Hunter-Gault, Charlayne - New News Out of Africa: Uncovering Africa's Renaissance

Hunter-Gault begins this book by telling a story about one of her professors asking for a new, not news, then noting that much of the "news" coming out of Africa today isn't news, but olds: poverty, genocide, AIDS, famine, and military coups. What follows are three essays about news in Africa, from post-apartheid South Africa to democracy across Africa to African journalism.

The book and essays are a combination of political analysis and memoir: Hunter-Gault goes back to her own status as one of the two first black students to attend the University of Georgia and her own experiences with the Civil Rights Movement, along with her later work reporting on apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa.

I'm sadly too ignorant to even figure out how to assess the book -- most of my knowledge of Africa comes from a college class on colonialism and, of course, the endless news feeds of what Hunter-Gault calls "the four D's" (death, disaster, disease, and despair). So I don't know if this is a useful or helpful book to read for those who know more than me, but for me, it was both. Theoretically, I know that Africa is many countries and peoples and cultures, that there is a lot going on there, that what we get from the news is both fed by the media's desire for sensationalism and racist to boot. Practically speaking, I know pretty much zip.

To me, it seems as though Hunter-Gault reports with a sense of optimism, although she is not hesitant about critique, nor does she downplay the challenges that the people and governments of Africa must face. Much of the book is focused on South Africa, and I particularly appreciated the look at how the African National Congress-dominated government is handling the policy of nation-wide affirmative action for black people to make up for decades of apartheid, how they are trying to grow business and investments, how they are working on education and enfranchisement. Though the second essay focuses on various African countries' steps toward and away from democratic government, much of the story behind the scenes has South African president Thabo Mbeki working with other African political leaders to provide incentives for other African countries to hold free elections.

Though most of the book focuses on Africa, Hunter-Gault is particularly critical of the role most of the Western world has played in the past decade or so, from the waffling about what to call the Rwandan genocide to Darfur to the US funding corrupt military governments in an attempt to keep out Communism (Cold War, I hate you so much for all the havoc you have wreaked on the so-called Third World).

The final chapter sometimes got a little too self-referential for me; possibly I wouldn't have thought so had I been more familiar with Hunter-Gault's other work. But I wanted more focus on African journalists and less on international correspondents, even though Hunter-Gault calls other international journalists and editors to task for their "drop in, get story, fly out" attitude, for the pre-existing bias that the only reportable news out of Africa is death and disease and despair and disaster. But she does focus a lot on African journalists in the second half of the essay, particularly on the struggles they have with a free press (or lack thereof), and how intl. journalists can help by reporting things that African journalists may not be able to, for fear of repercussions.

This was a much-needed read for me, and I have to start a) reading up more on history and b) reading up more on current news.

Young, Kevin - Jelly Roll: A Blues

I was first introduced to Kevin Young via heresluck's two posts and further prompted by coffeeandink's praise.

I don't usually read poetry; the last time I have seriously was probably for school. I feel like a lot of it goes over my head, and I tend to speed through poetry and not get the effect until later. I think I've read Jelly Roll about three times now, some poems maybe more, and while it's hard for me to place it in my personal ranking of poetry, as I have none, I really like it.

Kevin Young does the blues in this book, as the subtitle notes, and the collection goes through the familiar arch of love, loss, and lament. What I noticed most was Young's playfulness with the language: most of the poems are drawn-out metaphors. I am sure this is common to poetry (?), and can't say how different Young's is, save that it felt fresh to me, and many of the poems made me laugh with their invention and cheek and delight. I tend to like the first third of the collection better, probably because I gravitate toward happy cheerful music, and I particularly love it when Young uses food in his poetry, for the obvious reasons ;).

My favorite poems are the ones like "Disaster Movie Theme Music" or "Blues" (below); I can almost hear the music, deep bass twanging through your heart overlaid with a raspy, whiskey voice.

Below are some of the poems I remembered most, but I had a very hard time choosing (ergo reading some of the poems more than a few times); so many of them have a wonderful turn of phrase or a drawn-out metaphor that I love.

( Blues )

( Ragtime )

Hong, Cathy Park - Dance Dance Revolution

My foray into the world of poetry continues, this one prompted by Asia Pacific Arts' Best of 2007: Wordsmiths.

Dance Dance Revolution has nothing to do with the video game; instead, it's set in the not-too-distant future, in a place only called the Desert. The Desert is hotels and glamour and rich tourists in the center, and poverty everywhere else; the introduction compares it to Dubai or Las Vegas, though probably more apocalyptic. We're introduced to the Historian, who has come to interview the Guide, a Korean expat survivor of the Kwangju Massacre turned tour guide.

The Historian introduces the volume by saying that the Guide, like many others in the Desert, speaks Desert creole, a mix of hundreds of languages. The poems in the books are a mix of actual Desert creole and a mix of English clarifications that the Historian has provided/inserted; any ellipses are when he didn't clearly record what the Guide was saying.

This was a very difficult book for me to get through; the Desert creole meant having to sound out everything in my head as I read it. I did like the conceit of the book, and there are bits of prose taken from the Historian's memoir (largely set during his childhood in Sierra Leone). And some passages I took to very much, particularly the one below. But overall, I suspect this would reward a rereading or three on my part, only I don't quite have the mental energy to do so.

( The Lineage of Yes-Men )

This piece is a pretty good example of the Guide's voice, though this piece and others on Korea have more Korean than the rest of the book. From what I recall, much of the language doesn't play with Asian languages (the APA article says it's largely English, Spanish and Jamaican), which I sorely missed, particularly considering that the Guide is Korean. I'm sure adding in Asian languages would make the poems even more difficult to read for the average English-speaking reader, but still.

This will be an interesting book to revisit some day when I can concentrate more.