Lemuria Books – Page 63

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Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

On July 22, 2015

I don’t need to spend much time telling you this book is going to make waves, you probably already know that. I’ve walked into a restaurant holding the book and was haphazardly ushered into a table of strangers demanding to know how I got my hands on a copy of Between the World and Me before its release date. In another instance, a customer at Lemuria asked me what was my favorite bourbon, and offered to go to the liquor store that moment to find an adequate bribe to loosen my clutch on the book. Sorry man, Between the World and Me is worth more than the most expensive bottle of bourbon.

Put down what you’re reading and pick up Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates. It won’t take up more than a day of precious reading time. I am positive you will easily find profundity in Coates’s words regardless if you’re a man, woman, white, black, skinny, fat, carnivore, vegan, liberal or conservative.

Coates’s eloquent prose has given me chills as I sat reading in the blistering Mississippi summer, and his fiery gestures have made me sweat when I lay on my back reading with my AC set on 68. Rather than spoil his message by trying to use my words to explain Coates’s words, I want to share how this book has forced me to remember something tragic in my own history and made me examine it using new lenses.

Between the World and Me covers a lot of ground in a mere 152 pages. But one section left me in a trance it forced me to remember a story from my own history, which I have attempted to erase from my memory by burying it in silence.

Coates speaks to his time at Howard University as a momentary utopia, or in his words “The Mecca.” In his Mecca, for the first time, Coates is comforted by being around people like him—black men and women with vast intellectual concerns. But, the love he felt at Howard’s “Mecca” is shattered when a colleague is murdered in a case of senseless police brutality.

His words forced me to think. Between the World and Me took me back to the time I spent in my personal Mecca and it’s own violent end. It forced uncomfortable thoughts of my own whiteness to the surface, leaving my pores bubbling with anxious self-reflection.

* * *

I remember paying for my lunch at my public high school line and standing there, motionless, trying to gulp down an anxious stone in my throat. Where do I sit today? There dozens of tables, each comprising a community of kids, each inward looking, each excluding the next table as if they weren’t sitting together in the same room. Uniformed, sunburnt white baseball players sat together flirting with the future home-coming queens. The black footballers sat together showing each other their new, first-wave smart phones. The lower-income white kids sat together in their baggy-pants, throwing tater-tots at each other when the eyes of the disciplinarians turned away.

There was one table that was a bit less populated than the rest. A black kid wearing a Jay-Z t-shirt was beating his palms and a #2 pencil in alternating rhythms on the table. They were taking turns practicing their best Wayne impressions, spitting freestyles fraught with vulgarities about women, weed, and violence. They noticed when I sat down, but they didn’t make a big deal about it, they actually slid down to close the awkward gap I had left open because of my anxious uncertainty. I ate my processed chicken nuggets and bobbed my head in time with the tapping of the #2 pencil.

I ate my lunches this way for the next few years. We didn’t usually talk about blackness and whiteness, but it was coldly observed in the absence of their fathers, the warmth of their mothers toward me, and the distance of their older cousins that flashed gang signs and slapped complex handshakes.

Our sessions left the lunch room and went into the bedrooms of our suburban middle class homes. When it came my turn in the cypher, I’d let loose all the anxiety I’d scribbled in my journals into lyrics manifested by a two step beat and a bass drop. When my eighth bar had landed, the guys would burst with laughter and say, “Damn white boy got some words.”

This was the first time my passion for words made me feel cool. I have always manically been putting words into journals, secretly hoping to share them—not only to share them but for my words to make me cool. These young lyricists were The Mecca for me, not only did they listen to my words, but they introduced me to friends and friends of friends who also thought rhyming and beats were cool. I was at home in the comfort of not having to guard or hide the sincerity of my passion.

There were four kids I hung out with routinely, and we became pretty damn close. They were black guys and I am a white guy, and there wasn’t any ignorance of that fact. Between the World and Me reminded me how perversely race issues can slither into Mecca and usurp the comfort Mecca provides.

We were about to graduate. We had done alright in school. Good enough to go to college if we were willing put our noses to the grind stone. I ended up getting accepted to Millsaps College, one of us went into the airforce, and the other two ended up getting felony charges.

One of those kids pled guilty and took two years jail time, and the other accepted to be a CI and try to get a bad guy arrested.

I was running late for a morning class during my sophomore year of college and I got a call from the friend who took the jailtime in Parchman. He sounded completely different. Alive with rage. Frankly, he sounded ready to kill. Then he told me that our friend, the one that took the offer to be a CI, was found dead in an abandoned home with his hands duct taped behind his back and a bullet wound to his forehead. The friend on the phone swore revenge and he thought he knew on whom it should befall.

I walked to class along the giant wrought-iron fence topped with razor wire that “secured” our luxury automobiles and macbooks from the larger black community surrounding my college.

The class was Civil Liberties. It was a nice spring day and we sat outside and discussed Brown v. Board of Education. The professor was mid sentence when a staccato burst of gunshots a block or two away cut him off. One of the white kids laughed, detached from the reality outside the safety of the precious spools of razor wire. He said, “That’s Jackson for you.”

I stood up, and in a rage of expletives I excused myself. I dropped the class and never went back.

I was angry with myself for being comfortable. Angry that my friends, who had first showed me that it was ok to be the person I saw myself as, were killing, imprisoned or dead. Angry that it was too hard to talk with new friends about what happened to them. I was angry that I was in college when I didn’t deserve it any more than one of them. I was angry at my own whiteness, and frustrated at the fact that whiteness had mastered me with a private education where it was ok to analyze Brown v. Board of Education and laugh at black on black violence in the same breath.

I’ve been to Mecca before, and my Mecca ended much the same way as Coates’s—this is not a coincidence, this is evident that the emotions and observations expressed in Between the World in Me are truthful. Racially driven violence is systematic and intrinsic in today’s America; there is no way to escape application to you, whoever you are and wherever you are reading this.

Ta-Nehesi Coates in Between the World and Me has empowered me to be able to share this story with you; a story I’ve tried to forget for so many years and hardly ever shared. I’m a white guy and can never understand the suffering black bodies are put through. But, Coates has forced me to re-examine what it means to black and what it means to be white. Blackness and Whiteness are real things—tangible things. Coates explains why whiteness and blackness cannot be circumvented by neo-liberal policies of colorblindness. Race issues are just as American as hot dogs, and we must constantly examine and re-examine the mechanics that propel racial violence and mistrust because they are parallel with the grand mechanics of domination and oppression. Pick up the book. Read it and think about who you are and honestly ask yourself how race has affected your life.

Please direct any thoughts, comments or questions to Salvo Blair at salvo.blair91@gmail.com

A Jim Ewing Review: Go Set a Watchman

By Guest Author

On July 21, 2015

In Fiction, Guest Post, Southern Culture, Southern Fiction, Southern History

Special to the Clarion Ledger By Jim Ewing

For the Lord said to me, “Go, set a watchman. Let him declare what he sees.”

— Isaiah 21:6

Legions of readers have eagerly awaited the release of “Go Set a Watchman (Harper Collins),” the previously unpublished precursor of Harper Lee’s iconic “To Kill a Mockingbird,” and now that it’s out, the reaction is as explosive as first publication in 1960.

“Watchman” is likely to offend devotees of “Mockingbird” and add to the current debate about race relations in America. But, if “To Kill a Mockingbird” is a morality tale about the woeful state of racial justice in a small Southern town of the 1930s, “Watchman” is a reality tale about race relations in the 1950s — still relevant to today.

In “Watchman,” Scout is now called Jean Louise, 26, a college graduate living in New York City, coming home to visit her aging father. She is horrified by his racial views and those of her hometown.

In “Mockingbird,” the tragedy of a black man convicted of a crime he didn’t commit against a white woman elevated his defender, Scout’s lawyer father Atticus Finch, to saintly status. But in “Watchman,” Finch is revealed as — to modern eyes — a bigot.

But it’s more nuanced than simply that. The point of “Watchman” is the point in time it depicts.

In “Mockingbird,” the younger Atticus is, honestly, a white patrician who is, perhaps idealistically, passionately acting out the role of society of being a legal advocate for the oppressed. But in “Watchman,” the “revolution” in race relations, as Lee terms it, has begun.

Racial lines have hardened. People no longer see the people they grew up with as people (black or white) but as “tribes” or factions — divided by race.

Remember, this was more than half a century ago. When Lee wrote “Watchman” in 1957, the ink was barely dry on Brown vs. Board of Education that ordered school desegregation. That fall, the Little Rock Nine were escorted by federal troops to the schoolhouse. Racial segregation was a fact of culture and shifting laws.

The reality of that time, which still lingers in the memories of Southerners who lived in the 1950s, ’60s and beyond during the civil rights struggle, is more complex than we now view it. The South and the nation still wrestle with those conflicts and points of view: the good vs. evil narrative of slavery and Jim Crow — and Confederate battle flag.

Jean Louise is cast cold turkey into the maelstrom of the historical ambiguity and cognitive dissonance of loving a heroic father (forebears and region) vs. the harsh, unremitting hardships and brutality that stem from that racial intolerance.

Atticus is the same Atticus, but older, and drawn into the reality of the times. He is racist — as is the white society in which he lives. He could not have been elected to the Legislature (when blacks lacked the right to vote) and not cooperatively exist in that world. In the 1930s, whites had unquestioned power; in the 1950s, it is crumbling before his very eyes. He was reared in a world of manners but he, still, is dedicated to the law.

Atticus’s bigotry is cultural and defines him less than his motivations. Why was he a board member of the Maycomb white Citizens Council? Why did he attend a Ku Klux Klan rally? These are uncomfortable truths about a time in this nation that the South would just as well pretend never existed or claim was blown out of proportion; but Atticus is still following a moral compass, the only one he knows: the law.

In “Watchman,” Lee gives an apologia through the lens of her uncle, Dr. Jack Finch, who sits Jean Louise down and tells why white Southerners fought the Civil War. It wasn’t for slavery, he explains, noting that only about 5 percent of the population owned slaves (rich man’s war, poor man’s fight), but because of their regional character as white, Anglo Saxons who essentially were serfs in Europe and took up arms as part of their inherent inclination to fight any change. It’s a strain of irrational rebelliousness that exists today.

The crux of the narrative is less about Atticus and more about the shift from 6-year-old Scout to twentysomething Jean Louise. If Scout saw the 1930s-era racial injustice as filled with heroes and villains from the eyes of an adoring, motherless child, Jean Louise sees the reality of race relations circa late 1950s with adult eyes — and the idealism of a young career woman living in New York City.

In this vein, “Watchman” is as much a coming of age story as “Mockingbird,” only a shift in the timeline. And her moral compass is tested — and readjusted.

The elder Atticus is wrapped up in the fears and prejudices of the time — envisioning his and his peers’ grip on the levers of racial power slipping away and fearful of the outcome. Both views are of the same piece, but different facets; two sides of the paternalistic elite’s same obdurate coin. And that currency remains. “Watchman” may be as much a timely novel in 2015 as “Mockingbird” was in 1960.

Reading “Watchman” reaffirms how extraordinary it was for “Mockingbird” to have been published 55 years ago in the first place. When “Mockingbird” was published in 1960, Freedom Summer had not occurred. Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech had not been uttered, nor the prospect of racial equality been brought to the forefront of America’s consciousness. Both books are time capsules that are transformative.

Through “Mockingbird’s” tale told through the simple eyes of a child, all the absurdities and horrifying realities of racial oppression were revealed —with the worst qualities of human beings as well as the courage and lonely moral convictions of the few who took on the task of righting overwhelming wrongs.

Now, “Watchman” comes in the wake of the killing of young black men like Trayvon Martin, the ghastly gun rampage by a white man in a black church in Charleston, South Carolina, and resurrection of the Confederate battle flag’s heritage vs. hate debate. It reprises lingering views on racial equality and the role of government in enforcing societal norms that leave more black men in jail or killed through violence than in universities.

As a novel, “Watchman” is a good book, with interesting characters, wandering narrative, thin plot, but compelling subject matter (showing the value of a good editor to make a good book great). Its power lies in its comparison with “Mockingbird,” showing even the best intentioned with feet of clay. Its message is that bigotry comes in many guises, including those who take an opposing view to an apparent and real wrong.

The “watchman” reference is interpreted to mean that only individual conscience can guide us in turbulent times. That biblical clarion still rings for all us to speak truth, raise awareness and come to a meeting of minds among all races with prayers of understanding.

In “Watchman,” we are again given an opportunity to see with new eyes racial wrongs still sadly current today.

Jim Ewing, a former writer and editor at The Clarion-Ledger, is the author of seven books including “Redefining Manhood: A Guide for Men and Those Who Love Them,” now in bookstores.

Donate Your Old Books!

By Former Lemurians

On July 21, 2015

In Oz: Children's Books

On July 10, the Kindergarten classrooms at Batesville Elementary in Batesville, Mississippi, were completely destroyed by fire.

Please help us replenish their children’s book collection.

There are several ways to help:

If your old books need a new home, drop them off at Lemuria for a delivery to Batesville.

We also have a running list of books the school would like 17 copies of for their 17 PRE-K and K teachers. Place an order with us and we will get them to the school!

OR if you can’t get to Lemuria, ship your books to:

Lydia Aderholt
211 Jones Street
Batesville Mississippi 38606

Kids need books before school starts, so stop by the store today! Any and all donations are much appreciated.

-The OZ Team

“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more you learn, the more places you’ll go.” — Dr. Seuss

A Song of Ice and Fire and the Development of Fantasy

By Former Lemurians

On July 20, 2015

In Fantasy, Fiction, Staff Blog

The next book in George R. R. Martin’s fantasy series, A Song of Ice and Fire is going to be released (hopefully) next year, and I’m taking the time to write about just how this series has been not only popular, but changing the genre of fantasy.

In 1937, J. R. R. Tolkien published The Hobbit, and by the time he finished his Lord of the Rings trilogy, he had laid the foundations of a new genre. In his works, he employed many fantasy archetypes in his story. For example, when you think of fantasy, the things that come to your mind are things like wizards, princesses, evil dragons, etc. This is because fantasy mostly uses Eastern European influence, which means copying things like their class structures, like kings, queens and knights. This also means using their folklore, drawing on stories of dragons, tales of valor, wizards, elves, and fairies. The central conflict should be about good versus evil; since fantasy stems from being mostly children’s stories, the story typically has a good hero to root for. Evil is depicted in a clear, monstrous form. Villains are not too human.

Tolkien took all the archetypes of fantasy and raised it up to create the subgenre of high fantasy. High fantasy is basically a fantasy book, but with larger, more sprawling worlds. Characters were different races, and served different kings, and the kings before those kings. Entire languages were created. Different races had different traditions, abilities, magical items, and styles of dress. Songs, histories, and lands were depicted in Charles Dickens level detail for each race in Tolkien’s Middle Earth. Since then, Tolkien has been the author whom most fantasy writers took inspiration from. High fantasy has remained largely static since then. Everyone wanted to emulate Tolkien, and nothing really changed for years.

But in 1996, George R. R. Martin moved fantasy to new depths again. People who I know that read much more fantasy than me said there was something new in this series. Martin also has a completely developed alternate world. But Martin takes inspiration from several, non-Eastern European cultures. He does not stay with the viewpoint of the protagonist, but switches to characters on every side of the conflict. By also switching to first person, Martin is able to delve into the minds of characters much more closely. Within this, we see that Martin does not portray one clear side of good or evil; he doesn’t even make his main characters the heroes. The series is fantasy in reverse because the obvious characters are not the key players in the story, it is not the kings or rulers but their children, wives, and friends whose viewpoints move the narrative. Even the most noble of his characters are flawed, and goodness in his books does not equal skill. A nice ruler does not mean a good ruler, or one that will survive. His graphic and explicit material also means he’s writing just for adults.

We’ve come a long way from the simple fairy stories told to kids. This is why I think George R. R. Martin is important, and there is speculation that he’s the American Tolkien. I personally think that he is, and I’m excited to be alive while a new trend in fantasy comes along and plucks the placid tradition from its roots in order to grow something new.

Mississippi Book Festival Kids’ Books (Part 1)

By Former Lemurians

On July 20, 2015

In Oz: Children's Books

Readers of kids’ books: mark your calendars for AUGUST 22. Meet great middle-grade and picture book authors at the first ever Mississippi Book Festival, held downtown at the State Capitol. Before meeting the authors, read their books!

Featured this week are Kimberly Willis Holt and Susan Eaddy, who will be on the Young Readers Panel and Children’s Illustrated Books Panel, respectively.

Dear Hank Williams by Kimberly Willis Holt (Macmillan, 2015)

Holt will be presenting her newest novel for kids, Dear Hank Williams, on the Young Readers panel. Dear Hank Williams is set in Rapides Parish, Louisiana, in the 1950s. When Tate’s teacher asks her students to choose a pen-pal, Tate knows just the person.

“That minute I knew exactly who my pen pal was going to be. Guess who, Hank Williams? I’ve picked you! Since you sing on the Louisiana Hayride and I’m going to sing at the Rippling Creek May Festival Talent Contest, we already have something in common.”

Tate writes letters so funny you will laugh out loud. After being sent to clean the kitchen after asking her Aunt Patty Cake too many questions about her past love life, Tate says,“Frog (Tate’s brother) is smart. He never is the least bit interested in the Christmas-tree-ornament stories. Curious people seem to have more chores.”

She’s “practicing to perfection” for the talent-show in order to beat golden-haired Verbia Calhoon. She spills her innermost secrets to the voice she hears on the radio, including tales of how she gets a dog for Christmas, whom she names Lovie. Aunt Patty Cake questions if Hank Williams even reads Tate’s letters, but Tate knows he does — so far he’s sent her three autographed photographs of himself.

Tate’s true story about her parents, her family, and the truth about herself unfolds in her letters to the country singer, and her voice is funny, Southern, fresh, and will even make you cry.

For readers ages 8-12.

Poppy’s Best Paper by Susan Eaddy, illustrated by Rosalinde Bonnet (Charlesbridge: 2015)

Eaddy will be on the Children’s Illustrated Books Panel with her new picture book, Poppy’s Best Paper. Poppy is a little white rabbit with long, floppy ears who wants to be a very famous writer. When her teacher, Mrs. Rose, tells them she will read one student’s paper in front of the class, Poppy gets to work. “At home, Poppy told Mr. Fuzz Dog, ‘I am going to write the BEST paper ever!’ ” She KNOWS that her teacher will pick her paper to read aloud to the class. Poppy plays adventure “treasure ahead!” She plays with Mr. Fuzz Dog, and she takes break after break. In fact, Poppy does everything EXCEPT write her paper!

Surprise, surprise, Mrs. Rose does not pick Poppy’s paper to read aloud. Poppy, disheartened, tries again, but keeps taking more breaks and not finishing the paper. Finally, she writes a paper Mrs. Rose reads to the class titled, “How to Get in Trouble.”

Poppy is similar to most students, and kids will identify with the struggle to finish homework. The illustrations by Bonnet are adorable, and Poppy is just one bunny amongst a group of other animal children. This book is perfect for kids going back to school and facing homework.

For readers ages 3-7.

Harper Lee’s “Go Set a Watchman” sees busy release day

By Guest Author

On July 16, 2015

In Fiction, Gift Books, Guest Post, History, Newsworthy, Southern Culture, Southern Fiction, Southern History

Original article posted on July 15, 2015 in The Clarion-Ledger by Jana Hoops

Tuesday’s long-awaited release of Harper Lee’s first novel since “To Kill A Mockingbird” 55 years ago was met with smiles, curiosity and mixed opinions as literary enthusiasts kept local book stores busy all day.

Despite Monday’s media leaks that “Mockingbird’s” beloved character Atticus Finch was portrayed in “Go Set A Watchman” as a “bigot” or “racist” — a far cry from his role as a defender of African American rights in Lee’s first book —readers seemed to shake off that possibility with a grain of salt, preferring to hold off judgment at least until they’ve digested it for themselves.

More than 125 people crowded into Lemuria Books’ nearby events venue, known as the “dot.com building,” as author and Belhaven creative writing professor Howard Bahr read the first chapter of “Go Set a Watchman” to the expectant audience.

“I don’t care about all that (controversy),” Bahr said. “To be chosen to do this tonight is an extraordinary privilege. I am deeply honored to be able to read this on its first release day.”

John Evans, owner of Lemuria Books in Jackson, said he has no worries that the pre-release hype touting a potentially racist character will discourage book sales.

If anything, Evans thinks it will fuel interest in the book. “Controversial labels arouse curiosity,” he said. “People should form their own opinions.

“ ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ was a story set in the ’30s, written in the ’50s by a middle-aged woman. Scout (the main character) was able to look at her father (Atticus) through the eyes of a child. A child at that age thinks of her father as God’s gift. ‘Watchman’ is about a woman coming of age, and a grown woman’s perspective of her father is different.

“Also, you have to look at the cultural differences,” Evans said. “At that time in the South, people were only third generation away from the Civil War. I haven’t finished reading the book yet, but I’m not sure those people may have thought of (some of the things in ‘Watchman’) as being racist, as we probably would today.”

Maggie Stevenson, special projects coordinator for the Eudora Welty House, attended the event to get her copy and read it for herself before making any evaluations.

“This book is not a sequel to ‘Mockingbird,’ ” because it was actually written earlier, she said. “I’m reading it as a separate book,” she said.

“I have a theory. I think this book is really more autobiographical than ‘To Kill A Mockingbird.’ She (Lee) left her hometown and came back and found out she had different views from most people there, including her father, who she loved very much — and that’s why she wrote ‘Watchman.’ You write what you know.”

Local author and former Clarion-Ledger writer Jim Ewing — probably the only person at the event to have read the whole book (in one day) — called ‘Watchman’ “excellent.”

Ewing said there was “no question” that Atticus was racist “by today’s standards, but this was written half a century ago. By those standards in the South, he would be considered moderate or even liberal. The strength of ‘Watchman’ is that it’s a time capsule and openly displays characteristics we find ugly today, but it becomes a measurement for us for both good and evil.”

Pre-Order YARD WAR by TAYLOR KITCHINGS, coming AUGUST 18!

By Former Lemurians

On July 4, 2015

In Uncategorized

We are thrilled to announce that our own Jackson native, Taylor Kitchings, has written his debut middle-grade novel, to be published AUGUST 18 by Wendy Lamb Books/Random House in the U.S. and Canada.

Set in Jackson in 1964, Yard War tells the story of 12-year-old Trip Westbrook and the summer that football and a forbidden friendship changed everything in his town.

Pre-order your signed copy here or call 601.366.7619, and be sure to join us for a signing on August 18 at 5:00!

‘Into the Savage Country’ mesmerizing tale of America’s youth

By Guest Author

On July 3, 2015

In Fiction, Guest Post, Southern Fiction

By Jim Ewing Special to the Clarion Ledger
Shannon Burke’s Into the Savage Country takes place in the western territories of the late 1820s with the clash of cultures of Britain, France, Spain, Russia and American Indian tribes, providing a gripping series of adventures.

William Wyeth, the protagonist, finds himself Out West having been disinherited by his father in Pennsylvania, and fighting the seeming curse laid upon him that he would never amount to anything for his inability to settle down into the civilized, farming life of his brothers. In this new world where he has found himself, he is at once confronted with prairies so wide, mountains so tall, vistas so broad, the silence so deafening it makes even the brashest of men seem small.

“I had come west to satisfy some restless craving, to sound the depths inside myself,” he reminisces. He finds that, and much more. Written in the form of a memoir, with accurate renditions of the clothing, speech and mannerisms of the mountain men, the citified dandies of St. Louis and various native tribes, Savage rings of authenticity as a historical novel should.

It skips across the more mundane aspects of frontier life, but zeroes in on key moments to make the tale hard to put down. The result is a portrait of life in all its hardship and monotony interspersed with mortal terror — not only at the hands of men, but by animals and the elements — along with brief moments of pure joy and abject awe.

Along the way, the reader matures as does Wyeth, coming to a greater understanding of the life of a trapper, seeing firsthand the rapidly changing landscape wrought by the influx of American settlers and the loss of the wildness of the continent.

The whole scope of the journey is shifted with this understanding, as the good and bad elements of “civilization” take their toll. Our pilgrim becomes transformed through the alchemy of the camaraderie of men, and how they change through hardship and association, their achievements, bonding and treachery.

And, of course, there is a woman. The Canadian half-breed Alene Chevalier is at once wild and wise, the daughter of a French trapper father and native mother, who knows more about life on the frontier than Wyeth can guess. He longs achingly and incessantly for her but risks the achievement of her love for this “restless craving” for adventure outside of the charms of her arms. Which allure proves stronger is a question that challenges and defines him.

Overall, Savage Country is a remarkable journey into the wild, untrammeled wilderness of a young man’s soul.

Jim Ewing, a former writer and editor at The Clarion-Ledger, is the author of seven books including Redefining Manhood: A Guide for Men and Those Who Love Them, in stores now.

Ash by Malinda Lo

By Former Lemurians

On July 1, 2015

In Staff Blog

PRIDE!

Ash by Malinda Lo. OH. MY. GOD. It’s Cinderella, but a little different. Rest assured, just because this is an LGBTQ book, it does not dwell on it. Whoever the characters fall in love with is not so important in the magical kingdom the main character, Ash lives. Or is it magical? In the West Wood, people still believe in fairies and brownies and elves. But some believe these are just stories. Ash’s mother believed in magic, and when odd things happen to Ash after her mother’s death, she begins to question just who her mother was. One thing that’s good about this book is that it opens with so many questions. Like, what do Ash’s dreams mean? Are they dreams? Who the person with the gleaming, beautiful face that watches her, and why is there glittering dust in her window sill? As the questions slowly get answered, then the story begins to go in the direction of a Cinderella tale. There are also a number of fairytales that different characters tell as Ash goes about her life. Stories that serve to warn her, foreshadow the future, or reveal the past. So this book is a fairytale filled with other little fairytales.

When both of Ash’s parents die she has to live with her mean stepmother and stepsisters and cook and clean for them because blah, blah you know the drill. But all Ash wants is to be taken away from her horrible life to be with the fairies, who have watched over her through her life, but they won’t tell her why.

Ash’s life gets even more complicated when she meets the prince and the royal huntress. Also, instead of the fairy godmother just lavishing beautiful gifts onto her, what Ash wants comes with a price that has been entangled in curses and negotiations between witches, fairies, and humans before she was born. But don’t worry, all the plot thingies tie back up together nicely. I was hooked reading this, and I hope you will be too.

If you like Young Adult fiction, Ash is exactly like those books. If you like fairy tales, then you’ll like this. If you want some light summer reading, you’ll like this. I really enjoyed this book, and I think you will too.

The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright

By Former Lemurians

On June 29, 2015

In Culture, History, Politics, Religion, War

Surah CIX

The Disbelievers

As Revealed at Mecca

1: Say: O disbelievers!

2: I worship not that which ye worship;

3: Nor worship ye that I worship.

4: And I shall not worship that which ye worship.

5: Nor will ye worship that which I worship

6: Unto you your religion, and unto me my Religion

Are you a history buff interested in accounts of War—specifically moments like Pearl Harbor, the sinking of the Lusitania, or the Gulf of Tonkin incident? If you are, you must know the potent, practical knowledge of studying instances in which the USA has been forced to abandon ideals of isolation to wage war in foreign lands.
I have met professional and amateur historians that rattle off facts and stories about D-Day, Pearl Harbor, or the A-bombing of Japan as if they stood there with omniscience on each of those days—but I have met very few people that are receptive to the same, vivid discussion concerning what happened on 9/11.

This is understandable; the wounds of 9/11 have hardly scabbed over. We still feel an emotional connection to the event and there is a collective seething just beneath the surface of our skins that makes objectivity an arduous pursuit. Alas, in order to channel our emotions toward greater resolution we must ready ourselves to have discussions with our peers without the fear of sounding “Un-American” or resorting to branded key words that numb our tongues and blind our vision.

As for many of the most difficult dilemmas, the Shelves of Lemuria may hold the answer.

I had only begun to realize what happened on 9/11, and so six years after the towers fell I decided to buy a first edition copy of The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright from Lemuria. Previously, it had been impressed upon me that the reason we were attacked was the product of an animosity driven by jealousy, silently brooding over seas, seething in envy of American ideals and freedoms.

The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright exposed frailty and incongruence in my own perception of what happened on 9/11, 2001. The pages of this work armed me with a powerful weapon—understanding. Besides my own heartfelt praise, The Looming Tower has been internationally lauded as a must read by a myriad of authorities, and won the Pulitzer Prize. After finishing The Looming Tower I feel it is my civic duty to encourage you to read this book.

Within the book, Wright makes poignant elaborations concerning the atmosphere that propelled the atrocities of 9/11. Much of The Looming Tower is spent analyzing Osama Bin Laden’s complex relationship with the West and with Saudi Arabia. An effort is spent to humanize Bin Laden and understand the importance of his exile from Saudi Arabia and the dual issuance of Fatwas against Saudi Arabia and the United States concerning the presence of an American military base on Islamic ground.

The Looming Tower makes the claim that Bin Laden’s expulsion from Saudi Arabia, where he was gaining traction as a populist mobilizer, led to his formation as an internationally sought financier and organizer of several grass roots extremist organizations. Bin Laden allowed the hunger for retribution corrupt his high levels of education and pervert his ideology towards gruesome ends. His thirst for vengeance upon the religious and political elites of Saudi Arabia catalyzed his momentum towards the violent culmination of 9/11.

Bin Laden’s motive as shown in The Looming Tower for organizing the hijackings of 9/11 was a strategic maneuver of wicked guile. He wished to strike the Saudi government, but found his organizations’ numbers too small to carry out such an audacious move—so he did the one thing that would become the legacy of the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: improvisation.

The lesson applied to The Looming Tower explains to me why Bin Laden attacked America in the first place. The thousands in the Towers, on the planes, and working in the pentagon were doves—completely innocent to motives and intentions of Bin Laden. The American Air Force, being the metaphoric red-tailed hawks theoretically would have become hungry for large meals of the religious and political elite of Saudi Arabia (being the metaphoric timber rattlers).

The stratagem was quite simple: attack Saudi Arabia by proxy. Al-Qaeda casted the 9/11 hijackers nearly exclusively from Saudi Arabia in order to illicit a violent response toward Saudi Arabia from the US. The intent of this design was to make it appear that the attack originated from Salafist and Wahhabi communities within Saudi Arabia, which (in thought) would propel America to employ their tools of war upon the political and religious infrastructure of Saudi Arabia. Perhaps, this could’ve happened if it weren’t for the hard work of our intelligence officers, who understood that the Taliban was housing Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.

If you haven’t read a well researched, objective account on Al-Qaeda or extremism in general, The Looming Tower is the best place to start. Come to Lemuria, put the book in your hands and feel the historical proximity of yourself to Wright’s work. Open it, let your emotions flow as the pages turn and you will connect to this book immediately. Then the next step should come naturally: tell others how you feel and what you think should be the next step in “The War on Terror.”

Photo Credit: http://www.dailymail.co.uk

Page 63 of 257

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