Hedes & Dekes: Author J.D Salinger Dies

The Washington Post has reported that one of the great American writers, J.D Salinger, has passed away. He was 91. [Washington Post]

--Uptown Literati

Hedes & Dekes: Battle For Camus' Grave, iPad Inks Deal with Publishers

One of France's most beloved writers, Albert Camus, died in a car crash 50 years ago this month. However, the issue of where his final resting place should be has sparked debate between French president Nicolas Sarkozy and a tiny village in Lourmain, where Camus lived until the time of his death. NPR breaks down the controversy as France commemorates one of it's literary and philosophical heroes. [NPR]


In other literary news: Apple's new iPad offers book publishers a deal to compete with Amazon's monopoly on the e-reading industry. Random House appears to be the only holdout. [NYT]

Lit Talk: Author Jonathan Safran Foer on 'Eating Animals'

Jonathan Safran Foer is known for acclaimed novels such as Everything Is Illuminated. Foer was an on-again, off-again vegetarian for years. But the birth of his son led Foer to ask: Was it right to feed his son meat? The result is Eating Animals, his new book on the moral, environmental and health quandaries involved. USA Today's Elizabeth Weise spoke with Foer.

USA: So should everyone be a vegetarian?

Foer: My book is not a case for vegetarianism. It's a case against factory-farmed meat. Basically, that's meat where animals are raised in enclosures, where they don't get to see the sun, don't get to touch the Earth, and they're almost always fed drugs to keep them from getting sick or make them grow faster.

I think there are a lot of responsible conclusions one could reach (about whether to eat animals). There's selective meat-eating (from responsible growers), there's being a vegetarian.

The thing I can't respect is the willful forgetting, the kind of people who say "I simply don't want to think about it."

USA: What was it that you found so morally problematic about factory-farmed pigs and chickens, the focus of your book?

Foer: The rule is animals in tiny cages where they can't turn around, in just this very ordinary kind of misery. The just insane vastness of the industry, 50 billion animals that are factory-farmed every year. It actually just boggles the mind.

USA: What were your assumptions going in?

Foer: That raising animals for food had to necessarily involve a kind of carelessness or violence. And in the process of writing this book, I met a number of small farmers who aren't that way. If my book has heroes, it's some of these small farmers. I was surprised by how moved I was by those farmers. And how statistically negligible they were.

USA: How many are there?

Foer: I thought such farmers might comprise half or a quarter of American agriculture. In fact it's significantly less than 1%. If there's a tragedy in the book, it's that those farmers are the exceptions. (In his book, Foer describes visiting small, boutique pig and cattle farms where animals are given ample space in conditions that at least attempt to allow them natural behaviors and social conditions.)

USA: What about people who can't afford to buy expensive meat from small farms?

Foer: It's exactly the opposite that's true. Factory-farmed food is an elitist food; it's a food that's making hundreds of millions of dollars for CEOs of corporations at the expense of normal people. Yes, it seems cheap when we go to the supermarket, but that's because we're being lied to about the true costs. We pay for them in our health care costs, the destruction of the environment and our values. What we call cheap food is the most expensive food in American history.

USA: But is it realistic to expect that people will stop eating meat because of a moral stance?

Foer: Sometimes we take apart very big things because we come to terms with the ways they're wrong. It's easy to forget that we had slaves in this country until quite recently, we treated women as second-class citizens who didn't have the right to vote until very recently, racism is something we're still working with. These things that have been going on forever can change very quickly.

USA: What suggestions do you have for people who take your research to heart?

Foer: One way is to stop eating meat entirely. Another way is to say, "I don't want to eat that kind of meat, but I still want to, so I'm going to seek out small farmers who raise the pigs and chickens outside."

USA: What choice did you make?

Foer: Not to eat meat. It would be very hard for me to reject factory farming without not eating meat, because I don't really have the time or energy or expertise to know where the meat comes from. (For those who have the time, Foer suggests buying at farmers' markets from farmers themselves after visiting their farms.)

USA: Do you think eventually everyone will be vegetarian?

Foer: There's a very good chance that there's going to be a rejection of factory farming. I think that will happen in my lifetime. The trend has been away from meat. People are eating less meat every year.

USA: You're a novelist. What responses have you gotten about writing a treatise like this one?

Foer: I've been very, very happy with the response I've gotten. Even if they say "I'm still going to eat meat, but you've given me a lot to think about."

USA: Will you be doing more books like this?

Foer: No. Novels.

Text from USAToday.com. See the interview here.

Recognize! Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." -- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Voices: Learning the Rules in 'Girls in Trucks'

Sarah Walters is a woman who has followed the rules her entire life, like most of us. Unlike most of us, her rules were passed down over generations of Camellias, women at the top-most rung of Charleston's social ladder. It's a public society that's anything but Democratic. Camellias are born, not made: If you're mother is one, then you are. For life. No matter what.

"'Never chase men or buses,' my mother told me. 'Another one will always come along,'" writes Sarah, whose struggles meeting expectations are what make this book by first-time novelist Katie Crouch so relatable and interesting.

With a slow start that follows Sarah and the three other Camellias her age, Bitsy, Charlotte and Annie, through middle-school Cotillion training, it's clear as the story develops why Crouch spent so much time developing the traditional South Carolina enclave of Sarah's youth.

Sarah as a heroine is a little bland and things happen to her, not with her or by her. She observes the increasingly bizarre sequence of experiences that happen when her domineering older sister moves to Yale, when she and wild-child Charlotte met country boys who lure them away from high-society duties and even when she goes away to a no-name Northern college.

The novel moves into familiar coming-of-age territory when Sarah moves to New York to work in journalism, joined by Charlotte, now in the fashion industry, and Bitsy. This is where she searches for love and where Crouch explores the frighteningly submissive personalities of her heroines. Sarah dates a man who changes her life and accepts, if not encourages, his violent sexual behavior. Bitsy marries a wealthy older man, who is later revealed to be selfish, uncaring and unfeeling. Annie dates men who don't love her. Charlotte, the most sensible, falls in love with mind-altering substances.

I wonder if these women are supposed to represent some aspect of femininity that exists in every woman because something, the fear of being alone or the fear of not being enough or the fear of being unloved, keeps all of them from searching for or choosing healthy relationships.

At one point Sarah remembers what her mother taught her about men, "that no mater what, there's always something. Fall in love and you'll find it. He will steal, or drink, or dress up in your clothes, or die on you at dinner. That's love, she says. That's what you sign up for."

Sarah is at her best when she is honest and feeling about the emotions that most of us only occasionally stumble upon. After almost screwing up her sister's wedding she tells her, "'There's a lot wrong with me,'" before continuing with, "I tell her I'm sorry again, which she waves off. I am sort of always sorry. I am sorry for being drunk on her wedding day and for not being good enough for Max and for not being smart enough for her friends and for breaking her toe with a hockey stick when I was twelve. God, I am sorry. I am sorry for so many things that I should go outside and swim to Cuba."

Emotionally numb, our heroine stumbles through the rest of the novel looking for electrifying love to shock her out of her numb funk. She finds it, in an unexpected place, and ends up right where she started: among the mama, baby and grandbaby Camellias of Charleston.

-- Whitney Teal

Lit Talk: Melissa Hart, Author of 'Gringa'

Author Melissa Hart's complex and dynamic childhood is the subject of her latest book, Gringa: A Contradictory Childhood. She spoke with The Urban Muse about the inspiration:

Urban Muse: Tell us about the inspiration behind Gringa.

Melissa Hart: Inspiration comes to me in the form of images--in the case of Gringa, I recalled a pack of Spanish flash cards that my mother had when we took language classes together at the local library. I couldn't get one image--a line drawing of a disembodied ear--out of my head. Really, it was that flash card that provided the initial inspiration to sit down and write the first chapter. I'd told part of my story--about my mother coming out and losing custody of me and my younger siblings--in my first memoir, The Assault of Laughter. However, I didn't feel that I'd written the story as eloquently or thoroughly as I could have, and so I set out to write it once more and expand upon it with more sophisticated prose and a greater sense of how the dissolution of my family affected me as a young adult. I'd also been reading memoir and fiction with recipes--Laura Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate, Diana Abu-Jaber's The Language of Baklava--and as food provided comfort and intrigue for me as an adolescent, I structured each chapter around a key recipe.

UM: Was it difficult to write about events that are so deeply personal?

MH: It is difficult to write about personal events. After almost thirty years, I still have a lot of pain regarding what happened to my family. Many women with kids who came out during the 1970s and 1980s lost custody of their children, and most don't want to discuss this. However, I think it's a critical period of history that needs to be explored, and while I shed many tears during my writing of Gringa, I also feel confident that this book offers insight into LGBT families and their value. The hardest scene for me to see in print is the sex scene in "Young Americans." I didn't want to include it, but my editor thought it was important. It's not erotic--more "theater of the absurd"--but I blush to think that my journalism students and my grandparents have read it.

UM: In addition to two memoirs, you've published a number of essays. Any tips on writing compelling essays? How is it the same (or different) from writing a memoir?

MH: Essay writing can be so much fun. It requires a lot less time commitment and research than a book-length memoir; however, many of the writing techniques are the same. You have to go into an essay with a compelling introduction, and the whole piece is guided by a thesis (that is, a topic and a point you wish to make about that topic). I think it's important to include research, so that readers learn something about a subject, and you also need to include sensory details, stylish writing, vivid imagery, and a conclusion that really leaves people thinking. I get a lot of my ideas from what I'm thinking about or learning about at the time--for instance, I've just finished an essay exploring Jim Henson's "The Muppet Show," which was so important to my family in the 1980s, and which my three-year old daughter now adores. The trick was to make it personal, while exploring a universal truth and offering readers insight into the program and its influences on audiences then and now.

UM: Since you also teach journalism, what is the single most important thing that you impart to students each semester?

MH: I think the single most important thing I impart is that publication doesn't have to be this far-off dream that one spends years pursuing. It's something that can happen within a few weeks of learning a few crucial skills, such as constructing a compelling short essay and submitting it to specifically-targeted editors with a succinct cover letter. My Feature Writing 1 students regularly get published in places including The Washington Post, The Oregonian, Horizon Air Magazine, and High Country News. They're amazed that editors are willing to publish their work, but why not, if they've worked hard at multiple drafts and submitted a polished piece?

UM: What books would you say should be required reading for aspiring essayists and/or memoir writers?

MH: I'm an evangelist for Sue William Silverman's Fearless Confessions: A Writer's Guide to Memoir [ed. note: Sue has also shared her insights on this blog]. It's simply the most thorough and inspiring book I've found for memoir writers, regardless of the level of experience. And I regularly read and assign the "Best American" series to my students; in particular, I like "Best American Magazine Writing" and "Best American Essays." I also really enjoy the writing in the literary journals "Creative Nonfiction" and "Fourth Genre." They're essential reading for memoirists.

-- Whitney Teal

Recognize! Happy Black Girl Day

Are you on Twitter? We are (@UptownLiterati) and we follow an amazing "twibe" of folks, mostly women, and largely women of color. Today, one (@SisterToldja) declared January 7 #HappyBlackGirlDay. How much do we love that?

If you're looking to celebrate offline, check out some of my favorite #HappyBlackGirlDay books:

What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day by Pearl Cleage. What would you do if you found out you were HIV-positive? For the heroine in my absolute favorite Cleage novel, you'd move to Idlewild, fall in love with an honest-to-God Black Adonis and raise a little bald baby girl. Happy Black Girl game proper.








Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. I read this book in high school and was so moved by Janie's determination to be a happy Black girl amid a town and culture that ignored and continually stepped on the dreams of her kind. In the words of Alice Walker, "There is no book more important to me than this one."









The Accidental Diva by Tia Williams. Inspired by shows like "Sex & The City" and the exploding Chick Lit genre of the '90s, Tia (who is currently Essence.com's Beauty Director) wanted to show that brown girls were there, living the life too. This book is very cute and funny and full of hot, steamy Black love. (Check the Clutch review, too).





For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf by Ntozake Shange. A classic celebration of Black girls in all their glory: Triumphs and Tribulations, Hurts and Happiness.

Twibe-member @MlleMitchell tweeted this amazing line from the play: "I found God in myself/and I loved her/I loved her fiercely." (via @sherealcool)







Black Girl in Paris by Shay Youngblood: Travel with this young Black woman all the way to Paris in pursuit of her passion, following in the footsteps of literary geniuses like James Baldwin, whom she revered. It reads like poetry, walking you through the protagonist's amazing journey and drawing you in with every intense emotion along the way. -- Nikita Mitchell







--Whitney Teal

Happy Holidays!

Hope you're enjoying the holidays (and the extra time to read) with the people that you love!

--Whitney

Green Living: Make Use of Your Books

Over at Apartment Therapy, they've featured a cool post on how to reuse your vintage books. You know. The ones collecting dust but you are loathe to get rid of? Well, bust out the creative thinking and a few old pieces of furniture and voila!

Photos: Apartment Therapy

SheReads: Bessie, The Fabulous Do-Gooder

SheReads looks at the reading lists of cool chicks. If you want to be featured, send an email to uptown.literati@gmail.com.

We are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For: Inner Light in a Time of Darkness by Alice Walker. "This book is a beautiful collection of essays and speeches by Walker that reflects wisdom, compassion, and social activism. This book took me on a journey with Alice Walker as she wrote about everything from childbirth, to love, to womanism, sexism, and life."

When Chicken Heads Come Home to Roost: A Hip Hop Feminist Breaks It Down by Joan Morgan. "I read this book in college but I still pick it up and read it every now and then, that is how much of an impact this book has had on my life. This book speaks on the reality of being an African-American woman and touched on male-female relationships in the African-American community. I was definitely able to see myself in several of the chapters."

A Piece of Cake by Cupcake Brown. "This book about redemption chronicles the life of the author as she goes through abuse, neglect, prostitution, and then on to college and law school to become a successful lawyer and, now, author. I love stories of redemption, because in life we will all enter a season that will end in redemption at one point or another."

Bessie is an Atlanta-based young women's advocate and social entrepreneur who's equal parts fabulous and philanthropic. Catch up with her at Twitter.com/FabDoGooder or via her Web site, TheFabulousDoGooder.com.