2020 #6 The New Jim Crow (Michelle Alexander)

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It is frustrating, in some sense, that so many people, myself included, are so late to reading and understanding the ramifications of this book, which was first published in 2010, with a revised edition in 2012.

Alexander clearly establishes that the legal system (from arrest to incarceration to post-incarceration) is not just a failure, but has both solidified and intensified a deeply entrenched racial caste system in the U.S. She explains the hows and the whys of the workings of this system with thorough evidence from legislation, court documents, prison studies, and news sources. She calls out the war on drugs, apathy, colorblindness, performativity, black exceptionalism--and this is one of the reasons it is such a valuable read. She ties it all together to show how the three distinct phases of mass incarceration: 1) the roundup, 2) formal control and 3) post-prison "invisible" punishment forms an undercaste of predominantly black and brown people who "because of the drug war, are denied basic rights and privileges of American citizenship and are permanently relegated to inferior status" (187).

The book has moments where a tighter editorial hand would have helped the fluidity of the information, but at the same time, the repetition of information help drives home the fact that Alexander's points are not siloed into "criminal justice reform" but need to be part and parcel of understanding race in America. I know that "essential reading" has become almost a cliché, but I do think this one really stands out because of the way it looks so deeply into how racism is truly institutionalized. This is not the story of one person. It is a story of systems, ideologies, and ultimately a societal mechanism that supports racism as an intrinsic element of this country's existence.

2020 #5 The Sun Also Rises (Hemingway)

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Well, I've finally read my first Hemingway. It probably won't be my last, despite my three-star rating. I wanted to like this enough to give it five stars--it is clever in places, and I'm generally ok with the "iceberg theory" and concision in writing.

I just had a difficult time connecting to any of the characters enough to care. Paired with the fact that bullfighting interests me not a whit, there wasn't a lot here to keep me interested. People drinking, talking about drinking, having sex, not having sex, fighting, not fighting...it also bothered me that the only female character was "liberated" (by 1920s standards) yet seemed to have very little else to do other than find a man de jour (or semaine). That this novel is semi-autobiographical does not help matters.

There are moments of very wry humor that I enjoyed, although parsing it from the anti-semitism was difficult. I did some background reading on the debate over the anti-semitic characterization of Robert Cohn. Jeremy Kaye, in the Spring 2006 issue of the The Hemingway Review suggests a re-imagining and re-reading of Cohn's character. That it dialogues with Hemingway's ideas of masculinity is certain. I'm just not sure I care for Hemingway's ideas of masculinity, or femininity, while we are at it. Sure, I get that gender fluidity was not a mainstay for most authors in the 1920s, but Hemingway's characterizations seem to reinforce the binary with such starkness that I found it difficult to engage.

I'm sure there will be those that read this and disagree heartily with my review. As I said, I haven't given up on Hemingway, and I'll probably turn to Old Man and the Sea next.

2020 #4 Learning Across Cultures (Eds. Mikk/Steglitz)

Learning Across Cultures Locally and Globally by Barbara Kappler Mikk
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

While this book is geared toward international and study-abroad programs, there are many essays within that will be helpful for anyone who teaches international students. There are places where the prose could have been curtailed and occasionally the boos seems like a thinly veiled advertisement for NAFSA (Association of International Educators--and the publisher of the book).

Depending on the needs of the reader, mileage will vary in terms of the relevance of each chapter. Jeremy Geller's "Terminology and Intersections" is a good primer for those new to the concept of interculturalism. Geller's parsing of "international" vs. "global" is a useful mindset for considering approaches to curriculum and pedagogy. Shanton Chang and Catherine Gomes offer valuable insights in their contribution, "International Student Identity and the Digital Environment." In addition to an overarching application of "mobile" and "interesecting" identities, the authors make several sound recommendations for how best to approach integration and use of digital platforms with a student cohort. This particular essay has immediate relevance to our current situation in 2020. Most importantly, the authors remind us that a student's self-identification in terms of culture (broadly defined) is central, and that even seemingly innocuous terms like "international student" can mean something different to the student than those who use the terms most frequently. Katherine Punteney introduces the concept of "intercultural competence" and continues some of the threads implied in the previous essay. As with the Shang/Gomes essay, Punteney's "Social Psychology in Intercultural Contexts" offers strategies and recommendations, notably four "essential strategies for creating safe and inclusive learning environments" (based upon Marcia Baxter Magolda's work).

While Yuliya Kartoshkina's "Neuroscience Behind Intercultural Learning" is interesting, it does seem to be a bit of an outlier in the collection. She takes a pro-learning styles approach and advocates for an understanding of neuroplasticity as an educational goal. Also valuable is the note that people with a shared culture often display shared neurological patterns.

Tara Harvey's "Design and Pedagogy for Transformative Intercultural Learning" is one of the more robust essays of the book, both in its clear delineation of best practices, as well as a 7-step adaptation of Dee Fink's backward course design principles. This would be a valuable essay to share with anyone involved in a curricular review process, and would offer a clear-cut and specific approach to "reverse engineering" (or backward design) for instructors, rather than just a general philosophy of considering "learning outcomes when constructing your syllabus". Barbara Kappler Mikk and Thorunn Bjarnadottir's "Intercultural Facilitation" is likewise a very useful offering for teachers. There are also helpful ideas about facilitation that could be implemented by students themselves in discussion-based classes and seminars.

"Mindful Reflection in Intercultural Learning" by Linda Gross and Michael Goh presents a few helpful models, specifically IDEO/Tim Brown's "T-shaped" competencies model, and Ash and Clayton's 2009 DEAL model for critical reflection. The former needed a bit more contextualizing, particularly in terms of distinguishing between disciplines and systems. The essay, however, provides a meaningful prelude to the work of James Lucas and Scott Blair that follows. In "Learning Outcomes and Assessment" the authors clearly differentiate between assessment and evaluation--something that is often overlooked in higher education. The subtext here is that if "grading" is assessment, it deserves to be inextricably tied to learning outcomes but should also be done in such a way that the feedback is geared toward continuous improvement in the student. What the authors don't say, but is implied, is that instructors should consider their own ability to give *timely* feedback when considering what is assessed in a course. There's a clear intention to align Bloom's taxonomy levels in learning outcomes, assignments, types of evaluation, and types of assessments.

Lucas and Blair echo the work of the others in describing the features of a global (rather than "international") focus, and perhaps the most salient is that the global:

conceptualizes culture from multiple perspectives and layers, with culture becoming more than race or nationality and involving a knowledge of self, one's place in greater society, and the biases, privileges, and implications of that place. (208)

As a whole, the collection admirably keeps this larger understanding of culture as a thread throughout the essays and has a transparent agenda in that regard. Most of the readings are accessible to those who are not entrenched in pedagogical theory, and each essay offers extensive bibliographies. The Appendix condenses the "take-aways" from each chapter, which is helpful for future reference and potentially for sharing out the information in a concise way across faculties and other cohorts who might find it useful.

2020 #3: Children of Virtue and Vengeance (Legacy of Orïsha #2) - Adeyemi

Children of Virtue and Vengeance by Tomi Adeyemi
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Well, I am disappointed that I am disappointed. 404 pages of the "Children of the Gods" not learning from their mistakes. And perhaps that is the point? Maybe we are all doomed to be victims of our own hatred?

I would have liked this second book in the Legacy of Orïsha to dig into the time of discovery that evidently took place after the climactic ending of Book 1. I wanted to know more about tîtáns, the Maji, the Iyika, reapers, burners, tiders, etc... Adeyemi deftly invited us in with the first book, giving us three characters whom we might really care about. In Book 2, however, she doesn't really follow up on the loose ends of the mythology, introduces characters who seem a bit "after-the-fact" (e.g. Nehanda), and seems to have a plot structure comprised of battles and little else. Again--I get that the war is tireless, but it doesn't necessarily make a convincing narrative for a book. I love that the characters are all flawed (that's a generous description in some cases), but there seems to be so little growth. They all make shades of the same mistakes. Over and over and over again.

But I haven't walked away regretting this reading experience. Adeyemi's gift for description and characterization has not faltered here. While I found myself frustrated with the same conflicts bouncing back and forth between the three main characters, I am still invested. I want to know where they are headed. I want to be invited back to the world of purples and golds. But I hope that the third book will let me stay awhile before the fighting begins. There's more to say about what lies behind the strife. There's more to tell us about what will be lost before we actually lose it. These are stories of truth-telling and testament, but they are still stories that have invited us to translate the lessons of a different world into our own. I'm not asking for a redemptive ending, but I hope Book 3 will help us dig in and invest a bit more into that different world so that the universality of the themes are illuminated even more clearly.

My review of Book 1 Children of Blood and Bone

2020 #2: Revelation (Makah Island Mysteries, Bk. 1) - Drayer

Revelation: Makah Island Mysteries Book One by Amy Drayer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was enjoyable from start to finish. I love Jo as the flawed protagonist because she's real. Within this mystery, Drayer weaves in a potent commentary about the importance of place, community, and the choices we make. The characters are vivid and multi-dimensional, full of individual mysteries both large and small. The Pacific Northwest is more than a backdrop here --the landscape comes alive with every plot point and narrative detail. This is no clichéd good vs. bad mystery novel, but instead a complex tapestry of characters and environments.

2020 #1: Art On My Mind (bell hooks)

Art on My Mind: Visual Politics by bell hooks
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"To transgress, I must move past boundaries..." ('Being the Subject of Art, 133). This is what bell hooks does in this 1995 collection of essays that is part historical survey, part critique, part manifesto. Artists (and artworks by) Alison Saar, Carrie Mae Weems, Emma Amos, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Lorna Simpson, and others are interviewed and interrogated in the best sense of the word. hooks amplifies intersectionality and lays bare the importance of "constructive critical interrogation" and how essential it is to creating a more authentic understanding. One can, in hooks's mind, celebrate contributions without having to offer wholesale acceptance, especially if there is an absence of understanding of one own's hegemonic role (her basic criticism of Robert Farris Thompson, for example). In essays like 'In our Glory: Photography and Black Life' she digs past both aesthetic and political dichotomies of "good" and "bad". She acknowledges that cultural critique is connected to capitalism and other societal structures:

Certainly a distinction must be made between having access to art and being willing to engage the visual on an experiential level--to be moved and touched be art. Many of us see art every day without allowing it to be anything more than decorative. The way art moves in the marketplace also changes our relationship to it. Often individuals who collect art spend more time engaged with issues of market value rather than experiencing the visual. ('Critical Genealogies: Writing Black Art', 108)

Roughly at the center of the collection is hooks's most personal (in some ways) essay, 'Women Artists: The Creative Process'. It is this short essay where we learn most about hooks as an artist and writer, and where some of her boldest statements appear:

Women have yet to create the context, both politically and socially, where our understanding of the politics of difference not only transforms our individual lives (and we have yet to really speak about those transformations) but also alters how we work with others in public, in institutions, in galleries, etc. For example: When will white female art historians and cultural critics who structure their careers focusing on work by women and men of color share how this cultural practice changes who they are in the world in a way that extends beyond the making of individual professional success? (131).

It is a more than fair question. And when we consider that this collection is from a quarter of a century ago, it is telling that I find these questions still very relevant--at least in my field of music history/musicology. I can't speak to the situation in art history, but I'd venture that not much has changed.

The only drawback of the book is that the reproduction of the artwork is not very good, and in some cases, the lack of color undermines some of hooks's most biting and salient points. The book warrants a new edition with color plates, but in lieu of that, the Internet does come to the rescue in most cases. It is worthwhile to take the time to look up the works featured in the book--some of them can be found on Phillips contemporary art and auction site, others on the artists's personal website (such as Carrie Mae Weems's personal website). Others, like Emma Amos's The Overseer, seem inaccessible. But hooks's prose throws many of these works into high relief through description and critique. But look for them---seek them out. Do the work. The rewards will be there.

This was an important book for me to read, especially because so many of its lessons are directly applicable to music history. It asked me to look at my own "wokeness" and wonder if I have ever been, as Emma Amos put it, "the white critic [who] feels safe focusing on the blackness and otherness of the artist instead of learning to look at the art" ('Straighten up and fly right: Talking Art with Emma Amos,' 188). How much has identity politics shaped by own understanding of music? Am I working against silence and erasure? I'm not sure. But I do know that spending time with these essays has helped me consider the boundaries that I have yet to transgress.

2019 #14: The Medium is the Massage (McLuhan/Fiore)

The Medium is the Massage by Marshall McLuhan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It is difficult to remember that this book was first published in 1967, as the message of the "massage" is as relevant today as it was then. The use of images to make its point should not detract from the prose, even though it is minimal. McLuhan's "allatonceness" and "global village" take on new resonance in the Internet age. Where it diverges is in thinking we privilege acoustic space--I don't believe that is true. I think we are still largely beholden to the visual, and when in 1967 McLuhan writes:

At the high speeds of electric communication, purely visual means of apprehending the world are no longer possible; they are just too slow to be relevant or effective.

we know that he could not have foreseen social media. But as many have noted, much of what McLuhan says holds up in our age.

This edition is wonderful and beautifully produced, from the Shepard Fairey cover (probably the most apt choice), to the self-referential New Yorker cartoon on the last page. It is both a (brief) history of media, and a harbinger of the future. Quentin Fiore's contributions are stunning, particularly in retrospect, and seem far less counter-culture now than they did in the 1960s. The use of visual images, creative typesetting, and lack of regular pagination help drive home McLuhan's point in this "inventory of effects." We get pulled into the "electrically-configured whirl" no less now than we did then, even if the medium has changed. One wonders if we aren't still "march[ing] backwards into the future." Media continue to be "extensions of some human faculty"--and in that, we see both the frailty and fecundity of our ideas.