Rights Readers

For September: Selling Olga by Louisa Waugh

noreply@blogger.com (Martha TerMaat) — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 02:52:00 +0000

For September, we have selected Selling Olga: Stories of Human Trafficking by Louisa Waugh,

It’s seems inconceivable in the 21st century, but human trafficking is now the world’s fastest-growing illegal industry: according to U.S. government estimates, between 700,000 and two million people have become victims. Following three years of in-depth research, award-winning author and journalist Louisa Waugh has produced a vivid, unflinching account of how this immoral commerce operates and why it thrives. Throughout Eastern Europe, a combination of war and poverty has led to women being sold in bars, confined, and coerced into sex work. And while Waugh focuses especially on one woman, Olga, who tells her own story in angry, heartbreaking detail, she also introduces us to many others across Europe including Nigerian women in Italy and migrants trapped in other forms of forced labor. She helps us understand why, in spite of global awareness, relentless anti-trafficking campaigns, and increasing numbers of imprisonments, this type of crime hasn’t disappeared…and why, in spite of everything, there is hope for change.

Our June Author: Daniel Alarcon

noreply@blogger.com (Martha TerMaat) — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 14:37:00 +0000

Our June author, Daniel Alarcon, has made my job easy this month with his own website. Check out the links page for interviews, readings and short stories.

From The Elegant Variation, we learn about the imagined setting for Lost City Radio,

When I was on tour last, for War by Candlelight, I always found myself saying, “If Peru was an invented country, and Lima an invented city, many people would still recognize it,” and I guess I sort of followed my own advice. I invented a country, a city, drew upon my experiences in Lima, upon my travels in West Africa, upon texts I read about Chechnya (the incomparable Anna Politkovskaya, RIP), or Beirut, or Mumbai.

Also, be sure to check out that interview for the author's experiences in Peru with a family looking for the disappeared.

From the LA Weekly, we learn more about the real life inspiration for the book,

Alarcón began collecting material during a trip to Lima in 1999 to research the life of his uncle Javier, a leftist professor who was “disappeared” 10 years earlier during the violent Shining Path guerrilla war that over two decades claimed 69,000 lives. His uncle’s life is the basis for the character Rey, a university botanist who ventures into the jungle and gradually becomes involved in a guerrilla movement. During his time in Lima, Alarcón was an avid fan of a radio show called Buscapersonas, or “People Finder.”

The weekly also has much about the Alarcon's complex identity, as do these essays in Washington Post and Salon.

Our May Author: Muhammad Yunus

noreply@blogger.com (Martha TerMaat) — Fri, 16 May 2008 19:19:00 +0000

I did some of my homework on the author of this month's selection, Banker to the Poor, Muhammad Yunus, some time ago in this post with video introduction to Grameen Bank. Mr. Yunus has his own website with plenty of links to press clips. There are so many Grameen related enterprises its a bit overwhelming. Grameen-info looks like a good place to sort it all out. If you are curious about Grameen America here is their site. They have a new branch in New York City which you can learn about in this WNYC interview.

There are also many YouTube interviews available. Perhaps this one with Charlie Rose (mostly Grameen 101) or this lecture (perhaps a little more wide-ranging) at Google would be good places to start. NPR takes a look at his most recent book, Creating a World without Poverty and Democracy Now has an interview focusing on the same topic,

AMY GOODMAN: Explain your idea of social business.
MUHAMMAD YUNUS: Yes, and I am saying that the conceptual framework of capitalism itself is at fault. That’s what created all the problems. So we have to address that also. And the concept of business, for example, only way the concept of business is defined in a capitalist theory is a business to make money. Profit maximization is the sole mission of business.
And I’m saying this is a misinterpretation of a human being. Human being is not a machine. Human being is not a robot. It’s not a money-making machine. A human being is much bigger than making money. Money-making is an important part of a human being, but certainly it’s not the totality of human being. Human being is much bigger than that. It’s also caring being. It’s a sharing being, wants to make a difference in the world. That part is not included in the business world, in the economic world.

As a bonus, here's a recent NYT article on cell phones and poverty and some comment from The New Yorker, "What Microloans Miss."

For August: The Redbreast

noreply@blogger.com (Martha TerMaat) — Wed, 14 May 2008 00:46:00 +0000

In keeping with our tradition of reading a mystery in August, we have selected Jo Nesbo's The Redbreast,

Police Detective Harry Hole has made a terrible mistake. An embarrassment in the line of duty has pulled him off his usual beat. Reassigned to mundane surveillance tasks, he reluctantly agrees to monitor neo-Nazi activities in Oslo. But as Hole is drawn into an underground world of illegal gun trafficking, brutal beatings, and sexual extortions, he soon learns that he must act fast to prevent an international conspiracy from unfolding.

Trapped in the crosshairs of the man with all the answers, Harry Hole plunges headlong into a mystery with roots deep in the past. His investigation takes him back to Norway's darkest hour—when members of the young nation's government collaborated with leaders of Nazi Germany. Dredging up a painful history of denial, Hole turns his attention to the Norwegian troops who fought for Adolf Hitler on the Eastern front. Branded by their countrymen as traitors, the soldiers who survived the brutal Russian winter—the hunger, fear, cold, grenades, and snipers—returned home as scapegoats of a nation's atonement. Sixty years later, old grudges and betrayals appear to have been laid to rest, until Hole realizes that someone has begun to pick off the surviving soldiers one by one.

Persepolis Revisted

noreply@blogger.com (Martha TerMaat) — Mon, 05 May 2008 16:40:00 +0000

Welcome UW-RF Lion's Paw book group! Rights Readers read Persepolis a couple of years back and collected some nice supplementary links on these old blogposts, plus a couple of bonus posts on Iranian art. Unfortunately, many of the links have expired, but there are still a few nuggets buried here. For readers old and new, here are a couple of links I couldn't access before the NYT took down its subscription firewall: Iranian in Paris and an opinion page piece. Enjoy!

Happy Birthday Panchen Lama, wherever you are

noreply@blogger.com (Joyce Wolf) — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 22:49:00 +0000

April 25 is the 19th birth anniversary of Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, the six-year-old boy who disappeared in 1995 shortly after the Dalai Lama named him as the 11th Panchen Lama. He and his parents are believed to have been kidnapped by the Chinese authorities, who immediately put forward another young boy as their selection for the Panchen Lama. See news coverage from Reuters India or visit Campaign for Tibet or Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy. There are online petitions here and here.

For the latest news and actions concerning human rights in China and the Olympics, visit Amnesty International USA 's China page.

Our April Author: Dinaw Mengestu

noreply@blogger.com (Martha TerMaat) — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 15:56:00 +0000

Some links for our reading of Dinaw Mengestu's The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears:

For context NPR has a story on Ethiopian ex-pat artists here. You can watch video of Dinaw Mengestu give a reading (note the menu lets you can skip to the Q & A).

Tavis Smiley gets going with the author on the racial politics of the novel in this interview.

...My idea in writing the book was that, you know, I wanted to touch on as many different parts of America, I mean, gentrification, race relations, class relations, definitely relations obviously with immigrants, and also to push the idea of what it means to be an immigrant inside of America further than the stereotype of, you know, you come to America, you pull yourself up, you progress, you strive, everything is eventually going to be all right.

But characters who actually come realizing that everything's not going to be all right, they're not going to make it into the world and also to look at America very critically. I think the book spends a lot of time, you know, looking at American history, looking at American politics, race in America, and really try to see what is happening especially inside of American cities.

The book is set entirely in Washington, D.C. and inside of that little community that's rapidly gentrifying, where this historically Black neighborhood is being rapidly displaced by the new white upper-class community that's moving in. I think that's a dialog that still needs to be happening, especially right now where you can see cities transforming and changing so rapidly and, in my opinion, irresponsibly.

Meanwhile, this interview unpacks the literary references and the Guardian fleshes out his biography and explains why he received the Guardian First Book Award.

Finally, here's an article Mengestu wrote for Rolling Stone on the crisis in Darfur.

By the way, I updated our map of North America (see sidebar) so you can zoom in on Logan's Circle. The photographer responsible for the book cover shot has more pics of the neighborhood here.

Action for Tibetan Monks

noreply@blogger.com (Joyce Wolf) — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 22:50:00 +0000

Many news reports about the recent demonstrations in Tibet refer to the past large-scale protests in Lhasa in 1987-1988. Long-time members of AI Group 22 will recall that our former adopted prisoner of conscience, Tibetan monk Ngawang Pekar, was arrested at that time. Rights Readers started in 1999, and our third selection was the book Sky Burial, an account of the Lhasa events by a young American tourist. The author's companion was John Ackerly, who was so marked by his experience that he went on to become the president of International Campaign for Tibet. Today he wrote:

In the past 20 years, I have never had such an exhausting, heartbreaking, and exciting week. Exciting because the Tibet issue is exactly where it should be -- on the front pages of our newspapers and high on the agendas of politicians and human rights organizations everywhere. Heartbreaking because Tibetans have taken huge risks to make their voices heard and are experiencing the worst repression and crackdown since the earliest days of the Chinese occupation.

Amnesty International has posted an urgent action for the 15 Tibetan monks arrested March 10 in a peaceful demonstration. They are considered at high risk of torture. You can see their photos here. Please take action to support them!

Some non-AI actions are located here and here. A local organization is Los Angeles Friends of Tibet.

For July: China Road by Rob Gifford

noreply@blogger.com (Martha TerMaat) — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 21:06:00 +0000

For July, we have selected Rob Gifford's China Road,

Route 312 is the Chinese Route 66. It flows three thousand miles from east to west, passing through the factory towns of the coastal areas, through the rural heart of China, then up into the Gobi Desert, where it merges with the Old Silk Road. The highway witnesses every part of the social and economic revolution that is turning China upside down.

In this utterly surprising and deeply personal book, acclaimed National Public Radio reporter Rob Gifford, a fluent Mandarin speaker, takes the dramatic journey along Route 312 from its start in the boomtown of Shanghai to its end on the border with Kazakhstan. Gifford reveals the rich mosaic of modern Chinese life in all its contradictions, as he poses the crucial questions that all of us are asking about China: Will it really be the next global superpower? Is it as solid and as powerful as it looks from the outside? And who are the ordinary Chinese people, to whom the twenty-first century is supposed to belong?

Gifford is not alone on his journey. The largest migration in human history is taking place along highways such as Route 312, as tens of millions of people leave their homes in search of work. He sees signs of the booming urban economy everywhere, but he also uncovers many of the country’s frailties, and some of the deep-seated problems that could derail China’s rise.

The whole compelling adventure is told through the cast of colorful characters Gifford meets: garrulous talk-show hosts and ambitious yuppies, impoverished peasants and tragic prostitutes, cell-phone salesmen, AIDS patients, and Tibetan monks. He rides with members of a Shanghai jeep club, hitchhikes across the Gobi desert, and sings karaoke with migrant workers at truck stops along the way.

As he recounts his travels along Route 312, Rob Gifford gives a face to what has historically, for Westerners, been a faceless country and breathes life into a nation that is so often reduced to economic statistics. Finally, he sounds a warning that all is not well in the Chinese heartlands, that serious problems lie ahead, and that the future of the West has become inextricably linked with the fate of 1.3 billion Chinese people.

Our March Author: Wangari Maathai

noreply@blogger.com (Martha TerMaat) — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 16:11:00 +0000

Before you go any further, visit the Amnesty International USA site to take action on behalf of Wangari Maathai, author of our March selection, Unbowed.

Kenyan human rights defender and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Professor Wangari Maathai received three death threats on her cellular telephone on February 19, 2008, as did two people working for her.

These threats read, ‘‘Because of your opposing the government at all times, Prof Wangari Maathai, we have decided to look for your head very soon, you are number three after Were, take care of your life.” The threats were signed ‘‘Mungiki.” The “number three” refers to the two Members of Parliament who were killed at the end of January.

The website for the Greenbelt Movement does provide some reassurance that Wangari Maathai's security detail was reinstated on March 5. Of course the site is worth exploring to learn more about the movement (pictures!).

There are many Wangari Maathai interviews available on line. This interview is the one that brought Unbowed to my attention, and here's another recent one from Democracy Now. Asked about Iraq,

And in Africa, in particular, I know we have many wars. We have a war in Darfur. We have wars in many other countries like the Congo, in West Africa, in Somalia right now. We are still having these wars. And these wars, when you look at all of them, you realize that they are all about resources. It’s the question of who is going to control the resources in this country, who is going to be included, who is going to be excluded, who is going to be in charge of these resources.

I think that if we would get the message that the Norwegian Nobel Committee gave us in the year 2004, we would sit back and rethink again: Isn’t there another way of managing these resources, of sharing these resources, of being more inclusive, of allowing everybody to play a part to benefit, so that we do not have to fight and kill each other, so that we can have the supreme control of these resources?

Speaking of Faith has an interview and slideshow of Kenyan women (accompanied by Wangari Maathai singing!)

In addition to the Greenbelt Movement's activities, learn more about the United Nations Environmental Programme's "Plant for the Planet" project to plant one billion trees in 2008 here. NPR has a report on how this program is working in Indonesia.

For a taste of Wangari Maathai's inspiration: Mount Kenya is a UNESCO World Heritage site and a photo gallery and video can be found here. PBS Nature has a feature on the fig tree, The Queen of Trees. When I first saw the title, I thought this was a reference to Wangari Maathai herself! Watch a trailer here.

The latest Amnesty reports and actions on Kenya can be found here. Also of interest, another Rights Readers author, Michela Wrong, offers some insight into recent events in Kenya in the New Statesman.

Finally, while there are many Wangari Maathai videos available on YouTube, try this for a taste of her storytelling skills,

Wangari Maathai's Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech

noreply@blogger.com (Lucas) — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 19:09:00 +0000

Our group's Kenya expert, Paula Tavrow, who spends large parts of the year doing health-planning work in East Africa, has told us that the Nobel Prize acceptance speech by this month's author, Wangari Maathai, is well worth reading. Here's a link to read this online.

For June: Lost City Radio by Daniel Alarcon

noreply@blogger.com (Martha TerMaat) — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 01:33:00 +0000

For June we have selected Lost City Radio by Daniel Alarcon,

For ten years, Norma has been the on-air voice of consolation and hope for the Indians in the mountains and the poor from the barrios—a people broken by war's violence. As the host of Lost City Radio, she reads the names of those who have disappeared—those whom the furiously expanding city has swallowed. Through her efforts lovers are reunited and the lost are found. But in the aftermath of the decadelong bloody civil conflict, her own life is about to forever change—thanks to the arrival of a young boy from the jungle who provides a cryptic clue to the fate of Norma's vanished husband.

Daniel Alarcon's debut story collection, War by Candlelight, was a finalist for the 2006 PEN/Hemingway Award. He has received a Lannan Literary Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award, and has been named by Granta magazine one of the Best American Novelists under thirty-five. He is the associate editor of Etiqueta Negra, an award-winning monthly magazine published in his native Lima, Peru. He lives in Oakland, California.

More on Egypt

noreply@blogger.com (Martha TerMaat) — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 22:52:00 +0000

Breaking! They NYT has obliged with perfect timing for our discussion of the The Yacoubian Building: "Dreams Stifled, Egypt’s Young Turn to Islamic Fervor" --complete with maps and video.

Our February Author: Alaa Al Aswany

noreply@blogger.com (Martha TerMaat) — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 16:56:00 +0000

Some links for Alaa al Aswany author of our February selection, The Yacoubian Building:

The controversy surrounding the book and movie are nearly as interesting as the book itself and in any case the author is very forthcoming with his political views. This National Geographic interview is an excellent place to start. NPR has a good profile about the book and film as does the Guardian,

I work less but I would never give [dentistry] up because my clinic is my window. I open the window to see people and talk to them and I believe this is very important from the human aspect and the professional aspect as a writer. Patients tell me about their lives, I give them my time, so it's not just about the dental issues. I do care about people and it's very dangerous for a writer to shut himself away.'

I don't know, the dentist's chair isn't usually a place for idle chitchat for me, even if it were physically possible! But maybe a bit of friendly gossip before the drill makes the visit a bit more pleasant.

There's a little more on the controversy surrounding the book at Daily News Egypt and also in this YouTube. PEN American Center also has audio from some events the author participated in (this is how I learned of the book).

Amnesty country-specialist Geoffrey Mock keeps a blog, Human Rights in Egypt, and although it hasn't been updated in a few months its a good place to go for a little insight and useful links including some to Egyptian human rights bloggers.

Rights Reel

noreply@blogger.com (Martha TerMaat) — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 04:09:00 +0000

Recently I've stumbled on some films that seem like good backgrounders for a few of the books we've read. I recently rented the HBO film, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, a nice historical companion piece for the Louise Erdrich novel, Tracks, we read not long ago. For something completely different, there is Ten Canoes, an Australian fable told partially in an aboriginal tongue which brought me back to Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages. Unrelated to any reading we've done but providing a backdrop to our work on China and globalization there is the oddly beautiful and meditative documentary about the photographer Edward Burtynsky, Manufactured Landscapes. Last but not least, I am looking forward (next up in my queue) to viewing the film version of our February book The Yacoubian Building. Trailer (with the cheesiest voiceover ever) below:

Greetings from Wisconsin!

noreply@blogger.com (Martha TerMaat) — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 16:09:00 +0000

Most Loyal Readers know already that their Leader Reader has departed California for Wisconsin. Here's a little update on my reading exploits since moving here:

Apart from venturing into a community book discussion group, I arrived just in time for River Falls Reads 2008 and attended the kick-off event featuring Jerene Mortenson, the mother of Greg Mortenson, author of Rights Readers selection Three Cups of Tea. As noted before, River Falls is the birthplace of "Pennies for Peace", a program that educates American children about the world beyond their experience and raises funds for schools in Central Asia. A few things I learned from the talk: that there are over 400 U.S. schools now in the program, and that pennies were chosen to make sure children of all incomes could participate. I was also intrigued to learn that storytelling is part of the curriculum for students in Pakistan, thus incorporating the elders of the village and the oral tradition into the schools. I would love to hear some of those stories! My California readers will also be heartened to learn that steps are being taken to build new schools that are designed to better withstand earthquakes. The rest of the River Falls Reads event line-up looks interesting as well. Small towns have a lot to offer! I am sure I will have more reading adventures to share in the future...

Blogging Human Rights in Egypt

noreply@blogger.com (Joyce Wolf) — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 17:47:00 +0000

I've just finished reading our February book selection, The Yacoubian Building. A recent article in the Los Angeles Times about Egyptian blogger Wael Abbas addressed many of the human rights issues that this novel deals with.

DISPATCH FROM CAIRO
In Egypt, high-risk blogging
By Jeffrey Fleishman, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
February 8, 2008
CAIRO -- It was not the most comforting of e-mails: "May God honor my sword by slaying Wael Abbas." Cyberspace can be a messy, dangerous place, especially if you're Abbas, who with keyboard, digital camera and a bit of cunning has become one of Egypt's most popular bloggers. His posts, often with scratchy video, catalog police torture, political oppression, labor strikes, sexual harassment and radical Islam. He's been vilified and threatened, but has managed to stay out of jail, operating in an uncensored realm beyond the independent and state-controlled media. ... Abbas' most dramatic blog posts are videos, some shot with cellphone cameras, depicting police brutality, which has long been a concern in this country of 80 million people. In 2007, Abbas gained international attention when he posted images of police officers sodomizing a bus driver with a stick. The driver had committed no crime, and the courts, forced to react to irrefutable evidence and public anger, sentenced two police officers each to three years in prison.

You can read the entire LA Times article here. Here is a YouTube video of Wael Abbas accepting an award from the International Center For Journalists. Once you're at YouTube, you can search for and view other Wael Abbas videos.

Photos from Doodah Parade

noreply@blogger.com (Joyce Wolf) — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 01:47:00 +0000

Here are links to photo albums from Group 22's entry in the Pasadena Doodah Parade. Click on an image to view album or video.

Team Doodah. Photos from Stevi.

Video from Katerina. Action! Sound!

Katerina's Doodah Album. More photos and videos.

Dan's Album. Dramatic waterboarding shots, as seen from the driver's seat.

Paul's Album. Some nice closeups of participants.

Joyce's Album.

Marie-Helene and Robert's Album.

For May: Banker to the Poor by Muhammad Yunus

noreply@blogger.com (Martha TerMaat) — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 19:50:00 +0000

For May we have selected Banker to the Poor:Microlending and the battle against world poverty by Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus:

Muhammad Yunus is that rare thing: a bona fide visionary. His dream is the total eradication of poverty from the world. In 1983, against the advice of banking and government officials, Yunus established Grameen, a bank devoted to providing the poorest of Bangladesh with minuscule loans. Grameen Bank, based on the belief that credit is a basic human right, not the privilege of a fortunate few, now provides over 2.5 billion dollars of micro-loans to more than two million families in rural Bangladesh. Ninety-four percent of Yunus's clients are women, and repayment rates are near 100 percent. Around the world, micro-lending programs inspired by Grameen are blossoming, with more than three hundred programs established in the United States alone.
Banker to the Poor is Muhammad Yunus's memoir of how he decided to change his life in order to help the world's poor. In it he traces the intellectual and spiritual journey that led him to fundamentally rethink the economic relationship between rich and poor, and the challenges he and his colleagues faced in founding Grameen. He also provides wise, hopeful guidance for anyone who would like to join him in "putting homelessness and destitution in a museum so that one day our children will visit it and ask how we could have allowed such a terrible thing to go on for so long." The definitive history of micro-credit direct from the man that conceived of it, Banker to the Poor is necessary and inspirational reading for anyone interested in economics, public policy, philanthropy, social history, and business.
Muhammad Yunus was born in Bangladesh and earned his Ph.D. in economics in the United States at Vanderbilt University, where he was deeply influenced by the civil rights movement. He still lives in Bangladesh, and travels widely around the world on behalf of Grameen Bank and the concept of micro-credit.

Doo Dah Parade

noreply@blogger.com (Marie-Helene) — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 06:09:00 +0000

Doo Dah Parade!

Our local group of Amnesty International joined with some friends, mostly from the Caltech community, to participate in the 31^st Occasional Pasadena Doo Dah parade, which was held on Sunday, January 20^th, in Old Town Pasadena. Taking advantage of the availability of a truck (and a bathtub) that we could transform into a float, we decided to address the serious issue of waterboarding. We came up with a little scenario in which we welcomed the crowd to “Waterboard City, USA”… While some of us danced gaily to the Beach Boys music in Hawaiian garb, prisoners were “waterboarded” in the back of the truck which had been transformed into a jail/torture cell. Planted “suspects” among the crowd were extraordinarily rendered to the moving prison by two men wearing black suits and shades. It was a great success! The crowd was cheering and laughing as the float passed by, and some people even volunteered to try-out the free lessons of waterboarding that were advertised on the float.

We are very grateful to all the participants for all the hard work that went into the preparation of the float and its decoration. A special thanks to Dan, the owner of the truck, who eagerly put it to the use of a good cause!

Our January Author: Lisa See

noreply@blogger.com (Martha TerMaat) — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 01:04:00 +0000

Lisa See, the author of this month's book, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, has her own website, LisaSee.com (be sure to check out the Events section for an up-coming San Marino event!). Bloomsbury.com offers an article by See about her interest in nushu and an audio interview with the author is available here. Another interview with odd bits can be found at WaterBridge,

Bob Dylan has been a huge influence on my writing. He knows how to tell a whole story in just a few minutes and he has a wonderful way with words. Of course, the guy can’t sing, but you can’t have everything.

OK, not really seeing the Dylan connection in Snow Flower, heh, but not knocking the insight-- and looking ahead to her next book check out this interview at the The Elegant Variation,

The new novel’s tentatively called Shanghai Girls. It starts in 1937 with two sisters in Shanghai. They come to Los Angeles in arranged marriages. (We often read about arranged marriages in other countries, but a lot of people don’t know that we had and still have them here in the U.S.) They live in a place called China City, which was built from the leftover sets from the filming of “The Good Earth.” So in some ways Shanghai Girls will be an exploration of what it means to be Chinese or American, and what is real and what is just façade. I’ll also be looking at the Confession Program, which took place in the 1950s, when the U.S. government targeted Chinese to try to get them to confess that they were here illegally and at the same time rat out their friends, family members, and neighbors as being Communists.

I wasn't much interested in the discussion of footbinding in the book, but NPR and the BBC both have good backgrounders. I was more obsessed with the discussion of nushu. World of Nushu has a wealth of information, including pictures from Jian Yong Prefecture. Omniglot and Ancient Scripts have some nice side by side comparisons with Chinese and this article may be a bit academic for some, but it answered some of my questions about how nushu functioned in women's society.

For April: The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears

noreply@blogger.com (Martha TerMaat) — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 14:43:00 +0000

For April, we have selected Dinaw Mengestu's The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears,

Seventeen years ago, Sepha Stephanos fled the Ethiopian Revolution for a new start in the United States. Now he finds himself running a failing grocery store in a poor African-American section of Washington, D.C., his only companions two fellow African immigrants who share his bitter nostalgia and longing for his home continent. Years ago and worlds away Sepha could never have imagined a life of such isolation. As his environment begins to change, hope comes in the form of a friendship with new neighbors Judith and Naomi, a white woman and her biracial daughter. But when a series of racial incidents disturbs the community, Sepha may lose everything all over again.

Award to Imprisoned Eritrean Journalist

noreply@blogger.com (Joyce Wolf) — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 03:10:00 +0000

Eritrean journalist Seyoum Tsehaye has been chosen as “Journalist of the Year 2007” by Reporters Without Borders - Fondation de France. The panel of judges sought to highlight not only the case of this brave journalist held in Eritrea’s appalling jails since September 2001 but also the catastrophic state of press freedom in this small Horn of Africa country. At least four journalists have died in prison in Eritrea over the last few years. The blame lies chiefly at the door of Issaias Afeworki, the highly authoritarian and obdurate president of the country since its independence in 1993.

Read the full press release from Reporters Without Borders here.
There's a photo of Seyoum at the AI Group 19 website.

AI Group 22 in Pasadena works in behalf of Estifanos Seyoum, another Eritrea prisoner of conscience held incommunicado since the 2001 crackdown. We hope that the publicity generated by this award might help to persuade the Eritrean authorities to improve their country's human rights situation or at least result in the release of information about these journalists and former government officials detained without trial or charges since 2001.

Our December Authors: Marina Aidova and Anna Horsbrugh-Porter

noreply@blogger.com (Martha TerMaat) — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 02:25:00 +0000

I wasn't expecting to find much about our author-editors, Marina Aidova and Anna Anna Horsbrugh-Porter, this month for our reading of the collection of letters, From Newbury with Love, but here's a little something...

Here's the Amnesty Magazine version of their story and Marina takes questions from activists here. Amnesty International - UK tells us how Anna came to be involved in the project. And the BBC gives the project a little coverage,

If the book, From Newbury With Love, evokes the lost worlds of the Cold War, it's also a reminder of an era when people wrote each other letters, rather than e-mails and texts.
And Marina says she regrets the lost pleasures of the letter.
"You looked at the stamp, you opened the letter, you smelt it. First, you read it very quickly, and then in the evening, when the children were in bed, my mum would take a glass of wine, light a cigarette and read and re-read and really enjoy the letter. It's physical, you see their handwriting, you keep the letters."

For those who would like a little contextual background and visual stimulus, here's an exhibition of Moscow Samizdat books and another of vintage Soviet propaganda posters.

And a bit more tangential, check out the Wikipedia enry on the Kishinev pogrom
and this memorial site and learn about a little piece of Jewish history.

For March: Unbowed

noreply@blogger.com (Martha TerMaat) — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 01:00:00 +0000

For March we have chosen Wangari Maathai's memoir, Unbowed,

In Unbowed, Nobel Prize winner Wangari Maathai recounts her extraordinary journey from her childhood in rural Kenya to the world stage. When Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement in 1977, she began a vital poor people’s environmental movement, focused on the empowerment of women, that soon spread across Africa. Persevering through run-ins with the Kenyan government and personal losses, and jailed and beaten on numerous occasions, Maathai continued to fight tirelessly to save Kenya’s forests and to restore democracy to her beloved country. Infused with her unique luminosity of spirit, Wangari Maathai’s remarkable story of courage, faith, and the power of persistence is destined to inspire generations to come.