingly hard and passionately that he or she destroys the separateness between you.

There are three types of language. The first type of language voices a fellow-feeling. One need not say a word to pronounce this idiom. Wittgenstein says that this expression is none too easy to achieve, but Brandon and I effortlessly spoke it when we looked at each other’s reflections as he buzzed my hair. I know that the message that passed between us signaled I love you.

When Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne walked together in the Berkshires, they, too, co-wrote the story of their fatal love by marking their footprints into the leaf-mold of the Massachusetts forest. I cannot say if it was none too easy for them to do so, but the violent queerphobia plaguing the United States at the time (and, now) suggests that they had to fight to secure these precious moments of affective telepathy.

Lindsay Tunkl and her lover also spoke this language in This is How the iPhone Didn’t Save My Love Live, where she clamored at her, him, or them via text to return her devotion but only silence followed. Like Brandon and me in the bathroom, and Melville and Hawthorne in the forest, Lindsay Tunkl eventually understood the magnitude of her beloved’s message. It created an arduous yet necessary mutuality between them.

The second type of language bears words whose meanings arrive corroded and warped, but partially understood. This is the language of Ja, ja. Lovers live in terror of this vocabulary. It is the patois that leads to heartbreaking disagreements over Fourierism, singing I Will Always Love You, and drowning. Ja, ja has double, triple meanings, untrue meanings, builds false hopes, and lays secret traps. A person may hear a phrase spoken in Language Number 2 and believe that they discern an existential yes within its syntax, but later realize the damnation of their dreams. A particularly exquisite suffering ensues.

When Melville asked Hawthorne by what right he drank from the flagon of his life, Hawthorne replied with a Yankee Ja, ja by fleeing the soft mossy forests of the Berkshires for the redoubts of Concord and then writing The Blithedale Romance. In so doing Hawthorne tried to convince Melville that he had no idea what in the hell Melville was talking about but simultaneously also explain that he would love Melville for the rest of his life.

In my case, I fear that when I said That’s neat about the Rogue One prequel, and actually meant I sort of hate you right now, I cracked the mechanism that translates Brandon’s and my words when we speak to one another. I worry that the injury I inflicted on this love technology continued to lethally spread and widen in the months since our conversation about Star Wars, since I did not immediately superglue the damage with sex or authentic ideological submission. Thus, when I made erotic overtures to Brandon this evening, and he responded by saying Wait and Hold on, I am scared that what he actually tried to tell me was Stop, I do not want you anymore.

The third type of language cannot be understood, either as a single or double entendre. This private language is the shibboleth of a different type of wasteland. In this dialect, the word Stevedore may be written by an island castaway on a paper scrap that is then stuffed into a bottle and thrown into the ocean. When a beachcomber on the mainland sees the bottle bobbing in the water many months or years later, and opens it up, he reads the word and thinks that it refers to a character out of a novel by Herman Melville that treats the themes of masculine madness and whales. The castaway remains on her faraway sandbar, unable to translate her nouns and verbs into shapes that will attract a rescue party. She sits on the beach and contemplates Tsunamis and Nuclear Blasts — the end of the world.

It is 4:16 in the morning. Brandon’s breathing remains deep and steady. In Los Angeles’s pre-dawn, sepia light, I can make out the hedgehog spikes of his hair. I smell his skin, the clove of him under his cologne. He moves lightly. The cotton sheets make crinkling noises.

I want you to love me like a tornado, like a plague, like a fire.

I want you to destroy me with your light saber. I want to have your baby.

I lean over to him again. “I love you,” I say instead. I say it now so that he can hear it.

Brandon’s rhythmic breathing stops. He shifts and turns toward me. He reaches out under the sheets and grasps my thigh.

“Yeah, I love you too,” he says after several seconds. Then he falls silent again.

I look out of the transom window, at the blue-opal sky captured in a windowpane.

I don’t really know what he means.

Lindsay Tunkl, keep working.

Yxta Maya Murray is a writer and law professor who teaches at Loyola Law School.

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Feminist Children's Books & Explorations of Gender Stereotypes #JACBA Newsletter 24Nov2017

Book Highlight: part 3

This third installment of our multi-part series on the 2017 Jane Addams Children's Book Award Ceremony features an introduction given by Book Award Committee Member Jenice Mateo-Toledo for We Will Not Be Silent: The White Rose Student Resistance Movement That Defied Adolf Hitler, written by Russell Freedman, published by Clarion Books, an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, named an Honor Book in the Books for Older Children category.

Introduction by Jenice Mateo-Toledo

Russell Freedman writes:

The year was 1942 and World War II was in its third year, leaflets began to appear mysteriously in mailboxes all over Nazi Germany.... A person could not be too careful. Anyone caught with a seditious leaflet was marked as an enemy of the state and could land in a concentration camp, or worse... Neatly typed documents headed [with]... "Leaflets of the White Rose..." assailed the Nazi dictatorship as evil, denounced Adolf Hitler as a liar and blasphemer, and called on the German people to rise up and overthrow the Nazi regime." [but]... Who was the White Rose?...

Russell Freedman expertly utilizes eloquent prose, first hand accounts, and carefully curated black and white images to transport the reader to a time when German citizens were disappearing, when rumors of death camps were swirling, and when speaking out in public would warrant a visit from the Gestapo. It was a time when children were indoctrinated through their participation in the Hitler Youth Program, and the culture of fear and violence permeated every aspect of German life.

Yet... there was resistance.

The Scholl family and their like-minded friends were outraged by the occurrences in their country, and longed for the days when they spoke freely. They would not idly stand by and allow their beloved country to fall unchallenged into the hands of leaders who lost their humanity. No... the culture of fear and intimidation did not stop Hans and Sophie Scholl, along with other youth who attended Munich University. Instead, they met in secret to create the White Rose Student Resistance Movement that focused on publicizing Nazi atrocities and called on citizens to resist the Nazi regime. The students secretly cranked out thousands of leaflets in their hand-operated mimeograph machines and disseminated copies widely. Under the leadership of Hans and Sophie Scholl, this group of brave young students became the conscience of a nation, through printed word, when it appeared that all humanity was lost.

For creating a book that inspires young people to resist tyranny and oppression in our world, for reminding us all about the power of the printed word, and for sharing Han's final words with us... "Long Live Freedom!"...

I present the Jane Addams Honor Children's Book Award, in the Books for Older Children Category to Russell Freedman.

Acceptance speech by Dinah Stevenson, Editor at Clarion

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14 Feminist Children's Books To Give To The Young Activists In Your Life This 2017 Holiday Season

'The Youngest Marcher: The Story of Audrey Faye Hendricks, A Young Civil Rights Activist' by Cynthia Levinson

9 year old Audrey Faye Hendricks intended to go places and do things like anybody else. So when she heard grown-ups talk about wiping out Birmingham's segregation laws, she stepped right up and said, I'll do it! Meet the youngest known child to be arrested for a civil rights protest in Birmingham, Alabama, 1963, in The Youngest Marcher, a moving picture book that proves you're never too little to make a difference.

'The World Is Not a Rectangle A Portrait of Architect Zaha Hadid' by Jeanette Winter

Zaha Hadid grew up in Baghdad, Iraq, and dreamed of designing her own cities. After studying architecture in London, she opened her own studio and started designing buildings. But as a Muslim woman, Hadid faced many obstacles. In The World is Not a Rectangle, get to know Zaha Hadid and her triumph over adversity to become one of the most famed architect's in the world.

We've Got a Job: The 1963 Birmingham Children's March by Cynthia Levinson 2013 Awardee

We Shall Overcome: The Story of a Song written by Debbie Levy, illustrated by Vanessa Brantley-Newton 2014 Awardee

Nasreen's Secret School: A True Story from Afghanistan by Jeanette Winter 2010 Awardee

Educational Leadership Summit preparing educators to lead the learning effort

As a child in a migrant Mexican family, Francisco Jimenez had a hard time learning English in California schools as he needed to travel with his family to follow the crops.

Jimenez, a retired professor and author of several books, was the keynote speaker for the third educational leadership summit for Monterey County educators at the Inn at Spanish Bay.

Jimenez used his own story to illustrate the importance of multicultural education. Students who see themselves reflected in the curriculum feel valued in school and gain more interest in their studies, he said.

"I had a traumatic experience when I went to school," he said. "Many, many years ago, we were not allowed to speak our language. As a matter of fact, we were punished for it. The language we use communicates our cultures, communicates who we are. If my language is not appreciated and valued in school, the message is that I, as a person, I'm not valued."

And that's why it's important to value all languages and cultures, Jimenez said. Not just Latino cultures but also Afro-American, Asian American, Native American, and all the cultures that have found a home in the United States.

The Circuit: Stories from the Life of a Migrant Child by Francisco Jiménez 1998 Awardee

Rosie O'Donnell, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, and others contribute to new anthology How I Resist

"When is a YA publisher going to put together an anthology of essays about resistance?"

How I Resist: Activism and Hope for a New Generation, [is] an essay collection featuring contributions from celebrities like Rosie O'Donnell and Jessie Tyler Ferguson, and authors like Jason Reynolds, Jacqueline Woodson, Libba Bray, Jodi Picoult, Jennifer Weiner, and many more.

Each Kindness written by Jacqueline Woodson, illustrated by E.B. Lewis 2013 Awardee

From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun by Jacqueline Woodson 1996 Awardee

I Hadn't Meant to Tell You This by Jacqueline Woodson 1995 Awardee

A CONVERSATION WITH LOIS LOWRY: AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR DESCRIBES IMAGINATIVE LIFE

Lowry's favorite book was a book called "Indian Captive" written by Lois Lenski. She was heavily inspired by this book.

"I discovered my love for books and I could relate to the character in the book," said Lowry. "When I started writing books, I got a letter from a girl talking about how she loved that book and thought it was me." She apologized and stated it was Lenski who wrote "Indian Captive".

Number the Stars by Lois Lowry 1990 Awardee

Mansfield students raising money for Sudan water project

On Tuesday, fifth-grade students at Jordan-Jackson Elementary School will walk a mile around their school with pairs of students carrying a gallon of water in a quest to raise $15,000 to aid Water for South Sudan, a charity that drills new wells and rehabilitates others in the African nation to make drinking water available to all.

The students recently participated in the the 2017 Global Read Aloud by reading "A Long Walk to Water" by Linda Sue Park. The story recounts the extraordinary 1985 experiences of Salva Dut, a former "Lost Boy" of South Sudan and blends in a fictional character living in South Sudan in 2009.

While reading the book, the students were moved to help the people of South Sudan by holding a walk-a-thon.

A Long Walk to Water: Based on a True Story by Linda Sue Park 2011 Awardee

When My Name Was Keoko by Linda Sue Park 2003 Awardee

Ballet Folklorico de Mexico's first steps

"Danza! Amalia Hernandez and Folklorico de Meico" written and illustrated by Duncan Tonatiuh is a work of art in many ways. It should inspire parents to give their children some leeway in where their interests take them.

The book includes a glossary, rich history and spectacular art making it a worthy addition to any child's library.

Separate is Never Equal: Sylvia Mendez and her family's fight for desegregation, written and illustrated by Duncan Tonatiuh 2015 Awardee

Reading Corner: Celebrate Native American stories and Thanksgiving

The November calendar celebrates National American Indian Heritage Month and the Thanksgiving holiday, so now is a fitting time to introduce the family to the works of a prolific author, Joseph Bruchac. An award-winning poet and storyteller of 120 works for children and adults from upstate New York, he draws upon his family's Abenaki ancestry to bring to life stories centering on Native Americans.

The Heart of a Chief by Joseph Bruchac 1999 Awardee

This new film series will make you painfully aware of gender inequality in the art world

The series is separated into past, present and future. The first video, "Past," features some art world heavyweights, including sculptor Barbara Zucker, co-founder of A.I.R. Gallery (the first artist-run gallery for women in the U.S.), alongside artist and activist Faith Ringgold, figurative painter Joan Semmel, early new media pioneer Lynn Hershman Leeson, and art advisor Todd Levin.

Aunt Harriet's Underground Railroad in the Sky by Faith Ringgold 1993 Awardee

THEATER REVIEW Wedding Band: A Love/Hate Story in Black and White

Despite significant writing credits, Alice Childress' steadfast refusal to compromise in her depictions of injustice lurking in the shadows of our nation's history has resulted in a half-century of drama students imbued with the erroneous impression that the sole African-American playwright previous to August Wilson was a one-play-wonder named Lorraine Hansberry. Audiences in 1966 may have been ready for Herman's mother spewing forth racist epithets belying her patrician affectations, but they balked at hearing those whom she abused engage in offensive diatribes directed at likewise marginalized minorities.

The Artistic Home has displayed a welcome willingness to recognize this all-but-unknown author's significant contributions to the North American literary canon, however. Although Childress' script, by virtue of its period, could have succumbed to heavy-handed melodrama, Cecilie Keenan's direction keeps the action in this meticulously crafted production flowing smoothly and effortlessly, while an ensemble of marathon-sturdy actors deliver emotively nuanced performances, enhanced by Joseph Cerqua's wistful incidental music. They all remind us that tragic tales of love thwarted by filial obligation and societal pressure in an age characterized by pessimism, xenophobia and divisive unrest have not diminished in their timeliness.

A Hero Ain't Nothin' But a Sandwich by Alice Childress 1974 Awardee

Book examines labor history through music of Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan and the 1913 Calumet Massacre

Grown-Up Anger: The Connected Mysteries of Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, and the Calumet Massacre of 1913. Wolff explores the 20th century through the lives and songs of Dylan and Guthrie, which led him to the story of the tragedy on Christmas Eve 1913 in Calumet.

The '1913 Massacre' is the same kind of testament to a sort of lost chance. And a lost hope. Guthrie wrote it, as you say, during the Second World War. And it's, you know, Guthrie was famous for saying, 'I write songs that build you up, that give you hope.' This isn't one of them. This is about a massacre and a tragedy."

This Land Is Your Land words and music by Woody Guthrie, illustrated by Kathy Jakobsen, 1999 Awardee

Benway, Bidart, Gessen, and Ward Win 2017 National Book Awards

National Book Award winner Jacqueline Woodson took the stage to name Jesmyn Ward the winner of the National Book Award in Fiction for Sing, Unburied, Sing (Scribner). It is Ward's second NBA for Fiction, and she is the first black person and the first woman to win two NBAs.

Jamie Hogan Book Launch: Ana and the Sea Star

Peaks Island illustrator Jamie Hogan will have a program at the Peaks Island Library to launch her new picture book, Ana and the Sea Star, written by R. Lynne Roelfs and illustrated by Jamie.

Rickshaw Girl by Mitali Perkins, illustrations by Jamie Hogan 2008 Awardee

The Best Animated Film of the Year Confronts Islamic Misogyny

Nora Twomey's 'The Breadwinner,' executive-produced by Angelina Jolie, is a harrowing-and spellbinding-exploration of life under Taliban rule.

Far from light and frivolous, it's a lament for the continuing persecution of women in a land beset by endless conflict, as well as a tribute to those valiant females, young and old alike, who refuse to reside quietly in the shadows.

... this parable speaks to fiction's ability to embolden, and define-which is also true of The Breadwinner itself, a movie whose own narrative aims to affect change by speaking defiant truth to sexist authority.

Children's literature still in an utopian state, says Malayalam writer N S Madhavan

Extending his argument further, Madhavan said books such as Bread Winner and Sparrow Girl authored by Deborah Ellis and Sara Pennypacker have sought to break the stereotypes surrounding women in general and girls in particular by highlight the role that protagonists Parvana and Ming Li play in Afghanistan and China in the two novels respectively. "Children's literature should break such stereotypes and bring the readers in sync with modern realities," he argued.

Using Her Imagination: Nora Twomey's 'The Breadwinner' follows an Afghan girl's struggle for her family

"Deborah Ellis went to Pakistan and interviewed a lot of Afghan women who were in refugee camps and that's what she based her book on," explained Twomey while attending the world premiere of The Breadwinner at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival.

"Certainly, my biggest challenge on the film was not being able to go to Afghanistan myself and not being able to time-travel back to the period," Twomey confides. "There was not much photographic reference as to what it was like during that period, because photography was banned. That was difficult. Having to make sure that I talked to enough people who understood the time that we portray in the film so that it could be authentic as possible and making sure that the time pressures never got to the point if someone pointed out and said, 'That wouldn't happen at that time.' Or a prop doesn't look like it should exist in Kabul. We were always respectful of that and responded to that. It was important."

Interview: Saara Chaudry Calls The Breadwinner a Hopeful Story About the Power of Girls' Education

Parvana is voiced by 13-year-old Saara Chaudry. Chaudry's lends her voice to Parvana, who herself plays several roles.

Saara Chaudry: When I was 9 I asked my librarian to recommend a book for me to read over March break. She handed me the Breadwinner. I started reading the Breadwinner, the first novel in the trilogy, by myself. Part way through, there were some scary parts, so I asked my mom to read the rest of the trilogy with me. I could not put the book down and read the entire trilogy in 10 days.

For myself, I think I am drawn to stories that have characters that are like me – that perhaps look like me, having similar experiences. Or like Parvana, has characteristics I can relate to: a young girl the same age as me, from the same region of the world where my relatives came from. The Breadwinner made me realise that if my grandparents and great great great grandparents had not been as lucky to have moved to South Africa and England and then Canada, I could have been one of those Parvanas.

Breadwinner author Deborah Ellis remains hopeful

Canadian author's work draws on her experiences visiting some of the world's most troubled places, and her need to tell untold stories.

"I think it's just all about courage, right?" she said. "We all look for courage in our own lives. We look for examples of it wherever we can find them because we think if we can learn from other people's courage, that will help us to have courage ourselves.

"The Breadwinner is all about courage."

If there's something motivating about the courage of others, Ellis is as inspiring figure in her own right.

The Heaven Shop by Deborah Ellis 2005 Awardee

The Breadwinner Trilogy, three books by Deborah Ellis 2004 Awardee

Parvana's Journey by Deborah Ellis 2003 Awardee

Author Louise Erdrich can do anything - even your basic apocalypse

But as another far-from-original phrase points out, there is nothing new under the sun. So perhaps originality isn't what readers should be looking for from this story. With its themes of evangelical fanaticism, racism and patriarchy, it gains resonance in being released during the Trump regime, which has cut off global health funding to organizations that offer or merely mention abortion as part of family planning.

Louise Erdrich: Reproductive Nightmares, Real and Imagined

The author on control of women's bodies and writing dystopian fiction in dark political times.

Future, in Erdrich's words, "extrapolates a new reality from" the world we're currently bumping up against. Though the world is invented, its parallelism to today is eerie, at times dizzying.

Guernica: It was interesting to learn that you started this project in 2002, the year after George W. Bush passed the global gag rule and the Patriot Act, which are crucial to this story. You started writing at that time, but then you put the book away for a few years and wrote The Round House and LaRose.

Louise Erdrich: Yeah, I think it was about eight years. I had to reconstruct it. I came back [because] I really couldn't go back to the book I was working on after the election. In November, I just had to finish this book. I was compelled to finish it.

Do we need another 'Handmaid's Tale'?

This is the awkward question inspired by Louise Erdrich's new novel, "Future Home of the Living God." ... "Future Home" marks a striking departure - an experiment of sorts, inspired 15 years ago and then reignited by the incendiary election of Donald Trump.

Future Home Of The Living God' Is A Rare Stumble From A Great Writer

Erdrich's gift for innovation has paid off in the past, but her latest novel, Future Home of the Living God, is an overreaching, frequently bizarre book that never really comes close to getting off the ground.

It's never really clear, even by the end of the novel, what happened to cause the reversal of evolution, or, indeed, what that even means. The vagueness is certainly intentional, but it's also inexplicable, and it makes the novel nearly impossible to parse. "The first thing that happens at the end of the world is that we don't know what is happening," she writes. But neither does the reader, and that's a problem.

Inside the Dystopian Visions of Margaret Atwood and Louise Erdrich

Margaret Atwood literally wrote the book on a society of female procreative slaves: The Handmaid's Tale. Now Louise Erdrich is churning her own vision of that future in her new novel.

So who better to interview Erdrich about her new novel than Atwood? Lo and behold: They agreed! Over the summer, the two writers-one in Toronto, one in Minnesota-amid jaunts to the Arctic and Winnipeg, engaged in a cross-border digital interview about the novel, their prophetic fears, politics, climate change, and why we idealize Canada.

Erdrich: And, of course, The Handmaid's Tale, which I profoundly admire. Your book has always resonated for me. Fundamentalist religions always include religious laws that control the female body-you got that perfectly right, and invented such a horrifyingly normal society based on literal readings of scripture. Of course, The Handmaid's Tale draws enormous energy from biological shuttering, or refusal. No babies, no future. No human race. Men find ways to engulf women and to manipulate the female body. We keep thinking about it, because we are always close to the edge. Women's rights are just a watery paint on the walls of history. We must not forget.

Future Home of the Living God is more about things falling apart, about the chaos in the wake of disaster, and about how little we know when we need information the most. It is about how vulnerable women's rights are.

Shades of Atwood and Vonnegut in Louise Erdrich's Dystopian Novel

The funny thing about this not-very-good novel is that there are so many good small things in it. Erdrich is such a gifted and (when she wants to be) earthy writer; her sentences can flash with wit and feeling, sunbursts of her imagination.

Signs and portents, auguries and premonitions. Erdrich's novel is packed with them, push notices from an onrushing nightmare. One character says, in this novel's most pungent snippet of dialogue, "We ain't on no GPS, and Siri's dead."

The Birchbark House by Louise Erdrich 2000 Awardee

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The Jane Addams Children's Book Award annually recognizes children's books of literary and aesthetic excellence that effectively engage children in thinking about peace, social justice, global community, and equity for all people.

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