rahna reiko rizzuto

International Women's History Month Literary Festival

noreply@blogger.com (reiko rizzuto) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 14:56:00 +0000

Looking forward to a March 10th discussion in Baltimore on "the intersection of place, time and culture in literature and in the lives of women" with four amazing women:

Leila Cobo, a Fulbright scholar from Cali, Colombia, novelist, pianist, TV host, and executive editor for Latin content and programming for Billboard. She is considered one of the country's leading experts on Latin music. She is the author of Tell Me Something True. Her second novel, The Second Time We Met (Grand Central Publishing), will be released February 29, 2012. (www.leilacobo.com)

Jacqueline Luckett, author of Searching for Tina Turner and the newly published Passing Love (Grand Central Publishing). She participated in the Voices of Our Nations (VONA) writing workshops and, in 2004, formed the Finish Party along with seven other women writers-of-color. (www.jacquelineluckett.com)

Bernice L. McFadden, author of seven critically acclaimed novels, including Sugar and Glorious. She is a two-time Hurston/Wright Legacy Award finalist. In her new novel, Gathering of Waters (Akashic Books), McFadden brings her own vision to the story of Emmett Till and the town of Money, Mississippi. (www.bernicemcfadden.com).

Linda A. Duggins, moderator from the Hachette Book Group.

More details here

A Conversation with Sixers Review

noreply@blogger.com (reiko rizzuto) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 16:38:00 +0000

Appearing in Sixers Review today, a brief conversation with Goddard MFA graduate, Shokry Eldaly, who will someday be a literary marvel himself when he gets that half-finished novel done. Here is a sneak peek:

"Are you asking what you do when you are asked to conform? You don't. It's very simple. Why would you? Why would any person ever think that another person, or a structure (like publishing, or banking!), or a cultural assumption, knows what you need and who you are better than you do? You are the expert on you, and you have an urgency in your own preoccupations that is important for the rest of us to hear about. Otherwise, you become a bad copy of a character that someone else has made up."

Read the entire interview and take a look at the journal here.

Free in the New Year

noreply@blogger.com (reiko rizzuto) — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 14:22:00 +0000

What if there was no penalty for being who you are, and no prize either? If you didn’t have to worry about being judged, shunned, made fun of…what would you allow yourself to do? How would you act? What choices could you make? And what if there was no pressure to do the correct thing either: that you must write the bestseller, win the race, get the promotion, wear the most fashionable shoes? No approval, no praise.

Then everything you do every day, every choice you make, would be want you want to do at that moment, what you feel is right. You would be free to take risks. You would be free to play, and to find joy. You would be free to set your own priorities.

You would be free, free, free.

Happy 2012. Have a brilliant new year.

The Daily Mentor on She Writes

noreply@blogger.com (reiko rizzuto) — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 15:49:00 +0000

This week, I have the privilege to be the Guest Editor for She Writes, a virtual community, workplace, and emerging marketplace for women who write, with over 15,000 active members from all 50 states and more than 30 countries. It gives me a chance to bring together two writing communities I love: She Writes and Goddard College, where I teach in the MFA in Creative Writing. All this week, I will be hosting a feature called the Daily Mentor, with excerpts from essays about the writing life from my Goddard colleagues. You can find the Daily Mentor on the main page at She Writes all this week, and you can start here for the series.

Here is a taste:

Years ago, someone asked me who my writing mentor was. When I said I didn’t have one, she exclaimed, “Poor Bubbeleh!” I had never studied writing, and was just beginning to teach in the Goddard Masters in Creative Writing program. I had published a novel, was rewriting a memoir, and could not imagine what a mentor could offer me.

I know better now.

Love is the Revolution

noreply@blogger.com (reiko rizzuto) — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 14:29:00 +0000

"You have such gifts, that are important...For a long time our minds have told us that maybe we are imagining things, that it's crazy to live according to what you want to give...This isn't crazy...This is how to live."

This video is perfect. Check out the website, occupylove.org for more.

One year

noreply@blogger.com (reiko rizzuto) — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 16:46:00 +0000

Today is the day I must choose different words. To leave "my mother just passed away" behind and embrace "my mother died one year ago." It is something of a shock. It is sudden. Yet, there it is. A new year.

This is the two of us, when she was the age that I am now.

I don't know what this day is called, the anniversary of a passing. Today, please keep my family in your thoughts.

The Pen Fall Literary Tasting

noreply@blogger.com (reiko rizzuto) — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 13:48:00 +0000

Come join me at Westbeth for an evening of readings, conversation and cocktails.

Westbeth

With Henry Chang, Hal Foster, Michael Greenberg, Lev Grossman, Kevin Holohan, Sabina Murray, Rahna Reiko Rizzuto, Stephen Stark, and other special guests

What should you be reading this season? Hear from Sarah McNally of McNally Jackson Books about the runaway hits, the beloved secrets, and the must-reads of the 2011 fall season. Then wander the halls of Westbeth to attend live readings in the homes of Westbeth residents by some of the most exciting authors writing today. Don’t miss this rare opportunity to explore the oldest and largest artist community located in the heart of bohemian West Village, repurposed by renowned architect Richard Meier into 383 living and working lofts. The evening ends with a reception and cocktails.

When: Thursday, November 17, 2011
Where: Westbeth, 155 Bank St., New York City
What time: 7 p.m.

Tickets: $10. Purchase at ovationtix.com or at the door

No Demands

noreply@blogger.com (reiko rizzuto) — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 18:27:00 +0000

The genius of the Occupy Wall Street movement is its lack of demands. Not just because there cannot be one person who speaks, or one set of needs. Yes, consensus is good. But the minute something is asked for, we will be told it can't be done. We give up our power and autonomy because we will depend on someone else to effect this change. And in the time-honored way of the politics of negativity and exhaustion, any proposal that is made will be shot down, and no other solutions offered, because the powers that be do not want change. They do not want a solution. They want us to shut up.

We do not accept this. We will not play your rigged game. You come up with something better if you want our money, our shopping at your store, our working at your company....

This is what the Occupy movement is saying, should say. No.

Because we can live without them.

The genius of Occupy Wall Street is that, in the absence of demands, we the people each have to decide what we want to do. We may not choose to live in a park in the snow. But we may embrace National Bank Transfer Day and invest in ourselves through credit unions. And we may join a CSA and become shareholders in a local, organic farm. Or we may stand up against fracking. We can turn to each other in community and start a coop or refuse to buy genetically modified food, or refuse to spend hundred of dollars on toxic beauty products. As individuals, we can decide what we want to occupy in our lives. What we want to change. Occupy Wall Street can be this generation's version of Gloria Steinem's proposal, years ago, on outrageous acts:

"If each person in the room promises that the very next day she or he will do at least one outrageous thing in the cause of simple justice, then I promise I will, too. It doesn't matter whether the act is as small as saying, 'Pick it up yourself' or as large as calling a strike. '"

Perhaps only a mother knows how outrageous, how life-changing, the words "Pick it up yourself" can be.

Here is something else we can "occupy": rape.

From Eve Ensler (this is highly abridged. Check the link for the full text):

I am over rape.

I am over one in three women in the U.S military (Happy Veterans Day!) getting raped by their so-called "comrades."

I am over the fact that after four women came forward with allegations that Herman Cain groped them and grabbed them and humiliated them, he is still running for the President of the United States.

Which reminds me, I am so over the students at Penn State who protested the justice system instead of the alleged rapist pedophile of at least 8 boys, or his boss Joe Paterno, who did nothing to protect those children after knowing what was happening to them.

We need to OCCUPYRAPE in every school, park, radio, TV station, household, office, factory, refugee camp, military base, back room, night club, alleyway, courtroom, UN office. We need people to truly try and imagine -- once and for all -- what it feels like to have your body invaded, your mind splintered, your soul shattered. We need to let our rage and our compassion connect us so we can change the paradigm of global rape.

There are approximately one billion women on the planet who have been violated.

ONE BILLION WOMEN.

The time is now. Prepare for the escalation.

Today it begins, moving toward February 14, 2013, when one billion women will rise to end rape.

Because we are over it.

Look for this movement. Start your own. Because the only way we are going to get a safe, healthy, equitable, sustainable, clean and respectful society and world to live in is if we begin by picking it up ourselves.

Words become us. Occupying our words.

noreply@blogger.com (reiko rizzuto) — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 16:01:00 +0000

On my calendar next week: Go to Zuccotti Park when Jan Clausen is there.

On Cara Hoffman's blog today Jan writes:

A. I'm at Zuccotti Park, where I go every day, wearing a sign that says BECAUSE THEY'RE TRYING TO DRIVE OUR PLANET OFF A CLIFF. Cold rain is blowing sideways and I fight with my umbrella while reading Allen Ginsberg's poem "America." Looking up, I spy a tall young man clad in excellent rain pants, standing a few paces away. He pronounces each line as I do, with such assurance that it's clear he knows the entire poem by heart, all the way to the famous ending ("America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel"). We talk. It turns out he's one of the Occupy Wall Street librarians. "We have a whole Allen Ginsberg section in our library!" he exults. For the rest of the day, I feel more alive, because poetry lives.

And she also writes, about an anthology of essays about writing and the writing life, about the "the ragged edges and torn borders that truly invite creative motion":

I'm certainly not saying word artists don't need to spend lots of time alone, wrestling with their materials. Or that we shouldn't be paid. Or that we shouldn't study craft. I'm saying that art is more than the sum of these things, that the central impulse comes from elsewhere, from someplace webby and tentacled. What if the artist's vocation as prophet simply isn't compatible with being a profit center? Although Alchemy of the Word can be put to fine use, it is not a 'useful' book. It's a bountiful array of forking paths leading back into the thicket where one person's imaginative language always reverberates with the languages, purposes, visions of human others.

It is "our offering."

Read her full essay here.
Find the anthology Alchemy of the Word here and here.

Blast from the Past

noreply@blogger.com (reiko rizzuto) — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 14:11:00 +0000

Here is an interview I did with Rachel Glass for Evergreen Radio/WTBBL in Seattle last year, before the motherhood explosion, when the conversation was really about Japan and the atomic bomb and writing. It's quite interesting to go back in time. When Rachel and I sat down, we discovered, of all things, that her parents knew my parents in the old days in Hawaii. It is, especially in the islands, a very small world.

The MP3 link is here.

A Radical Act

noreply@blogger.com (reiko rizzuto) — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 14:06:00 +0000

“What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?
The world would split open.”

― Muriel Rukeyser

Twenty years ago, Anita Hill sat in front of a Senate hearing and told her truth at the intersection of race and gender. She was publically pilloried by a panel of white men. This weekend, at Hunter College, Anita Hill was celebrated by a sold-out, star-studded conference, whose participants had a chance to thank her for enduring what she has so that women today could stand on her shoulders.

After a full conference day, the evening was filled with stories, in a hot ticket night of performances curated by Eve Ensler. But throughout the day, there was a clear refrain that will resonate with all women writers. What Anita did, and what we all must continue to do for each other, is to tell our stories. Gloria Steinem quoted an Indian saying: “The loss of memory is a source of oppression.” When we forget, or hide in silence and allow others to forget, we literally lose our ability to speak up for who we are. “We are restoring, supplementing, and extending each others’ memories,” Steinem declared about the conference. For me, a writer who has dedicated herself to unearthing other people’s stories, this was the most powerful reminder in an electrifying day.

At lunch, Hedgebrook, the retreat for women writers on Whidbey Island in Washington state, hosted a conversation about storytelling. “When one woman tells her truth,” Executive Director Amy Wheeler said, “sometimes everyone beside her takes a step back to get out of the way.” When my memoir, Hiroshima in the Morning, came out last year and I tried to tell the truth about my motherhood and open a discussion about different forms of happy families and the importance of love, I got my own small taste of the white male panel, which was only interested in shutting me down. Everything I had to say was misrepresented, and at times it seemed like my only options were to accept an invitation from a hostile television show and shout over their slurs (which I decided not to do), or to retreat and be silent.

Hedgebrook was there for me, with their radical hospitality for women writers. The Feminist Press, my publisher, also stood with me. Someone recently asked me, “Was it worth it? What did you gain?” and I have to say that it was worth it to me to get so many emails from women who shared their own stories. From them, I was reminded that we all have similar struggles, though we make different decisions. And if more of us begin to speak up, none of us will have to go it alone.

Twenty years after Anita Hill’s testimony, the immigrant service worker who accused Dominique Strauss-Kahn of sexual assault in New York had her case dismissed as her imperfect past was tried in the court of public opinion. It seems that we have not come as far as we want. But as Steinem also pointed out, her courage to tell her story inspired others to tell theirs, and charges of inappropriate sexual behavior and predation continue to haunt the man who now will not be President of France because one story unlocks the next, and the next. Storytelling is a radical act – I know it, and you know it because you are a writer – but I did not expect to hear that truth reflected back to me so often by so many of the conference panelists, whether they were domestic worker organizers, academics, lawyers or performers.

We women writers need to tell the truth about our lives. It’s not a hobby or an indulgent luxury that we sit down to our desks and write. It is a service, a path-showing, a community we create for others. We also need to support each others’ truth by short circuiting the media and structures that would keep us silent and by sharing each other’s work. As Amy Wheeler said, “It’s not about my voice. It’s about my voice, and your voice, and your voice. We are in it together.”

That’s when the world will truly split open. Keep writing!

This post originally appeared on She Writes.

Second half

noreply@blogger.com (reiko rizzuto) — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 16:31:00 +0000

Part Two of The Open Mind interview with Cecilia Skidmore is now on line. Download and listen to both here.

The Tipping Country

noreply@blogger.com (reiko rizzuto) — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 14:59:00 +0000

On Saturday, at the Anita Hill 20 conference, Gloria Steinem observed that our country is getting out of control. And that’s a good thing. “Right now we have turned against two wars; in about 20 minutes we are no longer going to be a majority European American or white country; we have a proud African-American family in the White House; and we are critical of our financial institutions in a way we have never been before.” The resulting backlash – more guns being bought, more racist groups, more virulent violence and violent rhetoric, more legislation against personal and women’s reproductive freedoms – comes from people who, "through no fault of their own, were born into a structure that made them believe they had a right by birth to be in control” and whose identity rests on this control. She gives us this scary, powerful and hopeful metaphor: domestic violence as a microcosm of our political situation:

“The time of maximum danger for a woman who is about to escape a violent household is that moment just before and just after she escapes. She is most likely to be seriously injured or murdered at that moment because she is getting out of control.”

“We are in a time of danger and we need to protect each other. We need to know that. We are about to be free and we are not going to stop.”

Keep each other safe. Keep fighting. It is darkest, as they say, just before the dawn.

Today on the Open Mind

noreply@blogger.com (reiko rizzuto) — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 12:28:00 +0000

I will be talking with Cecilia Skidmore on The Open Mind on WGVU Radio today and next Sunday. Her program complements a national PBS series called Women, War and Peace. Listen in to the streaming broadcast online, or download the segment at your convenience.

The show airs in Grand Rapids, MI at 7:30 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. on Sundays.on WGVU-FM 88.5 and 95.3.

Link is here.

Asian American Literary Award Finalist

noreply@blogger.com (reiko rizzuto) — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 17:00:00 +0000

The finalists for this year's Asian American Literary Award in non-fiction this year are:

A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb by Amitava Kumar (Duke University Press Books)

The Lucky Ones: One Family and the Extraordinary Invention of Chinese America by Mae Ngai (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

Hiroshima in the Morning by Rahna Reiko Rizzuto (The Feminist Press at CUNY)

Come to the third annual Page Turner Festival, hosted by the Asian American Writers Workshop for a day of readings and panels, and a night of celebration and awards. Check out the link above for updates!

PAGE TURNER
Saturday, October 29, 2011, 11am - 7pm
POWERHOUSE ARENA, 37 Main Street, Brooklyn
$5 per event / $20 all day pass / $30 all-day pass (w/ AFTERWORD party)

Clemency

noreply@blogger.com (reiko rizzuto) — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 14:59:00 +0000

Clemency: a disposition to be merciful.

Letter (excerpt) from Troy Davis, executed last night in Georgia after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to intervene without comment:

"As I look at my mail from across the globe, from places I have never ever dreamed I would know about and people speaking languages and expressing cultures and religions I could only hope to one day see first hand. I am humbled by the emotion that fills my heart with overwhelming, overflowing Joy. I can’t even explain the insurgence of emotion I feel when I try to express the strength I draw from you all, it compounds my faith and it shows me yet again that this is not a case about the death penalty, this is not a case about Troy Davis, this is a case about Justice and the Human Spirit to see Justice prevail.

"I cannot answer all of your letters but I do read them all, I cannot see you all but I can imagine your faces, I cannot hear you speak but your letters take me to the far reaches of the world, I cannot touch you physically but I feel your warmth everyday I exist.

"So Thank you and remember I am in a place where execution can only destroy your physical form but because of my faith in God, my family and all of you I have been spiritually free for some time and no matter what happens in the days, weeks to come, this Movement to end the death penalty, to seek true justice, to expose a system that fails to protect the innocent must be accelerated. There are so many more Troy Davis’. This fight to end the death penalty is not won or lost through me but through our strength to move forward and save every innocent person in captivity around the globe. We need to dismantle this Unjust system city by city, state by state and country by country.

"I can’t wait to Stand with you, no matter if that is in physical or spiritual form, I will one day be announcing,

“I am Troy Davis, and I am free!”

Off to LA

noreply@blogger.com (reiko rizzuto) — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 17:06:00 +0000

There have been, in the last weeks, so many things to do: speeches to write, visuals to prepare, plane trips that require me to be patted down and my bags unpacked and gone through by hand because my books and my computer cord in my carry-on are so close together in the x-ray screening that the entire line was nearly shut down to deal with the threat that is me. But now I am on my way to Los Angeles – five airborne hours – with nothing but the present moment. I can read the book I brought – Amy Waldman’s The Submission – for nothing but pleasure. I can daydream. I have been preoccupied with what to say to an audience I cannot yet see and whom I have not met. But to decide so far in advance what I should offer them and what they need to hear is to constrain the future. To predetermine it and make it less than it might otherwise be. I am not an historian, or an expert, or even an advocate. I am an artist, and a witness, and so I have decided to lecture less and engage more. To be in the moment when it comes. Wish me luck.

September 10th at the Japanese American National Museum

noreply@blogger.com (reiko rizzuto) — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 17:24:00 +0000

This weekend, to mark the tenth anniversary of the September 11th attacks, I will be speaking and reading from Hiroshima in the Morning at the Japanese American National Museum. The program starts at 2 pm. The museum, if you have never been there, is beautiful and features the names of former internees of the WWII relocation centers - including my mother's, grandparents' and great uncles' - etched in the glass.

Come join me, and please pass the word along! Reservations are apparently encouraged, but that doesn't mean it is too late!

JAPANESE AMERICAN NATIONAL MUSEUM
369 East First Street
Los Angeles, California 90012
phone: 213.625.0414

When making a reservation, e-mail rsvp@janm.org or call 213.625.0414 at least 48 hours prior to the event.

Fishing, Hawaii Style

noreply@blogger.com (reiko rizzuto) — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 16:31:00 +0000

We (the boys and I) are in Hawaii visiting my Dad as we usually do a couple of times a year. Yesterday, fishing out of Kona, my oldest caught his first big blue marlin. Not exactly the Old Man and the Sea; the Tropical Sun is a very luxurious boat. This fish weighed about 250 pounds - we tagged and released it after walking it along side the boat to make sure it had revived and could swim. What a thrill for a 130 pound young man who has been fishing the Hawaiian waters all his life (his first fishing trip at age two!).

Dayton Literary Peace Prize

noreply@blogger.com (reiko rizzuto) — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 02:40:00 +0000

“Are we so naïve as to think that we can bring peace to the world through words? Yes we are. What else do we have?”

- Elie Weisel

Hiroshima in the Morning has been nominated for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, "the first and only annual U.S. literary award recognizing the power of the written word to promote peace." This year's nominees include Nelson Mandela, Isabel Wilkerson, Kai Bird, and Siddhartha Mukherjee, among many other gifted writers. It's an amazing honor to be nominated, and to be on any list that also has Nelson Mandela on it.

Wish me luck. Take a look at the list and read the books!

A beautiful tribute, and a chance to help

noreply@blogger.com (reiko rizzuto) — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 14:12:00 +0000

The crisis in Japan is far from over;
it may be gone from the headlines,
but it is not gone from our hearts.

Donald & Era Farnsworth's Sacred Pine depicts a pine tree in Rikuzentakata, Japan, a coastal city almost completely flattened by the tsunami following the 2011 Touhoku earthquake. Incredibly, this single pine was left standing from a grove of more than 70,000 trees planted along the shore three centuries ago; the tree has emerged as a symbol of hope and renewal in an otherwise devastated region.

For more information, to purchase or make a donation, (or to investigate my tiny connection to this beautiful work) click here.

Sixty-six years ago, more than 60,000 people killed in an instant

noreply@blogger.com (reiko rizzuto) — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 16:17:00 +0000

A moment of silence for the anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki.

In the words of Harry S. Truman, our President, on August 11, 1945, explaining the use of the two atomic bombs:

“The only language they seem to understand is the one we have been using to bombard them.

“When you have to deal with a beast you have to treat him as a beast.”

Source here.

We are being lied to

noreply@blogger.com (reiko rizzuto) — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 16:20:00 +0000

A round up on the English-language news about the Fukushima disaster and the state of our own nuclear power plants.

New York Times: Japan Held Nuclear Data, Leaving Evacuees in Peril
By Norimitsu Onishi and Martin Fackler, August 8, 2011

“In interviews and public statements, some current and former government officials have admitted that Japanese authorities engaged in a pattern of withholding damaging information and denying facts of the nuclear disaster — in order, some of them said, to limit the size of costly and disruptive evacuations in land-scarce Japan and to avoid public questioning of the politically powerful nuclear industry.”

New York Times: Japan Passes Law Supporting Stricken Nuclear Plant’s Operator
By Hiroko Tabuchi, August 3, 2011

“Japan’s Parliament passed a law on Wednesday that will allow the use of public funds to shore up the company operating the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, and help it pay what is expected to amount to billions of dollars in compensation claims.”

CNN: Workers find lethal radiation levels at Fukushima Daiichi
By Kyung Lah, August 2, 2011

“A 60-minute exposure could kill a man or woman within weeks.”

New York Times: US Senators Argue Over Fate of Nuclear Safety Proposals
By Hannah Northey, August 2, 2011

“Top Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee criticized the federal task force charged with reviewing Japan's nuclear crisis and the safety of U.S. reactors for recommending "more Washington red tape" and called its proposals premature, potentially excessively, expensive and burdensome.”

New York Times: Radiation-Tainted Beef Spreads Through Japan’s Markets
By Hiroko Tabuchi, July 18, 2011

“Japanese agricultural officials say meat from more than 500 cattle that were likely to have been contaminated with radioactive cesium has made its way to supermarkets and restaurants across Japan in recent weeks….If you eat it every day, it might be a problem,” Goshi Hosono, the minister in charge of the nuclear issue, said last week. “But if you eat just a little, there would be no big effect on your health.”

MSNBC: Radioactive tritium leaks found at 48 US nuke sites
By Jeff Donn, June 21, 2011

“Radioactive tritium has leaked from three-quarters of U.S. commercial nuclear power sites, often into groundwater from corroded, buried piping, an Associated Press investigation shows. The number and severity of the leaks has been escalating, even as federal regulators extend the licenses of more and more reactors across the nation…

"You got pipes that have been buried underground for 30 or 40 years, and they've never been inspected,' whistleblower says.”

Guardian U.K.: Fukushima cleanup recruits 'nuclear gypsies' from across Japan
By Justin McCurry, 13 July 2011

“Thousands of engineers and labourers have been lured by higher wages and a sense of duty…They include Ariyoshi Rune, a tall, wiry 47-year-old truck driver whose slicked-back hair and sideburns are inspired by his idol, Joe Strummer…For five days a week, Rune is in thrall to the drudgery of life as a "nuclear gypsy", the name writer Kunio Horie gave to contract workers who have traditionally performed the dirtiest, most dangerous jobs for Japan's power utilities. “I have about two months left before I reach my limit, but I'm hoping they will make an exception and let me work for longer," he says.”

Aljazeera: Fukushima: It's much worse than you think
By Dahr Jamail, 16 June 2011

“Scientific experts believe Japan's nuclear disaster to be far worse than governments are revealing to the public….We have 20 nuclear cores exposed, the fuel pools have several cores each, that is 20 times the potential to be released than Chernobyl," said Gundersen. "The data I'm seeing shows that we are finding hot spots further away than we had from Chernobyl, and the amount of radiation in many of them was the amount that caused areas to be declared no-man's-land for Chernobyl. We are seeing square kilometres being found 60 to 70 kilometres away from the reactor. You can't clean all this up. We still have radioactive wild boar in Germany, 30 years after Chernobyl."

Reuters: Radiation "hotspots" hinder Japan response to nuclear crisis
By Kevin Krolicki and Kiyoshi Takenaka, Jun 15, 2011

“Hisao Nakamura still can't accept that his crisply cut field of deep green tea bushes south of Tokyo has been turned into a radioactive hazard by a crisis far beyond the horizon.

"I was more than shocked," said Nakamura, 74, who, like other tea farmers in Kanagawa has been forced to throw away an early harvest because of radiation being released by the Fukushima Daiichi plant 300 kilometers (180 miles) away…The incomplete data has complicated Japan's response to the disaster and planning for an environmental clean-up expected to take years and cost tens of billions of dollars.

"It has also created a mood of quiet despair in already devastated communities. "I never believe anything I hear any more on radiation," said Shukuko Kuzumi, 63, who lives in Iwaki, about 50 km to the south of Fukushima.

"I want to dig a hole in the ground and scream."”

Yomiuri Shimbun: Radiation discovered in Fukushima, Ibaraki foods
March 21, 2011

“According to test results announced Saturday, samples of cow milk from Kawamatacho, Fukushima Prefecture, and spinach from six cities, towns and villages in Ibaraki Prefecture were found to contain radioactive iodine and other radioactive materials in excess of provisional limits, officials said….In Ibaraki Prefecture, radioactive iodine was detected from spinach sampled from farms in Hitachi, Takahagi, Hitachi-Ota and Hitachinaka cities and the town of Daigomachi and the village of Tokaimura. The highest level found was 15,020 Bq, 7.5 times the permissible level…There is no direct risk to human health from the latest radioactivity findings involving cow milk and spinach, according to Prof. Gen Suzuki of the International University of Health and Welfare.”

Stuart Smith Blog, Quoting The Washington Post: As Radiation Levels Soar In Japan, Officials Raise “Acceptable” Limits
March 16, 2011

“If we hear that exposure is “within legal limits” anytime soon, let’s remember this from the Washington Post: “Japan’s Health and Welfare minister had to waive the nation’s standard of radiation exposure, increasing levels of acceptable exposure from 100 millisieverts to 250 – five times the level allowed in the United States.”

Identity and otherness

noreply@blogger.com (reiko rizzuto) — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 15:27:00 +0000

Coming late to this talk, by Thandie Newton, about the devastating consequences of the human scramble to create a projection of self that we can hide behind and hold onto.

Storytelling

noreply@blogger.com (reiko rizzuto) — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 02:32:00 +0000

A note from the Goddard residency about a new article on Women Doing Literary Things:

"As a writer, I have always been attracted to what is hidden. I write to understand what is not understandable, what is not even acceptable, and to find a deeper truth in what has not been spoken.

"I write war, trauma, history.

"I also write family, without planning to do so. And motherhood. This is the natural consequence of writing who I am. In our culture and our stories, gender is everything. I have learned – not always in the nicest ways – that even when I am sure that my own preoccupations have nothing to do with gender, my readers will still bring their own, gender-based expectations to my work."

To read the whole article, you can link to this blog, to She Writes, or to Gender Without Borders.