Review: Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing, and Dying - The Secret WWII Transcripts of German POWs by Sönke Neitzel and Harald Welzer

Sönke Neitzel & Harald Welzer. Jefferson Chase, translator. Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing, and Dying - The Secret WWII Transcripts of German POWs. Alfred A Knopf, New York, 2012.

Jennifer Teege, author of My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me, spoke in my town. I asked her about English language books which might help me understand the mentality of Germans during fascism, and she recommend this book.

Sönke Neitzel, a historian, and Harald Welzer, a social psychologist, analyzed declassified transcripts of surreptitiously recorded conversations of German prisoners of war in British & American prisons during World War II. These transcripts confirm both the shocking level of violence fascists unleashed and the suitability of the psychological and institutional structures of a modern capitalist, industrial society to support this violence. Reading it in the United States of America in 2019 increases the urgency of radical resistance to oligarch-inspired labor docility, militarism and global genocide through ecological destruction.

Review: "Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment" by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

I first heard about Professor Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's book Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment on either Black Agenda Radio or On Contact with Christ Hedges.

I've never liked guns. People I know died by suicide with a gun or accident. A stranger pointed a gun at me in a road rage incident when I was a teenager. And, when I fired guns at a shooting range, the extent to which I liked it frightened me. On my social media, I follow and promote @Well_Regulated_, which publicizes tragic incidences of uses of firearms in the United States. I tell people I support "smart" gun control, which in my mind means requiring registration of weapons, restricting sales of weapons & munitions designed to kill masses of people and stripping rights to weapons from particular classes of convicted criminals, such as domestic violence offenders.

Review: Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America

In Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America, Ari Berman describes the events which led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, its impacts and the countermeasures its opponents took since then to undermine it through the book's publication in 2015.

I hope reading the book will motivate you to make sure you are registered to vote and actually vote in every election and attempt to understand your options in each election. And when you find your options are limited, then act to improve your options.

The book also is a great example of a phenomenon James W. Loewen identified in Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. Our public schools, for a variety of reasons, teach students that the United States always improves without explaining that people contested all issues, and some people won and others lost and sometimes those who lost won later. So we have this idea that "Civil Rights" happened in the 1960s, and, well, "problem solved."

"Even with good intentions, Hollywood still struggles to portray Muslims accurately or fairly, much less positively"

Edward Ahmed Mitchell, Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations - Georgia, describes his involvement in the production of the 2019 remake of Shaft and his reaction after watching the movie.

As a civil rights activist with the Georgia chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, most of the emails I receive involve deadly serious topics: hate speech…hate crimes…discrimination…Donald Trump’s latest tweet. So you can perhaps imagine my surprise when I received an email last year from a casting director for the latest sequel to the classic blaxploitation film Shaft, which was filming in Atlanta. --- read more ---

And of course I have to include the Isaac Hayes theme song to the original Shaft.

 

P.S. (April 8, 2020) - I watched Shaft (2019) on HBO today. The plot, as Brother Edward described, is a barely adequate veneer for the real story: the emergence of a third generation Shaft as portrayed by Jessie T. Usher, who like his grandfather Richard Roundtree (Shaft, 1971) & his father Samuel Jackson (Shaft, 2000), decides to stop "working for the man." Jessie begins the movie as an awkward hipster & ends it as another "man with the plan."

Law & Order: SVU S20E23 "Assumptions" Was Thoroughly Anti-Muslim

NBC's Law & Order: Special Victims Unit Season 20, Episode 23 "Assumptions" poorly handled recent controversies and promoted anti-Muslim stereotypes.

Short Film: "Refuge" by Mohammad Gorjestani and starring Nikohl Boosheri

“A brewing war with Iran, xenophobic sentiments towards immigrants, an exploitative tech industry—these things seemed farfetched in 2014, but time has made this thoughtful sci-fi short film seem prophetic. We revisit REFUGE on https://t.co/YlCPZggs8h today.” pic.twitter.com/Sa5gBvztQ8

— Kadena Source 💔 (@KadenaSource) May 15, 2019

The movie Refuge, directed by Mohammad Gorjestani (Twitter & IMDB) and starring Nikohl Boosheri, was the featured short film on May 14, 2019 at shortfilmoftheweek.com.

Favorite Quotes: Günter Grass, "The Tin Drum"

Günter Grass received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999, and his most famous book is Die Blechtrommel, translated into English as The Tin Drum. The June 4, 2007 New Yorker published his account of his participation as a teenager in the German Nazi war effort. Because he had not disclosed these matters publicly, despite his reputation as a critic of post-war Germany's attempts to forget its fascism and its crimes and their popularity, he received much criticism.

I read the 1961 Ralph Manheim translation, but some of these quotes are from the Breon Mitchell 2009 translation. Click to enlarge images.

Favorite Quotes: Dorothy Day, "The Long Loneliness: An Autobiography"

The best source for information on Dorothy Day is the Catholic Worker website.

These quotes are from the 1981 HarperCollins paperback of the 1952 book.

Some of her description of her mentor, Peter Maurin:

Peter made you feel a sense of his mission as soon as you met him. He did not begin by tearing down, or by painting so intense a picture of misery and injustice that you burned to change the world. Instead, he aroused in you a sense of your own capacities for work, for accomplishment. He made you feel that you and all men had great and generous hearts with which to love God. If you once recognized this fact in yourself you would expect and find it in others. [p. 171]

Documentary: "The War to Be Her" by Erin Heidenreich

 
Description on PBS.org site: "In the Taliban-controlled area of Waziristan in northwestern Pakistan, where sports for women are decried as un-Islamic and girls rarely leave their houses, young Maria Toorpakai (Instagram) defies the rules by disguising herself as a boy so she can play squash freely. As she becomes a rising star, however, her true identity is revealed, bringing constant death threats on her and her family.

"In July 2018, POV asked The War to Be Her filmmaker Erin Heidenreich what's happened since the cameras stopped rolling."

PBS created a supplemental reading list, a lesson plan and discussion guide. The film has a Facebook page.

Review: American Hate: Survivors Speak Out by Arjun Singh Sethi (ed.)

Arjun Singh Sethi's volume consists of his introduction and conclusion and thirteen accounts by victims of hate crimes and/or their surviving relatives. A web site accompanies the book.

I've never met Professsor Arjun, but he was kind enough to consult in the case of a hate crime in my city.

Even though I'd heard about most of the thirteen cases, the power of the testimonials still overwhelmed me. I had not adequately considered the long-term effects of these crimes on their immediate victims, and many of the initial media accounts did not include poignant details revealed in this volume.

Documentary on Ongoing Human Rights Violations in Yemen - "In Darkness" by Mwatana

New Documentary by Mwatana on arbitrary arrests and enforced disappearance by all conflict parties in Yemen. وثائقي جديد لمواطنة يسلط الضوء على الاعتقال التعسفي و الاختفاء القسري، اللذان تمارسهما كافة أطراف النزاع في اليمن.
 
Ask your Senators and Representatives to support Senate Joint Resolution 7 to end USA involvement in Yemen.

Play: “The Who and the What”: Written by Ayad Akhtar, Directed by Hana S. Sharif

Lily Janiak wrote a review of The Who and the What, written by Ayad Akhtar and directed by Hana S. Sharif in the March 6, 2019 San Francisco Chronicle. It is playing through March 24 at the Marin Theatre Company, north of San Francisco.

I haven't seen a performance.

Movie: The Other Wife, directed by Khalil Ismail, based on novel by Umm Zakiyyah

Khalil Ismail's movie His Other Wife, based on Umm Zakiyyah's novel of the same title, is available through Amazon Prime USA.
I haven't seen the movie or read the book.

Film: Timbuktu - Directed by Abderrahmane Sissako

LinkTV allows you to stream the movie Timbuktu (Abderrahmane Sissako, 2014) for free until January 24, 2019. It's available on iTunes and Amazon.

Trailer
Clip from the movie:

Timbuktu's director: why I dared to show hostage-taking jihadis in a new light by Danny Leigh, The Guardian, May 28, 2015

Abderrahmane Sissako for Beginners by Basia Lewandowska Cummings, BFI.org.uk, May 27, 2015

Re-Opening of Penn Museum's Middle East Galleries

The November/December 2018 issue of Islamic Horizons has an article by Kenneth Wahrenberger describing some of the contents of the newly reopened Penn Museum's Middle East Galleries. (click to enlarge)

The Penn Museum is located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. Plan your visit!

Suggested Reading List from "Girls of the Crescent"

Habeeba Husain profiled Girls of the Crescent in the 2018 November/December issue of Islamic Horizons. Sisters Zena & Mena Nasiri founded Girls of the Crescent in 2018 to promote materials in public libraries which represent the variety of experiences of Muslim girls and women. On December 7, 2018, I downloaded its suggested books and searched for them in the online Georgia public library system PINES. I created a public list for the books Girls of the Crescent recommended which are available in the PINES-participating public libraries. I used worldcat.org to create a list for the books I couldn't find in Georgia's PINES. A few books are not in either list.

I hope library users in my state of Georgia would request these materials. Remember, if your branch library doesn't have a book you want, you can request the branch library to retrieve the book from other participating libraries. You can do this online with a PINES account or at the circulation desk. Also note that some public libraries don't participate in PINES, particularly those in Atlanta.

I've reviewed children's books on this blog.

New York Islamic Arts Collective at Bernardsville, NJ Al-Hamra Art Center

New York Islamic Arts invites you to the opening of the “Peace and Mercy” exhibition on December 2nd 4-6pm at the Alhamra Art Center. Works of illumination, paper cutting, marbling, calligraphy, and miniature paintings from NYIA artists will be on display from Dec 2nd-Jan 20th. . . . . . #exhibition #exhibits #artevents #tazhib #tezhip #fineart #islamicart #traditionalart #sacredart #illumination #gilding #turkish #calligraphy #thuluth #arabiccalligraphy #khat #islamicdesign #islam #gold #manuscript #quran #instamuslim #turkishart #persianart #mashallah #islamic #ebru #marbling

A post shared by New York Islamic Arts (@nyislamicarts) on Nov 13, 2018 at 10:31am PST

The web site of the New York Islamic Arts Collective is https://www.nyislamicarts.com/. The exhibit is scheduled to run at the Al-Hamra Art Center through January 20, 2019. Here's a map.

Favorite Quotes: Carlos Ruiz Zafón on War in "The Shadow of the Wind"

Lucia Graves translated Carlos Ruiz Zafón's La Sombra del Viento as The Shadow of the Wind.

Nothing feeds forgetfulness better than war, Daniel. We all keep quiet and they try to convince us that what we've seen, what we've done, what we've learned about ourselves and about others, is an illusion, a passing nightmare. Wars have no memory, and nobody has the courage to understand them until there are no voices left to tell what happened, until the moment comes when we no longer recognize them and they return, with another face and another name, to devour what they left behind. (p. 428)

I don't know Spanish, but I think I've found the passage in the original text:

"Negroland: A Memoir" by Margo Jefferson

I'm sharing a few thoughts on Margo Jefferson's Negroland: A Memoir.

An idea which struck me was her insistence that contemplation of suicide is a civil right or privilege which blacks in America should seek to earn:

But one white female privilege had always been withheld from the girls of Negroland. Aside from the privilege of actually being white, they had been denied the privilege of freely yielding to depression, of flaunting neurosis as a mark of social and psychic complexity. A privilege that was glorified in the literature of white female suffering and resistance. A privilege Good Negro Girls had been denied by our history of duty, obligation, and discipline. Because our people had endured horrors and prevailed, even triumphed, their descendants should be too strong and too proud for such behavior. We were to be ladies, responsible Negro women, and indomitable Black Women. We were not to be depressed or unduly high-strung; we were not to have nervous collapses. We had a legacy. We were too strong for that. I craved the right to turn my face to the wall, to create a death commensurate with bourgeois achievement, political awareness, and aesthetically compelling feminine despair. (pp. 171-2)

I've never been very good dealing with people with depression, and I criticized Jay Asher's Th1rteen R3asons Why.

Here's a passage on housing segregation in Hyde Park, the home of University of Chicago, in the 1960s (p. 147):

Here's a passage about the mental price Margo Jefferson paid as a child trying to navigate the rules of race, gender and class which had been imposed on her and how her adult life has been an attempt to become "a person of inner consequence." (p. 156)

Favorite Quote: F Scott Fitzgerald, "The Last Tycoon" - "learned tolerance, kindness, forebearance, and even affection like lessons"

F. Scott Fitzgerald never finished the novel The Last Tycoon. Elia Kazan directed a 1976 movie based on the novel. Amazon produced one season of a series based on the novel.

From p. 97, a description of  "Hollywood studio manager Monroe Stahr, clearly based on Irving Thalberg (head of the film company Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer), whom Fitzgerald had encountered several times." (Wikipedia)

Like many brilliant men, he had grown up dead cold. Beginning at about twelve, probably, with the total rejection common to those of extraordinary mental powers, the "See here: this is all wrong -- a mess -- all a lie -- and a sham --," he swept it all away, everything, as men of his type do; and then instead of being a son-of-a-bitch as most of them are, he looked around at the barrenness that was left and said to himself, "This will never do." And so he had learned tolerance, kindness, forebearance, and even affection like lessons. (emphasis in original)