MEMBER BLOG TAG: pen america
| Monday, May 4, 2009 12:08PM | | | | The Fiery One: Nawal El Saadawi | Tags: el saadawi, kwame anthony appiah, religion, pen america, pen world voices, female genital mutilation, freedom to write, egypt
| | | She appeared at three events. Wearing a brightly colored dress and beautiful silver hair, she would raise her hand. Each time she would ask a difficult, penetrating question in a spritely, musical voice that challenged an author on a PEN World Voices Panel. This time about the role of government, that time about writing and dreams. She always carried herself with dignity and smiled warmly at her neighbors. I kept wondering to myself, who is this woman?
I soon found out at the Freedom to Write Lecture at NYU's Cooper Union. For she was stepping onto the stage with the Ghanaian Kwame Anthony Appiah, President of PEN America and professor at Princeton. The woman was Nawal El Saadawi.
Dr. El Saadawi... | | | | | | | Monday, May 4, 2009 12:00AM | | | | Coming to Terms with Tatsumi, Manga | Tags: tatsumi, adrian tomine, gekiga, manga, pen america, hiroshima, a drifting life, shortcomings
| | | 60 million people can’t be nerds. If they are, they’ve probably come to terms with it.
The Japanese story form manga uses extended plotlines and a distinct pictorial style. It falls somewhere in between a graphic novel and a comic book. Widely read in Japan, where it is a $4 billion industry, Manga attracts a slightly more esoteric crowd in the U.S. Here such readers may be considered nerds. There, they are cool. But increased domestic sales suggest that manga may no longer be the stuff stashed in freshman lockers.
Manga depicts stories of everything from shogunate sword fights to the lives of ordinary salarymen. A typical issue may contain several shorter storylines and be between 200-400 pages in length. Most of... | | | | | | | Saturday, May 2, 2009 4:34PM | | | | Saro-Wiwa and the Closing Window | Tags: richard north patterson, larry siems, ken saro-wiwa, mosop, ken wiwa, jr., nigeria, niger delta, oil, royal dutch shell, pen america, freedom to write
| | | Fifteen years after the death of author Ken Saro-Wiwa, the Niger Delta region of Nigeria remains embroiled in conflict. Kidnappings and murders are on the rise, and America is more dependent on Nigerian oil than ever. If there is hope, it may be found in Saro-Wiwa's legacy of non-violent activism. But the window of opportunity may soon be closing.
A Little Background: Why we care about Saro-Wiwa
A little background is in order. Ken Saro-Wiwa largely became known to people outside Nigeria for his activism against the degradation of his homeland in the Southern part of the country. Oil companies, particularly Royal Dutch Shell and British Petroleum, had destroyed this once fertile wetlands through a combination of mismanagement, gas flaring, and regular oil... | | | | | | | Monday, April 27, 2009 6:36PM | | | | Swine Flu, Any One? (Fear Itself) | Tags: PEN America 10: Fear Itself, Lou Reed, swine flu, The Language of Fear, World Voices 2009, Guillermo Fadanelli, Anya Ulinich
| | | BREAKING NEWS: The Statue of Liberty has swine flu. Evacuate New York. Punish the Mexicans. And let's all OVERREACT ... please!
Yes, here we go again. Fear is back. It never becomes unfashionable, does it? Fear sells newspapers, and now we're all supposed to stop traveling. Europeans should stay in Europe, Americans should stay in America, and nobody should travel to Mexico because swine flu is going to do us in!
I doubt it but maybe it will. Perhaps swine flu is going to b blamed for every death in the US the next twelve months. It might surpass our fear of terrorist attacks and erectile dysfunction. All You Need Is Fear - isn't that what John Lennon sang... | | | | | | | Wednesday, March 25, 2009 1:30PM | | | | Freedom to Share: Ramadan's Hearing | Tags: Tariq Ramadan, Pen America, Freedom to Write, fictionthatmatters.org, immigration, 2d circuit, human rights, muslim
| | | Freedom to Share: The Tariq Ramadan Hearing
Anyone who has ever invited a friend to come to the U.S. has bumped into the ruthless bureaucracy of the immigration system. The process often works something like this:
Consular officer: I regret that your visa application was denied, Mr. Jonathan.
Jonathan: Why?
Consular officer: Because I think you plan to stay in the U.S.
Jonathan But I have a wife and two kids here in Djibouti, and plenty of money.
Consular officer: The decision has been made. Next in line, please.
Jonathan: Can't I appeal?
Consular officer: You can submit another visa application. Next, please.... | | | | | | | Thursday, May 29, 2008 11:24AM | | | | China from the 22nd Floor | Tags: Freedom of Expression, Writers in Prison, PEN American Center, PEN International, China, Hong Kong, human rights, Tiananmen Square, earthquake, Joanne Leedom-Ackerman
| | | On June 4 China will face the 19th anniversary of the killing of citizens occupying Tiananmen Square. Nineteen years ago as president of PEN USA, I remember well sorting through dozens of unfamiliar Chinese names as we sought to untangle what writers had been arrested. Today there are at least 42 writers imprisoned in China.
I wake up 22 stories in the air. Most of Hong Kong is in the air with thousands of high rises shooting into the sky. I’m in a cubicle—two small beds pressed against each wall, a tiny shelf between, a TV mounted on the wall at the foot of one bed. At the head of...
| | | | | | | Monday, May 12, 2008 1:27PM | | | | OLYMPIC RELAY-- A POEM ON THE MOVE | Tags: Freedom of Expression, Writers in Prison, PEN American Center, PEN International, China, Olympics, human rights, Tiananmen Square, poem relay, Joanne Leedom-Ackerman
| | | One of the more creative and moving responses to the Olympics in China this year is a poem relay, initiated by writers and members of International PEN. The poem June, was written by Shi Tao, who is currently serving a 10-year prison sentence for sending to pro democracy websites a government directive for Chinese media to downplay the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests.
You may recall in 2004 Shi Tao was identified when Yahoo! turned over his email account to the authorities. Charged with “illegally providing state secrets to foreign entities,” Shi Tao now faces the next decade in prison. His poem June is his memorial of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown.
June
By Shi Tao
| | | | | | | Monday, April 14, 2008 9:39PM | | | | hay or hey | life in the city | Tags: writing, life, writer's life, dreaming, sadi ranson-polizzotti, pen america, tant mieux, blog, april, 2008, ,
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It's still too cold for me to wear one of my wife-of-a-chicken-farmer dresses. That is lost on you, no doubt, for what does the wife of a chicken farmer wear? Probably nothing at all like I imagine myself to be should I run away and start a chicken farm with the man that I love and yet I tell myself one day, one day, I will do this. We will simply take off and go to somewhere in Sicily and start a small no-kill chicken farm where the chickens can run around free-range and we will simply sell the eggs and live a poor but sated life. We will love. We will have time for our writing, our editing, our... | | | | | | | Friday, April 4, 2008 6:05PM | | | | view from the archive | Tags: documentarian, documentary, being the documentarian, archives, family history, history, photography, sadi ranson-polizzotti, pen american, pen, sadi ranson, heleina, tant mieux, archives, history, writing, writers, ,
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It's hard to capture the moment of any given moment in a single snapshot, and yet this shot, to me, captures everything about my most recent foray to NYC. It was subtle, full of life, soft, scented, productive, proud, energetic yet mild, and always but always with friends both old and new and discovering new things about myself and about them as well. One can hardly say that this was by any means a 'wasted' trip; besides which, no trip is wasted unless you make it so.
Life, like anything (and I realize this is trite) is what you make it. It's like that song by the group "Talk Talk" (remember them?) "Baby... life's what you make it..."... | | | | | |
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