Category: Uncategorized

When reviewing a book:

Don’t rock the boat. Moreover, don’t even think it can be rocked. Don’t acknowledge there is a boat, nor that you are on it and sailing in any critical direction. Bow to an author’s wishes. Deny out of hand the ignorant, callous, and delusional nature of John Updike’s primary rules for reviewing. Do this well, and you too may be a successful lit establishment reviewer. See the “rules” here: Reviewing 101: John Updike’s rules.

Unfortunately, the well-intentioned President of the National Book Critics Circle, John Freeman describes Updike’s 31 year old “rules” for reviewing as “worth following” and “still the single best guide to fairness today.” Continue reading John Updike’s Lit Establishment Rules

by Anne Feeney

The 2007 publication of The Big Red Songbook is long overdue.  Folklorist Archie Green has been in possession of 29 editions of the legendary Little Red Songbook of the IWW since Wobbly folklorist John Neuhaus entrusted them to him in 1958.  Published between 1909 and 1956, the IWW songbooks in the Neuhaus collection vividly embody the humor, philosophy and history of the working class.  Millions of copies of these little songbooks have been sold, giving the IWW its well-deserved reputation as a “singing union.”  For those of you saying “IWWWhat?” — here’s a little history….

Friends to the Working Class 

by Paul Piwko and Sarah Bromley

The Murphys started in Boston in the mid-90s as a band of young men from working class and union households. Says vocalist and bassist Ken Casey, a founding member: “We were singing about real life stuff at a time when [the] standard 18 year-old punk rock message [was] ‘Fauthority’ and ‘F- the police’.” The Murphys’ “real life” lyrics hit home with fans from backgrounds similar to their own. “People from that walk of life started to gravitate towards the band, and in the early days—back in the mid-’90s—places like Detroit, where labor issues are real life and death stuff, were our biggest footholds.”
 
Continue reading Dropkick Murphys

Dimslow in ’08 never had a chance. As this CNN article makes clear, he can’t even afford to get on the ballot.

So, he throws his support to Colbert, and hopes for the Vice Presidential nod.

From English PEN:

Aung San Suu Kyi, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, has spent most of the last eighteen years under house arrest in Burma. Her example continues to inspire other Burmese writers, whose names are rarely celebrated. John Pilger will be joined by other Aung San Suu Kyi supporters including Maureen Lipman and Rhys Ifans to pay tribute to all those writers of conscience in Burma whose voices have been silenced. New footage of interviews with Burmese writers living on the Thai border will also be shown. All proceeds will go to the Writers in Prison programme.

Terry Eagleton: 

I took Martin Amis to task for advocating the hounding of Muslims, but this has been reduced to an academic spat.

In an essay entitled The Age of Horrorism published in September 2006, the novelist Martin Amis advocated a deliberate programme of harassing the Muslim community in Britain.

Narrative situations on the ground: stories of injustice spanning North and South America, Asia and Africa.

Continue reading New Stories at Liberation Lit

Frame Up – by Ron Jacobs

Blood-strewn quarters of the Police State and the struggle against it.

Recent stories at Liberation Lit journal:

The Publisher – by Joe Emersberger
A Canadian newspaper publisher confronts his complicity in the Canadian, US and corporate backed coup and mass murder in Haiti. 

The Militants – by Adetokunbo Abiola
Guerrillas, soldiers and civilians struggle for justice and survival in the Niger Delta amid suffering and death fueled by the oil industry and the state.

Cut to downtown small town Little League baseball field. Carolyn Thompson, mother of Aaron Thompson, sits on wooden bleachers badly painted. She stares out over an empty field. She looks like Cindy Sheehan. A US mom. Continue reading Civil Acts

Liberation Lit seeks ”progressive partisan” fiction (stories only) of any length. Liberation Lit is the fiction journal of Mainstay Press, which publishes fiction “geared to social change.” Lib Lit stories are published online on a rolling basis and then periodically collected in book form.

Continue reading Liberation Lit: Call for Partisan Fiction

Renaldo Hudson, an inmate at a maximum-security prison outside Chicago, initiated a writing contest in the fall of 2003, asking Illinois prisoners to reflect on the questions, “Who am I, and what can I do to be better?” Lockdown Prison Heart contains the thirty-eight personal essays submitted to the contest. These brief writings–thoughtful, angry, sorrowful, honest, regretful, meditative–allow us to hear directly from people whose voices are too often distorted or ignored by mainstream media. The proceeds from the collection will be donated to Murder Victims’ Families for Reconciliation, a national organization composed of people who have had family members murdered–by homicide or state killings–and who work to restore communities by promoting crime prevention, opposing the death penalty, and helping victims reconstruct their lives.

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Some of the writers in this collection have spent over twenty-five years in Illinois prisons. Others have been in for a matter of months. They all know what it means to “do time,” and in these essays they reflect on how to make that time meaningful.

Renaldo Hudson, Stateville prison inmate

I am extremely thrilled that we are able to share our thoughts and souls to the public in these essays. These men and women are so brave. I take my hat off to all of them. Daily, I hear the hearts of men losing hope and the will to live. At the same time, I see the growth in so many.  

It is our hope that these essays will encourage others to think about who they are and what they can do better. We hope that you enjoy them as much as we did writing them. Please share them with as many people as you can. We want to grow. Help us to keep moving down the roads of positive change. May God bless.

More comments on Lockdown Prison Heart:

Sister Helen Prejean,
author of Dead Man Walking

The United States incarcerates 2 million people. Here are the voices of thirty-eight of them. These men and women heard about a writing contest that asked them to reflect on who they are—and so they did. Reading their accounts of struggle, loss, injury, faith, and hope, I am compelled to ask the same question to those of us who live outside prison walls: Who are we, and what can we do better?

Eric Zorn,
Chicago Tribune

This book has inspired creativity and productive thought, highlighting the humanity of prisoners.  To make society better, prison must make prisoners better, and this kind of effort points us in that direction.

Jeff Flock,
former CNN Chicago Bureau Chief

The written word can have tremendous power, particularly when it carries great emotion and great truth.  Both are present in these essays. Powerful writing doesn’t require good grammar, clever prose or even proper spelling. It comes from people who have something to say. And the men and women in these pages have much to say, primarily from personal experience—most of it experience they wish they’d never had.

Spending time with the people who populate prisons and particularly those on the former death row has reaffirmed for me a guiding journalistic principle: that all should have a voice regardless of color, race, opinion or what they may have done in their lives.

These essays give voices that are often silent the chance to be heard. We are better for the listening.

Katy Ryan,
English Professor, West Virginia University

From Tamms, the supermaximum security prison in southern Illinois, Jeffrey Boswell composed an essay, submitted it, and soon was notified that he had won second prize. He wrote to my father, who was helping organize the contest, and asked if he would send him back a copy of his essay. Jeffrey had mailed the original. My father put Jeffrey’s essay in the mail, but it was returned to my father with a form letter explaining that inmates cannot communicate with other inmates.

Such obstacles and delays are routine when dealing with prisons, but this one has stayed with me for its metaphorical potential: Can an imprisoned person communicate with herself or himself? This collection assures me the answer is, With perseverance, yes.

Jennifer Bishop-Jenkins,
Murder Victims Families for Reconciliation

When family members of murder victims struggle to face life after the tragedy that ended the lives of their loved ones, they must live with what some of us call “the new normal.” Our lives now contain a grave, which shapes us forever after the murder. Part of that difficult new reality is the fact that the offender often remains alive while their family member is dead. Yet members of MVFR firmly believe that vengeance and more bloodshed is not the answer. We oppose the death penalty in all circumstances. We know, more than most, how wrong it is to kill. We seek to reconcile ourselves to working against the cycles of violence that caused the death of our loved ones to begin with. We work to support each other as we struggle to cope. Many family members of murder victims need, more than almost anything sometimes, to understand why these horrible events occurred. And many of them long to hear words of remorse from those that hurt them the most. When my sister Nancy, her husband Richard, and their unborn child were murdered, her final act of life was to draw a Heart and a “U” in her own blood – her last word on life was LOVE in the face of great evil. She shared a profound truth with us in those final moments of her life: that love is the most important thing in the world. In the face of that, I hoped that their killer could come to realize the full measure of what he had taken. And since that time, I have come to know many of the prisoners whose writings are contained in this book. I cannot imagine anything more meaningful to victims of violent crime than to hear these words of responsibility and remorse, of healing and seeking forgiveness, of courage and growth. Finally, these writings are a redemption of tragedy. I am grateful to the writers herein for their decision to give the funds from this book to MVFR, and for the ways that they are helping all of us to heal.

Bill Ryan,
Advocate and Frequent Visitor to Illinois Prisons and JailsRenaldo Hudson and other inmates have provided me with genuine inspiration. Renaldo is the most truly spiritual person I have known. Reading the essays contained in this book will provide insight into the minds and thoughts of men and women in Illinois prisons. There are the stories of the guilty and the wrongfully convicted, of those who accept responsibility for their actions and those who seem to blame others. All the stories speak to the pain and suffering of the victims as well as those who cause the violence. Hopefully, some of you will be inspired to learn more about the individual writers, the criminal justice and prison system in our country.

My journey with prisons and death-row inmates began about eight years ago when our daughter Katy sent me a book entitled, Dead Man Walking by Helen Prejean. I had spent my lifetime in child welfare services where my focus was on trying to protect and support children and families and not giving much thought or consideration to the criminal justice system. I was moved reading Dead Man Walking and called Helen. During the conversation, she suggested I visit with people on death row. I contacted the Illinois Coalition Against the Death Penalty and discovered that two executions were scheduled in Illinois the next week. The parents of one of the men to be executed wanted to visit their son but had no transportation. I agreed to take them to visit their son. The first time I walked through the doors and into a visiting room with a sign “Condemned Unit,” my knees were shaking and heart pounding. I met Hernando Williams and Jim Free who were to be killed by the state in two days.

The day after they were killed, I had a phone call from William Peebles, one of the essayists in this book, who called to thank me for taking Hernando’s parents to see their son. I made arrangements to visit with William, and he introduced me to Renaldo and several others. As a result of getting to know men and women in prison, I became active in the abolition movement in Illinois and organized a death penalty moratorium movement. I became friends with each of the seventeen innocent men who had been sentenced to death in Illinois and were later exonerated, and I knew six of the thirteen men who were executed. I recall Walter Stewart putting his handcuffed arms around me the day before he was killed saying, “Don’t cry, Bill. I am alright, I am going to Jesus. You go home and have a beer.”

Former Governor George Ryan on January 30, 2000, declared a moratorium on state killings and on January 11, 2003, commuted the sentences of each of the 167 men and women on Illinois Death Row, pardoning four men. After leaving death row and being assigned to a different prison, Renaldo told me he wanted to have an essay contest so people can learn more about prisoners. I said I would be glad to help out, and this book of essays was conceived. Maybe, just maybe, someone else will begin a journey of learning about the reality of prison life and the humanness of the people living there.

If any readers would like more information about any of the essayists or any others issues, please feel free to contact me. Bill Ryan, 2237 Sunnyside, Westchester, IL, 60154; 708-531-9923; email nanatoad@comcast.net.

Katy Ryan

I envision this class as a philosophical, political, and literary exploration of the U.S. prison system, primarily through twentieth-century American literary texts. The class emerges from some dismal facts and some hopeful developments. First, the dismal facts: the United States imprisons more of its population than any other country in the world, with over two million people living behind bars; more black American men are locked up today than are in college; women are the largest growing population in prison; supermaximums, created in the 1980s, deny inmates all human contact; and four million U.S. citizens are disenfranchised because of felony convictions. But there are hopeful signs, including a strong movement against mandatory minimum sentences, participated in by federal judges; ongoing state moratoria on the death penalty; and the implementation of alternative sentencing programs based on restorative models of justice. Our state of incarceration has resulted in the emergence of a new body of American literature. Bell Chevigny writes in her introduction to a recent PEN anthology, “The writing coming out of U.S. prisons has never been as strong, rich, diverse, and provocative as in the final quarter of the twentieth century.”    
     
In Part One, we will look at the history of prisons–when and where and why they emerged and how they have transformed. We will discuss economic considerations, both in terms of the for-profit prison industry and in terms of the corporate use of inmates’ labor. We will also address one of the most costly, in every way, prison practices: capital punishment. To conclude this section, we will read two memoirs that address, among other things, the persistence of racism in our legal system. Part Two will constitute the bulk of our reading, which comes from imaginative literature—novels, short stories, plays, and poems. In Part Three, we will look briefly at recent developments in the struggle to reform or abolish prisons. The literature of imprisonment is an enormous field, and some areas of study will necessarily be neglected. You are, of course, welcome to pursue these areas in your own research.

In addition to the observations you bring to the table each week, we will consider both literary and social questions: What might be the parameters for the genre, “prison literature”? How does it compare to other generic literary classifications? What might the field of literature contribute to discussions about public policy? To what extent does Foucault’s analysis of modern systems of surveillance apply to prisons in the United States? What impact should international standards of justice, like those articulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Geneva Conventions, have on the administration of American prisons, domestically and abroad? What should be the role of victims and victims’ families in the criminal justice system? To what extent do literary texts expose or perpetuate the lie that we must sympathize either with prisoners or with victims of crime, not with both, a divide that undermines our reason and our ability to make the changes necessary to reduce violent crime and reverse the devastation of mass imprisonment.

In November, we will have two guest speakers–Delbert Tibbs, a poet who was sentenced to die in Florida and exonerated after three years on death row, and my father, Bill Ryan, who helped to organize the moratorium on executions in Illinois and continues to advocate on behalf of men and women in prison.

Continue reading IMPRISONMENT AND RESISTANCE – course

Katy Ryan

Together we organize the world for ourselves, or at least we organize our understanding of it; we reflect it, refract it, criticize it, grieve over its savagery; and we help each other to discern, amidst the gathering dark, paths of resistance, pockets of peace, and places from whence hope may be plausibly expected. Marx was right: The smallest indivisible human unit is two people, not one; one is a fiction. From such nets of souls societies, the social world, human life springs. And also plays.

–Tony Kushner, afterword to Angels in America: Perestroika

In a recent New Republic Online review (7.13.05), theatre critic Lee Siegel wrote, “In truth, there’s little that theatre can do, even in the most extreme times, to achieve that golden chimera of the activist’s imagination.” And in a Wall Street Journal editorial (6.6.05), Terry Teachout, after observing that conservatives just don’t write plays, commented, “Any work of art that seeks to persuade an audience to take some specific form of external action, political or otherwise, tends to be bad. But the line is not a bright one, and it is possible to make good, even great art that is intended to serve as the persuasive instrument of an exterior purpose.”         

            This semester we will pursue a specific question: How successful have twentieth-century performances been at achieving desired political effects on local or national levels? Obviously, this is a difficult question to answer empirically. As Baz Kershaw notes in the introduction to The Politics of Performance (1992), “Any attempt to prove that this kind of performance efficacy is possible, let alone probable, is plagued by analytical difficulties and dangers.” Yet, we will see what kinds of measure are available as we read, discuss, and perform twentieth-century radical performances. With the word “radical,” I aim to describe performances that attempt to get at the “roots” of social practices and ideologies in order to effect progressive social change.

            We will begin with a brief introduction to performance studies, a complex, emerging field that incorporates the methods and insights of many disciplines, including anthropology, history, visual art, textual studies, philosophy, and drama. At a time when, in certain academic circles, the possibility of meaningful action is questioned and notions of subjectivity have been deeply troubled, performance has proven an enabling device for theorizing some kind of needed agency. Next, we will consider Bertolt Brecht’s epic theatre (predicated on not only the possibility but the necessity of action) and the impact of his theories on twentieth-century theatre, primarily but not exclusively American performances focused on liberation struggles—for people living under foreign occupation, workers, women, Chicano/as, and African Americans. We will study a range of international theatre collectives, concentrating on the developments of Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed, as well as expressionistic theatre, documentary theatre, and performance art.

            In other words, we will be reading a lot of plays and encountering a wide-range of theatre practices—diverse in form, content, philosophy—that will allow us to think broadly about space and silence, experience and aesthetics, play and politics.

  Continue reading Radical Theatre: The Roots of Social Action

Table of Contents

Introduction                                          Renaldo Hudson                           

Editorial Note                                         Katy Ryan 

I’m Sorry                                              Joseph Dole
Anguish Like a Fire in my Heart                 Jeffrey Boswell
Every Tomorrow                                    George Whittington III
Second Chance                                     Guadalupe Navarro
Level E                                                Daniel Parker
A Secret Injustice                                  LaJuana Lampkins
No Longer a Prisoner                               Scott Caro
True Power                                           Donald McDonald
The Biggest Epidemic                              Marvis Alexis
Kidnapped                                            Aryules Bivens
Still Broken                                           Susan Daquila
Unseen Chains                                      Timothy N. Dickerson
The Work is Ahead                                 Donzel Digby
Drive Slow                                            Tyrone Fuller
Thoughts to Things                                Vincent Galloway
An Angry Street                                    Alan Garnett
Humanity is Never Lost                           Martell Gomez
Stop the Genocide                                 R. Lalo Gomez
Strive for Perfection                               Kirby Griffin
Optical Illusion                                      Stanley Howard
I Woke Up                                            Renaldo Hudson
Doing the Right Thing                             William Hudson
Dog-Eat-Dog                                        Raphael Jackson
That Bluebird Bus                                  Gerald James, Sr.
Open Your Minds and Hearts                    Keith Kimble
Wisdom                                               Ron Kliner
Momma’s Boy                                       Andrew Maxwell
If I Could                                             Gregory McMillan
Looking Back into the Mirror                    Tom Odle
God’s Grace                                         Roberto Ornelas
Forgotten Child                                     William Peeples
My Discovery                                       Larry Rodgers
Lil Lloyd                                              Lloyd Saterfield
Roller Coaster                                       Ricky Tilson
Odyssey                                              Shondell Walker
Coat of Many Colors                              Joseph N. Ward
Quest                                                 Eric Watkins
Mental Resurrection                              Ted Williams

Readers’ Comments                               Jennifer Jenkins-Bishop 
                                                         Jeff Flock 
                                                         Sister Helen Prejean 
                                                         Bill Ryan 
                                                         Katy Ryan
                                                         Eric Zorn
Introduction                                        Renaldo Hudson

___________________________________________________

Introduction

The concept for these essays came from a lesson I learned from Minister Farrakhan. He was teaching on the subject, Who are you, and are you good for nothing? This lesson on tape changed my life forever. So I wanted to give back from what I learned. I shared with Bill Ryan the idea to have an essay contest for Illinois prisoners, and he went about putting the judges and prize money together. Bill Ryan, we love you, and thank God for your heart and your willingness to continue working on our behalf.

I can tell you, the contest wasn’t about the money. I live here in the midst of these so-called “monsters.” Men came to me with smiles on their faces, like little children look on Christmas morning as they open gifts. They were saying, “Thank you, man. Sometime a brother just needs to be heard. Made to feel human again. The essay contest made me feel like a human again.”

I am extremely thrilled that we are able to share our thoughts and souls to the public in these essays. These men and women are so brave. I take my hat off to all of them. Daily, I hear the hearts of men losing hope and the will to live. At the same time, I see the growth in so many.

It is our hope that these essays will encourage others to think about who they are and what they can do better. We hope that you enjoy them as much as we did writing them. Please share them with as many people as you can. We want to grow. Help us to keep moving down the roads of positive change. May God bless.

-Renaldo Hudson

___________________________________________________ Continue reading Lockdown Prison Heart

This is a partial list of novels by American authors with some variant of America or United States in the title, 1767 to 2003. These novels are not necessarily highly political, though a number are, and many have a relatively strong social focus. A few novels with America, etc., in the subtitle are also included here.
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Antigone – Sophocles
Lysistrata – Aristophanes  [Lysistrata Project]
The Praise of Folly – Erasmus
Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift
“A Modest Proposal” – Jonathan Swift
“The War Prayer” – Mark Twain
The Iron Heel – Jack London
The Dispossessed – Ursula LeGuin
Ecotopia – Ernest Callenbach
Parable of the Sower – Octavia Butler
“The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” – Ursula LeGuin
“The School” – Donald Barthelme
“Please Attack Appalachia” – Mike Bryan
“The Complaint of Peace” – Erasmus
Les Miserables – Victor Hugo
Johnny Got His Gun – Dalton Trumbo
“The Yellow Wallpaper” – Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Woman on the Edge of Time – Marge Piercy
Wizard of the Crow – Ngugi wa Thiong’o

An Academic Hotshot Introduces a Petty Tyrant

Hell, Columbia by James McEnteer at CounterPunch

Continue reading Tyrant Bush

Are you a soldier opposed to the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, etc?

If so, if you had the opportunity to talk to the US President one on one, what would you say? And would you want it used in an antiwar novel that opens like this?: Deadline, Iraq

Continue reading The Soldier Said to the President…

revised 9/30 

Comments for “the President”? Go to: The Soldier Said to the President…

The entire continuing Deadline Iraq series: here.

The Shape of Tomorrow:
Deadline Iraq

Baghdad, Iraq

“Oh great, here comes the Liar in Chief,” said Soldier One to Soldier Two at a desert-embalmed seemingly remote military base actually not far from Baghdad.

“How you two fellas doing?” said the President of the United States, strolling over with an entourage that billowed around him, a cloud of cavalry made up of administrative, military, and media personnel. The President dressed in desert-wear Army camouflage thought it all a great photo op.

“Just fine, Sir.” Soldier One extended her peg arm to the President. Her hand and forearm had been blown apart by a roadside bomb. She was off duty now wearing a wooden peg because she was still spooked by the metal claws that made for her new active duty fingers and by the synthetic flesh of her modeled prosthetic hand.

So the President shook her peg. “Good, good, that’s good to hear.” He turned to Soldier Two who took a half step forward on his wooden peg, hidden in his boot, to more firmly grasp the hand of the President.

“We’re ‘living the dream’, Sir.” He stared the president in the eye, his look lively, unsmiling. Continue reading The Shape of Tomorrow – Deadline Iraq