A Q&A with “Latina Leadership” editors and contributors for Hispanic Heritage Month

SUP: Tell us a little bit about Latina Leadership and how you came together to create this groundbreaking study.

Laura Gonzales: This book has been a long time in the making. The collection began as a project that Michelle Hall Kells discussed with Lorena Gutierrez and I as part of our work with the Cultivating New Voices Among Scholars of Color (CNV) program sponsored by the National Council of Teachers of English. That program and the community that stemmed from it continue to inspire and motivate my work in multiple ways. Through the process of co-editing the collection, my own orientation to understanding the complexity of Latinx experiences, mentorship, and leadership also continues to shift and grow.

Raquel Corona and Nancy Alvarez: We advocate for a model of mentorship that allows for the intersectional experiences of Latinxs in graduate school. It was important for us to continually reiterate how each of us required a different kind of mentorship to reach graduation and that’s what faculty need to remember: there is no cookie-cutter method to advocating for and mentoring Latinxs.

Michelle Kells: In my chapter, I find inspiration for my understanding of mujerista activism and Latina Leadership in the landmark mobilizing efforts of the women of Local 890 union in Bayard, New Mexico in the historic Empire Zinc Mine Strike of 1950-1952.  The embodied rhetoric of the more than 100 women (who self-identified as mexicanas) held the strike lines against racial, environmental, cultural, economic, and sexual violence for more than nine months. Most of the women’s names were ultimately erased over the past 70 years. My goal was to recover their names and the stories as heuristics of Latina leadership during the Cold War era in America—a climate we find ourselves re-living in many respects today.

SUP: What makes this study a model for emerging Latina leaders?

Michelle Hall Kells: The authentic, bold, and beautiful Latina voices reflected in the essays by each of the contributors to this volume, in my mind, distinguishes this book.  This is a landmark collection of the leading Latina voices in the field. This is the kind of book I have longed to read in our field for more than a decade. 

Raquel Corona and Nancy Alvarez: What really stands out to us is how this book looks at various roles Latina leaders are in within the institution of higher education. We really appreciated being able to focus on our graduate experiences, but we found it important to consider some of the pedagogical implications for others in the book. This diversity in content really shows the power of this book.

Cristina Kirklighter: For too long, many of us have felt pressure to stifle our experiences both internally and externally.  How many times have we heard that the personal does not belong in our research, writing, teaching or elsewhere.  The consequences of this to Latinas is enormous for it stifles others’ understanding of us.  As a former co-chair of the Latina caucus, I often heard from emerging Latina leaders that the caucus felt like home precisely because they felt free to share their personal experiences.  I have heard many do not feel at home outside the caucus because they feel misunderstood.  What better way to bridge these misunderstandings than with the personal for we want our emerging Latina leaders to foster multiple homes where they are accepted and respected.  My hope is that emerging Latina leaders will take this book to their institutional colleagues and ask them to read it.  Then, I hope they will ask their colleagues to engage with them in meaningful personal conversations about what has been written and shared.  Emerging Latina leaders deserve to excel in multiple homes, and the personal is one way of making this happen.

SUP: How were the contributors selected and what are their unique contributions?

Laura Gonzales: Our contributors were selected through our connections with CNV, through our own mentorship networks, and through a CFP that was shared with the NCTE Latinx caucus. What is really useful, in my opinion, is that the chapters speak to experiences in both K-12 and University settings. These experiences are often separated, and yet our contributors illustrate the many connections we can find and the community we can build across institutional boundaries.

SUP: What qualities do you feel future leaders need to succeed in this increasingly difficult world and academia?

Raquel Corona and Nancy Alvarez: Flexibility, the ability to adjust to circumstances you could never see coming and utilizing your support network inside and outside the academy. Graduate school taught us that we never know what we may encounter and that we will need people in our lives to support us as we move through that.

Michelle Hall Kells: Again, I must look to my own experiences in the field and this recent research of the women of the Empire Zinc Mine Strike.  Their leadership inspired the iconic (only McCarthy –era blacklisted) film “The Salt of the Earth” which has been recovered and circulated globally since the late 1960s.  Efficacious leadership must be grounded in solidarity, community, dignity, and standing squarely in our home ground—in our “querencia.” I had the distinct honor of working with four amazing new leaders and graduate students in 2018 on the Salt of the Earth Recovery Project: Elvira Carrizal-Dukes, Kelli Lycke Martin, Zakery Muñoz, and Steven Romero. For Further Information See: 

History of The Salt of the Earth

Cristina Kirklighter: Courage and compassion come to mind for qualities of success.  Let me paraphrase Maya Angelou when she said courage is the most important virtue for if you do not practice courage, none of your other virtues will be consistent.  Although it is not an easy road to follow, you will be respected by many, and, most of all, you will respect yourself.  In these trying times, compassion is an admirable and necessary quality.  Compassion and knowledge are partners for the better we know others, the more compassionate we become.  Fortunately, for most Latinas, family and friends have instilled this in us.

SUP: What do you hope readers take away from this book?

Laura Gonzales: I hope the book sparks conversation about the diversity embedded within the label “Latinx.” I hope we continue having conversations about how Latinidad as a concept in itself can uphold white supremacy (see for example, The Black Latinas Know Collective). I hope the stories shared in this collection spark future connections, conversation, and change. 

Raquel Corona and Nancy Alvarez: Don’t be afraid to make your own path in graduate school and academia. You may very well be forging a path not yet created in an institution / system that doesn’t know how to acknowledge your existence within it. Finally, find YOUR PEOPLE. They may be Latinxs or not, but just find the people who will see you, hear you, and hold you as you traverse this journey through academia.

Michelle Hall Kells: The experience working with my colleagues on this volume and researching the Empire Zinc Mine strike over the past five years has been some of the most satisfying experiences of my professional and personal life. I am indebted to our courageous editorial team at Syracuse UP who did share our vision and finally brought this gorgeous collection of Latina stories, voices, reflections, and models of leadership to publication.

Cristina Kirklighter: The answer is simple—to better understand Latina emerging leaders.

Bios:

Nancy Alvarez completed her PhD in English at St. John’s University and teaches first-year writing and developmental writing at Bronx Community College. Her research interests include writing-center studies, writing peda­gogy, digital literacies, language rights, and issues of access and equity for Latinxs in higher education.

Sonia C. Arellano is assistant professor in the Department of Writing and Rhetoric at the University of Central Florida, where she teaches courses on feminist rhetorics and visual/material rhetorics. Her research focuses on textile projects that address social justice issues, particularly at the inter­sections of migration and death. Her current book project examines the tactile rhetoric of the Migrant Quilt Project, which uses quilts to memori­alize migrant lives lost while crossing into the United States. Arellano also engages in quilt making as a necessary part of her research. Her scholarship can be found in Peitho as well as in the edited collection Rhetorics Elsewhere and Otherwise: Contested Modernities, Decolonial Visions (2019).

Stefani Baldivia is an archivist in the Meriam Library Special Collections and University Archives Department at California State University, Chico, where she performs reference, instruction, and outreach activities. She estab­lished the Chico State Diversity Changemakers Oral History Project to illu­minate the history of Chico State’s diversity and inclusion efforts. Baldivia’s research interests include diversifying the archives, flattening barriers to information literacy, and preserving social justice efforts in Chico, Califor­nia, and beyond.

Blanca Gabriela Caldas Chumbes es una transnational indigenous/Latina scholar, catedrática en estudios de segundas lenguas y educación elemental en la Universidad de Minnesota–Twin Cities. She obtained su doctorado en la Universidad de Tejas in Austin en la especialidad de bilingual/bicul­tural education and Mexican-American/Latinx studies. Sus investigaciones están enfocadas en la preparación lingüística y académica y activista de future bilingual teachers, minoritized language practices y pedagogía crítica Freire­ana y Boaleana.

Raquel Corona completed her PhD in English at St. John’s University and is a full-time lecturer at Queensborough Community College within the City Uni­versity of New York system. Her research interests include Latinx literature, rhetoric, Black and Latinx feminisms, as well as the study of the Latina body in various media. Her dissertation is a rhetorical exploration of how trans­nationalism affects the dissemination and circulation of stories about the Latina body and sex.

Christine Garcia is an assistant professor of rhetoric and composition at Eastern Connecticut State University, Willimantic, where she teaches in the First-Year Writing and Freshman Experience Programs as well as courses in Chicanx and Latinx rhetoric and literature. She earned her PhD in rhetoric and composition from the University of New Mexico and holds both a BA and an MA in English language and literature from Angelo State University.

Genevieve García de Müeller is assistant professor and director of the Writing across the Curriculum Program in the Writing Studies, Rhetoric, and Composition Department at Syracuse University. Her research interests include examining intersections between race and writing program administration, critical pedagogy, the rhetoric of immigration policy, and the discursive practices of migrant civil rights activists. She has work in the WAC Journal titled “Inviting Students to Determine for Themselves What It Means to Write across the Disciplines” (cowritten with Brian Hendrickson, (2016). Her most recent project is a forthcoming book on the deliberative rhetoric of immigration policy.

Laura Gonzales is assistant professor of digital writing and cultural rhetorics at the University of Florida. She is the author of Sites of Translation: What Multilinguals Can Teach Us About Digital Writing and Rhetoric (2018), which was awarded the Sweetland Digital Rhetoric Collaborative / University of Michigan Press Book Prize prior to publication in 2016 and the Advancement of Knowledge Award by the Conference on College Composition and Communication in 2020.

Lorena Gutierrez is assistant professor of teaching in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Riverside. She received her PhD in curriculum, instruction, and teacher education from Michigan State University. Her research highlights the ways Latinx migrant and seasonal farm-workers thrive in their educational pursuits in spite of the inequities they face in K–12 schools. In her dissertation, “‘Use My Name, They Need to Know Who I Am!’: Latina/o Migrant and Seasonal Farmworker Youth at the Interstices of the Educational Pipeline” (2016), based on a three-year ethnographic study, she examines the schooling experiences of Latina/o migrant farmworker youth in K–12 schools and in a high-school equivalency program in the Midwest.

Michelle Hall Kells teaches courses in rhetoric and writing in the Department of English at the University of New Mexico. Her research interests include public rhetoric (civil rights and environmental discourses), language diversity, sociolinguistics, and community writing studies. Kells’s scholarship centers largely on the public rhetoric of citizenship. Her most recent book is Vicente Ximenes, LBJ’s Great Society, and Mexican American Civil Rights Rhetoric (2018). Her previous book was Héctor P. García: Everyday Rhetoric and Mexican American Civil Rights (2006). She was the lead editor of the collected volumes Attending to the Margins: Writing, Researching, and Teaching on the Front Lines (with Valerie Balester, 1999) and Latino/a Discourses: On Language, Identity, and Literacy Education (with Valerie Balester and Victor Villanueva, 2004). Kells’s work has been featured in the journals JAC, Written Communication, Journal of Reflections, Journal of Community Literacy, Praxis, and Rhetoric & Public Affairs as well as in a number of edited books, including Cross-Language Relations in Composition (2010); Dialects, Englishes, Creoles, and Education (2008); TESOL Encyclopedia of English Language Teaching (2018); and Who Belongs in America? Presidents, Rhetoric, and Immigration (2006). She is currently working on a new book about women labor activists, environmental racism, and the landmark Empire Zinc Mine strike in New Mexico in the 1950s.

Cristina Kirklighter is a recently retired professor from Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi, and former editor of Reflections: A Journal of Public Rhetoric, Civic Writing, and Service Learning. She is the past cochair of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) / Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) Latinx Caucus (2009–14) and co-coordinator of the NCTE Writing and Working for Change Project, with a specific focus on documenting the histories of the identity-based NCTE/CCCC caucuses. With Diana Cárdenas and Susan Wolff Murphy, she co-edited Teaching Writing with Latino/a Students: Lessons Learned at Hispanic-Serving Institutions (2007), the first book focusing on Hispanic-serving institutions within a discipline.

Kendall Leon is associate professor of rhetoric and composition, with a specialization in Chicanx/Latinx/@ rhetoric, in the Department of English at California State University, Chico. Her teaching and research interests include cultural and community rhetorics, professional writing, writing program administration, and research methodology.

Aja Y. Martinez is assistant professor of writing studies, rhetoric, and composition at the University of North Texas, where she researches and teaches rhetorics of race and ethnicity, including the rhetorics of race within both Western and non-EuroWestern contexts. Her monograph Counterstory: The Writing and Rhetoric of Critical Race Theory (2020) presents counterstory as a method for actualizing critical race theory in the research and pedagogy of rhetoric-and-composition studies.

Cristina D. Ramírez is associate professor of rhetoric and composition at the University of Arizona, where she directs the doctoral program. She specializes in archival rescue and recovery of work by Mexican and Mexican American female authors. With Jessica Enoch, she coauthored Mestiza Rhetorics: An Anthology of Mexicana Activism in the Spanish Language Press,

1875–1922 (2019).

Ana Milena Ribero is a proud Latina, mother-scholar, and assistant professor of rhetoric and writing at Oregon State University. Her research and teaching focus mainly on the rhetorics of (im)migration, rhetorics of race, critical literacies, and women-of-color feminisms. Her book project explores “dreamer rhetorics”—the rhetorical productions of undocumented youth activism—during the Obama years. Her scholarship can be found in Rhetoric Review, Peitho, Performance Research, Present Tense, Decolonizing Rhetoric and Composition Studies, and The Routledge Handbook of Digital Writing and Rhetoric.

Mónica González Ybarra is assistant professor of bilingual education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Illinois, Urbana–Champaign. Her research examines the literacies and knowledges of Latinx/Chicanx (im)migrant young people through the use of Chicana feminisms, critical literacies, postcolonial and decolonial frameworks, and critical theories of race and citizenship. Drawing on scholarship across the fields of education and ethnic studies, her work is concerned largely with challenging and disrupting normative, colonial notions of knowledge pro-duction by centering the voices, experiences, and ways of knowing of youth of color. 

September 15, 2021 | Categories: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Pride Month Featured Interview with “Gay is Good” Editor Michael Long

To commemorate Pride Month, a celebration of the progress made in the fight for equality among the LGBTQ community, SU Press interviewed Michael Long, the editor of Gay is Good: The Life and Letters of Gay Rights Pioneer Franklin Kameny. Long is the author or editor of numerous books on nonviolent protest, civil rights, politics, and religion.

SUP: You’ve published books on Jackie Robinson, Thurgood Marshall, Martin Luther, and other historic figures. What drew you to civil rights activist Franklin Kameny and how important did you feel it was to tell the world his story?

Michael Long: I first came across Kameny when researching connections between the modern civil rights movement and the early LGBTQ rights movement. That research led me to the collection of his papers at the Library of Congress, where I found a treasure trove of his unpublished letters.

I’ve read thousands and thousands of letters in my life—Robinson’s, Marshall’s, Bayard Rustin’s—and I dare say I’ve enjoyed none more than Kameny’s.

 I was captivated not just because of their rich historical quality, but especially because of their style. His letters are strident and loud. Clear and logical. Demanding and urgent. Full of capitalized words and exclamation points. Like his brash personality, they’re brutally honest and transparent. Kameny bled all over the page.

Given my long-term interest in the letters of historical figures, you can understand why I was hooked. 

I was also attracted to the project because at that time there was no other single book devoted to Kameny. Historians had largely ignored him, even though he was one of the most influential leaders of the early LGBTQ movement. So telling his story was important for correcting his ongoing erasure from much of history.  

SUP: How does your book and the 150 letters included give voice to his drive for equality?

Michael Long: The letters track Kameny’s transition from a relatively closeted gay man to an activist picketing the White House and marching through New York City.

Kameny was fired from his federal job as an astronomer during the height of the Lavender Scare, when the federal government deemed LGBTQ individuals as significant threats to national security. Typically, gay men and lesbians fired during at this point retreated into the private sector without publicly protesting their dismissals. But Kameny was far from typical.

Not long after he begged for the return of his job—and I mean begged—he began demanding equality for all “homosexuals” in the federal government and throughout the public square. It’s really a breathtaking transition. The letters show how the government unintentionally radicalized him and pushed him to become a hard-driving pioneer in the early homophile movement.

Perhaps what’s best about Gay Is Good is that it offers Kameny’s unfiltered voice. The letters reveal his feelings in all their intensity—his despondency after losing his job, his fury at the government’s treatment of “homosexuals,” his arrogance when dealing with anyone who wants to treat LGBTQ individuals as second-class citizens, his relentless passion for gay rights everywhere, and his pride about making the government treat LGBTQ individuals with respect, dignity, and equality.

SUP:  Why do you feel Franklin Kameny isn’t as well-known as Harvey Milk when it comes to LGBTQ history?

Michael Long:  Kameny had a much greater impact on the national LGBTQ movement than Milk did, especially in shaping federal policy, declassifying homosexuality as a mental disorder, and organizing marches for gay rights at the White House and other public institutions long before the Stonewall Uprising of 1969. But Kameny could be abrasive, and he possessed none of Milk’s political charm and willingness to compromise. He alienated a lot of people.

Milk was also seemed more adept at building a constituency of younger people in the growing LGBTQ movement, the ones who would become its future leaders. Compared to Milk, Kameny appeared staid and conventional. Plus, after Milk was assassinated in 1978, his life took on a near-mythological quality.

SUP:  What unique contribution does Gay is Good make to LGBTQ history?

Michael Long:  Gay Is Good gives Kameny his rightful place in LGBTQ history, and it makes a compelling case that his name deserves to be uttered in the same breath as Milk’s. Indeed, our book clearly shows that it’s utterly impossible to tell the story of the early LGBTQ rights movement without placing Kameny at its center.

By the way, one of the interesting things about the early LGBTQ rights movement in the United States is that it’s so diffuse. Unlike the black civil rights movement, the LGBTQ rights movement never had a Martin Luther King, Jr. figure—a single leader who represented the general movement. But this does not mean that the LGBTQ rights movement lacked individuals whose ambition was to become its national leader. In fact, Gay Is Good shows that Kameny struggled mightily to become the single leader. He failed at that, but he certainly gave it his all. 

SUP: Are there a few specific letters or writings that really stood out to you when working on the book?

Michael Long: One of my favorite excerpts comes from a letter he wrote to his mother in 1972:

“Some thirty years ago, I told you that if society and I differ on anything, I will give society a second chance to convince me. If it fails, then I am right and society is wrong, and if society gets in my way, it will be society which will change, not I. That was so alien to your life that you responded with disdain. It has been a guiding principle in my life. Society was wrong. I am making society change.“

Another favorite writing comes from his petition to the Supreme Court. Given the year he wrote this—1961—it’s quite the radical sentence:

“Petitioner asserts, flatly, unequivocally, and absolutely uncompromisingly, that homosexuality, whether by mere inclination or by overt act, is not only not immoral, but that, for those choosing voluntarily to engage in homosexual acts, such acts are moral in a real and positive sense, and are good, right, and desirable, socially and personally.“

Still another comes from a 1965 letter he wrote to the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB), who had expressed reservations about picketing for “homosexual rights”:

“[W]e were informed that DOB would picket only when the action was backed by the larger community.            

First, this is arrant nonsense! When one has reached the stage where picketing is backed by the larger community, such picketing is no longer necessary. The entire force and thrust of picketing is a protest on issues not yet supported or backed by the larger community, in order to bring issues to the fore, and to help elicit that support.

Second, this is in keeping with a mentality which has pervaded this movement from its beginning—homosexuals must never do anything for themselves; they must never come out into the open. They must work through and behind others. They must never present their own case—let others do so for them. We have outgrown this “closet queen” type of approach, and it is well that we have.“

SUP:  Are there any misconceptions about Franklin Kameny that you’d like readers to know about?

Michael Long: I’m less concerned about misconceptions than I am about the lack of basic knowledge about Kameny’s life and legacy. I implore the readers here to dig in and learn about the person I consider to be the most important pioneer of the early LGBTQ rights movement. 

SUP: If a movie was made about Franklin Kameny, what actor do you feel would best portray Kameny’s powerful voice?

Michael Long: Billy Eichner would be an excellent choice!

 

June 1, 2020 | Categories: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Waleed Mahdi on Arab Americans in film

Waleed Mahdi discusses his forthcoming book, Arab American in Film: From Hollywood and Egyptian Stereotypes to Self-Representation, and talks about the politics of portraying Arab Americans in the cinema.

SUP: Your work, Arab Americans in Film, compares Arab American portrayals in both the movie making hubs of Hollywood and Egypt. Why these two culture centers? And what is gained by surveying these film landscapes side by side?

WM: Indeed, these are important movie-making hubs. For decades, Hollywood filmmakers have produced works that model good citizenship and normalize what it means to be American in ways that alienate Arab and Muslim Americans along with indigenous Americans, Latino/a Americans, Asian Americans, Jewish Americans, and African Americans, among other minorities. When it comes to subverting Hollywood in the Arab world, the most important media culture to examine is that of Egypt, home to the largest, most popular, and most prolific Arabic film industry. Egypt is the most populous country in the Arab world and boasts a critical history in developing anticolonial and postcolonial narratives of struggle for Arabic and Islamic identities.

Both industries have played major roles in mediating the collective imagination of the dominant forces in the two respective cultures. Comparing them reveals clues about East-West polarization in the cultural imaginations of “Self” and “Other” that exist in both US and Arab nationalist rhetoric. Despite major differences between the two cinematic industries in power, production, and circulation, I argue, the filmmakers in these filmic sites have subjected their imagery of Arab Americans to binaristic portrayals through glorification of Americanness and vilification of Arabness in Hollywood and vice versa in Egyptian cinema, leaving no imagination of Arab Americans as complex communities defined by a multitude of identities and  experiences.

SUP: Today’s media environment is a crowded one. From traditional forms like broadcast television and music, to new social media platforms and streaming services, audiences don’t have to look far for cultural productions. Why did you choose film as the means for your comparative analysis? What does film uniquely offer as a site of inquiry?

WM: It is true that our age is saturated with content, especially with the quality improvement of television series and emergence of social media as well as subscription-based platforms. Film remains an important medium with multi-layered importance in popular culture, especially in countries like the United States and Egypt, as it serves a venue for both entertainment and education.

Films are intriguing because they mold visual imagery into codes that reflect and shape both a nation’s collective memory and national identity in an entertaining way. They tend to be accessible to audiences regardless of their language competency, educational status, or cultural background. They often serve as educational tools in a world increasingly centered around, if not mobilized by, mediated images and messages. They also have the power to function as tools for visibility, podiums for authenticity, and mirrors of reality.

And when adding the enriching effects of genres, it becomes obvious that the medium of film is a vehicle of thoughts and emotions that is often packaged as mere entertainment, but that carries the power to connect with audiences in personal terms, voice social commentary, mobilize public sentiments, and patrol the boundaries of national and cultural realms of belonging.

And the process of inclusion and exclusion that goes into all aspects of film making presents itself as a rich site for analysis of constraints and monopolies of power. Therefore, I should emphasize the instrumentality of film imagery especially in relation to this book’s critical site of inquiry, i.e., identity and representation.

SUP: How have your experiences influenced and inspired the task of writing this book?

WM: One of the key contributions of the book is to illustrate how Arab Americans’ struggle for belonging and citizenship is not exclusively a product of US Orientalist and racialized histories. I rather imagine this struggle as one against existing polarizations in the cultural imaginations in both US and Arab state nationalist narratives. This argument is inspired by my personal experience as an Arab American of Yemeni background constantly wrestling with American, Arab, Muslim, and Yemeni narratives of belonging and citizenship.

In my travels, I have encountered conflicting public attitudes and government policies preconfigured to define me and confine my identity within a specific national, ethnic, or even religious frame. During trips to Malaysia, Turkey, Lebanon, Egypt, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Morocco, and Yemen over the past few years, people would often question me about US foreign policy towards Arabs and Muslims. Uniting such questions, in most cases, was not so much interest in my scholarship but rather a desire to read my responses through the prism of allegiance. My interlocutors sought to package me as either an American or a Yemeni—identities implicitly presumed to be incompatible.

In the meantime, my return story to the US in the aftermath of every overseas trip has involved an additional layer of security, whether before boarding in Tokyo, London, Dubai, Doha, and Amman, or when landing at Chicago’s O’Hare airport. The “SSSS” designation on my boarding passes, which stands for Secondary Security Screening Selection, speaks of an institutional anxiety around my ethnic background and conflates it with a potential act of terrorism.

Since I consider myself as a film buff, I have watched hundreds of films that perpetuate the sense of alienation that I have experienced in travels and while growing up in both Arabic and American cultures. This sense of alienation strips Arab Americans like me of our capability of occupying our own third space, one that does not have to be completely rooted in either Arabic or American cultures, and one that does not present Arab Americans as either aliens to our American culture or traitors to our Arabic heritage. And that’s why the book adds emerging Arab Americans films, limiting as they may be, as an important site for projecting a sense of Arab American authenticity that is about how Arab American individuals define themselves rather than how others define them.

SUP: The American dream is one subject that Egyptian cinema constantly returns to in its portrayals of the Arab American experience. In certain segments of US society there is an increasing disillusionment surrounding the idea of the American dream. Do you see a similar cynicism toward the American dream in more recent Egyptian films?

WM: Egyptian filmmakers have always attached a sense of disillusionment to the American dream and presented it as unrealizable and unrewarding, urging their audience to seek out their own dreams in Egypt. As early as the film Amricany min Ṭanṭa (An American from Tanta, 1954) and as late as Talq Senaʿi (Induced Labor, 2018), Egyptian films have done so as part of a nationalist critique of the public fascination with the American culture. And as I argue in the book, this sentiment is driven less by a hatred of the US than by a sense of insecurity, loss, and anxiety regarding Egypt’s relative appeal as a place to live in and build a future. This is especially the case since many Egyptians would express a desire to live in the US, where hard work, social mobility, and justice are relatively cherished. Some Egyptian corporations have even capitalized on this fascination with the American dream via consumerist trends that primarily market US commodities, pop culture products, and shopping malls.

That’s why Egyptian films not only articulate disillusionment in the American dream but also imagine and advance an alternative Egyptian dream, one predicated on deterring Egyptians from leaving their homeland. This alternative dream will be made in Egypt, one in which migrating in search of social mobility, individual success, and even personal ambition is considered a selfish measure divorced from a commitment to one’s own Egyptian community. It is also worth noting that this simultaneous critique of and construction of alternatives to the American dream not only is limited to the films’ portrayals of Egyptian immigrants but also is deeply critical of the Egyptian elite’s promotion of consumerism and neoliberal economics as a global fulfillment of the American dream in Egypt.

As for American-based experiences, the American dream has always been a socio-political construct meant to uphold the American nationalist project, often entrenched in white privilege, institutional racism, and discrimination against people of color. The surveyed Arab American films in the book both celebrate and critique the limitations of the American dream. The films present Arab immigrant characters seeking to fulfill their own aspirations in the US but not without providing insightful critiques of the American dream notion as a celebratory site of inclusion in the American society. The lead Arab immigrant characters in films like American East (2007), Amreeka (2009), and The Citizen (2012) have various strives to fulfill material desires (e.g., houses, jobs, cars, etc.) and seek belonging to the United States, but they are forced to navigate both a racialized system and a post-9/11 reality that constantly challenge their American cultural citizenship. The characters enjoy happy endings with their dreams fulfilled or reconciled but the films are filled with situations and images that question the very idea of dreaming in a country that itself questions the presence of Arab immigrants.

The fact that many Arab American filmmakers and actors have struggled for decades to make their voices heard in Hollywood, an industry reluctant to embrace diverse Arab and Muslim perspectives, is a testimony to many of the critiques that the films themselves communicate.

SUP: In a post 9/11 world, there is an issue of typecasting Arab American talent. But, film making is a multilayered operation. From funding producers, to script writers, and even on marketing teams, what area of film making do you see as most in need of Arab American self-representation?

WM: 9/11, the growth of Arab and Arab American independent film festivals, particularly in the US, has provided Arab American filmmakers with a valuable alternative to casting and narrating their communities, with some limited success in distribution. And the prospect of providing support for Arab Americans seems promising with the competitive rise of such content-streaming services as Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu. Yet, Hollywood presents an institutionalized challenge for truly diverse narratives and experiences. Most Arab and Arab American actors, for example, have struggled against a casting practice that feeds on their vulnerability. Their roles are usually subsidiary and deeply entrenched in a racial hierarchy—despite evidence suggesting consumer demand for more diversity in lead roles.

It is certainly hard to prioritize any aspect of film making because production, writing, acting, filming, and marketing are all parts of a crucial process in film making. But I see the most urgent and past due change within Hollywood is to mainstream images of Arab Americans’ experiences beyond stereotypical lenses of national security and foreign policy. While some Arab American actors like Emmy Award winners Tony Shalhoub and Rami Malek have achieved prominence in Hollywood and transcended being cast in stereotypical ethnic roles, I am not convinced that success for such actors should only be limited to the desire of the privilege of being non-racialized in the industry.

I am for once hopeful that Hollywood’s production companies will experience a shift from their institutionalized lack of appetite to entertain non-mainstream perspectives, particularly ones that feature critical voices and ethnic community narratives. But this will not be possible without truly embracing the notion of multiculturalism. Until then, Hollywood’s positive portrayals of Arab Americans are merely sympathetic and function no more than tokens for inclusion in films that primarily entertain white perspectives.

May 20, 2020 | Categories: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

International Women’s Day

In celebration of International Women’s Day, we asked our acquisitions editor Peggy Solic to share a few of her favorite SU Press women’s studies titles. Her selections show the essential role women have played in societies around the world, inspiring females to continue working towards equality between genders.

Gladiators in Suits: Race, Gender, and the Politics of Representation in Scandal edited by Simone Adams, Kimberly R. Moffitt, and Ronald L. Jackson II.

Respectability and Reform: Irish American Women’s Activism, 1880-1920 

by Tara M. McCarthy

Reservoir Year: A Walker’s Book of Days 

by Nina Shengold

Interpreters of Occupation: Gender and the Politics of Belonging in an Iraqi Refugee Network 

by Madeline Otis Campbell

March 8, 2020 | Categories: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Mid-Winter News and Reviews

The Middle East Journal included Political Muslims: Understanding Youth Resistance in a Global Context, edited by Tahir Abbas and Sadek Hamid, in the Winter 2019 volume. Their accolades included, “The agency and diversity of young Muslims are demonstrated, which not only helps us to better understand Muslim youth within Western societies but better informs engagement with those around the globe, including the Middle East.” 

Making Peace with Referendums: Cyprus and Northern Ireland, written by Joana Amaral, was recently praised by the Nationalism and Ethnic Politics journal. The book was described as “an extremely welcome addition to the field” that is “likely to remain relevant so long as there are agreements put for public approval.” 

The Asian Review of Books called Gaia, Queen of Ants “so impressive is the novel that one need not be familiar with other Uzbek works or culture, or even other Central Asian writing, to recognize its high quality. Any patience the novel may demand from the reader is an effort well-rewarded.” 

Author Talks and Interviews

• Author Charles Kastner took a quick trip to New York City to visit New York Road Runner’s RUN CENTER for an interview on ‘Gotta Run with Will!’. He spoke with Melanie Eversley about his latest book, Race Across America: Eddie Gardner and the Great Bunion Derbies. This engaging interview discusses the history of black runners and the struggles they persevered through during these transcontinental races.  
• Elizabeth Mannion, co-editor of Guilt Rules All, is participating in a Celtic Noir at the Tenth Annual St. Augustine Celtic Music and Heritage Festival on March 14^th. A Celtic Noir is a celebration of Irish mystery and crime writers, including ‘Question & Answer’ opportunities, a panel discussion, and book signings with the authors.
• Author Chuck D’Imperio was recently interviewed by the Ithaca Times. He and Andrew Sullivan discussed the fascinating historic homes he located throughout Upstate New York in his latest book Open House: 35 Historic Upstate New York Homes. 
• Joshua Stacher, author of Watermelon Democracy, recently discussed his latest book on OpenDemocracy.

Ursula Lindsey’s The New York Review of Books piece on Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish featured several books, including Khaled Mattawa’s Mahmoud Darwish: The Poet’s Art and His Nation. 

Tablet reviewed Moishe Rozenbaumas’ autobiography, The Odyssey of an Apple Thief, calling it “a remarkably compelling read.” This review praises Rozenbaumas’ ability to objectively reflect on many decades of his life, stating “Rozenbaumas is eager to reflect on his life, good and bad, rather than gloss over the difficult and unflattering moments.” 

March 6, 2020 | Categories: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

2019 Veterans Writing Award Winner!

We are thrilled to announce the winner of the 2019 Veterans Writing Award is Dewaine Farria for his novel Revolutions of All Colors. Farria’s writing has appeared in the New York Times, CRAFT, Drunken Boat, Outpost Magazine, and on the Afropunk website. He is a frequent contributor to The Mantle. He holds an MA in International and Area Studies from the University of Oklahoma and an MFA in Creative Writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. As a U.S. Marine, Dewaine served in Jordan and Ukraine. Besides his stint in the military, Dewaine has spent most of his professional life working for the United Nations, with assignments in the Russian North Caucasus, Kenya, Somalia, and Occupied Palestine. He presently lives in the Philippines with his wife, daughter, two sons, two cats, and a dog.

Farria answered a few questions for us about his writing and what inspires him.

SUP: Has your military service influenced your writing? In what ways?

DF: The Marine Corps taught me how much of life revolves around consistency and habits. The discipline I developed in the Marine Corps helped shape my, “every morning, butt in the chair” approach to writing. Certainly, my time in the military also heavily influenced my thoughts on patriotism, masculinity, and violence—themes that frequently pop up in my work.

SUP: You’ve published both non-fiction and fiction in various print and online platforms. Do you see each as engaging with the reader in different ways?

DF: Good writing—whether it be poetry, fiction, or non-fiction—conveys truth. I consider myself a pretty forgiving reader. For a good story I’ll tolerate self-indulgent language, grammatical liberties, and slips in point of view. What I can’t abide is dishonesty; nothing disengages me from a piece of writing more quickly than the creeping desire to call “bullshit.” Convincing the reader to trust your narrator is the challenge and this is true regardless of genre or point of view—including for pieces with heavily journalistic elements (like this essay that I wrote for the New York Times last year).

SUP: What was the inspiration for this novel?

DF: My father inspired the novel. I built the book out of a short story called “Walking Point,” which contains a character loosely based on my dad. An early version of the story won second place in Line of Advance’s Colonel Darren L. Warren Writing Contest and can be found here.

SUP: Are you currently working on any writing projects?

DF: I’m about halfway done with a collection of short stories. Earlier this year, CRAFT published, “The Knife Intifada,” the first story from the collection. After I finish up these eight short stories, I plan to begin work on a collection of linked essays.

October 23, 2019 | Categories: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Celebrate Short Story Month this May!

Short stories are the perfect way to discover an author’s work, great for when you don’t have the time or mojo to commit to a 400 page novel, and a brainy impulse purchase on your phone or e-reader. This month we encourage you to pick up a new story collection or share one with a friend, and we have a few suggestions to get you started.

These six books and the rest of our short story collection is available for purchase online at our website.

May 6, 2019 | Categories: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Put Poetry First this Month with Books from Sheep Meadow Press!

April is the month when the world celebrates the importance of poetry in our lives. To join the celebration we’re highlighting five books of poetry from our press and our distribution partner, Sheep Meadow Press. We hope these selections will spark your interest, and encourage you to read a poem, share a poem, or write your own poem.

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To learn more or purchase any of the books listed on this page, visit our website!

April 1, 2019 | Categories: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Discover The Grandest Madison Square Garden

Learn about Suzanne Hinman’s latest book in our interview where we discuss art, architecture, and scandal in 1890’s New York City.

The Grandest Madison Square Garden tells the story behind the 1890 construction of Madison Square Garden and the eighteen–foot nude sculpture of Diana, the Roman Virgin Goddess of the Hunt, that crowned it. Author Suzanne Hinman delves into the fascinating private lives of the era’s most prominent architect and sculptor, revealing the nature of their intimate relationship. She shows how both men created a new era of art which meshed European styles with American vitality. The Grandest Madison Square Garden tells the tale of architecture, art, and spectacle amid the elegant yet scandal-ridden culture of Gotham’s decadent era.

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Suzanne Hinman holds a PhD in American art history and has been a curator, gallerist, museum director, and professor. She served as the director of galleries at the Savannah College of Art and Design and was the associate director of the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth. We interviewed Hinman about her experience writing The Grandest Madison Square Garden to better understand the ins and outs of this time in history.

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What inspired you to write about the lives and achievements of architect Stanford White and sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens?

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It is so difficult to recall exactly, as I began more than 12 years ago, largely inspired, I would have to say, by the beauty of their creations, separately, and then even more so together. I had always loved the Italian-inspired architecture of McKim, Mead, and White, whether in New York, Boston, Washington, D.C. or anywhere else I could find it. I was also intrigued by the life of Stanford White, the most exuberant, amazing, creative of the three partners. When I first moved to New Hampshire, I visited the town of Cornish and discovered the incredibly beautiful work of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, set at Aspet, his home that sparked the beginning of the Cornish Art Colony and is now a National Historic Site. And when I discovered that these two men not just knew each other but were dearest friends who often collaborated together, it was even better.

I probably first discovered the Diana sculpture that topped the tower of Madison Square Garden while visiting the Metropolitan Museum in New York, where in a half-size version she welcomes visitors to the grand courtyard of the American Wing. It took a few years before I was able to see the actual surviving 1893 version Diana, reigning over the Great Stair Balcony at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and that was an amazing moment.

Which part of researching for the Grandest Madison Square Garden was the most personally interesting to you?

I truly loved it all. Of course, visiting archives that held the letters and notes actually written by my two key players, architect Stanford White and sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, was definitely an incredible experience–touching (in gloves) the pieces of paper, holding them in my hands, studying the signatures, the extra bits written in the margins, and all the wonderful information they revealed. Among the most important collections were the Avery Architectural and Fine Art Library at Columbia and the New York Historical Society for the papers of Stanford White and the McKim, Mead & White firm. For Augustus Saint-Gaudens, it was the Saint-Gaudens Papers at Rauner Special Collections, Baker Library, at Dartmouth College.

The second major source of research information was the newspapers of the day, and that was quite exciting also, finding contemporary accounts written the very day, filled with so much information, much of which had not been seen or noted for more than a hundred years. I loved the detective work, stumbling on amazing new bits as I searched newspapers archives now so accessible online. The discoveries I made, including a long-forgotten scandal regarding Saint-Gaudens and his nude models and a new theory regarding the crime-of-the-century murder of White at the Garden were quite exciting!

Do you think your background in art history has influenced your writing style? If so, how?

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I think it was an interwoven process, that my writing style derives from wanting to tell a good story and that led me to the field of art history. I fell in love with art and art history while still a teenager, when I wanted to know the stories behind the artists and their work. My background as an art historian has allowed me to know the sources and dive deeply into the research, but still, my goal remains telling a good story, not simply for an academic audience but for a general audience with an interest in art, architecture, history, life in the Gilded Age, and so forth. I should add that the book also examines significant elements of LGBTQ history, as well as the history of sports in America, so much of which occurred at Madison Square Garden.

What was the most difficult aspect of your twelve-year research and writing process?

There was no difficult aspect to the research and writing process. I absolutely loved it: from the excitement of discovery to putting the bits and pieces together into a good story that I could see unfolding inside my head. There was nothing I would rather do than sit at my computer in my messy little home office, spinning my straw into gold.

The difficult part came towards the end, finding just the right publisher who would realize the market for the book, that it was not written just for academics but for the general public and that there was a real audience for the subject. Luckily Syracuse University Press was that publisher, and the book fit neatly within their existing series on the history of New York state.

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Why read The Grandest Madison Square Garden? (in 50 words or less)

To start with a couple of kind reviews, “it’s a splendid story,” as “vivid and enthralling as a novel,” revealing the fascinating private lives of the era’s most prominent architect and sculptor while telling the remarkable and sometimes scandal–ridden story behind the design and construction of the fabulous 1890 Madison Square Garden and the nude sculpture that crowned it.

Read more about The Grandest Madison Square Garden and purchase the text on the Syracuse University Press website today!

March 22, 2019 | Categories: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Top 5 Valentine’s Day Reads

Cuddle Up With A Good Book This Valentine’s Day ♥

Check out our top five reads for Valentines Day! Whether you are reading on your own, gifting one to your partner, or discussing it with your girlfriends on Galentine’s Day, these books will not leave you disappointed.

1. Love Is Like Water

This collection of thirteen short stories centers around protagonist Nadia, who was born and raised in Egypt, educated in England, and immigrated to the United States. Her background mirrors the life experience of author Samia Serageldin, whose stories shed light on one woman’s exploration of identity through a backdrop of Egyptian history and everyday interaction with friends and family.
Serageldin shifts the narrative from Nadia’s grand-mother’s garden house in Cairo to the suburbs of North Carolina, revealing powerful portraits of cultural dislocation, faith, and multi-generational conflicts.

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2. Popular Turkish Love Lyrics and Folk Legends

This is the first illustrated anthology of Turkish folk poetry and legends published in the United States. Author Talat Hamlan brings together three of the most beloved Anatolian tales and legends with selected poems from four great folk poets—Yunus Emre, Pir Sultan Abdal, Köroğlu, and Karacaoğlan.
Divided into seven sections, each features four visual experiences which portray extraordinary images of nature, human figures, and emotions. They capture not only the splendor of nature in Anatolia but also the quintessential spirit of the legends and love lyrics that originated there.

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3. The Art of Party-Crashing in Medieval Iraq

He’s fond of anyone who throws a party;

he’s always at a party in his dreams,

for party-crashing’s blazoned on his heart . . .

a prisoner to the path of fine cuisine.

With this statement. author al-Khatib al-Baghdadi, a Muslim preacher and scholar, introduces The Art of Party-Crashing. This collection of irreverent and playful anecdotes celebrates eating, drinking, and the importance of having fun. Included are ribald jokes, flirtations, and wry observations of misbehaving Muslims to better familiarize readers with the ins and outs of everyday life in medieval Iraq. Translated from Arabic to English, The Art of Party-Crashing introduces the delights of medieval Arabic humor to a new audience.

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5. Improbable Women: Five Who Explored the Middle East

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, during the time of Ottoman rule, travel to the Middle East was almost impossible for Westerners. That did not stop five daring women from abandoning their conventional lives and venturing into the heart of this inhospitable region.
Improbable Women follows the pilgrimages of five middle to upper-class British women as they travel to Palmyra to pay tribute to the warrior queen, Zenobia. Divided into six sections, one devoted to Zenobia and one on each of the five women, Improbable Women provides a fascinating glimpse into the experiences of these intelligent, open-minded, and free-spirited explorers.

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4. Ladies of the Lake: Women Booted in Water

This collection of twenty-three interviews and 120 accompanying photographs provides a glimpse into the lives of the women who are drawn to the magical power of water and life in Lake Placid, New York. These ladies include eighty-two-year-old Helen Murray, who converted her camp to a popular club after World War II; the eccentric yet practical artist Margo Fish, who hand-built the enchanting Tapawingo compound out of twig and stone; and scratch-golfer and financial-expert Sue Riggins, who lost her one true love but held onto her camp on the water. This book is for anyone who visits or appreciates the Adirondack area, spends time on the water, and enjoys learning about the serendipitous lives of women everywhere.

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February 13, 2019 | Categories: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

A New Perspective on Margaret Drabble

While renowned British novelist Margaret Drabble is recognized for her fiction, her connection to the theater is what inspired her to experiment with dramatic form. Drabble’s two plays, Laura (1964), a television play, and Bird of Paradise (1969), a stage play, delve into the domestic life and social class of women in the twentieth century. In editor José Francisco Fernández’s new critical edition, The Plays of Margaret Drabble, both plays are included and accompanied by critical essays which provide valuable insight into the historical and social context of each.

Fernández is a professor at the University of Almería in Spain. He is the editor of Drabble’s short story collection A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman: Complete Short Stories, and is also a fan of Drabble’s writing. We interviewed Fernández about his latest project which explores the understudied body of Drabble’s work.

What inspired you to undertake this project?
I am very interested in the historical context that appears as a background to her novels and short stories. I knew that she had written two plays for the stage (one for TV and one for the theater) and when I read them I realized, first, that they were very good, and, second, that they reflected the ideological environment of a decade of changes in British history, the 1960’s, with great accuracy. I simply felt that these plays had to reach a modern audience.

What is the most surprising thing you learned while editing this collection?
I learned that the best way to be universal is by focusing on the local. The protagonist of Laura, for instance, is clearly a product of Drabble’s generation, a time when women were beginning to question the place they occupied in a patriarchal society. But, at the same time, the characters’ complaints can resonate in a myriad of situations today with any young mother feeling trapped in her assigned role. Margaret Drabble is able to capture the longings and the contradictions of female characters perhaps like no other contemporary writer.

Do these plays resonate with the current social/political climate? How do they reflect a very different era?
The protagonists of these plays do not blindly accept the tenets of the official discourse of the day; they are critical of the message transmitted from the spheres of power that were, basically, projecting a high level of conformity with what had been achieved by the welfare state.  As individuals, these women feel that they do not want to conform and that they want to grow personally and professionally without being judged or classified into feminine stereotypes. In that sense, the plays are very modern, that questioning attitude is much in need today.  The economic conditions of the day were very different, but the spirit is still valid.

What draws you to Margaret Drabble’s work?
I think she is an honest writer who bares her soul in every book, without subterfuges or tricks for the reader. The directness of her voice is what I find most compelling.

In what ways does her writing for the stage differ from her novels and short stories?
As an accomplished novelist, it is fascinating how Margaret Drabble immediately grasped the principles of theater writing… In her two plays, we actually listen to her female characters speak and explain themselves. There are, of course, dialogues in her novels, but here the medium is exclusively the spoken voice and it comes out with power and brio.

 

Convince someone to read Drabble’s plays in 50 words or less.
That’s easy; enjoy the pleasure of reading good literature. As an example, I’ll offer a quote from Bird of Paradise, when Sophy West, feeling the burden that is put on her shoulders, addresses the audience and says:

“It would be pleasant, of course, to think that these clichés had no relevance. It would be pleasant to dismiss them, pleasant to condemn their reiteration. I try to evade them, I evoke images to escape them – a golden bird, an emerald-green vest, a man who views me with neutrality – but it does not help me. History meets in my bones. It lifts my hand to pour the coffee at breakfast, it hardens my tones, it smiles in my smiling public face, it lifts my skirts and it bares my bosom. The bird flies away, alarmed by these mechanical snares.”

 

January 17, 2019 | Categories: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

AAUP #TurnItUP: THE NEIGHBORHOOD

An Author’s View of a Regional Press
By Michael Doyle

Syracuse University Press has an encyclopedic grasp of the region it holds so dear. It’s the literal truth; you can look it up. Or, better yet, you can buy it. The Encyclopedia of New York State spans 1,921 pages and captures it all, from the Adirondacks to the Tappan Zee Bridge and beyond. Each entry is a doorway, one New York curiosity opening to another.

But here’s the thing. The publication of that colossus in 2005 did not initiate nor exhaust the Syracuse University Press’s commitment to the Empire State. Instead, it was but another blossom of that which was planted with the Press’s founding in 1943.

Consider this: The same university press that still offers decades-old but still-fresh fiction by Walter D. Edmonds, he of In the Hands of the Senecas fame, published in the fall of 2018 Rural Indigenousness: A History of Iroquoian and Algonquian Peoples of the Adirondacks by Melissa Otis. See what I mean? Season after season comes the regional harvest, new generations arising.

By my rough count, the Syracuse University Press’s catalog offers upwards of 100 New York state and regional titles, of every tang and texture. There are histories, biographies and memoirs. There are novels, essays and field guides. There’s New York poetry, for Pete’s sake, and a slice of Upstate cuisine.

Two of the New York-related titles are my own, so I can testify to Syracuse University Press’s regional devotion. In 2004, the Press published my first book, The Forestport Breaks: A Nineteenth-Century Conspiracy Along the Black River Canal. Of late, it occurs to me that the book illuminates how a locality grows ever-larger under a microscope, revealing new depths in a ‘see the world in a grain of sand’ kind of way. This is what a university press’s regional line can do: It starts with a tight focus and deepens, and deepens more, until all those grains resolve themselves into the big picture, the beach itself.

So it was with The Forestport Breaks, which begins with a forsaken town of 1,500 souls and then expands into what a 19th century lawman called “the most damnable conspiracy in the history of our state.” A book like this also illustrates how a region imprints itself on a university press, and vice versa. Inside Forestport’s former Hotel Doyle, now a frolicsome bar called Scooter’s, we held, hands down, the zaniest book-signing in the history of university press book-signings. Autographs may fade; such memories endure.

One thing leading to another, Syracuse University Press this year published my new book, another regionally-rooted work entitled The Ministers’ War: John W. Mears, the Oneida Community and the Crusade for Public Morality. It shows, again, how a university press committed to a particular locale can sink new wells where strangers see only worked-over rock. The 19th-century, ‘free-love’ Oneida Community in Upstate New York has been much written about; what more might be said? The editors, though, empowered my peculiar slant, a deep dive into the life and times of the zealous minister, a much-published college professor, no less, who fought Oneida. It’s a very granular look, indeed.

Unlike Tip O’Neill’s aphorism about politics, all university press publishing is not local. Syracuse University Press, for one, balances its New York state offerings with specializations in Irish Studies and Middle East Studies, among other topics. It’s the region, though, that bears the press, and it’s the region that the press so artfully represents.

November 14, 2018 | Categories: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

A Conversation on Life and Writing with a Young Poet

Born in North Carolina by the Appalachian Mountains, Erin Fornoff now finds home in Ireland. As an author and avid poet who received an M. Phil in Creative Writing with Distinction from Trinity College Dublin, she’s performed at events across Ireland, the UK, and the US, and even co-founded Lingo, the first spoken word festival to appear in Ireland and for which she was Program Director. In the spirit of National Poetry Month, we interviewed Fornoff about her debut collection of poems, Hymn to the Reckless, and more.

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1. What was the inspiration behind your collection of poems, Hymn to the Reckless?

The collection doesn’t really have one central theme, though it touches heavily on the path a life takes from a forest-filled childhood to a country across the ocean, and the reckoning of those shifts. It looks at ways we take risks and why and what happens when we do. It’s me trying to make sense.

2. You were born by the Appalachian mountains of North Carolina, and now reside in Ireland. How would you say this sense of home you find in multiple countries influences your writing?

It’s a hugely strong influence. I write about home constantly, and grapple with those choices—do I stay or go? Where is home and what does it mean and can it come to mean something different? A poet once told me that new poets write about their childhood until they exhaust it and then they move on to other topics. Perhaps I haven’t exhausted it yet. Identity is an inescapable theme in poetry and I find myself becoming more Irish and differently American, and yet never fully Irish and missing America, and poetry is probably my central vehicle for figuring my own muddled head out.

3. Is there any one thing you hope readers take away with them after reading your poetry, specifically Hymn to the Reckless?

Take a risk now and then. Find home wherever it springs up. And don’t be scared of going to spoken word shows.

4. What was the most rewarding aspect of creating this collection? The most difficult?

I was really touched by the process of having a publisher and editor. I had never had someone take such interest and care in my work, and be invested in making it as good as it could be. I found it really moving to be taken care of that way. I went to a writers retreat in a stone cabin on a cliff in County Kerry and sat, in a storm, with every poem I had written printed out or scrawled, and it was so cool to see them altogether, and turning into something (hopefully) greater than their parts.

5. Tell me about the poets who have influenced your writing.

I love Mary Oliver for her use of nature and the way she manages to pull off that rare trick of saying exactly what she means (sometimes) and it not coming across as heavy-handed or twee. I try and fail at this – I’m forever getting edited with people saying ‘You don’t have to draw a neon sign blinking HERE IS MY POETIC POINT.’ Others I love are Philip Levine, Danez Smith, Colm Keegan and Kate Tempest. Kate is a rapper, spoken word poet, playwright, and novelist, and her honesty and fierceness just bowl me over, every time.

6. Do you ever do spoken word? If so, what is it like to read your work aloud?

I started with spoken word and still feel most comfortable and energized by that space. I do around 60-80 gigs a year and it’s such a privilege. I love that communion between performer and audience. As a writer I get to explore the poems in a new way (and improve them over time) and I think they are experienced in a much different way by the audience. I love spoken word – and there is a great culture for it in Ireland. It’s the only place in the world I’ve been where a random person can stand up in a bar and start reciting a poem and the entire bar falls silent.

7. You’ve also written a novel. How was this different than writing poetry? Any advice for writers who find it difficult to switch between forms?

Ooooh it is so much harder. So much harder! You can dip in and out of poems and thus they kind of suit a small attention span, but a novel is a slog. You feel a bit like a crazy person, living in an imaginary world in your own mind. I would love advice for writers who find it difficult to switch between forms, because I am finding it difficult to switch between forms!

8. Where is your favorite spot to write?

I have a little desk in an art studio with a window and a blank white wall. Other people share the room, so there’s hubbub but not too much, and the desk is clear and ready.

9. What was one of the first poems or books you read as a child that you fell in love with?

I loved Shel Silverstein and used to be able to recite ‘The Perfect High’ from memory. All little kids books are essentially poems – so I guess I could say ‘The Runaway Bunny’? My favorite longer books were The Phantom Tollbooth and The Secret Garden, which I read until they fell apart.

10. What’s on your nightstand now?

Right now I’m reading Poet X by Elizabeth Agevedo, a cool melding of spoken word poetry and novel, as well as ‘Land of Lost Borders’ by my friend Kate Harris, about biking across the Silk Road. For poetry it’s ‘Flights Over Finglas’ by Rachel Hegarty.

April 6, 2018 | Categories: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

A Woman with a Passion for People and Prose

If you don’t know who Ruth Colvin is, we’re here to tell you why you should.

Now 101 years old, Colvin will be the commencement speaker for Le Moyne’s graduation ceremony this spring. As a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom and a member of National Women’s Hall of Fame, she’s also an icon to commemorate during Women’s History Month.

But let’s back track a bit… In 1962, Ruth Colvin founded Literacy Volunteers of America, now known as ProLiteracy Worldwide, an organization based in Syracuse, New York and dedicated to increasing literacy rates in adults. Having lived in Syracuse for some time, and as a graduate of Syracuse University, Colvin’s mission began within the snow-covered city. Just a few decades later, however, she has educated adults across the globe, and her organization has made its mark in about 30 countries.

In Off the Beaten Path, Colvin recounts stories of the people she’s met around the world. Traveling with her husband, she’s seen 62 countries. Dedicated to the power of lifelong learning, she’s also provided literacy training in 26 developing nations. Within her rich career, Colvin found the most rewarding aspect to be the connections she made with people from vastly different backgrounds, the values she learned from their cultures, and the similarities she discovered amongst all people.

A memoir of the people and places who impacted her during her travels, ranging from Madagascar to Cambodia, Colvin’s book is sure to open your eyes to the customs and values of the many societies and individuals who share our globe.

March 30, 2018 | Categories: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Books to Fuel Your Olympic Spirit

Alpine skiing, curling, figure skating – the Winter Olympics are full of snow-themed fun, but only for about two weeks. What are you supposed to do for the rest of winter? If you can’t get enough of the Olympics, we’ve got you covered. Check out our Olympic-themed books below:

In Tarnished Rings, Stephen Wenn, Robert Barney, and Scott Martyn tell the story of the Salt Lake City slush fund scandal of 1998-99. Following suspicion that these funds were used to obtain votes in the city’s bidding process, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) spent weeks under scrutiny. Delving into the IOC and the Olympic Movement, while also exploring the broader notions of leadership and crisis management, Tarnished Rings is sure to keep you entertained on a snowy day.

Diving a bit deeper into the world of business, Sports Business Unplugged features a collection of Rick Burton and Norm O’Reilly’s recent columns from the SportsBuiness Journal. Tackling current and complex subjects such as gender equity, diversity, and collegiate athletics, Burton and O’Reilly discuss the future of sports as well as their importance in maintaining a healthy and prosperous society.

Having been the Chief marketing Officer for the U.S. Olympic Committee during the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, Syracuse University professor Rick Burton recently shared his perspective on what it was like to be a part of the Olympic Committee with the local news.

To get you excited about warm weather and the Tokyo Olympics in 2020, our forthcoming book, When Running Made History, shares the firsthand accounts of  world-class runner, Roger Robinson, on the ways in which running has been interwoven with, and shaped by, recent history. Robinson recalls the victory of Abebe Bikila, an Ethiopian athlete in the Rome Olympics of 1960. He shares his unique perspective on the intimate intersection of history and running.

Whether you need more of the Olympics or simply want a day inside by the fire, these books are sure to offer you new perspectives on the long-running world-wide event.

 

February 20, 2018 | Categories: Uncategorized | Leave a comment