Books in Brief: 2004/3
by Paul GrantWhy read anything that's not required during the academic season? Because the world is so big and exciting, that's why.
How many of us have become calcified in our minds, while walking the halls of institutions dedicated to intellectual discovery? Demographers say Americans are growing less creative, as we become more and more regimented in our daily lives - and more and more busy.
This fall, allow your curiosity to mature. Plan on reading at least one book that is important or valuable, but is not part of your curriculum. You may discover a new passion for learning and life. The only way to do that of course, is to do less. Hyperactivity kills the spirit every bit as much as authoritanian oppression, probably more so.
Which books should you read? Try visiting the new arrivals section of your local library. This is one bottleneck shelf that every book in the whole library passes. You never know what's going to show up. It could be from any field of inquiry. The new arrivals shelf helps you expose your mind to fields that you wouldn't investigate, or even know exist. Below are a few books that have recently caught our attention at Urbana.org. Should you read these? Not necessarily. But they're likely to make you think about new issues or themes.
Inside Cuba: the history, culture, and politics of an outlaw nation
various authors
A collection of previously published articles on such topics as baseball, classic cars, Fidel Castro, Elian Gonzales and the pop culture scene in today's Cuba, this book very well written and quite rousing. Cuba is much like Canada: at its best, Cuba is a dynamic North American society, multi-ethnic, creative and committed to the open-ended possibilities of the future. At their worst, both societies squander their potential by obsession with not being the United States. Also like Canada, Cuba's history contains unhappy moments for US-based readers, because of the decadence and impulsiveness with which we've abused our neighbors.
Inside Cuba is not a political treatise. There are far too many interesting stories to tell to dwell on Fidel Castro. For instance, Cuba is a classic car-lover's paradise. When trade with the US was shut down in the late fifties, thousands of American cars were now orphaned without spare parts. The only way to keep the cars running was loving stewardship.
At the same time, there are a few really good historical survey chapters that can help you gain an understanding of this very complex society. Cuba is an island nation which like Ireland hits way above its weight in terms of cultural creativity. Drawing from a cultural genepool menage containing mostly African and Spanish blood, with servings of Native Caribbean, Anglo American, Arabian and even Chinese impulses, Cuba's music is everywhere around the world, but continues to innovate.
Mexifornia: A State of Becoming
Victor Davis Hanson
Parts of Central Valley California are close to 90% Mexican. Victor Davis Hanson is an Anglo grape grower and classics professor living outside of Fresno. This book is a Jeremiad lamenting the loss of assimilation as a cultural value in multi-ethnic America. Hanson has made a lot of people angry with this book, and has made a lot of unsavory people unhappy. Both sides misinterpret Mexifornia as an anti-multiethnic pamphlet.
Hanson is not in the business of cheap polemic. He believes in assimilation as a tool for multi-ethnicity, but he does not believe in a static society. Society should change to meet the immigrants. The burden goes both ways. He feels, quite correctly, that the American government has been negligent in its Mexico policy: Regardless of what the policy is, a lot more attention needs to paid toward developing more sophisicated relationships with this neighbor of a hundred million souls.
Dead Cities
Mike Davis
Mike Davis is one of North America's finest essayists. His acclaim would be far greater if he didn't so easily buy into the conspiracy theory of the week. Dead Cities follows Davis' marvelous trilogy on the history of Los Angeles. The book is a collection of articles written over the last ten years and quite diverse in theme: Everything from the environmental poisoning of much of the intermountain west due to military-industrial disasters, to WWII bombings of Japanese and German cities, what Davis acidly calls the last public works achievement of the New Deal, to Pentacostal revivalism in Los Angeles. As always, read it for the tirelessly reasearched and footnoted facts, while glossing over the ridiculous conclusions Davis draws from the same.
Culture Jam
Kalle Lasn
Culture Jam belongs to the literary genre of Manifesto. As a call to arms for reasserting non-corporate control of cultural and private space, this book, written by the founder of Adbusters, is a great success. Lasn musters his evidence for the dangers to democracy posed by private-invester-driven cultural impositions, such as corporate published High School textbooks that discuss, for instance, the great savings you get by supersizing your combo meal as an example of algebra. If our children's minds are commodities we allow salesmen to access in exchage for cool cash, we may be in danger of losing far more than we gain. Far less radical under the surface than the militant tone suggests, Lasn wants to preserve mental health in society from the dangers of too much for-profit activity. Also far more sensible than Mike Davis (above), Kalle Lasn has a legitimate gripe. William Bennett once asked record-company executives, who had just released a CD containing lyrics glorifying rape, "are you morally handicapped?" In the same way, Culture Jam appeals to the common sense of protecting our children to demonstrate the need for governments to reassert control over public space, cultural or physical.
Reclaiming Friendship
Ajith Fernando
This book changed my life. Reading it during my first semester in college, I was floored by the shallowness of my own friendships, in contrast to the community held up by scripture as normative. Friendship is hard work, and in our individualistic world we've allowed some of the greatest treasures of life to be taken away by our business: Friends.
Ajith Fernando, a Sri Lankan leader of the global church, is noted as a bible teacher, but he here proves himself to be quite the sensualist: a serious reading of scripture leads him to the conclusion that just as there is no Christianity without Christian community, so also Friendship is both a gift from God and a mark of maturity and of the Holy Spirit. This book is recommended for all those who wish to be wealthy: not as millionaires, but as those who know the life-giving joy that comes from companionship and life-long friendships.
We real cool: Black men and masculinity
bell hooks
Bell Hooks is a brilliant Black Feminist public intellectual, whose career has covered everything from poetry to politics. We Real Cool is an extended essay on African American manhood. Hooks passion for justice is more than compassion for victims; she balances discussions of Hip Hop misogyny with exposition of the helplessness with which our society shackles young black men. Conversely, she tempers explanation of social brokenness with fury over patriarchal oppression. In other words, this proudly non-Christian book displays a very Christian ethical approach: Societies are guilty for the oppression of their weakest members, but never to the exclusion of individual culpability.
In fact Christians are major culprits for Hooks, not because of the tenets of our faith, but because we fail to live by them. Rejecting Jesus' social radicalism for what Hooks calls "Capitalist-Imperialist-Racist-Patriarchy", Christians insist on reproducing into subsequent generations our worst fears, which demand our worst responses. So for instance European obsession with African sexuality, now into its sixth century, rewards black men with public honor for acting savagely toward black women, in part because such behavior justifies the legitimate violence needed to keep those same black men from acting savagely toward white women. In other words, a society that insists on viewing women as male property tolerates a few losses (the staggering numbers of black female victims of sexual assault) in order to preserve a status quo guaranteeing a balance of security for most with sexual liberty for a few. Christians, in Hooks' understanding are more concerned with patriarchy than with protecting the weak.
We Real Cool is a quite refreshing feminist perspective, because Bell Hooks has words for everyone, and avoids embarrassing simplifications. It's also a grave reminder that manhood, not just African American manhood, is a balancing act few generations have gotten right. Bell Hooks is not a man-hater, nor is she an emasculator. Rather she believes institutional-societal patriarchy is emasculating. If men gather the courage to reject patriarchy, they can become better protectors of the weak in the world.
Both of these are perfectly Biblical: protecting the weak, and having the courage to reject social pressures. Bell Hooks vision of masculinity arrives at highly biblical values, though she starts far away from them.
Unless otherwise noted, all materials on the urbana.org web site are Copyright InterVarsity Christian Fellowship / USA. All rights reserved.
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