March 20, 2019
I might be a year older, but I haven’t gone soft quite yet. Proof positive are the odd results of yesterday’s photo excursion at the Oregon Zoo for lack of a real safari. Not soft (hopefully) puts me in the company of two women whose writing I greatly admire. You know the stories floating around about people on their deathbed not willing to let go until they see the Mueller Report? I feel like I want to hang on for many more years to see these young women in their full power.
The first is Jia Tolentina whose articles I have introduced here before. Her wit has the precision of a sharpshooter, frequently with similarly devastating results. Her essays are often deeply personal, or at least suffused with personal bits and pieces which allows the reader to relate on more than an intellectual level. Associations to her Peace Corps service in Kyrgyzstan resurface regularly, making me think that it was either a formative or a memorable time, probably both.
Not surprisingly, given my own predilections, I find her eclecticism in choice of topics particularly attractive. Although the bulk of her work is focussed on, loosely speaking, issues of gender, she does introduce a remarkable range of themes. The latest example can be found in the New Yorker, where she is staff writer.
It is a piece about Shen Yun, the traveling dance troupe(s) of Falun Dafa (aka Falun Gong) a Chinese organization deemed a cult by the Chinese government and not clearly definable by the rest of us. The essay excels in description, vividly capturing the experience of being at one of the performances and laying out what knowledge could be gained about the formation and ideology of Falun Data. Their claim to fame in public consciousness has been the accusation of organ harvesting of its imprisoned members by the Chinese authorities – a claim that remains largely unproven.
Less strong here is an underlying analysis of this strange phenomenon Falun Dafa – they attract millions of adherents despite disclaiming evolution, disavowing homosexuality and promiscuity and predicting a strict separation of races in the there-after; and they are a real target of state persecution. Acknowledging the limits of fact-based interpretation is a welcome honesty, though.
“The fact that both Falun Gong and the Communist Party communicate via propaganda makes it almost impossible to understand what’s really happening; a decade ago, the journalist Joseph Kahn, in the Times, described the rise of Falun Gong as “probably the most mysterious chapter in the history of China over the last 30 years.” Falun Gong members are genuinely persecuted in China, but stories about this have petered out in the press. And, in China, state censorship of dissent is growing. Under these circumstances, Shen Yun can be seen as a baroque and surreal last-resort call for help and attention.”
Analysis, on the other hand, is a particularly strong suit in the article of Keeanga Yamahtta Taylor who teaches African-American studies at Princeton.
http://bostonreview.net/race/keeanga-yamahtta-taylor-succeeding-while-black
Her piece in the Boston Review takes apart Michelle Obama’s autobiography Becoming with laser-sharp observations. Willing to give praise where deserved, her criticism nonetheless forces the reader to stop avoiding important implications. Here are key passages that encapsulate what’s written across the essay:
Becoming, after all, is an exquisite lesson in creating ideology. As a political insider with broad pop culture appeal, Obama wields enormous influence in shaping discourse and opinion on critical issues concerning race, gender, public policy, and how we define progress in general………Obama, then, is not just telling stories; she is shaping our understanding of the world we live in, which is why it is so critical that we, as a public, interrogate her ideology. When we do, we might see that her story is not in search of the collective experience but is a celebration of personal fulfillment—the kind of self-involved, “live your truth”-inspired homilies that middle-class and rich women tell each other. Becoming normalizes power and the status quo while sending the message that the rest of us only need to find our place in the existing social hierarchy to be happy. This is unfortunate because personal narratives—including Obama’s—do have power. When stitched together and told honestly, they can create a map of shared experience that raises the possibility of collective action as a way to transform the individual circumstance. This is certainly true of poor and working-class black women whose personal stories expose the racism, sexism, and general inequality of U.S. society. These stories relentlessly pierce the treacherous idea that the United States is free, democratic, and just, and they prove the axiom of black feminism that the personal is political.
Let that sink in!
Music today is an homage to strong girls:
