Laila Lalami

Depictions of U.S. soldiers in Korean literature are often negative, says the Chosun Ilbo.

There were many works written after the war that depicted the dark atmosphere of the 1950s and 1960s in which children who should have been going to elementary school instead were working as U.S. military houseboys and pimps. Yet more works, despite featuring stories that take place is or around U.S. bases, stressed the social corruption that they claim forced us into such a situation.

Poems, novels, and short stories are examined in the article, reminding me how unfamiliar I am with Korean literature. Ideas for a good place to start are welcome.

At long last, issue Number 4 of Pindeldyboz is going to be available June 12.

A kind reader emailed to point out Brian Whitaker’s take on The Arab Mind, which appeared in The Guardian.

Consider these statements: “Why are most Africans, unless forced by dire necessity to earn their livelihood with ‘the sweat of their brow’, so loath to undertake any work that dirties the hands?”
“The all-encompassing preoccupation with sex in the African mind emerges clearly in two manifestations …”
“In the African view of human nature, no person is supposed to be able to maintain incessant, uninterrupted control over himself. Any event that is outside routine everyday occurrence can trigger such a loss of control … Once aroused, African hostility will vent itself indiscriminately on all outsiders.”
These statements, I think you’ll agree, are thoroughly offensive. You would probably imagine them to be the musings of some 19th century colonialist. In fact, they come from a book promoted by its US publisher as “one of the great classics of cultural studies”, and described by Publisher’s Weekly as “admirable”, “full of insight” and with “an impressive spread of scholarship”.
The book is not actually about Africans. Instead, it takes some of the hoariest old prejudices about black people and applies them to Arabs.

Read Whitaker’s article here.

Nilanjana Roy’s review of Gregory Roberts

Nice blurb about Indiana Review’s Between Cultures issue. Order a copy here.

I don’t really have much to say about this Alice Walker profile except, perhaps, “Co&ntildeo, El Che isn’t Cuban. ”

Ed links to this SF Chronicle profile of Diana Abu-Jaber.

“It wasn’t great for ‘Crescent’ to come out when the war was being launched; it gave me some initial attention, but it wasn’t appropriate,” says Abu-Jaber. “People were asking me things like, ‘Why do (Arabs) hate us?’ and asking me to speak for the Iraqi nation, which I really didn’t want to do and hadn’t intended to do in any fashion. It was frustrating to political activists who read it and wanted it to be more staunchly directive in what it says.”

Abu-Jaber’s Crescent is just now out in paperback.

Several of my favorite bloggers are mentioned in this week’s New Yorker. Lizzie reviews Alice Randall’s latest in the NY Times, and Sarah tackles Heaven Lies About Us in the Denver Post.

Fans of Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies have had few short stories by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author to nibble on (beside ” Nobody’s Business,” which appeared in The New Yorker and was anthologized in BASS 2002.) So it was a special treat to find “Hell-Heaven,” in this week’s New Yorker. Enjoy.

According to a recent New Yorker article, Raphael Patai’s The Arab Mind was used by some neo-cons to justify the meme that Arabs can only be handled through violence and may have served as a pretext for some of the practices at Abu Ghraib.

[Raphael Patai's The Arab Mind], it is said, gave these hawks in Washington the idea that the Arabs understood only force, and their greatest weakness was shame and humiliation. The daughters of Mr Patai, a Hungarian who moved to the US and taught at Princeton and Columbia universities, have condemned how their father’s work is treated. In a statement, they said: ‘There’s nothing new about written work, including scholarly work, being put to uses its authors never dreamed of. But still it rankles when it’s an esteemed family member who is being maligned.”

See, they’re generous. They classify it as academic work, whereas it really belongs under the heading “Caricature.” But, then again, what the hell do I know, I’m supposed to only understand force. Read the Independent article here.