Extraordinary People- Urmi, Geeta, Usha

New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof finds himself in India talking to these three amazing women. Watch the video diary about the women below.

You have two choices, her husband told Urmi Basu, your either stay in this marriage or you continue working with prostitutes. Urmi chose to help the children of prostitution gain an education.

You either stop being friends with a girl we disapprove of, her parents told the eleven year old Geeta Ghosh, or you get out of her house. Geeta was kicked out, fate led her to prostitution, which led her to getting out of it.

You either keep your mouth shut about our activities, neighborhood gangsters threatened Usha Narayane, or we rape and kill you too. But Usha threatened them in return and in doing so mobilized her community.

Notes from the Singapore Writers Festival 2005

Jerome Kugan reports from the festival what it means to be an Asian and what it means to be a writer Asian.

And, anyway, what does it mean to be an ‘Asian writer’? Whose/which Asia are we talking about here? The Asia that stands as the Exotic Other to the Occidental Imagination (fantasy), or the Asia that is lived through the spectre of the Asian whose Other is an Occidental concept of Asianness (banana insecurity/double fantasy). Most of us who live in Asia don’t even consider ourselves Asians until we find ourselves in a context that demands us to identify ourselves as such
(a freakshow in the literary circus...

What would it mean to a writer based in Malaysia or Singapore? Here we are, trying to point out the fact that we are a people constantly in flux, have always been so, and will continue to be. Goddammit, globalisation happens in the backwaters of the Third World too. And yet boxes await us.

Thai writer Rattawut Lapcharoensap almost rectified the situation by relating his experience as a writer living in between two worlds, not only geographically and culturally, but morally. Yet he did not – could not – deny the contention that perhaps what made his collection of short stories Sightseeing an American literary success was partly because he is seen in the American lit scene as a cultural (or more accurately, ethnic) anomaly.

Almost the same can be said of Wei Hui whose Asian chic lit style came across strongly in her anecdotes and exuberant if bimbo-ish personality. Here is an example of an Asian writer who unashamedly mines the exotic Asian factor for her books; practically throwing the explosive sex and Zen swill at the heathens. Good for her that she can do it and still look fabulous (what more can one ask for?). But alas, the testimonials left a metallic taste in my mouth (a lot more, it seems).

read it here

Worthy Read. 'Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide'

Does the single word 'genocide' carry so much weight that it warrants immediate attention, attention that might not be forthcoming to the statement civilians are being massacred in record numbers. In Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide Gerard Prunier, research professor at the University of Paris, discusses the application of 'genocide' the word as well as the nature of African conflicts in particular Darfur, a country in its own right before its 1916 incorporation into the British colony of Sudan.

"Unfortunately, whether the 'big-G word' is used or not seems to make such a difference," Prunier writes. "It is in fact a measure of the jaded cynicism of our times that we seem to think that the killing of 250,000 people in a genocide is more serious, a greater tragedy and more deserving of our attention than that of 250,000 people in non-genocidal massacres. The reason seems to be the overriding role of the media coupled with the mass-consumption need for brands and labels. Things are not seen in their reality but in their capacity to create brand images, to warrant a 'big story', to mobilize TV time high in rhetoric. 'Genocide' is big because it carries the Nazi label, which sells well. 'Ethnic cleansing' is next best (though far behind) because it goes with Bosnia, which is the last big-story European massacre. But simple killing is boring, especially in Africa.
Prunier"

Review by G Pascal Zachary in Salon
Review by Dominick Donald in Guardian

Why Readers Got James Freyed

It is not shocking that James Frey would agree to market A Million Little Pieces, his story about defeating drugs, as a memoir rather than a novel. He was a writer who wanted to be published and his story as 'novel' was rejected by 17 publishers. Neither should it be a surprise that publishers Doubleday came up with the scheme of marketing novel as memoir. Publishers after all need to sell thier product as best as they can. Truth then is dismissible at the alter of profit, ambition, fallibility and this litery con is merely an extension of the morally grey times we live in.
Few seem bothered by the distinctions between fact and fiction, exaggeration and misrepresentation, between forgetting and forgiving, lies and white-lies. There's a war being fought in Iraq. Water is labelled sugar-fat-cholestrol free. Oprah contends all is good for the sake of good and, if the source is falsehood, so what? At my Barnes and Nobles book club only one out of seven was upset by being Freyed, two said they never took memoirs literally anyway and the remaining four shrugged 'no matter, it was a good read.'

Whose Fault is Frey? asks John Dolan of eXile.

In a review I published in May 29, 2003, I started off by saying that AMLP was "the worst thing I've ever read" and went on to say that Frey was a phony, his characters recycled Hollywood types, his female lead, "Lilly," wholly invented and his story downright silly. Now that Frey's been caught, I'm getting lots of emails praising me for seeing through Frey. But it was easy. The real question is, why couldn't the rest of the literate public see it?

Publishers are just as guilty as the likes of Frey says columnist Russell Smith of The Globe and Mail

Both the Frey and LeRoy frauds were cynically preying on this publishing/media craving for celebrity. That craving comes from all of us: from our collective desire to know secrets about people we don't know. Another word for this is gossip. It was only a matter of time before a few bright people figured out how to exploit that prurience. Instead of proudly making art -- the most difficult aspect of which is indeed its made-up-ness, its artifice -- and being justifiably proud of inventing something that seemed real, they decided to hide its artness and call it something cheaper. They decided to call it gossip, and it paid.

The New York Times' Michiko Kakatuni weighs in with what truth means in and for our current culture.

They also coincided with our culture's enshrinement of subjectivity - "moi" as a modus operandi for processing the world. Cable news is now peopled with commentators who serve up opinion and interpretation instead of news, just as the Internet is awash in bloggers who trade in gossip and speculation instead of fact. For many of these people, it's not about being accurate or fair. It's about being entertaining, snarky or provocative - something that's decidedly easier and less time-consuming to do than old fashioned investigative reporting or hard-nosed research.

Children dead, yeah? so?

"This is a big lie," said Shah Zaman, who lost two sons and a daughter. "They dropped bombs from planes, and we were in no position to stop them. To tell them we are innocent."

The village of Damodola in Pakistan is enjoying Eid celebrations, akin to Christmas. It is visited by a US airstrike on the hunt for a Laden's doctor, Aymen al-Zawahiri.
17 villagers die including five women and five children.
Washington embarrased that Zawahiri not found.
I know. Collateral damage. Shrug. Shrug.