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Publishing A Children's Book
Material from:How To Publish A Childrens Book
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As I wrote a few days ago, I was informed that alleged Russian spy Mikhail Semenko had my business card. Turns out I had his information as well in my personal lap top and had hoped to meet him before my next trip to China — as his blog on the Chinese economy interested me.
There are rumors that Semenko applied for jobs at both the New America Foundation and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. I've checked with New America's director of human resources, and there is no application — so I can't confirm that he applied. He may have wanted to; New America is a cool place for youngish policy wonks.
But I met Semenko at a meeting I chaired with global strategic risk guru Ian Bremmer, President of the Eurasia Group, who was speaking about his best-selling new book, The End of the Free Market: Who Wins the War Between States and Corporations?.
The fundamental thesis of Bremmer's fascinating book is that the biggest, most significant new feature of the global economy is the emergence of “state capitalism”. Bremmer argues that his state capitalism — as manifested in its most potent form in China — threatens both firms and states that practice more traditional laissez-faire market capitalism.
This debate on Chinese vs. American approaches to capitalism is what the handsome alleged Russian agent Mikhail Semenko came to learn about when he visited the New America Foundation on May 27, 2010. Fascinating.
Above is a short clip of my exchange with Ian Bremer on that day — and this is a link to the longer program. It would be interesting to see (I haven't had the chance to check) whether Semenko lodges any questions during the Q&A session.
The Washington Post is reporting that all or most of the alleged Russian spies are going to plead guilty and be deported to Russia as early as tomorrow. I sort of hope that Mikhail Semenko keeps up his blog from Russia — because “agent of influence” or not — his interest in key questions on how the world organizes itself is something we should all be thinking about.
– Steve Clemons publishes the popular political blog, The Washington Note. Clemons can be followed on Twitter @SCClemons
Dear Motion Picture Association of America:
I'm freshly back from the theater after seeing Toy Story 3, which prompts me to ask: A G-rating? Seriously? I haven't been this disturbed since the Turkish prison scenes in Midnight Express (which was rated R, by the way).
In the first two Toy Story movies, the happy relationship between a young boy named Andy and his toys acted as the backdrop. In Disney/Pixar’s Toy Story 3, Andy is packing for college, and the story leaves the toys to fend for themselves in a world where there’s no longer anyone to care for them.
It's not that the movie was mis-rated. Devoid of sex or gore, it is a kid's movie. Technically.
But what it stirs up in movie-goers is anything but juvenile: Essentially abandoned by a grown-up Andy, it's up to the desperate, panicked toys to find not just a new home, but a way to recapture their raison d'etre : The simple joy and richness of being loved best by a child.
The unspoken premise is this: Nothing lasts forever, and in the end you're either the deserted or the one deserting. (Also: because this is a kid's movie, Pixar tosses us a bone: Don't fret too much; you'll eventually find someone else who is almost as good as the original. But it'll be hell – hell! — getting there.)
So, Motion Picture Association, you could have warned me. Toy Story 3 is tragically under-rated — in the sense of sketchily explained, resulting in a whole audience of popcorn-munching Americans who will suddenly be caught off guard for that scene when Woody, Buzz, Ham, and the rest of the toys — trapped on a garbage incinerator's conveyor belt — hold hands in heartbreaking resignation as they brave a certain fiery death, and in that moment you forget that they are not just toys but cartoon toys, and you bawl like a baby at the desperate humanity laid bare on their digital faces.
And that was just one scene of several: The scene where Woody leaves for college….? The mix of wisdom and acceptance that flickers across the faces of the toys as they watch him drive off down the road, which signals a silent acknowledgment about the nothing-lasts-forever bit? It will destroy you. Unless you are made of stone.
I've admittedly been in a melancholy mood lately, what with the fledgling kid about to take flight and the situation with the one-eyed dog. So maybe it's just me. But I don't think so. As the credits rolled, only a few people (possibly robots) jumped up and made their way immediately to the exit, instead of taking what the rest of us needed, and had earned: a sensible few minutes to pat our faces dry and collect ourselves before shuffling out.
Then as we left the theater, my daughter — who tends to sprout hives when she's really upset — could manage to only scratch broodingly and shake her head no at me when I asked her what she thought. My son said simply, “Why did we have to see that?” in a ponderous tone. He sunk into silence for the rest of the car ride home, no doubt remembering his previously carefree existence. And by “previously” I mean like 2 hours before, when the frailty of us all wasn't quite so palpable.
When my daughter was younger, she'd self-police her entertainment options. A grade school friend would call and invite her to a matinee, and she'd say, “Sorry. But that movie has mild thematic elements. How about we see…?” And then she'd name another film more in line with her middle-aged sensibilities. She picked that up from reading the cautionary footnotes your association uses to elucidate and rate a film’s content suitability for certain audiences. (Like: “May be too intense for younger audiences” or “Contains mild thematic elements not appropriate for younger viewers.”)
So I'm thinking that some films could carry similar cautionary footnotes to a prescribed rating, because frankly, I could have used an elucidating footnote prior to the movie today. On Toy Story 3, for example, you might consider: “Caution: Contains mild thematic elements not appropriate for older viewers.” Or: “May be too intense: The sensitive and overwrought strongly cautioned.” Or perhaps: “Attention parents of graduating seniors: You might want to skip this one and go straight to dinner instead.”
Pixar is long overdue for this kind of action, in fact. The last animated film that similarly unhinged me was also a Pixar flick; specifically, the “Married Life” montage from Up. Haven't seen it? Let me summarize: Two adorable kids marry with dreams of a life together, then eventually things don't work out exactly the way they envisioned, and one of them ends up sad and alone.
Which leads to the inevitable question: Is that a cartoon – or is that life?
Thanks for your consideration.
Material from:cnewblog.ru
At a panel at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books this year, I sat on while three distinguished authors discussed their work. After about 45 minutes of talk of craft and inspiration, the panel was opened up to questions from the audience. One by one the readers and writers (you are either or both if you hold a ticket to this panel) stood up from creaking UCLA lecture hall seats to inquire about character development or how to query an agent.
Toward the end, a twenty-something man popped up from his seat and, in a tone of pure desperation, asked the three fiction writers where they did their writing. He asked as if these published authors would reveal an enchanted garden or some other sacred location, the knowledge of which would change the course of his writing career from then. If only he could know where they write, he could go there as well and produce his magnum opus at last. At that moment, I sat at the edge of my seat as well, pen and Moleskine ready to capture the secret. And then Elizabeth Crane, author of the story collection, You Must Be This Happy to Enter, said that she writes at home, often on the couch with the T.V. on. “It's not very exciting to the onlooker,” she said. She went on, however, to explain that it is exciting to her because she is creating her stories in these places. Crane's refreshing answer was at once slightly disappointing (what, no cabin in the woods?) and utterly encouraging because it taught this young writer a lesson in comparing my experience to others'. I can only write what I write from where I write it.
However, inquiring minds such as mine want to know more, so I have asked a few writers whom I admire to talk about where they write. Here are their responses.
Emily St. John Mandel, author of Last Night in Montreal (Unbridled Books, 2009) and The Singer's Gun (Unbridled, May 2010):
“I do most of my writing in my home office, at my unbelievably messy desk. It's by far my favorite place to write–my cats and my music are there, and it's a very peaceful room. I live in Brooklyn and work at a university in Manhattan, and I get off work in the mid-afternoon. Often if I have theatre tickets or some other plans that require me to be in Manhattan that evening, I'll linger at work for a few hours. When that happens, I go to the library at the university where I work and write there for a while. Often, very often, I'll find myself writing in the subway. I spend two hours a day on the F train, five days a week, and I always carry a notebook with me.” (photo: Kevin Mandel)
Alexander Chee, author of Edinburgh (Picador, 2002) and the forthcoming The Queen of the Night:
“Usually it's trains where I get the most writing done–I wish I could get a residency from Amtrak on a sleeper car, or an office booth in a cafe car. I recently had a residency at a colony in Florida, where I had two days of writing 17 pages a day, and it would have continued if I hadn't had to leave. I think anonymity and displacement help me no matter where I am–I need to feel like I've vanished and no one can find me.”
Nova Ren Suma, author of Dani Noir (Aladdin/Simon & Schuster, 2009) and Imaginary Girls (Dutton, summer 2011):
“I live in a tiny apartment in New York and can sometimes be found writing first thing in the mornings at a cafe, if I can find a good table, but I don't stay there for long. There are the crowds. The noise. I can't control the music on the stereo. The real place where I get most of my writing done is called the Writers Room. Billed as an urban writers' colony in New York City, it's a place for writers of all genres to go for space, quiet, and uninterrupted time to work. At various desks in the giant loft space of the Writers Room, I've written, no exaggeration, thousands of pages. When you pay for an 'office space' like this and have a dedicated place to go, one filled with other working writers typing up their own pages, it makes you all the more motivated to do your own work.” (photo: Erik Ryerson)
No, I am not talking about the James Frey who wrote A Million Little Pieces, the controversial piece of creative “nonfiction” that initially made a splash with Oprah but then fell into ignominy. The man I want to praise today is James N. Frey, probably the best writing teacher on the face of the earth.
As far as I know, Jim is still leading writing workshops all over the place, giving of himself, helping others improve their craft. According to his website, “Many participants of his workshops have gone on to publish with major New York houses and receive solid advances (as high as $2 million) and much critical acclaim.” I don't for even a second doubt the veracity of that assertion.
I first met Jim in the spring of 1984, the year he published his first thriller, The Last Patriot. I had seen an ad in a Berkeley, California, newspaper for something called “The Story Laboratory,” a writers' workshop that met every Monday evening in the basement of the Finnish Brotherhood Hall near the corner of University Avenue and Chestnut Street in what we called the flats. We working stiffs lived there, not with the rich and famous up in the Berkeley hills. It didn't take me more than five seconds to decide to check out the Story Lab because I lived just a half block away on Berkeley Way. Somebody was trying to tell me something. I seemed destined to become a member of this little group of struggling scribblers.
When I walked into that basement, Jim was sitting at one of those long, institutional folding tables that reminded me of the ones at the Berkeley Chess Club, where I had spent a humiliating few weeks the year before. Jim was about forty, and my first impression was that he was a red-nosed Irishman who liked his whiskey just a wee bit too much. But that perception evaporated as soon as the rest of the crew showed up and he began to talk shop. Jim spoke more lucidly than any college professor about language, plot, characterization, setting, and something else of vital importance that I will get to in due time.
The way the Story Lab worked was that someone would read a short story or a chapter of a novel, and then the rest — especially Jim — would most likely tear it to shreds with scathing comments. Jim would invariably start out with, “The problem with this story is … ” And he'd always be right. The first work of fiction that I read at the workshop was of the type known derogatorily as a “slice of life” piece. Its title was “The Loft,” and it was about my experiences with a punk rock band in New York City during the late 1970s. It was full to bursting with funky description and quirky characters. I thought it was just great, of course, but no one else around the table in that cellar seemed to agree. They all had something a bit nasty to say, but only Jim was able to articulate what the problem really was.
“This bit of writing could get you into the Creative Writing Masters program at San Francisco State,” Jim told me, “but it isn't any good.”
The first part of that seemed rather encouraging, I thought, but the rest sounded crazy to me, as it appeared to contradict what came before. Jim went on to explain, “You use words very well, and the images are fine, but the story lacks conflict.”
I was flabbergasted. He was right! Why hadn't I seen that myself? I felt like a fool, and I told him so. Jim responded, “Don't feel bad. Everybody starts out as you did. But writing is like everything else. Somebody has to show you how to do it.” After that, I must have heard him say at least a hundred times to other writers around that table, “Your story needs three things: conflict, conflict, and conflict.” He liked to illustrate this point by showing how Charles Dickens had used conflict to the utmost effect in A Christmas Carol. Jim made that story come alive in so many ways that I realized I had taken Scrooge for granted all my life.
That was just the first of many invaluable lessons from the master, and it led to the writing of one of my best short stories, “Decibels.” Thanks, Jim, for helping with the manuscript.
I'll never forget the time I read another short story, “The Little Room.” Right after I finished the last sentence, Jim called for a break and took me by the arm and said, “Let's go over to Taco Bell and get a cup of coffee.” The fast-food restaurant was just across the street.
I thought for sure that I was walking my last mile as a writer, that Jim was going to tell me something like, “I didn't want to say this in front of everyone else, but I was wrong about you, kid. Give it up. You've got no talent.” But no. He said that my story was terrific and that I had found my voice as a writer. Actually, that's what I think he said. I was so blown away by his praise that I really don't remember his exact words, but he thought the story was good, and that's all that mattered. I think I was actually in shock as we walked back to the Story Lab.
When we sat back down inside the Finnish Hall, other members of our group had some comments critical of “The Little Room,” but Jim wouldn't let any of them stand. He said the story was a piece of literary fiction of the highest quality. Perhaps it really is as good as Jim thought it was, but perhaps it isn't. The point is that I wouldn't have been able to write it at all had it not been for Jim's tireless encouragement and excellent advice.
Sadly, I haven't spoken with him in years. I know I disappointed him by not living up to the potential he saw in me. After all, I don't have even a single novel under my belt, just a modest collection of self-published short fiction. But whatever writing skill I do have I owe to Jim. I hope he is doing well.
Jim has written nine novels, among them The Long Way to Die, an Edgar Award Nominee, and Winter of the Wolves, a Literary Guild Selection. Yes, I've read them all, and I've enjoyed every one. Jim is also the author of the How to Write a Damn Good Novel series of instructional books for fledgling writers.
Material from:puls-auto.ru
Who now?
Lieberman made an unwanted cameo on the public stage during the Clinton years, when she became briefly famous as the White House staff member who tried to shoo Monica Lewinsky away from Bill Clinton after she noticed that the intern seemed to be “spending too much time around the West Wing.”
Okay, and how well did Lieberman do?
Lieberman ostentatiously failed in that mission.
OH, WELL, GREAT. Why is it that of all the “White House observers” in the world, Politico only seems to know the ones that are thundering dipshits?
If such bare-chested behavior had occurred in the West Wing, “Evelyn would have said the same thing she'd say to women in the White House whose skirts were too short,” said Jennifer Palmieri, a deputy White House press secretary during the Clinton years. “She would say, 'Excuse me, I think you forgot your skirt.' In this case she would say, 'Excuse me, I believe you forgot your shirt.'” However, Palmieri said even White House aides get a longer leash for what happens in a bar on a weekend afternoon.
AND THAT IS WHEN I CLICKED “CLOSE TAB.” I mean, that is one whole page of nothing but meandering equivocation and nonsense. (It goes on, into the wasteland of lost time, for two more pages).
Inexplicably, it took two writers to produce an article this pointless. And one of them is editor-in-chief John F. Harris! Meanwhile, Politico's gossip site, Click, has an article up on a documentary film about redistricting. It's like two universes have just swapped places.
Anyway, this is why there is a section in my living will that reads, “Any perceived willingness to work for Politico should be treated as de facto evidence of brain death; do not resuscitate.”
UPDATE: Jed Lewison bravely kept the tab open, and finds, on the third page of this dreck: “Contrary to the original reports, the group was not playing beer pong. And their shirts were off because the group had gotten caught in a rainstorm before repairing to Old Glory in Georgetown.” I regret inadvertently going easy on John F. Harris, who really is a complete numbskull.
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How Does This Story Make You Feel?
Don't make us ask Canada. A group of scientists in Canada is developing a software program that will evaluate the biological responses of internet users, giving us insight into how the internet makes us feel.
I know what you are thinking. Canada has scientists?
Only kidding, of course, but for a brief moment our Canadian friends had a negative reaction to this story that might not have been readily apparent to the naked eye.
Aude Dufresne, a professor at the University of Montreal Department of Communications, is leading a team of researchers in creating computer software that will tell us when Canadians are mad at us. I suppose it will work on other people as well.
The software will measure everything from body heat to eye movement, heart rate to facial expression, collecting all of the data in order to let us know how others react to things on the internet.
Isn't that what forums and comment systems are for? Sure, but a lot of people in forums and comment sections lie.
See? There's that anger again.
The software is currently being tested at the Bell User Experience Centre in Québec. After that, it will likely be sold to marketing firms and internet-based companies for millions and millions of dollars. Unprecedented insight into how humans react to the internet is serious business, after all.
“With e-commerce and the multiplication of retail Web sites, it has become crucial for companies to consider the emotions of Web users,” says Professor Dufresne. “Our software is the first designed to measure emotions at conscious and preconscious levels, which will give companies a better sense of the likes and dislikes of Web users.”
Ah, what powerful biological response reading software you have! The better to market to you, my dear.
Perhaps one day this sort of functionality will be built right into websites, so all you have to do is think about how much you dislike our daily science posts without having to take up valuable commenting space.
New software to measure emotional reactions to Web
Send an email to Michael Fahey, the author of this post, at fahey@kotaku.com.
Material from:anely.ru
How to Complain About The New Yorker's 20 Favorite Writers Under 40
The New Yorker has created a list of 20 writers under 40 worth watching. You probably hate it already, without even knowing who's on it. But how can you complain about it, without looking jealous and bitter?
So: The New Yorker's 20 under 40. Has your mother called you yet, to ask why you're not on it? (“It's very political, mom.”) This is a list, in case you couldn't tell, of fiction writers who were all born more recently than 1970. It is very important to the 300 people who still read fiction, because that's what lists do: Tell you what is important.
This is how it came about: Sometime last year, Eustace Tilley and the fiction editors holed up in New Yorker fiction editor Deborah Treisman's house, talking about “books” and “writing” and listening to Hounds of Love on repeat, playing Russian Roulette till dawn and watching publishers and agents dance, naked, begging Lady Treisman to put their authors on her devil's list. (Okay, actually, they just had a couple meetings back in January and looked up some birthdays and chose 20 writers, eight of whom will be published in an upcoming “fiction” special; the other 12 in subsequent issues of the magazine.)
Anyway. The list has been given to The New York Times. And it definitely has 20 authors on it! Are you ready? Are you just, like, totally pumped? Here are the greatest 20 authors to have never turned 40 years old:
- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- Chris Adrian
- Daniel Alarcón
- David Bezmozgis
- Sarah Shun-lien Bynum
- Joshua Ferris
- Jonathan Safran Foer
- Nell Freudenberger
- Rivka Galchen
- Nicole Krauss
- Yiyun Li
- Dinaw Mengestu
- Philipp Meyer
- C. E. Morgan
- Téa Obreht
- Z Z Packer
- Karen Russell
- Salvatore Scibona
- Gary Shteyngart
- Wells Tower
Hey, so, it's not a bad list. Rivka Galchen is great! But if you're an author under 40, you can't admit that! You aren't on the list, and therefore, the list sucks. The thing is, you don't want to sound bitter when you complain about it to your Tumblr followers/barber/kidnap victim. The key is to be as dismissive as possible. Here are some guidelines:
DON'T pick on specific writers who you hate.
DO pretend you don't even read new fiction.
Sample: “Jonathan Safran Foer? He's a writer, you say? Hmm. I'll definitely check him out, when I finish rereading Box Man.”
DON'T accuse the magazine of favoritism or “affirmative action.”
DO make up authors and wonder vaguely why they're not on the list.
Sample: “That's odd—I was sure Suzanne Jeffersontonian would be here. Oh well.”
DON'T claim that you could come up with a better group of writers
DO act skeptical about the concept of “lists.”
Sample: “So these are, what, the best writers under 40? Huh.”
DON'T spend more than 200 words or five minutes talking about it.
DO use the phrase “for what it is” as much as possible.
Sample: For what it is, this is great! For what it is.
DON'T call it “unsurprising” or “boring.”
DO pretend you didn't even know about the list.
Sample: “Oh, The New Yorker? It's a magazine, right? They publish fiction?”
And don't worry! I'm sure you'll make it next time. Unless you're over 40, in which case, sorry.
[NYT; pic, of editor-in-chief David Remnick, via Getty]
Send an email to Max Read, the author of this post, at max@gawker.com.
Disney/Marvel has already announced that it plans to mine its properties for some lesser-known characters to adapt to film. Over at Warners/DC, with Superman and Batman projects already in the works, it looks like The Flash might their next major superhero project. Although The Flash has had several aborted starts in the past, Berlanti was recently rumored to be one of the front-runners for the director’s chair.
Heat Vision posits that this has a great deal to do with the fact that Geoff Johns is now the chief creative officer at DC Entertainment. Johns was responsible for the 2009 series The Flash: Rebirth. It is believed that the new Flash film would be based on the Barry Allen incarnation of The Flash (also the one that Johns uses). Since Allen and Hal Jordan (AKA The Green Lantern) are known to be friends in the comics, the potential for crossover could be significant. Thus, if Green Lantern is a hit in the way that Warners is hoping, it could be the start of more than one franchise.
A couple years ago I was helping renovate a house in New Orleans and I came across a children's book lying around that I really liked. I was sure I would remember the title, but of course I didn't, and now that I really want to find it, I feel like one of those people who come to Barnes & Noble to buy "East of Eden" and know only the color of the book & that it is a book.
Here is what I (think I) know, in descending order of certainty: The book is about an African-American girl, between 8 and 13 years old, in an urban neighborhood. It's an oversized hardback, and each page is covered with art, with only about a sentence or two of text per page. The girl lives with just her mother (or possibly grandmother, but pretty sure it's her mother). From what I remember about the types of buildings in her neighborhood, it might be Harlem, or somewhere else in New York City, though I don't think a real-world place is ever explicitly mentioned. The art style has lots of rusty reds and browns, and not much detail; the landscapes and people could theoretically be assembled out of construction paper. I feel like the characters may not have even had faces.
The book is relatively plotless and minimalistic. The girl lives with her mom and enjoys being part of her community. There may have been some kind of conceit, and I remember a very strong and subtle melancholy subtext, but I don't remember what could possibly have been the source of it, or whether it was even from the book or my own state of mind at the time.
The biggest detail I can remember is that there was something in the book about the windows in the girl's mother's house. For a long time, before I tried Googling it, I was actually convinced the title of the book was "No Windows in My Mama's House" – but there's no such book, and I have no clue what that phrase could be suggesting in the context of what I remember of the plot.
If anyone can figure out what on earth I'm talking about, holy crap, I will personally hew you a mighty limestone shrine from the very fundament of the Earth using only my toenails and a dental pick.
My search has to this point been frustrated by the profusion of competing editions. The one I have in mind, anyway, which is to say the one I remember from my youth, is a picture book or a children's book with intricate full-page color illustrations of Tampa Town, the projectile's interior, and the actual firing, as well as amusing grotesques of members of the Baltimore Gun Club, with their missing limbs and jaws and so on. It's not formatted like a comic book, though I believe there're more pictures than text. I'm not sure whether it's called "From the Earth to the Moon" or "A Trip to the Moon and Around it" or something else.
On February 27, 2009, Tapey, a Kirti monk, set himself on fire after a religious ceremony was cancelled by the Chinese authorities at his monastery in Tibet. He survived but may still be imprisoned. His protest followed a year of crackdown after major protests by monks.
Just before he was detained, well-known Tibetan essayist and editor Shogdung had visited his family outside Xining in Qinghai province where he lives. While there, he went into the mountains to make a traditional Tibetan offering, throwing 'windhorses' – prayers printed on small scraps of paper – into the sky. It was a ritual that Shogdung, a 47-year old civil servant who works for the Qinghai Nationalities Publishing House, would previously have opposed, on the grounds that such traditions are ultimately damaging to Tibetan efforts at modernizing their culture.
But that was before March, 2008, and the 'Spring protests' against the Chinese government that swept across the entire Tibetan plateau, involving every sector of society, from nomads, farmers and businesspeople to schoolchildren, teachers, and artists.
Shogdung, whose views were previously seen by many Tibetans as being close to those of the Communist Party, came to believe that this upsurge in dissent and solidarity is a new awakening for the Tibetan people and a rediscovery of pride in their identity as Tibetans. His writings about the 'peaceful revolution' since March, 2008 are among the most far-reaching indictments of Chinese policy in Tibet for 50 years. They are also likely to have been the reason why Chinese security police descended on his office on April 23, seized his books and two computers, and took him to prison.
For the first time since the Cultural Revolution, writers, intellectuals, singers and artists in Tibet are being systematically targeted for their work, and almost every expression of Tibetan identity can be accused of being 'reactionary' or 'splittist'. A popular singer from Amdo (now Qinghai), Tashi Dhondup, is in a labor camp as a result of singing songs referring to Tibetans' grief at the killings in March, 2008. The founder of a Tibetan website promoting Tibetan culture, Kunchok Tsephel, was sentenced in November to 15 years in prison. Bloggers, artists and other intellectuals, including an artist who taught the Tibetan language to nomad children, have 'disappeared'. A Tibetan author who interviewed elders about their experiences in the 1950s has lost his mind after torture in detention.
Despite, and also because of, the severity of the clampdown since the protests began, dissent continues to be expressed, particularly through the written word. As Tibet's best-known writer and poet Woeser says, Tibetans are attempting to transcend the terror by writing about it. They are daring to refute China's official narrative, presenting a more complex challenge to the Communist Party than before.
Shogdung is one of a new generation of educated Tibetans at the forefront of a literary and cultural resurgence in Tibet. This new bicultural, bilingual generation is fluent in Chinese as well as Tibetan, and familiar with digital technology. Although less well-known outside than high-profile Chinese dissidents such as Liu Xiaobo and Hu Jia, Shogdung and other Tibetan writers and bloggers detained over the past two years are famous among Tibetans, and their concerns about repression and restrictions by the state mirror those of their Chinese counterparts. This is a development of immeasurable significance to Tibet's future – and as educated Chinese build new alliances with their Tibetan counterparts – to China's.
While loyalty to the Dalai Lama remains undiminished, often this new generation of Tibetan intellectuals is secular in background and politically moderate. Many support the Dalai Lama's 'Middle Way' approach for a genuine autonomy under Chinese sovereignty. In one collection of writings, Eastern Snow Mountain – banned as soon as it was published in Tibet in 2008 – essayists from Amdo in eastern Tibet demonstrate extensive knowledge of Chinese and Tibetan law and policy, and discuss the sufferings of ordinary Chinese people as well as their own struggles against the state.
Tashi Rabten, one of the editors of the magazine, a thoughtful, determined young student at Northwest Nationalities University in Lanzhou, was detained on April 7, his room ransacked, and his current whereabouts is unknown. In Eastern Snow Mountain, he writes that the essays were published “as a sketch of history written in the blood of a generation.” (English translation in A Great Mountain Burned by Fire: China's Crackdown in Tibet)
Since March 2008, the Chinese government has engaged in a systematic attempt to block news of the arrests, torture, disappearances and killings that have taken place across Tibet. As part of this rigorous approach, the Chinese authorities launched a campaign in Tibet not only against 'spreading rumors' – a term typically used to refer to dissenting views and sentiment in the PRC – but also against listening to them. One Tibetan woman, Norzin Wangmo, is serving a five-year sentence simply for talking about the situation in Tibet on the phone.
Beijing has also tightened control of the internet. In an announcement typical in its opacity, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Qin Gang said recently: “The Chinese Government manages the Internet according to the law. As for what you can and cannot watch, watch what you can watch, and don't watch what you cannot watch.”
In China, as one writer observed, there is a red line between what can be said and what cannot. But you do not know where the line is until you've crossed it.
Tibetan writer Shogdung, the most high-profile writer to be detained in the current crackdown, knew he had crossed the line when he published his book, The Line between Sky and Earth. That's why he went to visit his elderly father and to pray in the mountains. His family does not know where he is, and no one knows how long he will be held. But his book, published without an ISBN number, is now a word of mouth bestseller, circulating underground, his written words about the 'peaceful revolution' now reaching Tibetans in exile all well as across Tibet.
Details of more than 50 writers, artists and intellectuals who have been imprisoned, 'disappeared' or suffered harassment for their work at: http://http://www.savetibet.org/
High Peaks, Pure Earth: translations from Tibetan blogs and new writing http://highpeakspureearth.com
Like Gold that Fears no Fire: New Writing from Tibet http://www.savetibet.org/media-center/ict-news-reports/gold-fears-no-fire-new-writing-tibet
The New Yorker:
The habit of list-making can seem arbitrary or absurd, leaving the list-makers endlessly open to second-guessing (although to encourage such second-guessing is perhaps the best reason to make lists). Good writing speaks for itself, and it speaks over time; the best writers at work today are the ones our grandchildren and their grandchildren will read. Yet the lure of the list is deeply ingrained.
Read the whole story: The New Yorker
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