Lois Leveen

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June 19, 2012

Take the Juneteenth Challenge

Happy holiday.

Didn't know you were having one?

Here's
a snip from the Huffington Post
to catch you up:

Today is Juneteenth. This holiday, which commemorates the end of slavery, tells us as much about what America means as the Fourth of July, Presidents Day, or Memorial Day. What distinguishes the United States is our nation's persistent struggle to make real a set of ideals that have been contested and contentious from the earliest days of the republic. It's particularly worth remembering Juneteenth this year, as people across the country mark the sesquicentennial of the Civil War.


You can read the full piece at the Huff Post website, and take the Juneteenth Challenge: name 5 African Americans who helped end slavery--besides Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman?

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June 18, 2012

Michelle Obama’s DNA

There's a great piece in the New York Times about Michelle Obama's forebears, and her distant cousins.

The white ones.

While most of us are aware that Barack Obama is biracial, Michelle's mixed ancestry is less well known. Or it has been, until some author (you know how they are) started researching the topic, using DNA evidence (for more on DNA evidence and a different case of interracial presidential genetics, check out this clip).

The article talks about what it means for whites today to come to terms not only with the fact that their ancestors not only owned slaves, but with the likelihood that a particular great-great-grandfather raped some of those slaves. Not an easy thing to think about. Actually, even writing that sentence was hard. I want to say "abused" or "forced" as though maybe those words are less ugly, less brutal. But why pretend anything about the topic isn't brutal and ugly?

The article reminded me of two very good, though very different, books. One is The Alchemy of Race and Rights, by the law professor Patricia Williams. In the book, Williams talk about how, when she was accepted to law school, her mother said that wasn't surprising, since they had lawyering in their family. What shocked Williams was that the lawyer in question, Austin Miller, was a slaveowner. He bought an eleven-year-old slave, who within a year had borne his child. That slave was Williams' great-great-grandmother, and Miller was her great-great-grandfather. He was a demon in the story of her family. But he was also as much a part of her as the young girl whose identity Williams and her sister researched, in their efforts to understand how slavery touched their family.

The second book is Kindred, by Octavia Butler. In that novel, the main character, a black woman married to a white man and living in Los Angeles in the 1970s, is repeatedly transported back in time to the nineteenth century, when she happens about a young white boy in trouble. He's in trouble a lot. She saves him. A lot. And then she realizes he will grow up to be the person who rapes *her* great-great-grandmother. She's left to choose whether to rescue him, or to let him die, or to take some action to kill him. And in that process, the novel reveals how much the protagonist owes to the very acts of violence and systematic oppression she has always hated.

I've taught both these books, together. Because I think it's not just Williams or the fictional character in Kindred or Michelle Obama's "white" cousins who need to think about these things. Ultimately, this nation is the offspring of that brutal, awful, despicable institution. Slavery financed early America. Slavery financed some of our greatest thinkers and most powerful institutions. Slavery allowed some of Americans to enjoy freedom they never would have had otherwise. My family immigrated to America long after slavery was outlawed here. But I recognize that the America that offered them a haven only existed because of the way it embraced slavery in earlier generations (and that it continued to support things like red-lining and segregation in ways that privileged white immigrants over blacks whose families had been Americans for generations).

So in a way, we're all descended from slavery.

Which does not mean I will start calling Michelle Obama cousin. Unless she asks me to. In which case I will totally do it.
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June 14, 2012

PDXellent

After five days in nearly 90 degree whether in Chicago, I was a little cranky.

But then I discovered the BEST welcome home at the Powell's Bookstore in PDX, Portland's beautiful airport.

staff pick tag

One of the customers in the store, seeing me photographing this, asked if I wrote the card. I demurred, though I did cop to writing the actual book. She bought a copy. Actually, she and her mom bought a copy, and each told me to inscribe it to the other. How cute is that?

Portland, I love Portland!
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June 13, 2012

Coming July 12 to an Internet Near You

I've been shlepping all over the country to talk to readers about The Secrets of Mary Bowser. Great fun, especially if you collect souvenir spoons.

But on July 12, it will be great to chat with everyone anywhere via an on-air segment of Book Club Girl.

Hope you can make it. Because really, how far are any of us from the internet, ever?
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June 7, 2012

The Mouthfeel of Fiction

Is the sexiest writing about food, rather than, well, sex?

If you’ve ever participated in a writing workshop, you’ve probably heard the mantra “Show, don’t tell.” Rather than declaring that a character “is” a certain way, we writers are charged with describing a detail or, better yet, an action that reveals something about a character — the more visceral, the better. Showing allows a reader to experience something along with the characters, to recognize some aspect of character for themselves.

Maybe because my best writerly procrastination involves snacking, when I’m looking to show rather than tell, I often create scenes that involve cooking and eating. Passages that appeal to the sense of taste, and to smell and touch as well, draw readers in. Done well, such passages show more about characters than merely what they’re having for dinner.

For some examples, include an incredibly erotic poem that's about pie baking, check out this article at Culinate, one of my favorite foodie magazines.

BONUS!!!! Post an example on Culinate of a literary food scene that draws you in, and you could win a copy of The Secrets of Mary Bowser.
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