Musician, Author...James McBride

Heard a great interview this evening on the PBS show Between The Lines,the "weekly author interview program" hosted by the wife of the late Maynard Jackson, former mayor of Atlanta. I've listened to the show many times, and learned about some great new authors as a result. Today I learned about James McBride, author of Color of Water, Miracle at St. Anna(the film produced by Spike Lee soon to be released)and Song Yet Sung (Riverhead Penguin). Take time to listen to the podcast where he talks about the characters in his new novel. Sounds like a must read; it'll definately be on my list. And check out his website also, really cool. In addition to being an author, McBride is also a musician and has written songs for Grover Washington and Anita Baker, among others. Click here to see the trailer for the movie Miracle at St. Anna, due to be released September 22.

Live Cargo by Pauls Toutonghi

Live Cargo is a fascinating collection of short stories by Pauls Toutonghi that I wanted to highlight. We used this collection in my Advanced Prose class this semester as well as a few others. I found Toutonghi invigorating, classic and wise beyond his years. I love how he juxtaposes histories as in he does in “Still Life”, where he places side by side a story about the death of a friend of Pablo Picaso, with the experiences of a grandfather in the trenches during World War I. And in “The Lives of Saints” he infuses humor with Greek philosophy while exploring the possibilities of Socrates as a male, exotic dancer. I’ve wanted to read contemporary short stories that restored my faith in the short story form, and in the kind of literature that I want to read and write, and Toutonghi does that for me. This is a great night table book!

As If...

...I shouldn't be studying for a Spanish exam, or like I actually have time for fun reading in the thick of the semester. But Danticat has a new book, and I couldn't help myself. I just love the wisdom, loveliness and intensity in danticat's work. She is an old soul who writes as though her life depended on it.

Southern Short Stories

Although I am an English major, for a degree in anything there are other basic course requirements which must be met, like Biology, Georgia History or Math, which for most English majors I know, is a nightmare. Literature classes, which are required for my major, keep the semester from feeling like a job. This semester I took a course in Southern Short Stories which really opened my eyes to the diversity of Southern writers. One of the books we used was the Signet Classic Book of Southern Short Stories, an excellent introduction to some of the best short story authors around. It includes Edgar Allan Poe and his mastery of the sympathetic unreliable narrator in The Tale of the Ragged Mountains, and Ellen Glasgow’s subtle use of gender role reversal to discredit two would be reliable narrators in Dare’s Gift. I also read Three Men and Bloodlines by Ernest Gaines whose intimate knowledge of the Louisiana social landscape is unmistakable and authentic, and the neo-slave narratives of Alice Walker, The Child Who Favored Daughter and Strong Horse Tea. And, too, Katherine Anne Porters’ last “Miranda” story, Old Mortality, with its dispersion of the mythology of Southern womanhood. I’ve learned that the range of the Southern literary canon expands far beyond the “plantation novel”, and the valorization of the antebellum society we are normally exposed to: from the fascinating and unflinching depiction of Flannery O’Connor’s Southern Grotesque, to the progressive interpretation of women and marriage in the stories of Ellen Glasgow and Susan Petigru King.

Trethewey's Ophelia

Tender like new fallen snow at midnight, the imagined life of Natasha Trethewey’s Ophelia melts upon the lips like Godiva chocolates. Bellocq’s Ophelia, published in 2002, is a collection of poems inspired by the eloquent black and white images of a “white-skinned black” prostitute photographed in the early 1900’s by E. J. Bellocq, and collected in the book, Storyville Portraits. I am fascinated with Trethewey’s use of poetry to tell a story, so compelling, and so lovely. Ophelia, at first, seems delicate and easily broken, but as verse flows, so does Ophelia, heroically transforming into womanhood, into photographer, and into survival. She sees in the world what the camera captures in us all; our thoughts, our secrets, our passions, and our sorrows. Through Trethewey’s words, Ophelia is made beautiful once again permeating the quiet determination of her song. A New Orleans backdrop drew me to this collection; the soft, sensual undertones of unspoken occultism, the subtle resonance of wash board jazz, and the intense images of sepia photographs which this work induces has earned it’s place on my nightstand.