Non-fiction Works Research Articles

Toward integration of reading and service learning through an interdisciplinary program

This study examined the effect of an interdisciplinary program of reading and service learning on the cognitive and affective development of university students in Hong Kong. As Nussbaum (1997) stated, literature plays a vital role in educating citizens of the world through its narrative imagination and its power of promoting understanding and empathy toward the life of others. Halstead and Pike (2006) also emphasized that art can foster reflection upon action and bring about change in behavior as a result of perspective change. In this study, 24 freshmen read literary works under the theme of children’s welfare and explored issues related to the welfare of children worldwide. Their reflections on these materials were expressed in writing and in a presentation. In the following semester, the students participated in voluntary services within and outside Hong Kong. All students completed a questionnaire on their humanistic concerns and sense of global citizenship at the beginning and the end of the project. Results showed that students were conscious of their changes after joining the program and stated their growth in values and knowledge. The pre–post-t-test analysis suggested that students had made significant improvement in the following areas: (1) their attitude toward serving others, especially in their personal and social values; (2) their engagement in reading literary and nonfiction works which reflect social and moral issues of the world; (3) their attention to world affairs; (4) their concern for the underprivileged; and (5) awareness of their potential in helping the poor.

Sur les traces d’un père : « La quête harkéologique » de Dalila Kerchouche

This article proposes a textual analysis of Dalila Kerchouche's non-fictional work, Mon père, ce harki (2003). Struggling to accept and pardon her father's decision to side with the French during the Algerian War, Kerchouche explores the aftermath of the war on her family and on the harki community who fell victim to post-independence violence in Algeria and to racial discrimination in France. Born in 1973 in Bias, an internment camp in southwestern France, Kerchouche embarks on a journey through time and space. Her objective: to read her family's history and the history of the harkis in physical traces left on the French and Algerian landscapes. As the youngest member of her family, Kerchouche must engage with parental and archival memories as well as visit harki sites of memory in order to constitute her own (post)memory of the harki experience. Throughout this article, I argue that while Kerchouche's quête harkéologique fails to find and catalogue physical traces of the past, it succeeds in creating an oral archive capable of rewriting national history and of reconciling father and daughter.

Retribution in Islam (Qur’an 2:178): Fact and Fiction in Victorian Literature

Retribution in Islam (Qur’an 2:178):Fact and Fiction in Victorian Literature Clinton Bennett (bio) The Number of non-fictional works on Islam increased dramatically during Victoria’s reign. In fiction, though, reference to specific texts is rare, perhaps even absent. Yet whole novels were set in Islamic contexts, with plots presenting ideas and images of Islam. Many such images bore little or no relationship to what Muslims believe or how they behave. Among common misconceptions, indeed one of the “most widely prevalent” was the notion that Islam demands retaliation or retribution (qisas), that it is a duty to take an “eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” (Khattak 117). Several verses in the Qur’an refer to the Lex Talionis (see 2:178, 4:92, 5:45). Verse 5:45 says that this was ordained for Jews but that Allah prefers forgiveness. Verse 2:178 refers to qisas as a right. However, a “suitable payment” is better, since Allah loves mercy. Later, Islamic law recognized that victims or their relatives have a right to financial compensation or to demand an “eye for an eye” penalty, but encouraged them to consider a less severe punishment, so that in Islam “retribution” becomes “subordinate to forgiveness” (Pal 21). The emphasis has been on “forgoing retribution” to end the cycle of violence. Many think that retributive justice should be pursued only if it results in a type of healing, in reconciliation between victim and wrongdoer (Lakhani, Shah-Kazemi, and Lewisohn 127). In fact, Islamic law elevates restorative over retributive justice. When the Qur’an does speak of qisas, it is within a judicial, not a personal, setting. Even in non-Muslim judicial contexts, however, restorative justice has started to be featured, notably as pioneered in Canada in the 1970s. For many Victorians, however, retribution represents the very “epitome of Muslim behavior” (Khattak 117). Three writers who refer to retribution are [End Page 13] Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936), Lillias Hamilton (1858–1925), and James Morier (1780–1849). Kipling was born in India. Hamilton worked in Afghanistan, where she was physician to Emir Abdur Rahman (1840–1901). Morier, born in Turkey, was a British diplomat in Iran involved in negotiating peace with Russia from 1810 to 1816. All three were distinguished Victorians, although Morier was near the end of his career when Victoria ascended. Hamilton qualified as a doctor in Scotland in 1890, then went to India privately (not sponsored by any official agency). After working in a Zenana hospital in Calcutta, where she also ran her own medical practice, she accepted an invitation to treat the emir’s wife in Kabul. She stayed on as the emir’s personal physician. Initially invited for six months, she remained for almost three years. All three knew Muslims and experienced life in Muslim contexts or in societies in which Muslims had a considerable presence. Kipling is perhaps the quintessential Victorian in terms of his attitude of effortless superiority and racial stereotyping, giving us the “White Man’s Burden” (Verse 371) or the so-called moral mission of civilizing the non-Western world. The idea that east and west are irreconcilably and inalienably different owes much to his writing. Yet in “The Ballad of East and West,” the Kipling poem from which an east-west polarization is derived, he implies an exception to this rule: “There is neither East nor West … / When two strong men stand face to face” (Verse 268). It is in this poem that Kipling refers to qisas. In the ballad, an Afghan chief, Kamal, steals a horse from a British colonel, who sends his son to recover it and punish the chief. The son shoots at Kamal but misses. Subsequently, the chief challenges him to a race across rocky terrain. The son’s horse stumbles. Kamal might easily have shot him; “twas only by” his “favour” that the son had “rode so long alive” (270). However, instead of killing him, Kamal cites qisas, “a limb for the risk of a limb” then sends him back to the colonel with his own son, who was to “ride at his side” (271). The colonel had sent his son to Kamal so he sent...

Fictional characters in non-fiction works

Drawing mainly on postings to Index-L in the period 2008―II, Madeleine Davis explores the various approaches indexers have taken to the indexing of fictional characters in non-fiction works. She concludes that there are no 'authoritative' pronouncements on the subject, that any rules there may have been have become less prescriptive than they once were, and that (as so often in indexing) the only rule is that 'it all depends'.

Edith Wharton and the Making of Fashion (review)

Reviewed by: Edith Wharton and the Making of Fashion Gary Totten Katherine Joslin. Edith Wharton and the Making of Fashion. Lebanon, NH: UP of New England, 2009. xv + 209 pp. In Edith Wharton and the Making of Fashion, Katherine Joslin explores the question of how to read literature through the study of fashion images and actual garments, a methodology she terms “reading dress.” Joslin notes that while previous critics have commented briefly on references to clothing or fashion design in Wharton’s work, her goal is “to pull the seemingly peripheral story of fashion to the center of study.” Joslin’s book participates in the recent focus on material culture in Wharton scholarship or the inclination, as Joslin states, “to think about [Wharton] with an archaeologist’s trowel in her hand” (179). Joslin herself engages in a fair amount of archaeological work; in identifying and analyzing fashion references in Wharton’s life and work, she draws on her research of actual garments from the period. The book is generously laden with images of these garments including color plates of dresses, hats, art, and magazine illustrations from Wharton’s era. In addition to her compelling readings of the clothing that appears in, or is contemporary to, Wharton’s works, Joslin also provides helpful context about the history of dress design and specific designers invoked by Wharton (including Jacques Doucet, Charles Frederick Worth, Jeanne Paquin, Paul Poiret, and Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel) and analyzes the cultural significance of fashion design, dress reform, and the garment industry. In her first chapter, Joslin identifies a link between Wharton’s love of “dressing up” and “making up,” or storytelling. Joslin reads Wharton’s own dress throughout her career as seen in iconic photographs, and she notes how, through her sartorial choices, Wharton managed her public image and negotiated her “dual strivings for beauty and accomplishment” as a female artist (44). Joslin makes some unexpected connections, such as her analysis of the parallels between Wharton’s dress in a 1907 photograph and a Doucet dress worn by the French actress, Réjane. Joslin also discusses how Wharton’s nonfiction works such as The Decoration of Houses, French Ways and Their Meaning, The Writing of Fiction, and her autobiographical texts reveal that Wharton’s notion of fashion moved well beyond clothing to include home furnishings, window treatments, bodily comportment, tone of voice, societal conduct, and art. Joslin argues that we can see Wharton’s modernity developing in her dress, and in later chapters she more fully discusses the ways in which this modernity shows up in Wharton’s fiction. In chapters 2 through 7, Joslin provides readings of dress in specific works. She is most successful when discussing The Custom of [End Page 349] the Country, The Age of Innocence, and The Mother’s Recompense. Joslin’s discussion of shopping, mirrors, and plate-glass windows in The Custom of the Country is particularly compelling (though she does not refer to recent scholarship on these phenomena in Wharton’s works) as is her examination of a possible model for Undine Spragg: Medora de Morès, the well-dressed and unconventional daughter of a wealthy New York banker who moved to North Dakota when her husband set up a ranch and meatpacking business in the Badlands. Joslin’s reading of the clothing in The Age of Innocence is noteworthy for the connections that she makes between dress reform and the dresses worn by Ellen Olenska and May Welland, which illuminate the characters’ relationship to social convention and their degree of freedom relative to such convention. Joslin observes how dress directs our attention to the play between the novel’s historical setting and the time of its composition and provides clues to Wharton’s stance on women’s freedom and her feelings toward her adopted country of France. Ellen’s Empire-style opera gown, out of fashion in the 1870s but popular in the 1910s as revived by French designer Paul Poiret, represents, Joslin says, Wharton’s “sartorial salute to France” and reflects her patriotism following World War I (138). Similarly, in her chapter on The Buccaneers, Joslin notes how the anachronistic traces of 1930s fashion in the novel’s Gilded...

Queen of the Falls (review)

Reviewed by: Queen of the Falls Elizabeth Bush Van Allsburg, Chris. Queen of the Falls; written and illus. by Chris Van Allsburg. Houghton, 2011. 40p. ISBN 978-0-547-31581-2 $18.99 R* Gr. 3–6. Van Allsburg is certainly not a name associated with children’s nonfiction works, but that’s about to change with this engrossing and ultimately bittersweet account of sixty-two-year-old Annie Edison Taylor’s record-setting barrel ride over Niagara Falls in 1901. No longer able to support herself offering children lessons in etiquette, the cash-strapped widow hatched the decidedly unladylike plan to hurl herself over the Falls and, assuming she survived, live off her fame on speaking tours. She designed her own barrel, garnered a sponsor, made it through the ordeal alive, and then . . . well, not much (“Excited crowds quickly lost interest when they discovered the fearless ‘Queen of the Falls’ was a little old lady”). Even her barrel became a source of disappointment—twice purloined by her road tour managers, but only once reclaimed. It’s not the happiest of endings, either for Taylor or for readers, but Van Allsburg graciously preserves her dignity by concluding with her feisty interview on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of her ride, in which she claimed, “It was the greatest feat ever performed. . . . And I am content when I can say, ‘I am the one who did it.’” How does Van Allsburg pull off this transition into information books? Actually, by doing what he already does so masterfully—employing wryly reportorial prose to make the fantastic seem perfectly plausible. Artwork in his signature grainy monochrome style is literal enough to be convincing (cramped, undersized boxes that portray Taylor inside the barrel are almost palpably uncomfortable), while chiaroscuro effects heighten the surreality of Taylor’s tour de force. A daredevil story is an easy sell for almost any kid audience, and a daredevil story by a beloved storyteller is just about as good as it gets. Copyright © 2011 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Reflections on the MacArthur Controversy at Sixty

Reflections on the MacArthur Controversy at Sixty* Steven Casey (bio) and William Stueck (bio) All hell broke loose in Washington on Wednesday, April 11, 1951, and it showed no sign of ebbing in the days that followed. Republican senator Joseph R. McCarthy called for the impeachment of the Democratic president Harry S. Truman, accusing him of making decisions under the influence of "bourbon and Benedictine." Other Republicans in Congress talked of similar action against Secretary of State Dean Acheson, or even of abolishing the State Department. When a Democratic senator came to the defense of the president on the Senate floor, several Republicans tried angrily to interrupt him. Freshman Republican Richard M. Nixon, always on guard against dirty tricks by the enemy camp, warned that Democrats were planning one of history's most reprehensible "smear campaigns" against General Douglas MacArthur, a darling among right-wing Republicans. Senators from the opposing parties participating in a radio talk show became so heated toward each other that only the moderator's intervention prevented a resort to fisticuffs. A White House aide seeking comic relief jotted down an imaginary scenario concocted by the Republicans that included "the burning of the Constitution," the "lynching of Secretary Acheson," the leap by "300 nude D.A.R.'s . . . from [the] Washington monument," and a "21-atomic bomb salute" to General MacArthur. CBS's Eric Sevareid commented wearily that "Washington is a place that can never, for very long, deny itself indulgence in the wild pleasures of party politics." Intense partisanship in Washington had been building since the surprise victory by the Democrats in the 1948 election, but the immediate cause of the fury was Truman's relief of MacArthur from all his commands. The 60th anniversary of that event invites us to revisit its causes, its execution, and its impact on American politics and foreign policy. The exercise serves as a reminder that extreme partisanship in the nation's capital is not unique to the present, nor does it necessarily lead to disaster or even a halt of all progress on crucial issues. In a period in which the direction of U.S. foreign policy was hotly contested, the Truman administration proved able to sustain its goal of limiting the Korean War and to do so while continuing to build a durable alliance system that included Japan, the strategic prize of the western Pacific, and western Europe, the key area in U.S. global strategy. Why did Truman fire MacArthur? The president's explanation was that the general, as commander of U.S. forces in the Far East and United Nations forces in Korea, had publicly dissented from the administration's policy of attempting to limit the war there rather than expanding it to achieve total victory (i.e., the unification of the peninsula under a friendly government). That dissent represented insubordination to the president as commander-in-chief of U.S. armed forces, thereby threatening the constitutional principle of civilian control of the military. As Truman put it to Democratic congressman Maury Maverick, "I had to choose between General MacArthur and the Constitution . . . and I decided to save the Constitution." Click for larger view View full resolution President Truman meeting General Douglas MacArthur, Wake Island, October 1950. From the PBS documentary Truman: American Experience (1997). Until the early 1980s this interpretation remained largely unchallenged among serious historians. In 1982, however, Joseph C. Goulden, a journalist and best-selling author of numerous works of nonfiction, presented an alternative explanation. MacArthur had been dismissed, Goulden claimed, because the National Security Agency (NSA) had intercepted and decrypted messages from Spanish and Portuguese diplomats in Tokyo to their governments. They reported private comments by MacArthur expressing confidence "that he could transform the Korean War into a major conflict in which he could dispose of the 'Chinese Communist question' once and for all."1 According to Goulden, the general's repeated public criticism of U.S. policy in Korea was insufficient to explain the president's decision. Only concrete evidence that MacArthur planned to act out his views and expand the war provoked Truman into a move that he knew would generate a storm of protest at home. Goulden cited Charles...

The creative crone: aging and the poetry of May Sarton and Adrienne Rich

Too often the elderly suffer death by invisibility long before their physical demise, but what can we learn from individuals when they grow old? This book examines the work of two major contemporary women poets to show how they confront aging in a deliberate and constructive way. Sylvia Henneberg reveals how May Sarton and Adrienne Rich have critically evaluated and embraced their roles as elder poets and crones and in doing so offer a powerful resistance to age discrimination.The Creative Crone highlights new dimensions in the works of both writers: one deeply engaged with aging but often overlooked by scholars, the other a prominent poet and feminist but not generally thought of in the context of aging. Henneberg shows how these writers offer radically different but richly complementary strategies for breaking the silence surrounding age. Rich provides an approach to aging so strongly intertwined with other political issues that its complexity may keep us from immediately identifying age as one of her chief concerns. On the other hand, Sarton s direct treatment of aging sensitizes us to its importance and helps us see its significance in such writings as Rich s. Meanwhile, Rich s efforts to politicize age create stimulating contexts for Sarton s work. Henneberg explores elements of these writers individual poems that develop themes of aging, including imagery and symbol, the construction of a persona, and the uses of rhythms to reinforce the themes. She also includes analyses of their fiction and nonfiction works and draws ideas from age studies by scholars such as Margaret Morganroth Gullette, Kathleen Woodward, and Thomas Cole.The lasting impression of these poets is that any evaluation of their writings and any serious study of personal or political identity will benefit from including a critique of aging. Together, Sarton and Rich establish a literary symbiosis that suggests strategies for reassessing and radicalizing our notions about aging, senescence, and literature. This new perspective on their work shows that creative and crone are far from mutually exclusive; considered in tandem, they renew the discourse on late-life creativity.

"Pointing to the Heart": Transpacific Filipinas and the Question of Cold-War Philippine-U.S. Relations

This article examines a recurring fascination with the transpacific Filipina in Bienvenido N. Santos's "Scent of Apples," "Brown Coterie," and "So Many Things" (from the 1955 collection of short stories, You Lovely People ), and the nonfiction work of two Filipina feminists, María Paz Mendoza-Guazón's Development and Progress of the Filipino Woman (revised and extended in 1951) and Trinidad Tarrosa Subido's The Feminist Movement in the Philippines, 1905–1955 (1961). Published in the Philippines during the cold war, these texts document responses to broader concerns about the role of transpacific Filipinas in the postwar climate, the years in which Filipina/o authors assessed the past and projected the future of U.S. influence in the Philippines. In an analysis that rethinks the dynamics of postwar and cold war discursive productions, I contend that these writers stage a drama in which questions about transpacific Filipinas—and their fraught answers—are necessary to the narrative reformation of Filipina/o identities and communities, and to the imagining of Philippine-U.S. relations.

Users' Guide: A Word from the Editor

Users' Guide:A Word from the Editor Pearl A. McHaney Reynolds Price, who died on January 20, 2011, was first and foremost as fine a human being as we are likely to ever know. He was also Eudora Welty's great friend, a memorable teacher, and a hugely talented writer of more than a dozen novels, six collections of short stories, poetry, plays, memoirs, and astounding nonfiction—work that changes lives. We offer a modest tribute to this kind, funny, and generous man with comments by Josephine Humphreys, Lee Smith, and Suzanne Marrs. Their pieces reveal both their relationships with Price and the richness of his gifts. Additionally, John Bayne, author of "Collecting Eudora Welty," has prepared a checklist of published comments between Price and Welty. We are delighted to offer an excerpt concerning The Ponder Heart from Suzanne Marrs's eagerly awaited edition of the correspondence between Welty and William Maxwell, who was Welty's friend and her editor at the New Yorker. What There Is to Say We Have Said will be published in May 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This issue of the Eudora Welty Review looks back to Welty's centennial year of 2009 and forward to new critical assessments of the author's writing and photographs. In 2009, Rosella Mamoli Zorzi and I organized the Eudora Welty Centenary International Conference in Venice, Italy. I am pleased to include in this issue of the Eudora Welty Review several essays revised from conference presentations (by Alison Goeller, Jan Nordby Gretlund, Carol Ann Johnston, Monica Pavani, Peggy Prenshaw, and Rosella Mamoli Zorzi), each revealing new, twenty-first-century perspectives of Welty's writing. The conference was also an opportunity for Italian fiction writer Elisabetta Rasy, author of Memories of a Night-time Woman Reader, to reflect upon her first reading of Delta Wedding. An English translation of her essay is included here. Some of the other essays that originated at centennial celebrations can be read in the online journal Transatlantica (see Catherine Chengges's "Checklist of Scholarship"). Lorinda Cohoon contributes a cultural studies perspective on Delta Wedding and two short stories by "reading" characters' shoes in conjunction with ladies' magazine advertisements. Adrienne Akins writes about Losing Battles using postcolonial theories of cartography and education. Daniel Wood shows us much that we have missed in our sociopolitical readings of [End Page 1] "Where Is the Voice Coming From?" We anticipate Minrose Gwin's current scholarly project—Mourning Medgar Evers, a study of the many aesthetic responses to Medgar Evers's assassination that have since impinged upon the cultural memorialization of the event—to give us yet other perspectives. I call your attention to a new Welty photography exhibit, Exposures and Reflections, curated by Jacob Laurence of the Museum of Mobile. Leigh Kirkland reviews the exhibit at the Atlanta History Center venue; it is scheduled thereafter for Decatur, Alabama, and Columbus, Mississippi. It is my understanding that Exposures and Reflections is available for additional exhibition for the shipping and handling costs, arranged with Laurence. Geraldine Chouard's "Welty at 100" in Transatlantica (2.2009, online) includes several Welty photographs selected and commented upon by various scholars. The Practical Matters section of EWR includes updates from the various constituencies collaborating in the enrichment and promotion of Welty's materials and legacy: The Welty Foundation, House and Garden, Collection at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, and Society. We've added here news about archives that may have materials pertinent to the study of Welty's work. Don't miss the society column report of a 1921 wedding, another sort of archival finding, contributed by Malinda Snow. As has been the case since the inaugural issues of the Eudora Welty Newsletter in Winter and Summer 1977, we continue checklists of Works by Welty and Welty Scholarship. Please take note also of the Ruth Vande Keift Award, sponsored by the Eudora Welty Society and EWR, to encourage submissions. [End Page 2] Pearl A. McHaney Georgia State University Copyright © 2011 Department of English, Georgia State University

Ici et maintenant ed. by Marcel Vuillaume

VUILLAUME, MARCEL, ed. Ici et maintenant. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2008. ISBN 978-90420 -2439-7. Pp. 219. $43.70. It is fair to say that terms such as here and now are used every day—indeed, probably every hour of every day—with scarcely a thought to the complexity of their true meanings. In this edited volume, however, Vuillaume and the contributors ask readers to do just that, by examining maintenant, ici, là, and là-bas, notably , as indexicals and scrutinizing their referential value in various contexts. Although it is tempting to accept a simple analysis of maintenant-now as referring to the moment of enunciation and ici-here as the speaker’s location at the time of enunciation, the contributors provide convincing evidence from a number of different contexts (literary texts, travel texts, encyclopedic and other nonfiction works, posted signs, etc.) that such an analysis is far too simplistic. If these deictics referred merely to current location or time, how could the use of maintenant with an imperfect or future verb form, for example, be explained? How could differences in signification be understood between signs that say push here, where here refers to a very clearly delineated zone, and Spanish spoken here, where the zone is a much larger and possibly moving target? Vuillaume and the contributors answer these questions and more in this highly instructive, if complex, volume. Starting with articles on the topic of maintenant (which is a bit curious, given the title, but perhaps explained by the fact that maintenant is only temporal, whereas ici has both locative and temporal uses), the contributors establish this adverb as a token-reflexive—that is, one that derives its meaning from the context in which it is used. These contexts are then examined in detail, demonstrating that maintenant, although it is certainly used to refer to the present, can also be used in combination with other tenses. In such cases, it may signal a cognitive shift on the part of the author (of letters or travel texts) or narrator (in literature). Likewise, in their examination of ici and là, the contributors note that these terms may have temporal uses (jusqu’ici or d’ici là) that belie a simple analysis of these terms as referring to the here of the speaker or author. This combines with the moving target problem posed by such indexicals —when a secretary says that Mme Dubois n’est pas là cette semaine, this could mean that she is not in the office, not in town, or not in the country—and their analysis becomes all the more difficult. Overall, this is an excellent volume that answers a number of interesting questions. It is not, however, for the non-initiated. It assumes a knowledge of linguistics in general, and of semantics more specifically, that will dissuade many nonspecialists. This is not a criticism; it is difficult to discuss issues as complex as those raised in this volume in nontheoretical terms. For readers of the French Review without prior knowledge in semantics, however, some basic background reading is suggested before attempting these articles. This volume will be well worth the time and effort. If there is a weakness to point out in this work, it is perhaps the inclusion of one chapter that traces the historical evolution of ici and là from their corresponding Latin terms. Although interesting, this chapter does not deal with the deictic issues that were the focus of the other contributions to the collection and thus appears to be out of place here. With this sole exception, however, there is scarcely a criticism to be made of these contributions. Each takes on a different aspect of the analysis of these indexicals, problematizing the question of the reference of these terms in a different way, and thus contributing Reviews 633 to the astounding variety of the volume. French semanticists will find this wellresearched collection very informative. University of Florida Theresa A. Antes Methods and Materials edited by Sarah Jourdain CAHORN, JUDI OLGA. The Incredible Walk: The True Story of My Parents’ Escape from Nazi-Occupied France. Southeastern, PA: Beach Lloyd, 2008. ISBN 978-0979277887. Pp. 132. $19.95. Judi Olga Cahorn, née en...

Charles Darwin (review)

Reviewed by: Charles Darwin Elizabeth Bush Krull, Kathleen. Charles Darwin; illus. by Boris Kulikov. Viking, 2010. 144p. (Giants of Science) ISBN 978-0-670-06335-2 $15.99 R Gr. 5-8. Did you think you were done collecting Darwin books by the end of 2009? Make room on the shelf for the latest entry in the Giants of Science series, which focuses this time on, as Krull frequently reminds her readers, a really all-around nice guy. Sans wild hair, bizarre personality traits, or even a conspicuous air of genius, Darwin has little to recommend him in the quirkiness department apart from a large nose (of which he was embarrassed) and chronic stomach problems. Krull therefore wisely plays his strong suits here—keen observation; patient, deliberative thought; engaging, accessible writing; respect for fellow scientists; devotion to his family—and succeeds in portraying, well, a really all-around nice guy whose affability and humility never hobbled his dogged pursuit of truth, wherever it led. And it led, famously, to the controversial On the Origin of Species, which generated uproar that segued rather speedily into the fundamental theory of the mechanism of evolution. Kulikov once again ably supports Krull's text, offering playful illustrations that lightheartedly illuminate some corner of Darwin's life or create a symbolic image that impresses a concept into the reader's memory, e.g., Darwin scratching in his notebook while perched on a limb of his Tree of Life. Readers who favor the flow of a novel in nonfiction works but aren't quite up to Deborah Heiligman's Charles and Emma (BCCB 2/09) will find this quick read as easygoing as its subject. Copyright © 2011 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Tom Thumb: The Remarkable True Story of a Man in Miniature (review)

Reviewed by: Tom Thumb: The Remarkable True Story of a Man in Miniature Elizabeth Bush Sullivan, George. Tom Thumb: The Remarkable True Story of a Man in Miniature. Clarion, 2011. [208p.] illus. with photographs ISBN 978-0-547-18203-2 $20.00 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 5-8. Baby Charles (Charley) S. Stratton did not appear destined to make a career of the "freak show" circuit in nineteenth century America. Though he weighed a normal nine pounds at birth, his growth stalled by age five; while the outgoing child coped quite well with his diminutive size, his stature was a cause of embarrassment for his older sisters and his future a cause of worry for his father. An introduction to P. T. Barnum, the notorious showman who had just riled his public with two wildly bogus attractions (the world's "oldest" woman and the Fejee Mermaid), set them both on the path to a successful, lifelong partnership. Barnum employed and mentored Stratton and, after naming him Tom Thumb, launched him to a height of stardom that wouldn't be seen again until the age of the Silver Screen. Sullivan follows the careers of both Stratton and Barnum, setting the display of human "oddities" into historical context, exploring the genuine respect between employer and entertainer, and emphasizing the cordial relationship that Tom Thumb developed with his audience through lectures and conversations. Insets on dwarfism appear early in the text, elucidating Tom Thumb's condition for readers without seriously interrupting the genial flow of the narration. Generous leading and a large stock of photographs and period reproductions will entice readers who shy away from longer works of nonfiction. Booktalk this with Candace Fleming's The Great and Only Barnum (BCCB 10/09) for a riff on celebrity—old school. [End Page 253] Copyright © 2011 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Talking trash: Documentaries and Italy's ‘garbage emergency’

ABSTRACTThe following article looks at three recent non-fiction works—Biùtiful cauntri/Beautiful Country (Calabria, D'Ambrosio and Ruggiero, 2007), La bambina vuole prendere aria/The Baby Needs Some Fresh Air (Rossi-Prudente, 2008) and Una montagna di balle/A Mountain of Lies (Angrisano, 2009)—that depict the criminal mismanagement of both household and industrial waste in Southern Italy. Employing theoretical paradigms from anthropology, documentary studies and environmental criticism, I analyse how the films shift the terms within which garbage is understood nationally. Through their rhetorical strategies (most significantly their use, alteration or rejection of conventional voice-over narration) the films also place the spectator in various positions vis-à-vis the crisis and serve as examples of the ways in which documentary attempts to turn its spectators into activists.

Telling times: writing and living, 1954-2008

Never before has Gordimer, awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991, published such a comprehensive collection of her nonfiction. Telling Times represents the full span of her works in that field-from the twilight of white rule in South Africa to the fight to overthrow the apartheid regime, and most recently, her role over the past seven years in confronting the contemporary phenomena of violence and the dangers of HIV. The range of this book is staggering, and the work in totality celebrates the lively perseverance of the life-loving individual in the face of political tumult, then the onslaught of a globalized world. The abiding passionate spirit that informs A South African Childhood, a youthful autobiographical piece published in The New Yorker in 1954, can be found in each of the book's ninety-one pieces that span a period of fifty-five years. Returning to a lifetime of nonfiction work has become an extraordinary experience for Gordimer. She takes from one of her revered great writers, Albert Camus, the conviction that the writer is a responsible human being attuned not alone to dedication to the creation of fiction but to the political vortex that inevitably encompasses twentieth- and twenty-first-century life. Born in 1923, Gordimer, who as a child was ambitious to become a ballet dancer, was recognized at fifteen as a writing prodigy. Her sensibility was as much shaped by wide reading as it was to eye-opening sight, passing on her way to school the grim labor compounds where black gold miners lived. These twin decisives-literature and politics-infuse the book, which includes historic accounts of the political atmosphere, firsthand, after the Sharpeville Massacre of 1960 and the Soweto uprising of 1976, as well as incisive close-up portraits of Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, among others. Gordimer revisits the eternally relevant legacies of Tolstoy, Proust, and Flaubert, and engages vigorously with contemporaries like Susan Sontag, Octavio Paz, and Edward Said. But some of her most sensuous writing comes in her travelogues, where the politics of Africa blend seamlessly with its awe-inspiring nature-including spectacular recollections of childhood holidays beside South Africa's coast of the Indian Ocean and a riveting account of her journey the length of the Congo River in the wake of Conrad. Gordimer's body of work is an extraordinary vision of the world that harks back to the sensibilities-political, moral, and social-of Dickens and Tolstoy, but with a decidedly vivid contemporary consciousness. Telling Times becomes both a literary exploration and extraordinary document of social and political history in our times.

Blind-Spots

Blind-Spots Sean Bernard (bio) Observations Without Daddy: Vivid Evocations of Growing Up in Texas. James P. White. Tabloid Books Inc. PMB 272, 1223 Wilshire Blvd. Santa Monica, CA 90403 240 pages; paper, $7.50. Mentor. Tom Grimes. Tin House Books. http://www.tinhousebooks.com. 256 pages; cloth, $24.95; paper, $16.95. In writing reviews, the manner of a work's execution is usually the most responsible thing a reviewer can look at. Reactions to the story itself, no matter how much we kid ourselves, are almost entirely subjective. Anyone who's taken (or taught) a lit class understands this: no one can convince an eighteen-year-old who wants to be updating his Facebook page that an eight hundred page novel about two guys wandering Dublin and thinking about life is an interesting story. Some students might like it; some will think, "This is boring and has nothing to do with me." You can't sell people on content. But by ignoring the story and looking at the structural innovations in Ulysses (1922), we move beyond the "story"; we move into the critical sphere. It's no longer about the student's engagement with the story; it's about the way the story's been told. In contemporary fiction, there are plenty of authors whose formal execution is a discussion at least as worthy as how "engaging" their stories are. John Barth. Lucy Corin. Lydia Davis. David Foster Wallace. The list is much longer. But in nonfiction, specifically memoir, it's still content, content, content. "How 'interesting' is the story?" we ask, rather than, "How has it been formally crafted?" Memoir that foregrounds form is rare—David Shields and Ander Monson are current exceptions—and so reviewers, rather than rolling up their sleeves and considering an author's execution, are stuck summarizing the basic storylines and themes before arriving at a very intricate, very intellectual, "I liked it" or "I didn't." Most contemporary memoirists aren't asking to be critically considered. This isn't a dodge to get out of reviewing two recent works of nonfiction. It's a caveat. And, too, a complaint. James P. White's memoir, Observations Without Daddy: Vivid Evocations of Growing Up in Texas, arrives decontextualized. (White directs the Christopher Isherwood Foundation.) The book reveals little about White—a few blurbs from older books—and the slender volume is printed on plain white paper. The margins aren't justified. Typos aren't uncommon. And the subject matter is small in scope: a childhood in Texas. Just by opening the book, you feel a small sense of hope. A little slender nothing—what if it's great? How fantastic, to discover a small gem in such modest form. The execution is straightforward, as is the prose: White writes a chronological account of his first eighteen years, set in West Texas in the 1930s and 40s. His style is flat and to strong effect: he writes almost entirely in declarative sentences that are often startling in detail or meaning (White begins by announcing he remembers his birth). There are limited reflections, as White doesn't overly explain the meaning of this moment or that. He just evokes it and stands to the side so the reader can enjoy. When a character dies early on, White writes, "She was stricken, crying, 'Oh! Oh! Oh!' as if someone stuck her with a knife." Describing his grandmother in her garden: "Before noon she would stand on the front porch and shoot caterpillars off of her morning glory vines with a bee bee gun." Talking about a local heartthrob: "The girls in the town swooned over her boy. One girl left a sealed fruit jar with a tongue inside on the doorstep for him." Strange details like these are one of the memoir's strongest points: the precise and unique descriptions have an immediacy and impact found in the best prose. They linger. The rarity of reflections also serves the memoir well. The first comes when White observes, "There are moments in our lives when our hearts are so badly broken that life itself intervenes and gives us healing…. There is something so singular about the periods, because...

Sky Sailors: True Stories of the Balloon Era (review)

Reviewed by: Sky Sailors: True Stories of the Balloon Era Elizabeth Bush Bristow, David L. Sky Sailors: True Stories of the Balloon Era. Farrar, 2010. 134p. illus. with photographs ISBN 978-0-374-37014-5 $18.99 R* Gr. 4-8. Take aeronautics back, back, back before space shuttles, moon missions, airplanes, and dirigibles, and you arrive with Bristow at the late eighteenth to early twentieth century heyday of tethered and free-floating balloon flight, with its fearsome novelty and peculiar perils. Bristow traces the development of this lighter-than-air technology by examining some dozen or so practitioners, from scientists to showmen and -women, who used balloon ascent for everything from pure entertainment, to military surveillance, to exploration. Readers who may have had earlier picture-book encounters with the like of the Montgolfier brothers and their airborne animals (Priceman's Hot Air, BCCB 7/05) or Frenchman Jean-Pierre Blanchard and his American balloon debut (Wallner's The First Air Voyage in the United States, BCCB 5/96) will recognize old friends, but it's likely that few will know much, if anything, about other elements in Bristow's history, such as Blanchard's widow, Sophie, who set off fireworks from her highly flammable hydrogen-filled balloon; Coxwell and Glaisher's 1862 record-setting high-altitude ascent (sans oxygen tanks); or the 1858 accidental adventure of young siblings Martha and David Harvey in a runaway balloon. Mini physics lessons are incorporated throughout the text on a need-to-know basis, and even the youngest readers should grasp the essence of Bristow's concise explanations. A wealth of period illustrations, some in color, are included, and captions frequently point out errors in visual representation, due either to misinformation or to the urge to satisfy a thrill-hungry audience. With thorough source notes, an extensive bibliography, and a list of recommended websites (though no index), this is an inviting title for kids making their first ascents into longer works of nonfiction. Copyright © 2010 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Essays: Residing in Farewell: On the Road with Rosario Ferré

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Additional informationNotes on contributorsLuis Rafael SánchezLuis Rafael Sánchez (b. 1936, Humacao, Puerto Rico) is a renowned playwright, novelist, and essayist. Among his publications are the non-fiction work La guagua aérea (1994; The Airbus), which humorously addresses Puerto Rican migration to New York, and the essay collection Devórame otra vez (2005; Devour Me Again); and the novels La guaracha de Macho Camacho (1976; Macho Camacho's Beat, 1983) and Indiscreciones de un perro gringo (2007; Indiscretions of a Gringo Dog). In 1985, he was presented with the Humanist of the Year Award by the Puerto Rican Endowment for the Humanities

Decorating Fiction: Edith Wharton's Literary Architecture

Drawing on the nineteenth-century analogic tradition exemplified by Walter Pater, Honoré de Balzac, and Henry James, this essay considers the conjunction of literature and architecture in Edith Wharton's oeuvre, and particularly her custom of relating novelistic form to architectural design. Her bestselling novel The House of Mirth and her non-fiction work The Writing of Fiction are identified as literary counterparts to Wharton's first book, The Decoration of Houses, a manual of interior design co-authored with architect Ogden Codman. Given Wharton's lifelong interest in architecture and material culture, this essay suggests that she conceived of the modern novel as a product of design, as primarily architectural or constructed space. Windows, thresholds, and furniture, as well as libraries and other interior spaces, figure centrally in her work. The confluence of literary and architectural principles is featured in The House of Mirth, a novel in which the author's skill is equivalent to the architect's, and where the decorative allure of protagonist Lily Bart renders her disturbingly analogous to a rare book. By examining key library scenes in the novel, this essay offers new insight on the decorative appeal of Wharton's work while calling attention to an underlying ethical dimension of her literary architecture.

Assessing the Promise of Jonathan Franzen's First Three Novels: A Rejection of "Refuge"

This article attempts a broad-canvassed reading of the three novels Jonathan Franzen has published to date, The Twenty-Seventh City (1988), Strong Motion (1992), and The Corrections (2001). By analyzing these novels alongside Franzen's extensive non-fiction efforts in the genres of the literary essay and personal narrative, the article uncovers a central and paralytic contradiction in Franzen's thinking about the American "social novel." Franzen's aesthetics suggest that for him the American social novel is to serve as a forum wherein writers and readers consider the intersection of individual lives and the social forces that prevent individuals from establishing community in contemporary American life. At the same time, both Franzen's nonfiction work and his novels undermine the prospect of community by characterizing global capitalism in overwhelmingly deterministic terms.