Want to be lifted out of your comfortable armchair, earbuds blown out, favorite title from The New York Times best seller list dropped suddenly into your lap? Want literature that still astonishes and amazes? Wanna rise above incessant post-modern commentary on life in these United States of American corporations, calcified institutions, claymation government, and balkanized sexual/gender/cultural identities? Get acquainted with some of these authors listed at the links below. Pay attention. The revolution(s) over there is being televised but these American writers bring depth and breadth and passion and sense and frames and authenticity to the revolutions that are really going on, the struggle to fairly represent what our American channels will not.
I just returned from the Radius of Arab American Writers Mizna 5th National Gathering in Minneapolis, MN. I could devote a great deal of space here about my experience, but I would soon be out of character and so bordering on the obsequious that I might have to run and check my look in the mirror and make sure I am still me. Let’s just leave it as, I feel like a saturated solution of salt about to bear crystals.
Normally, I leave readings of short stories, novel excerpts, and poetry diluted and frustrated.
I think I can distill this experience and articulate why I felt like I got more out of two days with these writers and lovers of literature than I probably did at a two-week writers conference I attended a few years ago.
First, most of the writers who read their work at this gathering were talented enough, confident enough, astute enough to add a dimension to their reading that complemented the words, without resorting to multi-media. And they did it in a way that was not only unique, but was deeply personal and as they felt for what they were reading. Two poets read in duet form from poetry they wrote together by email. They had not met until this conference! One woman laced her words as if she were about to self-combust, fiery, angry then imploring then searching, but every move she made, every dynamic and intonation was in keeping with the meaning behind her words. We witnessed a theatre work in progress practice-staged for the first time by two actors, one of whom had only started acting two weeks ago. Another writer used a simple backdrop of an image on a big screen of two windows with curtains being gently moved by the wind to contrast her home in America with her ancestral home in Lebanon. An actor-writer dramatized what it was like to be in Baghdad with her family (in the consulate area) while it was under siege.
It is no small feat to strictly balance the performance element so that it does not overwhelm or underwhelm the reading. Most writers reading their literature don’t even think about this. Most of them sound like they’ve never even practiced reading the work in front of others. A few drown out their words with multi-media pyrotechnics.
To listen to a dozen or more writers so artfully achieve this balance just blew me away.
The second distilled observation is that the venue itself embodied literature. Minneapolis has a literary community, space dedicated to literature and reading and performance, programs to get children reading and writing early and often, and numerous allied arts organizations. It is a city which supports the BOOK. Many cities have vibrant arts programs. Minneapolis-St. Paul has programs focused on the BOOK. It has the Loft Literary Center, a whole building called Open Book, even a Book Lover’s Ball. By the way, I’m told three of the ten largest and most admired independent publishers reside in Minneapolis. Winters may be unbearable, but the twin cities know how to curl up and warm up with good books.
There is a third observation. It is the elephant in the room, the 900-lb gorilla, the tank in the corner, the warplanes overhead, the barrel bombs descending. The Middle East is burning. All of these writers have family, homes, history, stories, fables, myths, voyages, and land torn apart, or otherwise permanently scarred, by regional, sectarian, and religious strife and geopolitics. You’d be hard pressed to name a country in the region that isn’t engulfed in civil war, civil unrest or protest, invasion, or brutal occupation, and those that aren’t probably will be soon, the way things seem headed. The country these writers call home, America, is in the middle of all of these Middle Eastern conflicts one way or another.
There is no shortage of suffering. Suffering breeds passionate writing. Hope for the Middle East right now is barely keeping one nostril above water. The performances from these writers represent submerged energy desperate to be picked up by the sonar of justice, mediation, and peace. And as if that isn’t enough, they grapple with the freedom to fully express themselves as non-stereotypical men, women, LGBT, and other identities in this country, identities far more repressed, shunned even, “over there.” Clashes of culture, clashes of politics.
Want to be lifted out of your comfortable armchair, earbuds blown out, favorite title from The New York Times best seller list dropped suddenly into your lap? Want literature that can astonish and amaze again? Wanna rise above incessant post-modern commentary on life in these United States of American corporations, calcified institutions, claymation government, and balkanized sexual/gender/cultural identities? Get acquainted with some of these authors listed at the links above. Pay attention. The revolution(s) over there is being televised but these American writers bring passion and sense and frames and authenticity to the ones that are really going on here and there, and to the struggle to fairly represent what our American channels will not.
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