Pawn Shop Research Articles

A Conversation with Andrew Blanchard

A Conversation with Andrew Blanchard Andrew Blanchard (bio) emily louise smith You grew up on the Mississippi Gulf Coast and now live in Spartanburg, South Carolina. How have these places and others you’ve lived in or visited influenced your work? andrew blanchard I didn’t appreciate the Gulf Coast until I had some distance from it. For the brief time that I lived away from the South, I missed it in a far more visceral sense than just being absent. I trek back and forth from South Carolina to Mississippi and Louisiana quite regularly, and a camera is always within reach. I make it a point to meander the blue highways, much like William Christenberry. There is no shortage of subject matter within the South’s diverse landscape and environmental variance. els The overlaps where one place edges or blurs into another—the urban / rural, for example, or the church in Surely a Revelation Is at Hand, which shares walls with a bar and pawn shop—seem to be a preoccupation in your work. ab Those niche pockets of mashed-together culture are interesting, huh? That fringe sector, the acreage between city and country life is visually rich with ironic couplings of righteous and rowdy. Surely a Revelation Is at Hand conveys my interest in documenting these locations, which establish themselves out of present-day economic necessity, societal shifts in belief systems, and the homogenization of traditional Southern mores. I regularly stumble on storefronts or collections of businesses that seem like a collage created in Photoshop—a fundamentalist congregation abuttting a liquor store or den of sin—but nope, they exist in real time, no digital manipulation. els The cover of this issue is excerpted from a print in your series Urban Removal. Could you talk about this play on the term urban renewal? ab Ill-gotten gain is the driving factor in the Urban Removal suite, a pseudo–James Baldwin concept. When one decides to urban renew, in many cases, one also urban removes. Neighborhoods change hands every generation or few. That transition finds its way into my work. Southern land management and ownership is a slippery slope. els How have viewers responded when you’ve exhibited in the communities you depict in your work? ab It runs the gamut. I mean, some of the subject matter can be uncomfortable, especially if we don’t sugarcoat the past. A Boston curator with familial ties to our region accused me of displaying a romanticized version of the South, which I don’t think I do, but what can you say? Everyone formulates their own opinion. I can’t change that, that’s [End Page 124] not my job. I just give folks something to gnaw on. Some recognize structures that offer personal associations, or react to site specificity, while others respond to titles appropriated from Southern literature. Sociocultural terms and their contradictions really interest me: projects, initiatives, county lines, urban limits, white and black flight. These conventions inspire my compositions—poetic-political-religious-historical narratives—that I hope allow viewers to reflect on their experiences. els Your large-scale prints on wood panels combine techniques from print-making, graphic design, and painting. Could you describe the process? ab My current approach is a hybridization of my printmaking education (process), an interest in contemporary painting (application and support materials), and a means of documenting my subject matter (digital photography). My works are mostly screen prints; whether focusing on a painterly field of color, a section of texture, or realistic subject matter, it’s all acrylic ink applied via a stretched mesh fabric. Wood panel is durable and stable. I can layer, scrape, sand, and drip like a painter; but I also have the ability to print on the surface. Though super time consuming, the combination allows for a more convincing narrative in my opinion. Click for larger view View full resolution © matt johnston els You’re inspired as much by literature as by visual art. Any books or authors you count as influences? ab Words and phrases from Southern fiction help me as I compose images from my digital photo vault. I’m a big fan of Jesmyn Ward; I...

Payday Loans versus Pawn Shops: The Effects of Loan Fee Limits on Household Use

This paper uses data from the January 2009 FDIC Unbanked/Underbanked Supplement to the Current Population Survey (CPS) to examine how household use of payday loans and pawn shops is related to limits on loan fees set by states. We use information in the CPS to measure the relationship between household characteristics and payday loan and pawn shop usage and to control for these factors in examining the relationship between usage and state fee ceilings. We find little relationship between levels of fee ceilings in their current range and payday loan usage. Results for pawn shops indicate somewhat more variation in usage over the current range of pawn-shop fee ceilings. The results are generally consistent with conjectures that because of scale economies at the store level, payday lenders can adjust the scale of store operations to maintain profit margins and thus continue to lend over a range of fee ceilings. This finding suggests that lowering loan fee ceilings up to some point can benefit borrowers, many of whom report using these loan to meet basic living expenses or to make up for lost income.

The Art of a Loan: “When the Loan Sharks Meet Damien Hirst’s ‘$12-Million Stuffed Shark’”

Part I of this Article introduces the reader to the typical types of loans that banks make, includes an in-depth description of a secured loan, and finishes with a discussion of the due diligence requirements of banks. Part II identifies the unique complexities posed by art when it is used as collateral, comparing and contrasting the banks’ process when approving a loan secured by commonly-used assets versus a loan secured by art. Part III discusses the banks’ growing willingness to approve art-backed loans, and identifies the safeguards built into such deals. Part IV introduces the sub-prime lenders of the art market, discussing pawn shop regulations and loans made by “luxury pawn shops” and “art dealers.” Part V compares and contrasts bank loans and “art lender” loans with an emphasis on defaulting borrowers. Part VI discusses the effects of art-backed loans in general, predicting that such practices may lead to a significant drop in the price of art in the market, placing more works in private collections, and thereby decreasing the amount of art available for viewing to the general public. Finally, Part VII briefly concludes.

My Old Kentucky Home: Black History in the Bluegrass State

My Old Kentucky Home:Black History in the Bluegrass State Luther Adams (bio) As an African American and a Kentuckian, writing Way Up North in Louisville was a labor of love. In the book, I argued that many African Americans in Louisville joined a long tradition of claiming the South as Home; through sweat, blood, labor, and history their identification with the South fueled their hopes, dreams, and collective action oriented toward making their lives and the South better. The idea of “Home” resulted as much from placing black people at the center of their history, as it did from my family, which has lived in Kentucky for generations. Although today they are concentrated in Lexington, the Adamses, Markses, Govers, and Overstreets are scattered across the Bluegrass from Louisville to Versailles, from Danville and Cynthiana to Stamping Ground. For well over 150 years, they raised families; they attended church, mainly the House of God or Bethel Baptist Church; they valued education no matter how much or little they had themselves; and they worked in tobacco factories, as janitors, postal employees, cafeteria workers, groomsmen, or joined the military to provide for their families. Some “ran the streets,” drinking and gambling their paychecks and pain away—struggling with the violence of their lives. Yet they, and many more, worked and prayed for a better life for themselves and their children. Or at least to make ends meet. Making ends meet could, and often did, mean [End Page 385] “doing without,” taking on odd jobs, relying on family or food stamps, picking berries, fishing, or growing corn, tomatoes, and green beans in the backyard to eat, maintain a roof over our heads, and have clothes. Family, consisting of blood relations and a dense network of kin, community, and church, was central to our social, cultural, and spiritual lives and economic well being. Illness was all too common; like many of their ancestors my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins struggled (and still do) with blindness, heart disease, strokes, diabetes, hypertension, depression, dementia, and cancer. Like illness, violence—racial, sexual, and domestic—cast its shadow over our daily lives. Still, our family was close, mutuality was taught and expected—your money, time, and talents were not your own but were resources shared by all, more often than not willingly. My parents, Arnetta and Luther, married young and later separated—but never divorced. Through my father’s military benefits we maintained vital access to medical care, and the low prices available shopping on base at Fort Knox. My father dispensed hard-won wisdom and was a violent alcoholic—abusive and loving. My mother was uncompromisingly honest, hot tempered, strong willed, and generous; supported by family, church, intermittent government assistance, and her job working behind the salad buffet at Doss High School, she created a home. My father was shot by the police in 1995, and my mother died after a nineteen-year struggle with cancer a year and a half later.1 Family was powerful and fragile—joy and pain, sunshine and rain. Although family members often “fell out,” we adhered to the belief that “a family that prays together, stays together.” When I think of growing up as an African American child in Kentucky, I recall laughter and jokes, the joy of sucking that tiny sweet drop of honeysuckle, and catching lightning bugs and crawdads. No elder accepted any response that did not include “yes, ma’am” or “no sir.” My family followed basketball passionately, rooting for the Wildcats but keeping a warm spot for Dr. Dunkenstein (Darrell [End Page 386] Griffith) and the Louisville Cardinals. I remember Dan’s Pawn Shop stood at the intersection of Dixie Highway and Broadway in downtown Louisville. As a fifteen-year-old, my brother worked all summer as a janitor, helping pay bills, buying groceries and my new school clothes, and yet he still saved enough to buy the first pair of Air Jordans at Dan’s Pawn Shop. Outside the air was full of the heady smell of tobacco and distilleries. Like many black Kentuckians, those in my family continued to believe in the value of hard work in the face of limited educational and economic opportunities...

Faktor-Faktor yang Mempengaruhi Perilaku Konsumen Dalam Memilih Pegadaian Syariah di Kota Banjarmasin

This study intends to find out if factors including product, promotion, price, place, and service have affected consumers’ behavior in choosing syariah pawn shop (pegadaian syariah). The regression analysis results show that those factors have affected consumer decision making at 63.9%. UsingF test, all of those variables simultaneously have affected consumers’ decision in choosing syariah pawn shop. Furthermore, using t test, only some variables including product, price, and place that partially have affected the consumers’ behavior, but, promotion and service have not affected it. The data analysis also indicates that price is the most dominant variables that affected consumers’ in choosing Syariah pawn shop.

O blefe na vida cotidiana: o jogo (de truco) enquanto mecanismo imaginário para evasão do real

Este trabalho discute o jogo de truco como elemento que permitiria a própria existência dos sujeitos jogadores ao tornar suas realidades minimamente suportáveis. Estudamos as dimensões simbólicas de um jogo de truco que acontece há 23 anos em uma organização empresarial, em que jogavam do "peão do chão de fábrica" ao "vice-diretor geral da empresa". O método de estudo utilizado foi a etnografia em organizações, a qual recebeu auxílio da observação participante e de entrevistas em profundidade. Os jogadores parecem significar sua realidade de trabalho através de movimentos do jogo que o conduzem a ser aquilo que sempre desejaram ser nessa realidade.

Pawn Stars: Putting Theories of Negotiation to the Test

Management science and economic theories of negotiations are tested using a unique data set. The History Channel television show Pawn Stars portrays many negotiations between customers and workers of a pawn shop. This provides a unique data set not typically available to researchers as the tactics of bargaining can be observed, recorded, and analyzed. Many, but not all, of the primary theories developed receive empirical support. The use of experts, experience, the gap between the initial offers, and the use of final offers all affect the likelihood of a deal being made as well as the division of the surplus. The party making the opening offer suffers a disadvantage, which stands in contrast to predictions of sequential bargaining and anchoring effects.

Electronic retention: what does your mobile phone reveal about you?

The global information rich society is increasingly dependent on mobile phone technology for daily activities. A substantial secondary market in mobile phones has developed as a result of a relatively short life-cycle and recent regulatory measures on electronics recycling. These developments are, however, a cause for concern regarding privacy, since it is unclear how much information is retained on a device when it is re-sold. The crucial question is: what, despite your best efforts, does your mobile phone reveal about you?. This research investigates the extent to which personal information continues to reside on mobile phones even when users have attempted to remove the information; hence, passing the information into the secondary market. A total of 49 re-sold mobile devices were acquired from two secondary markets: a local pawn shop and an online auction site. These devices were examined using three industry standard mobile forensic toolkits. Data were extracted from the devices via both physical and logical acquisitions and the resulting information artifacts categorized by type and sensitivity. All mobile devices examined yielded some user information and in total 11,135 artifacts were recovered. The findings confirm that substantial personal information is retained on a typical mobile device when it is re-sold. The results highlight several areas of potential future work necessary to ensure the confidentially of personal data stored on mobile devices.

Comedy Matters: From Shakespeare to Stoppard (review)

Reviewed by: Comedy Matters: From Shakespeare to Stoppard Miriam Chirico Comedy Matters: From Shakespeare to Stoppard. By William Demastes. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008; pp. 224. $80.00 cloth. The machinations of a cast of characters attempting to reconcile their conflicting ambitions by evening's end is typical grist for the comic mill. Comedies that resolve in favor of the collective will seem to prioritize the status quo, but can these same plots also reward individual desires? In his book Comedy Matters, William Demastes analyzes the comic tension between individual desire and the social good. Drawing upon evolutionary biology, neuroscience, and psychology, Demastes explores the dynamic interplay among nature, society, and the individual that comedy embraces. Comedy "matters"—that is, it both bears relevance and reflects material needs—because it showcases the transformation of society and the preservation of the species, as opposed to tragedy's glorification of principled idealism leading to self-destruction. In the comic agenda, social hierarchies are deconstructed through the dramatization of human interconnection, as exemplified by the "life force." Yet it is the intrinsically selfish behavior of humanity that sets the plots in motion. Herein lies the paradox: narratives of intense individualism underwrite comedy's larger agenda of united social betterment. Demastes draws upon an evolutionary model of species development to argue that an individual's biological drive for self-preservation undergirds comedy. Susanne Langer, in Feeling and Form, first theorized that a comic character struggles for homeostatic equilibrium and adapts to a changing environment. Society thus can correct for nonconforming behavior by forcing the individual to adjust to mutually beneficial goals. As Demastes explains, "unsociality, rather than immorality, is the subject of comedy" (18). Drawing upon Richard Dawkins's premise of the "selfish gene," Demastes wonders how comedy can work toward reciprocity if we, at the cellular level, are actually programmed to fight for individual survival. Even though a collective has a higher survival rate than an individual, we are not biologically designed to think collaboratively, a trait that disrupts the dramatic resolution of comedy. Demastes solves this problem by combining Marcel Mauss's analysis of gift-giving, which produces obligatory social bonds through the practice of exchanging gifts, with Timothy Wilson's model of the adaptive unconscious, which posits an unconscious self that secures its survival through a highly conditioned response to its environment. The model of gift-giving allows us to perceive reconciliatory characters such as Prospero and Portia in a new light, because their gifts of forgiveness and mercy, while approaching Derrida's notion of the "pure gift," nonetheless secure their own ends, which happen to be congruent with the community's well-being. A play like American Buffalo, however, does not exemplify comedy's gift-giving nature; according to Demastes, the economic motivation of each individual for himself overwhelms the free circulation of friendship and loyalty in a society represented by the pawn shop. [End Page 147] Demastes's second approach to comedy, modeled on the adaptive unconscious, illuminates how a character's interaction with his or her environment alters the self so that a comic resolution can be attained; rather than remain in a fixed worldview, as a tragic character might, the comic hero adapts to the way the world truly is, a process that leads to self-revelation. In light of the role-theorist's belief that each person possesses multiple selves, this model of an adaptive unconscious yields new interpretations of various plays, such as The Importance of Being Earnest, where, as Demastes shows, Jack Worthing puts forth the self most suited for any particular social environment. Moliere's character Alceste proves a failed comic character, by contrast, because he refuses to adapt to his hypocritical social milieu. Demastes further maintains that comedy negates a Cartesian mind–body dualism and draws upon current theories in neuroscience to demonstrate how mental processes are in no way separate from their bodily connections. Taking Shakespeare's Troilus and Hamlet as examples, Demastes argues that these figures are not comic, because not only do they adhere to a mind–body dualistic vision, but they erroneously prioritize the mind at the expense of the body. As the mind is physically embodied in...

Yellowtown: Urban Signage, Class, and Race

ABSTRACTThere are many kinds of edges, both distinct and ambiguous, in modern cities. The edges demarcating medieval cities were clear and material, but modern municipal boundaries are amorphous, with a multiplicity of physical edges resulting from physical infrastructure, local demographics, and urban zoning laws. Commercial signage visualizes these edges and forms a cultural landscape also influenced by long-held societal beliefs. This article explores the use of the color yellow in signs as they relate to pawn shops, check cashiers, gun supplies, and other businesses aimed at those in a state of urgency. While the color yellow presents itself well from great distances and at high speeds, providing good contrast and high legibility, and it has historically been associated with moneylenders, a pawn shop located near a white demographic will use red, green or blue colors in its signage: yellow is specifically used for stores at the edges of the African-American Goodloetown neighborhood of Lexington, Kentucky. While not deliberately racist, yellow-colored signs are rarely used in other Lexington neighborhoods, or for similar businesses in different demographics. When passing near the edge of Goodloetown, the clustering of yellow-colored signage produces the cultural landscape “Yellowtown,” indicating beliefs about what parts of cities are appropriate for certain kinds of commercial signage.

Preventing the Unpredicted: Managing Violence Risk in Mental Health Care

Preventing the Unpredicted: Managing Violence Risk in Mental Health Care

Learning to save lives.

Learning to save lives.

An Excerpt from the Novella Moving

An Excerpt from the Novella Moving

Booklist and Notes

Booklist and Notes George Brosi Bragg, Rick. Ava's Man. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001. 304 pages. Hardback in dust jacket. $25.00. Rick Bragg (b. 1959) has carved out a journalism career for himself writing features mostly about people who share his working class origins. He started with papers in his native Alabama, and now he is a national correspondent for The New York Times and has a Pulitzer to his credit for his reporting on the Oklahoma City Federal Building bombing. In 1997 he told the story of his mother in the book, All Over But the Shouting. It drew rave reviews—Pat Conroy called it "one of the best books I've ever read"—and was a best seller. His collection of personal profiles, published first in papers, called Somebody Told Me (2000), was equally well received. Ava's Man has already drawn the unique kind of praise his previous efforts saw. The book takes this title because the author knew the widow of the subject of this biography but not the subject, Charlie Bundrum, his maternal grandfather, who died in 1958, a year before the author was born. Bundrum lived in the foothills of the Appalachians, near the Alabama-Georgia border, and worked primarily as a roofer, but also as a carpenter, a moonshiner and a fisherman. Bragg presents Bundrum completely, without glossing over his rough edges—the kind that brought him to knock his grown son unconscious with a single punch to the face. "In this pungent paean to his grandfather, Bragg also chronicles a vanished South that, like the once-wild Coosa River Charlie liked to ply in homemade boats, is becoming too tamed to accommodate those who would carve out a proud if hardscrabble living on its margins."—Publishers Weekly. "In creating an indelible portrait of his grandfather, Bragg also brings alive a particular time and place showing us just how much we've lost as we've made progress."—Booklist. Harvey, Steven. Boundfor Shady Grove. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2000. 157 pages. Hardback in dust jacket. $24.95. This is an eclectic collection of essays about traditional mountain music. It includes, for example, a piece that describes in detail the creation of a handmade banjo, another on a trip to England to explore the origins of this music, one on a pawn shop that specializes in musical instruments and firearms, and another on a banjo contest. 98 The author was born in 1949, in Dodge City, Kansas, and received his doctorate from the University of Virginia. He has been an English professor at Young Harris College in North Georgia since 1976. This is his fourth essay collection in book form, following a volume of poetry. Hickam, Homer. Sky of Stone: A Memoir. New York: Delacorte Press/Random House, 2001. 336 pages. Hardback in dust jacket. $24.95. This is the third and final book in a trilogy of memoirs from a NASA engineer who grew up in a West Virginia coal camp. The first, Rocket Boys, was a number one New York Times bestseller, later made into the successful Hollywood movie, October Sky. This book, Sky of Stone, takes place in the Summer of 1961 when the author has returned home after his first year at Virginia Tech. "Sonny" as the author calls himself, is working at the coal mine his father runs for a large company. The title comes from how the sky appears when miners first emerge from underground. The plot is enlivened by Sonny's difficult relationship with his distant father, the impending break-up of his parents' marriage, an older woman who becomes a love interest and an investigation of Sonny's father's complicity in a methane explosion that killed a friend. "This concluding volume has the feel of literary durability about it, even more than the muchballyhooed Rocket Boys."—Kirkus Reviews. Homer Hickam (b. 1943) was born in Coalwood, West Virginia, received a BS from VPI, served in Vietnam as Second Lieutenant, and then worked for the Army Missile Command and NASA in Huntsville, Alabama, until his recent retirement. Kelsay, Michael. Too Close to Call. Oxford: University Press of Mississippi, 2001. 274 pages. Hardback...

Mixing with Records

Mixing with Records

The Pillow Incident

The Pillow Incident Connie Wanek My father, Judge Wanek, was in possession of a handgun. He accepted it, he explained, in lieu ofa legal fee. The gun surprised me, but not the manner of acquisition, for I had grown up accustomed to the ancient tradition among lawyers to accept as compensation practicaUy anything of value from chents who needed help but had no money—had only, for example, chickens, a trombone, purebred Pomeranian puppies, grandmother 's gold teeth, or perhaps a tennis racket stringing machine. Someone had painted our house once, rather badly, to setde a debt. And for months we had a line of credit at a fresh fruit stand. But a gun . . . was it the same one used in the robbery, I wondered? It's in the bedroom, Father said, and he led us there, my husband and me, into the stuffy gloom where shades were always drawn. The darkness seemed to rise rather than faU in that room, gathering at the taU ceiling like smoke. I had the sense that if I feU on my hands and knees the air near the floor would be cooler and easier to breathe. He opened the cabinet at his bedside and drew the gun out; its sudden weight made his wrist bend, and he held it carelessly, with a completely uncharacteristic bravado. It had a strange, oil-saturated gleam, even in the dark. I'd Uke you to take this to the pawn shop and see what you can get for it, Father said. Or if they won't give you cash, just leave it there on consignment . Talk to Manny. He knows me. He's been to court on a number of occasions. Perhaps it was an errand best undertaken by someone other than the judge. My father, although just a municipal judge, was careful of his position in the community, though he was in no sense vainglorious. He had the power to infuriate people, or to calm them, as he chose. He never abused this power, and in fact found it amusing that he had ended up on the bench, 91 92Fourth Genre when he could, he claimed, just as easily have been one of those standing before it. He used to teU us of his young days in Marinette, Wisconsin, skipping school, hanging out at the bowUng alley, setting pins for a few cents a line. He was such a late baby, the last oftwelve chüdren, and his father was in his fifties, his mother in her mid-forties, when he was born. Perhaps they hadn 't the energy to manage him as they did the first few—though to be honest , I have the impression that aU the Wanek boys inherited a kind of Bohemian savvy, and a set of ethics that were almost purely situational. He described a late night when he and his buddies crossed the bridge to Menominee, Michigan, and what they were doing there he didn't say. But it attracted the notice ofa certain policeman, notorious for his vigüance and for his left arm, which was withered—one of those curiosities that fascinate boys particularly. A chase ensued, the boys dashing for the bridge and the safety of their home town, across the state Une. Close behind was the policeman, roaring and threatening. As they crossed the bridge, they turned to see their pursuer stop and shake his good fist at them. Inspired, my father shouted, "Beware the short arm of the law!" So it was ironic, he felt, that he was now a judge. And I think what made him such a good and worthyjudge, re-elected again and again, is that when he looked at the defendants, the law breakers, he saw human beings. He saw people not so very different from himself, apart, ofcourse, from the rare, truly evü, brutal soul who surfaced now and then, the genuine danger to others. But back to the gun. I took it from my father for a moment before passing it on to my husband. It was greasy, like a Brazü nut, and was sUghdy warmer than my hands. It had a strange smeU, the cumulative odor ofaU the...

The Girls' Army

WHEN PETER RETURNS from officer training it is usually near dark, and he's lightheaded, bold and hungry. He's relieved to see his house approaching after the merciless day, and he's glad to know his sister Ellen will be waiting there, impressed by his shabby, tight uniform, his after school war-stories. She is always there, just inside the broken doorway. Tonight he has something much better than usual to show her?a gun he bought at a pawn shop. It weighs down his backpack beneath water damaged textbooks, skin magazines, his umbrella and his soft, rotting lunch.

Woven Stone by Simon J. Ortiz

162 Western American Literature A spontaneous combustion propels the reader into the complex density of the modern Indian world, on and off the reservation, at once painful and compelling yet somehow balanced with humor and hope. Alexie’s razor-sharp irony races toward unexpected twists and turns. His stark portraits are vivid and disturbing: house fires, sin and forgiveness, Crazy Horse dreams (the kind that don’t come true), Buffalo Bill opening a pawn shop, powwows and fancydancers like Vernon WildShoe (Elvis in braids), Crazy Horse just back from Vietnam in the Breakaway Bar, Lester FallsApart translating the directions on a commodity can of soup, Chief Victor, two hundred winter beers wide, still sinkingjum p shots from thirty feet and beyond. Alexie grew up in Wellpinit on the Spokane Indian reservation. He speaks of his connections to and isolation within, not only white America, but his own tribe. His writing hits hard because it comes directly out of his own experiences. Comic relief provides an element of surprise. And throughout we encounter the theme of forgiveness. In “Pow Wow”we read of the usual hustle and bustle, humorous incidents and the inevitable encounters with whites, all taking place in the present and past. The poem ends: still, Indians have a way of forgiving anything a little but more and more it’s memory lasting longer and longer like uranium just beginning a half-life. The threads of isolation and alienation that weave through these stories all sum up what Gerald Vizenor terms the “cultural schizophrenic,” who has the impossible task of living in two worlds, always questioning where he or she belongs. In “Distances”we are told that “There is nothing as white as the white girl an Indian boy loves.” And “I do not speak my native tongue. Except that is, for the dirty words. I can tell you what I think of you in two languages.” Sherman Alexie’s powerful voice exemplifies how imagination and the power of words, native or not, can be the most potent weapon of all. His writing challenges the reader to listen and listen well and to confront an honest portrait of the contemporary Indian world, a world where, all too often, “suddenly, nothing happens.” It is exactly this kind of truthfulness and insight that leads to triumph in battle. The Business ofFancydancing is guaranteed to provoke, amaze and remove those rose-colored glasses from idealistic non-Indians by revealing the hard realities of the present-day Native American world. ANDREA-BESS BAXTER Albuquerque, New Mexico Woven Stone. By Simon J. Ortiz. (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1992. 365 pages, $45.00/$18.95.) It is a testament to Simon Ortiz’s influential career that Woven Stone has been published: three of his books, long out of print, have now been collected Reviews 163 into one volume. For those of you who have searched in vain for GoingFor The Rain (1976), A GoodJourney (1977), and Fight Back:Forthe Sake ofthePeople, For the Sake of the Land (1980), look no further. Reprinted in their entirety, these acclaimed works are now available along with an insightful, in-depth thirty-page preface which chronicles the author’s life. For those not familiar with Simon Ortiz’s prolific career, GoingFor The Rain and A GoodJourney are two works of poetry that use oral histories, narratives and stories. His memories of a traditional upbringing at Acoma Pueblo, New Mexico, intertwine with his encounters of rural and working-class Americans. These cyclical poems are told to us by Ortiz with Coyote’s help and vice versa. An ironic sense of humor flows throughout tales of the contemporary world. Always committed to native survival and endurance, Ortiz’s gift lies in making us aware of our own personal responsibility; these are not just words on a page, they are a call to political action. Fight Back is a powerful and beautiful example that art and politics do mix. This book of poetry and prose focuses on the uranium mining in the AcomaGrants -Laguna area in the early 1950s. Ortiz writes from historical perspectives (the most accurate history being the stories of the workers and their families) as well as from...

Kids, guns, and killing fields

Kids, guns, and killing fields

Tan Malaka's Arrest: An Eye-Witness Account

When he returned from Holland in late 1919, he taught school for a while in a plantation in East Sumatra. But, unable to bear the sight of contract coolies working under miserable, inhuman conditions at the plantations of that region, he quit teaching. What he saw of the coolies' sufferings increased his fervor for communism. He moved to Semarang, where he quickly rose in the ranks of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), eventually replacing its leader Semaun, who went to Moscow. But accused of delivering inflammatory speeches during a strike of pawn shop workers, Tan Malaka was arrested by the Netherlands Indies government and exiled to Holland.