Father Told Research Articles

A Silent Spring

A Silent Spring

“Remember me”: Hamlet, memory and Bloom’s poiesis

Although memory is not explicitly named in “Hades”, it nonetheless features centrally. Intertextuality is an example of memory, and in “Hades” Shakespeare’s Hamlet is remembered – specifically the Ghost’s relation to Hamlet, whom he bids to “Remember” and “revenge”. Derrida calls this relation “hauntological”: it is characterised by an uncertain gaze, the father telling his son what to do, and the son mourning for his father. In Bloom’s mourning for his father, Virag, hauntology might be expected. However, it is Bloom’s late son, Rudy, who hauntologises Bloom, thereby revitalising the latter; this adjusts Shakespeare’s original hauntology. While considering repeatable ways of maintaining this hauntology, Bloom jocularly reverts to new technology: the phonograph and photograph. His plan reveals his relish for liminality and poiesis: being and non-being at the same time. Bloom is thus remembered into the future, all the while Ulysses is haunted by Hamlet.

Incorporating a holistic view into the art of healing

<p>Nuclear Medicine Specialist Dr. Kornélia Kajȧry recalls the period during her childhood when her parents’ career had helped spark her interest in medicine. “Both of my parents worked in the field of health. My father practiced his profession as a general practitioner, therefore medicine became a part of everyday life in our family. When I was a child, my father told me and explained a lot about his work, which made me more interested in the art of healing,” the Researcher in Spotlight reminisces.</p>

Mission Graffiti Mission

The day my father told me that I was dead to him, I took the whole thing as a sign and loaded my rusty, dented SUV with my protest zines, stickers, chapbooks, surfboard, and secondhand MacBook. Obs...

Hugh Glass: Grizzly Survivor by James D. McLaird

Reviewed by: Hugh Glass: Grizzly Survivor by James D. McLaird Steven J. Bucklin Hugh Glass: Grizzly Survivor. By James D. McLaird. Pierre: South Dakota Historical Society Press, 2016. xx + 228 pp. Illustrations, map, notes, bibliography, index. $14.95 paper. Growing up in Mobridge, South Dakota, I could look west across the Missouri River and see a vista of buttes and high plains that memorialized three people who filled the stories my father told me. Two of them—Tatanka Iyotanka and Sacagawea—had monuments on a bluff, but Hugh Glass did not. Like the two others, though, his physical and spiritual journey served, and still does, as a monument of inspiration for generations of Americans. James D. McLaird, professor emeritus of history at Dakota Wesleyan University, in Hugh Glass: Grizzly Survivor, requires the reader to ask, though, inspiration for what? For the sort of rugged individualism that many Americans have promoted since colonial times? Perhaps it serves a greater purpose as inspiration for the search for truth. In that pursuit, McLaird has written a gem of a book for the South Dakota Biography Series. Because of limited direct evidence about Glass, McLaird set himself the task of "blazing a different trail." Along the way, McLaird uses Plains history to bring the reader closer to the truth about Hugh Glass. He also uses the "perhapses" and "what ifs" surrounding the legend of Glass to deconstruct it through careful analysis of the limited primary sources, as well as the abundant monographs, articles, novels, and films. He does this in almost the opposite way that, say, Natalie Davis uses conjecture to reconstruct Bertrande de Rols in The Return of Martin Guerre. McLaird demonstrates that there are limits to what history can tell us about "the truth." He demonstrates that many of the "facts" of the Glass legend—his dutiful participation in Major Andrew Henry's party, his survival of multiple Native American attacks and a grizzly attack, his "crawl" across the plains—are either contested or unsubstantiated across the secondary literature and primary sources. In fact, there is something of a heroic template novelists and historians alike have used to develop the legend of Glass that may bring about an entertaining story, but does "not result in good history." McLaird concludes that whatever "the truth of his story," Glass "stands out as a legendary figure embodying traits that Americans revere." If those same Americans also revere the search for truth about themselves and their heroes, whether on the plains of Dakota or elsewhere, this book is a great place to start. Steven J. Bucklin Department of History University of South Dakota Copyright © 2017 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln

Front Porch

Front Porch Harry Watson, Editor Click for larger view View full resolution Improbably, the story from this issue that touches me most directly comes from the Love Valley Rock Festival of 1972. Here and now, I will finally admit in public that your straitlaced editor was in personal attendance for his very own brush with hippiedom. Hard as it is to believe, my own memories thus stretch from family stories of Reconstruction to the Summer of Love and beyond. Love Valley Rock Festival, courtesy of Ed Buzzell Photography. In Faulkner's Requiem for a Nun, the character Gavin Stevens famously declares that "The past is never dead. It's not even past." Stevens's judgment on the power of history seemed profound when I first read it, back in college. It's still true today, but now it's become a platitude, a staple of presidential speeches and Woody Allen movies that raises more questions than it answers. "What past?" we have to ask. Better yet, "Whose past?" And what makes the southern past more living or more present than everyone else's? Is life in the South like a real-life version of Bill Murray's popular comedy, Groundhog Day, in which Jamestown, Pickett's charge, and Freedom Summer keep happening over and over? No, no, thankfully, that's impossible. But William Faulkner knew something about how some southerners can't seem to get the past out of their heads. It keeps playing in a loop, like a nasty [End Page 1] earworm, whining a constant jingle of resentment and regret that keeps driving its victims to reenact old battles in new uniforms. Historians like to think that uncovering the past is part of the process of healing from it, and changing the earworm's tune. If the undying past is all in our heads, then it's not so much a product of what happened, but what we remember about it. Or rather, which version of the past we remember, for controlling memory is a major part of shaping the present and the future. But controlling or steering public memories is a lot harder than rewriting the history books, because memory is such a crucial part of who we are. It's like the horror of amnesia: who would you be if you couldn't remember anything? And as any detective will tell you, memories are notoriously tricky. One witness sees a tall suspect, another sees a short one. One swears he saw a knife, another is sure it was a gun. And so on. The consequences spread far beyond courtrooms and tv dramas. Once when I was ten or so, my father told me about Reconstruction. It wasn't a lesson from the books; it was raw personal memory, surely passed from his own father, who was born when a sprinkling of federal troops still "occupied" South Carolina. Grandfather must have heard a lot about it from his own family, so Dad's memories of Reconstruction were almost as vivid—and certainly as subjective—as if he had been there himself. "That was when white men couldn't vote!" he hissed at me, eyes blazing with undimmed outrage. His passion took me aback, because Dad almost never got upset, especially about history or politics. His feelings were new to me that day; I did not sense hate, but fury and humiliation at his forebears' disgrace. My father's memory was mistaken. No racial test ever took the ballot from white southerners. President Andrew Johnson pardoned ordinary Confederates and affirmed their political rights within six weeks of Appomattox. He excluded Confederate leaders, and so did the Fourteenth Amendment three years later, but these barriers soon fell. Only black southerners ever suffered racial disfranchisement, first before Emancipation and again before the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Now the day would come, I'm glad to say, when my father proudly voted for black political candidates himself, but the pain and outrage he "remembered" from South Carolina's experience of "Negro rule" were just as real as if the freed-men and carpetbaggers had personally stripped away his own rights. And Dad's feelings were certainly not unusual. For much...

The Play of Allusion in the Historia Augusta by David Rohrbacher

Reviewed by: The Play of Allusion in the Historia Augusta by David Rohrbacher K. R. Bradley David Rohrbacher. The Play of Allusion in the Historia Augusta. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2016. Pp. xiii, 246. $65.00. ISBN 978-0-299-30600-7. Not a forgery, hoax, or imposture, but the playful contrivance of a single author (not six) composed in the early fifth century for a small circle of érudits interested in the nature of biography and alert to the work’s all-pervasive literary allusions. Such is the solution to the problem of the Historia Augusta Rohrbacher proposes in this well-informed and engaging book. He defines the collection of imperial biographies seemingly written under Diocletian and Constantine as a parodic, satirical work unconcerned with religious controversies or political events of the late imperial age, as generations of scholars have contended; it is a work primarily of fiction, the key element of which is a literary allusiveness that intentionally challenges its readers to solve the many humorous puzzles of recognition and appreciation its author creates. Dissociating himself from historians preoccupied with separating fact from fancy in the lives, Rohrbacher brings the HA’s literary playfulness to the fore in a bold, distinctive way. Few today will dispute the HA’s single authorship or relatively late date. Rohrbacher offers no answer, however, to Momigliano’s plea from long ago for a simple explanation of why the author chose to assume six identities and pretended to write much earlier (English Historical Review 84 [1969] 569). The [End Page 436] writer himself, moreover, remains anonymous, not identified broadly, as Syme’s notorious rogue grammaticus (but see 60), or specifically (and controversially), as with Ratti’s Nicomachus Flavianus. From what is known about the participatory, antagonistic character of Roman literary composition, the putative circle of readers is reasonably supposed to have been sensitive to allusion, and the modern construct of “interpretative communities” (85) lends brief theoretical support. But contemporary notions of literary incongruity and humorous wordplay are unexplored, and the debates assumed about biography as a contested literary genre are at most hypothetical. Who precisely were the “late Roman thinkers on biography” (48) able, it appears, to notice the lives’ engagement with events of the years 408–410? Allusion itself, indeed, is never defined. In practice it comprises direct quotation, verbal reminiscence, emulation of stylistic mannerisms and themes, and complex manipulation of subject matter—a very diffuse concept. Many suggestions consequently strain belief. Simple quotations are uncontentious, and invented names might be allowed to have sometimes produced amusement. But when meeting the fictional Gallus Antipater of Claud. 5.4, can readers then or now realistically be expected to associate him with the Coelius of Hadr. 16.3, also an Antipater but not so designated, and to recognize that Coelius is the source of Gallus Antipater’s name (25–26)? Or to see that references to the proconsulship of Cilicia (Aur. 42.4; Car. 4.6), a nonexistent position in the imperial age, “must be inspired by the example of Cicero” simply because Cicero was “the most famous holder of the office” (32)? Or to deduce that since the unusual word spinthriae occurs in Suetonius (Tib. 43.1; Calig. 16.1; also Vit. 3.2), its use at Elag. 33.1 reveals Elagabalus “as a student of Tiberius and Caligula, or at least the Suetonian account of the emperors” (55; Tac. Ann. 6.1; Petr. Sat. 113.11)? Rohrbacher acknowledges that individual examples will not always convince; but his open-ended understanding of allusiveness constantly encourages the tendentious. Suetonius’ occasional references to information received from his father and grandfather duly become the basis for a stylistic technique in the HA, and evidence of engagement with the Caesares (50–53). Cassius Dio’s report (69.1.3), however, of what his father told him about Trajan’s death and Hadrian’s accession shows that this cannot be a feature of ancient biography alone. The most complex allusions allegedly involve Ammianus and Jerome. Rohrbacher follows Syme in connecting Quad. Tyr. 8.10 (drinking cups in Hadrian’s letter) with Amm. 15.3.7 (description of a sordid banquet), given that an Africanus appears in...

Emerante de Pradines: The Birth of a Legend and the Making of a Tradition

From 2012 to 2016, spent each July at the fabled Hotel Oloffson Portau-Prince, where often sat and conversed with Madame Emerante de Pradines Morse (Emy), developing a friendship. Emy is the mother of Richard Morse, who with his wife, Lunise, fronts the popular Haitian roots band RAM and manages the Gothic gingerbread hotel. Emerante was born on September 24, 1918, to a mother of Haitian and Spanish descent and to a polio-stricken French father who had moved to Haiti with his family at the age of nine and became one of the country's most beloved singers-Ti Candio.To know Emy is to enter a kaleidoscopic world of Haitian history, performing arts, New World postcolonialism, the supernatural, Vodou, and the formation of the Haitian folkloric music and dance tradition. With each summer that passed, Emy told me more stories, and regretted recording them. So this year decided to sit down with Emy and interview ninety-eight years old, she never ceases to amaze me with her mental acuity, although couldn't help wishing had done this type of interview earlier, when perhaps it wouldn't have been as much of an effort for her to plug in (as Emy refers to harnessing her powers). In the cool shade of her sprawling home perched on a mountainside above Port-au-Prince, we talked about her childhood and young adulthood, and how she played the pioneering role, her own words, of bringing to Port-au-Prince.1Emerante was one of eight surviving children born to her parents; she was the eldest girl the family, second line after her older brother and following four other children who had died prematurely. Describing her mother as a very religious woman who disliked leaving the house, Emy tells the story of how her mother implored Notre Dame of Mount Carmel to give her a child, a girl, promising that return she would devote this child to the virgin saint. Not unlike the birth ofJesus, Emy's own birth purportedly occurred a mystical way. birth happened very strangely. Instead of being at the doctor or the midwife, [my mother] was on vacation at Riviere Froid. She went to the bucket to urinate and got out. just dropped out. She screamed. Someone from the yard came in, put her to bed, took me and cut the umbilical cord, and took me out to bathe recounts Emy. Throughout Emy's childhood, her mother told her the story of this day, saying that the midwife prophesied, This one will be something because of the way of her birth.From an early age, Emy began to have experiences with the occult, experiences that she did fully understand until a later age. At age seven, a strange thing happened to me. In Haiti, there is always a guy on a corner somewhere breaking stone, from a big stone into a little [piece of] gravel, for people to build houses. A little chip of stone flew away and hit me on the head. screamed, and [then] saw a vision of a man with a top hat. He put his finger over his mouth. He passed his hand, wiped the blood, and disappeared. That was a visit of a spirit, says Emy. While her mother thought she was crazy and her father told her not to dream for him, Emy says, Vodou started to show me. would tell them exactly what was going to happen and it would happen.Meanwhile, it was also from a young age that Emy's artistic inclinations and talents were being nurtured by both of her parents. Her mother taught her to recite poetry: I was introduced to the arts by my mother, who was an introverted person who couldn't put herself into action. Since she had me, she probably noticed was talented and she focused on me and pushed me. think used to amuse her and entertain her. And her father, Ti Candio, who composed up to five new songs a week and traveled throughout Haiti to perform for adoring fans, taught her to sing. first teacher of voice was my father. My knowledge of knowing how to sing-to please a public-that came from my father. …

An Interview with Sylvia Snowden

An Interview with Sylvia Snowden Charles Henry Rowell and Sylvia Snowden Although brief, my conversation with Sylvia Snowden gives us as readers and observers of her art a glimpse into her vibrant personality and how that affects her unique approach to art and painting. ROWELL: How did you came to art? You were born in the Deep South—in North Carolina. SNOWDEN: I grew up on the campus of Dillard University in New Orleans and on the campus of Southern University in Baton Rouge, where my mother taught English and where my father worked also. And that’s how I ended up in what you call the Deep South. My parents gave us—my brother and me—something to do when we were very young; they gave us watercolor paints. I enjoyed painting. I enjoyed being alone, and I enjoyed color. I grew up around a lot of color. My mother liked color. And she is as strict as I am. That is, a strict sort of person on her visual likes and dislikes. My father and mother moved to Washington, DC, when I was in the seventh grade. I went to school here and later to college at Howard University. My father told me that I should be very careful as to what I should major in. And he also advised me to do what I’d like to do, but to do what I can do for the rest of my life. I thought about it for a long time, and I said that I would major in art. And my father said, “Oh, I don’t know how you are going to make it in art, but fine, do it.” My father and mother supported me, and they supported my desire to paint. For that, I will always be appreciative. ROWELL: After high school you entered Howard University to study art. Will you talk about some of the highlights of your experiences studying art at Howard University, especially those experiences that you think contributed to your being the artist you are today? SNOWDEN: The second blessing of my life—besides my parents—was to study art at Howard University. And there I studied with professors who were extraordinary. David Driskell was one. The others Loïs Jones, James Porter, James Wells, and others. Those people really had an impact on my life as a painter. They were people who took a deep interest in what their students were doing, and they fostered the learning process, and I am deeply appreciative of their knowledge and their will to share it. And these are people who had their own careers, and they also spent as much time and energy with their students. I will always appreciate them. ROWELL: You said they had a very serious impact on your art. I’m thinking about them right now, as you speak about this, because we just produced an issue devoted to that whole group. None of those artists created abstract art—that is, as far as I have been able to tell. The main of their work was more impressionist rather than abstract. Of course, later in her career Loïs Mailou Jones’s work became more and more abstract. Now in his distinguished career as a practicing artist David Driskell, who had earlier been a student of the Howard University professors you mentioned, created (and still does so) art that reveals his thorough [End Page 85] knowledge of art in Africa, Europe, and the USA. And, of course, that includes abstract art. I view your art as abstract expressionist. SNOWDEN: Well, I wish you wouldn’t have said that. I’m going to tell you why. Because that terminology is dated. It has nothing to do with abstract expressionism. Really, it has very little to do with my work. My work is abstract and it is based on logic and emotion. But that’s really the only connection. I have tried for years to make my own style of painting, to paint what is me, so that’s why I don’t want you to use “abstract expressionism” when you discuss my work. That’s a dated term. That’s...

Quetiapine-Related Tic in a Pediatric Bipolar Patient

[Author Affiliation]Shiyan Chen. Otolaryngology Department, Fuzhou General Hospital of Nanjing Command, PLA, Fuzhou, Fujian 350025, China.Hongxun Gong. Otolaryngology Department, Fuzhou General Hospital of Nanjing Command, PLA, Fuzhou, Fujian 350025, China.Xianming Chen. Otolaryngology Department, Fuzhou General Hospital of Nanjing Command, PLA, Fuzhou, Fujian 350025, China.Address correspondence to: Xianming Chen, Otolaryngology Department, Fuzhou General Hospital of Nanjing Command, PLA, Fuzhou, Fujian 350025, China, E-mail: fuzongerbihou@163.comTo The Editor:Quetiapine is currently being used to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. We report a case in which quetiapine acted as a possible tic inducer during treatment of bipolar disorder, although there have been several case reports on the successful use of quetiapine for the treatment of Tourette's syndrome in children and adolescents (Copur et al. 2007). This is probably the first such reported case in a pediatric bipolar patient.Case ReportL, a 16-year-old boy without any other past psychiatric history, was overactive for ∼5 weeks, and his mother thought him, mad. She said that he spent all his money to buy lots of unnecessary things. His teachers thought that he appeared restless all day without getting tired. He frequently felt more self-confident than usual and always said he could be in charge of a country. He talked rapidly with abrupt changes from topic to topic, and was difficult to interrupt during the outpatient clinical examination. No abnormality was detected on a brain MRI scan or electroencephalogram (EEG), or during laboratory examination. No childhood or family history of tic disorder was found. Because L's history also revealed a depression episode 2 years earlier, he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder type I according to the Kiddie Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia for School-Aged Children--Present and Lifetime Version (K-SADS-PL). His score on the Young Mania Rating Scale was 44.Quetiapine was started at 50mg/day for the first 2 days. The dose of quetiapine was increased progressively by 50 mg every 4 days. The patient's symptoms resolved completely when quetiapine was titrated up to 600 mg/day. His father told us afterwards that he occasionally blinked his eyes once the quetiapine dose was titrated to 150 mg/day. Recurrent episodes of ''tightening'' of his eyes, nose, and the corner of his mouth increased in frequency, ultimately occurring thousands of times per day when quetiapine was titrated up to 600 mg/day. When the patient came to our clinic again, we used the Yale Global Tic Severity Scale to measure the severity of tic symptoms, and the score was 40. …

Researching a Civil War Drummer Boy

My father told me stories about his father Almon, who was a drummer boy during the Civil War. At age 14, Almon ran away from home to follow an Indiana regiment marching off to war. The second time he ran away, he changed his name to Albert Walton so his mother couldn’t find him. He was mustered into the Seventy-fifth Indiana Infantry Volunteers regiment, was captured at the Battle of Chickamauga, and survived Andersonville prison.

HOW DO YOU MANAGE THE TREATMENT OF A MINOR WHOSE PARENT REFUSES A REASONABLETREATMENT PLAN?

Q Early in my career, a father brought his 12-year-old daughter to my practice as a new patient. She complained of discomfort “on the lower left.” The clinical examination revealed a moderately sized carious lesion on the occlusal surface of tooth no. 19. I also noted incipient decay on teeth nos. 3, 14 and 30. I discussed the examination findings with the father, along with a treatment plan that included restorations on all four teeth. The father told me he did not want any of his daughter's teeth filled.

In Search of Brightest Africa: Reimagining the Dark Continent in American Culture, 1884–1936 by Jeannette Eileen Jones

Reviewed by: In Search of Brightest Africa: Reimagining the Dark Continent in American Culture, 1884–1936 by Jeannette Eileen Jones Sharai Erima (bio) Jones, Jeannette Eileen. In Search of Brightest Africa: Reimagining the Dark Continent in American Culture, 1884–1936. Athens: U of Georgia P, 2010. You’re five years old. You hold your father’s massive yet reassuring hand while you marvel at a herd of seven elephants stampeding towards you. Ten minutes ago you were riding the A train in Manhattan. Now you are in the American Museum of Natural History aboard an “invisible train” as it takes you on a safari through Carl Akeley’s vision of Africa. The museum boasts comprehensive replicas of African wildlife, including people dressed in grass and hide and mud and shell. You remember your father telling you about the Egyptians, but you see no sign of them. He tells you to ask the tour guide. You do. The man answers: Natural history museums don’t exhibit the cultures of “white people”; go visit the Met across the park (xii). These early memories of author Jeannette Jones serve as a powerful metaphor for her first book, In Search of Brightest Africa: Reimagining the Dark Continent in American Culture, 1884–1936. Jones, an assistant professor at Nebraska University, weaves a compelling examination of outsiders’ first impressions of Africa through film, thought, bullet, and plunder. Jones aims to unravel complex evolutions in white American and African American thoughts about Africa. In her assessment, the modern American view of Africa formed from a collision of white naturalists and black nationalists during events bookended by the Belgian occupation of the Congo and the Italian invasion of Ethiopia. The resulting debates sought to characterize the continent during a time when America looked outwardly to define its own relative modernity at the expense of African people’s ability to define themselves on the world stage. Both the white naturalists and the black nationalists sought to protect Africa from Western expansion, but wished to keep Africans in the role of observer. Jones effectively writes with a sense of symmetry that links seemingly disparate events in a purposeful way, such as the rise of the rubber trade, the birth of modern pan-Africanism, and innovations in taxidermy. Jones organizes events well, ascribing two distinct Western responses to Africa: one white and one black. I will address her analysis of black responses later. Jones’s bifurcation further breaks up white responses into European and American. European responses then divide as either imperialist, typified by the attendees of the Berlin Conference and led by the Belgians, or missionary, exemplified by institutional efforts to spread Christianity intended to eradicate traditionalism and stall the Islamic influence. Jones separates American responses into either definitive, reinforcing the collective view of America as modern in opposition to a perceived African retardation, or primitive, an appeal to American game hunters wishing to express rugged masculinity by dominating an uncivilized frontier much like America’s Wild West. The Belgian occupation of the Congo also brought the area’s wildlife to the attention of the upstart American Museum of Natural History who sent naturalist-environmentalists on expeditions, under the approval of Belgium’s King Leopold, to amass collections by shooting and skinning the animals they wished to preserve. In the process, they stumbled upon ethnographic evidence that challenged their assumption that the Congolese were benighted compared to white, American modernity. Bantu African advancements in metallurgy, it appeared, brought civilization to Egypt and then, by extension, to Europe and ultimately America. These discoveries were not widely accepted and instead were [End Page 493] replaced with a more palatable metanarrative of Africans as savage children, mistreated by the superior, yet crafty, white Belgians (80). In Jones’s evaluation of naturalist-environmentalist discourses on and displays of Africa, no individual looms larger than Carl Akeley does. Akeley’s single-minded efforts to preserve what he viewed as a vanishing Africa led him to innovative methods in taxidermy and wildlife display, unmatched even today. Jones dedicates one of the five chapters of In Search of Brightest Africa almost entirely to Akeley. It flows well and is easily the most focused of the chapters, but...

Ho-Chunk Warrior, Intellectual, and Activist: Henry Roe Cloud Fights for the Apaches

Ho-Chunk Warrior, Intellectual, and ActivistHenry Roe Cloud Fights for the Apaches Renya K. Ramirez (bio) Henry Roe Cloud (1884–1950), my Ho-Chunk grandfather, an activist, intellectual, and policymaker, was a cofounder of the Society of American Indians (sai), the first Native American–led, pan-tribal national organization created in 1911. This essay examines Cloud’s successful activist work to free Geronimo, an Apache, and his people, who had been imprisoned after being captured by the US military in 1886 (Wishart; Turcheneske), and his efforts to assist the Apaches who chose to stay in Oklahoma with their land allotment struggle against the federal government. I argue Cloud combined his Ho-Chunk and Yale educations, transforming his colonial training into Indigenous intellectual weapons to fight for the Apaches. I discuss Cloud’s Ho-Chunk warrior training and its impact on him as a Ho-Chunk intellectual. I then examine his Yale experiences, offering a critique of Joel Pfister’s recent study, The Yale Indian: The Education of Henry Roe Cloud. Finally, I discuss Cloud’s involvement in the sai, his intellectual work and activism, his fight for the Apaches’ freedom, and his work in assisting them in their land conflict with the federal government. Cloud’s Ho-Chunk Warrior Education Cloud was born in a traditional Ho-Chunk bark home next to the Missouri River on the Winnebago reservation in Nebraska surrounded by his family and tribe (Ramirez, “From Henry”). Despite facing tremendous settler colonial challenges, including five successive removals from our homelands in Wisconsin (Lonetree; Wolfe), Cloud’s Ho-Chunk tribal elders and family kept their Ho-Chunk culture and language [End Page 291] strong, which they taught to him.1 Indeed, he declares in a 1909 letter, “Up to the age of 13, I had no other training but Indian.”2 Vital to his training was a Ho-Chunk warrior education stressing prayer and fasting, which involved building endurance, strength, and self-discipline, placing the needs of the sick, children, and elders first, and fighting for the survival of his people. His grandmother taught him traditional Ho-Chunk stories, instilling in him Ho-Chunk cultural values and teaching him skills in oratory (Cloud, “From Wigwam”). When Cloud was twelve or thirteen years old, flu epidemics overwhelmed our reservation, killing his grandmother and parents. According to my mother, her father suffered from much grief and terrible loneliness after losing his close family members. These dreadful losses were central to his decision to informally adopt the Roes, a white missionary couple, as his “mother” and “father” when he was in his early twenties. This informal adoption was consistent with the Ho-Chunk cultural custom to adopt others to take the place of those who had passed away. My mother discussed how important her father’s Ho-Chunk name—Wo-Na-Xi-Lay-Hunka, meaning “War-Chief ” and described by him as “the Chief of the Place of Fear”3—was to him. Cloud was a member of the Thunderbird Clan—the clan, as Cloud discusses, that “obstructed and permitted war.” Cloud’s clan membership and name were pivotal to his roles as a Ho-Chunk leader, man, and modern-day warrior. During a harsh winter when Cloud was a young boy, he did not eat for ten days. Then his father discovered a frozen beaver’s home, killed the beavers, and arranged a feast. While his family ate, his father told him his prophecy: “Eat, War Chief, for I am hungry but will not eat until you have tasted food. I am old and it makes no difference if I starve, but you are young. The future of the Winnebagoes [Ho-Chunks] lies within you.”4 My mother emphasized how her father repeated these words to himself, showing how this powerful story defined him, motivating him throughout his life to fight as a Ho-Chunk warrior for the survival of his people. This story teaches a strong warrior value, which is to prioritize the survival of the young, who embody the future and persistence of the tribe, before one’s own continued existence. Another core value is to protect one’s tribal land base. Indeed, Cloud’s Ho-Chunk...

"Follow the Money"

"Follow the Money" Mark W. Geiger (bio) Editor's Note: The following represents the acceptance speech for the Watson Brown Prize for best book published on the Civil War era in calendar year 2010. Tad Brown, president of the Watson-Brown Foundation, awarded the prize for the book Financial Fraud and Guerrilla Violence in Missouri's Civil War, 1861-1865, published by Yale University Press. Reproduced in whole, the remarks were given at the annual banquet of the Society of Civil War Historians (SCWH), held during the Southern Historical Association meeting last October in Baltimore. The SCWH judges and administers the book prize. Before I say anything else, I'd like to thank my graduate adviser, who is here tonight—Dr. LeeAnn Whites, of the University of Missouri-Columbia. I based this book on my dissertation, and without her excellent guidance and advice—and all the times she read my work—I would not be here tonight. I'll begin tonight with a question we have all heard: Why study the Civil War? The war ended long ago and is already the subject of a vast body of work. One reason the war remains important is that for many Americans, myself included, the war is in us. My family lived in Missouri in the mid-nineteenth century, and we have five or six stories handed down from the Civil War: The time the bushwhackers surrounded a church during a Sunday service. A great-great uncle, called out of his house and shot dead in front of his wife. How my great-grandfather hid in the brush for weeks on end. I didn't read these stories, and the family genealogist didn't dig them up. I heard them from my oldest living relatives, and they heard them from their parents and grandparents. I suspect millions of other living Americans carry stories like these. And all the Americans whose ancestors immigrated after the War share that atmosphere. We live with the shadows of our ancestors. One such family story—a short one—led me to the initial discovery that eventually resulted in this book. My father told me: "My grandmother was named Rose Anderson. Her father was shot down in the streets of [End Page 298] Boonville, when she was a girl." I asked why—and who shot him. "I don't know," he replied. "We don't know anything about him." I asked what his name was. "No one knows now," my father said. "And there's no one left to ask. They're all dead." I grew up knowing that story, and some years back I decided to research it. I found that my great-great grandfather was an uncontrollable wild man, and knowing what I do now, I'm surprised he lasted as long as he did. But while looking into his sordid affairs, I also noticed a large number of defaulted-debt cases in the Cooper County, Missouri, circuit court records, dating from the war years. These cases had many odd features. First, the same defendants appeared over and over in different combinations: A and B signed a note payable to C. A and C payable to B. B and C payable to A—and so on. Second, judging by their names, many of the defendants in these cases were southerners. I saw names like Pike Thompson, Jackson Quisenberry, Lacy McClanahan, Presley Marmaduke. What else could they possibly have been? I also saw that none of the defendants had German surnames, which suggested that these were men of Confederate sympathies. Large numbers of German immigrants had come to central Missouri in the 1850s, and when the War came they were almost unanimously pro-Union. Finally, I found that while the court records of many counties had these "special" defaulted-debt cases, their distribution was uneven. For example, I counted 68 and 122 cases respectively in Cooper and Pettis Counties, which adjoin each other. But Morgan County, which adjoins both Cooper and Pettis, had no cases at all. So these cases were not fallout from the wartime destruction of Missouri's economy. That affected everybody, regardless of ethnicity, sectional origin, or politics. Rather, these cases affected specific people...

Minimalisms

minimalisms Jesse Ball, Kevin Canty, Monica Drake, Amelia Gray, Phil Greaney, Sheila Heti, Tao Lin, Bobbie Ann Mason, Robert Miltner, Melinda Moustakis, Nami Mun, Shouhua Qi, Ron Riekki, James Robison, Justin Sirois, Tom Spanbauer, and Michael Trussler Overheard My Father Speaking to a Man in the Middle of the Night Who Said He Had Come From an Accident: wanted to use the telephone. My father told him there was no telephone. Man said again there was an accident. My father told him we didn't have a telephone. Everyone has a telephone. I need to use it. Don't you see, opening the door a little, there's no telephone anywhere. —Jesse Ball, author of The Curfew (2011) More of a critic's word than a writer's word. I have learned the world from Carver, Hemingway, Beatty, Babel—all writers who have been called minimalist— but what I've learned is concision, precision, economy, etc. I've never gotten a dime's worth of value from the contemplation of minimalism itself. —Kevin Canty, author of Everything (2010) About the time I first read Raymond Carver, I was crazy about Tom Verlaine, Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson and Jonathan Richmond. It was in the associative leaps between stripped-down lines of seemingly narrative lyrics I found the raw energy of minimalism and its power to muscle emotion into the world. —Monica Drake, author of Clown Girl (2007) "Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Perfection is achieved when there is nothing left. —Amelia Gray, author of Threats (2012) Minimalist writing empowers the reader intent on finding a rich reading experience. Rather than demand the reader follows a pre-ordained path created by the author, it creates gaps—deliberate omissions, in form, function and style—in which the reader is free to determine his or her interpretation. The price the reader pays is that they must give themselves over equally to the text. —Phil Greaney, author of "Less is More: Literary Minimalism in American Short Story. (2006) When I read a sentence and someone says "tree" or "mountain" or "Linda," immediately in my head is a whole and complete "Linda," "mountain." I see every detail. If they then begin giving me details, it's really frustrating; it counters the image that's already there. They're never quick enough to undo the mountain, chair, in my head. I imagine everyone is like this, so I never describe chairs or Lindas or anything. —Sheila Heti, author of How Should a Person Be? (2012) I currently try to avoid defining or earnestly using the word "minimalism" for many reasons. One is to avoid further training my brain to discern abstractions instead of uniqueness, so that when I encounter [person/thing] my brain won't as strongly discern [abstraction] and inaccurately transfer qualities of [abstraction] to [person/thing]. —Tao Lin, author of Richard Yates (2010) This label was the rage in the eighties. Gag me with a spoon. Critics trying to label a bunch of short-story writers set Raymond Carver on the throne of minimalism and grouped the rest of us at his feet. But we were just trying to write stories. —Bobbie Ann Mason, author of The Girl in the Blue Beret (2011) Named after a 1960s pop culture art movement characterized by impersonal stark canvasses, minimalism is a writing style using simplicity of form and content, bare settings, stock characters, limited dialogue and silences, present tense tension, and open endings. Its progeny are the quirky brevities and micro-fictional darlings of online journals. —Robert Miltner, co-editor with Sandra Lee Kleppe of New Paths to Raymond Carver (2008) How to describe minimalism? There is an invisible forest. You, the author, have cut down all the trees. But you don't describe the forest to the reader. You only hold up the axe. But the reader knows that forest is out there, can feel it on the blade. —Melinda Moustakis, author of Bear Down, Bear North (2011) Minimalism is the art of building by subtraction. By silencing the noise of a sentence, by compressing emotion...

Four Poems

12 | World Literature Today photo: iridescent moments photography (www.flickr.com/photos/cgombos) Tree of Red Leaves, Jaén I try to remember everything – the clothes he wore in 1975, black slacks, a white shirt, short sleeves. I try to remember where he hid his soul – under the book he bought in Jaén, 1939, under the gallery table made of echoes. I try to remember when they opened his body to check his temperature – 107 degrees. I try to remember when he felt lost in his small corner – a space too tiny for breathing. When he had no memory with him – his life without the bag of testaments, without the number etched in his mind. When he had no glass, no plate, no fork, and used the same paper cup, the same paper plate, one small plastic fork, until he had no choice but to surrender – that’s when he told me A tree of red leaves can break your heart. I try to remember him without his mouth open, without death hanging on his tongue. I try to remember what he told me, word for word about the day he hid from the sun, that there is a certain light that brings war back. But he was warned, there is no such thing as perfect shade. Author note: The general and dictator Francisco Franco was head of Spain from 1939 until 1975. Prophet in Andalucía We love in the morning, close our eyes to forget it’s early. We name the street with a drawing of a hundred Jesuses on the wall. We try to define beauty, what tells us that we should have kept our eyes open when we could. We hear voices against the wind, look at the sea, discover what’s broken, invent the rules of drowning. We ask ourselves if the white villages are absent when we long, if we are phantoms dreaming ourselves as flesh, if the prophet is buried in the mind’s unbearable song. Editorial note: To read an exclusive interview with Nathalie Handal, and listen to recordings of her reading these poems, visit worldliteraturetoday.com. Four Poems Nathalie Handal January–February 2012 | 13 photo: ram devineni La Guerra The newspaper stained our hands, as if holding on to paper would prevent our fall. You said: After the bomb, I held a comrade’s arm, listened to Radio Cadena Española, and looked at the moon. The bodies weren’t moving. I went closer – we must remember what we looked like once, a country cut in half. And there she was, lying by the sidewalk still faithful to what she believed, her body stiff, her hands open, as if she knew I’d find her – it was her way of giving me another chance to change sides, or it was my chance to take her with me – that’s all I wanted – but she wouldn’t let me do even that, the smile on her face louder than my pleading – this was not the nation we dreamed. So I walked away, tried to remember what her heart looked like when it was not outside her chest, when she kissed me for the first time and thought I was on her side. Author note: Radio Cadena Española (RCE) consisted of stations formerly owned by Franco groups. The Courtyard of Colegiata del Salvador We are strange when we’re lost, his father told him. Saïd didn’t hear the rest. He couldn’t count the waves that led him across the Strait of Gibraltar so he tore his memory, left where he came from behind, and learned to pray differently. He knelt instead of bowed. He counted stones, drew the church columns, spoke any language but his own. Years later, sitting in a courtyard he is startled by the loudness of the wind, almost like the start of the adhan. He feels a small fire alongside his heart, and hears his father’s voice – we are nothing but an image growing from our sleep – how do we explain our journey to others? He looks at the grounds of the courtyard where a mosque once stood and understands what his father...

India grapples with its child marriage challenge

India grapples with its child marriage challenge

Jutito

Jutito* Antonio Gálvez Ronceros The day the black Vallumbrosio was insulted by his own godson, a little black boy named Jutito, his jaw dropped. Putting his eyes like a cow, his nose like a bull, and biting his teeth, he went to his buddy's house. "Compaire Juto, I have come to make a complaint." "Complaining to me, compaire?" "I come to complain about Jutito, your son, because he insulted me." "What!" "He told me such an insult." "What word was that, compaire." "A tremendous one." "But which one is it, compaire. Because I want to know the size and dimension of that word, so I can punish that bratty boy in the right way." "You, compaire, you want me to repeat that word and screw myself." "But I want to know what the kid told you." "He said such a tremendous insult." "Fine," said Juto. He turned his neck, prompted his teeth toward the back of the house and called his wife, "Juuuta, Juuuta . . ." "Juto?" "Call that Jutito. I want to talk to him." Juta called her daughter who was further back. "Jutiliiicia, Jutiliiicia . . ." "Mom?" "Call that Jutito. Tell him his dad is waiting for him outside." "Jutiiito, Jutiiito . . ." "What do you want?" said Jutito, who was hidden in the courtyard. "Dad's calling you." Hesitating, Jutito was taken before his father and godfather's presence. His father told him, "Liiisten, blaaacky, youuu are going to teeell me what thiiing you told to my compaire." "Ha . . . ha . . . Dumb, my daddy. You want me to bother my godfather again." "Riiight away, youuu are going to teeell me what thiiing you call him." "Ha . . . Ha . . . I called my godfather Mitey Cuca."* Vallumbrosio's color washed away. He turned grayish. "And youuu, damn blacky, blacky of all demons, why did you say such a thing to my compaire." [End Page 252] "Ha . . . ha . . . to piss him off." "Now you'll see how I'm going to grab you and make you disappear." But, Oops! Jutito passed under his father and godfather, grabbed the tall and leafy tree that gave shadow to the house and with elastic ease climbed rapidly until the highest branch, like a lizard running along the trunk. Then everything stayed silent. Juto and Vallumbrosio saw each other's face. Immobilized from the neck down, they slowly raised their heads and looked up. The branches of that side were quiet and in the foliage penumbra it was impossible to distinguish anyone. They lowered their heads and they raised them again little by little by the other side. The quietness and the penumbra were extended all around the top of the tree. Then Juto, keeping his view upwards, called, "Jutito, get down from there." The tree didn't even move. "Hey, boy, get down I'm telling you!" The tree continued in silence as if no one was up there and as if Juto were talking to the tree. "Did you hear me?" Everything remained the same. It was to be believed that there wasn't any tree and Juto was talking to the air. Disappointed, he asked Vallumbrosio, "I saw that he climbed here. Did you, compaire, also see what I saw?" Vallumbrosio, who was furrowing his eyebrows, tightened his mouth in agreement with his buddy. Then Juto called again to the top of the tree, "There you are. You get down right away." Jutito's voice fell from the top. "For what?" "Get down I'm telling you." "For what?" "Are you disobeying?" "I'm fine here." "Get down, damn boy!" "Are you kidding me?" Vallumbrosio made a gesture like killing a serpent and got away without saying goodbye. Juto, who saw him leave, looked at the sky and noticed the sun slide from the center. Then he threw a gob of spit to the trunk of the tree and rapidly entered in the house. He reappeared with a reaper in his hand, pulling a mule with empty panniers by a rope. He mounted the animal and rushed away. Jutito stuck out his head from the top of the tree and observed the country around. His father, far, was approaching a sown field. "There goes my dad," he...

Tusk

Tusk