Minnesota Books

This book is a favorite of mine. When I opened it and saw John Other Day on the first page, I knew I was hooked. I grew up on the farm land once owned by this man. The story has many Minnesota landmarks and realistic events mentioned. It's a very good Minnesota Historical Fiction book. It briefly includes the Sioux Uprising and Civil War. It also deals with sensitive areas of abuse and being an orphan. I highly recommend this book and I think it sparks an interest in looking further into the history of Minnesota.

This is one of the most important texts in African American cultural criticism. Dyson demonstrates a level of critical engagement and on-the-ground familiarity with Black popular culture that is rarely seen in the academy. This is a must read text for anyone interested in the intersections between cultural studies, African American studies, and religion.

It's easy to get lost in the refracting images of Narcissus, but Bruhm happens to be an excellent guide through the morass. He opens the book with a challenging but rewarding survey of recent relevant scholarship (Earl Jackson, Leo Bersani, Moe Meyer, Gregory Bredbeck are all discussed). He then provides an elegantly written contribution to the evolving themes of the Narcissus myth which is heavily indebted (but updated) to Louise Vinge's thematic study.

The best chapter by far (for me) is "Reverse of the Mirror" (chapter 2) which lays out Gide and Wilde on Narcissus. It is an excellent study of the differences between the two writers who otherwise shared so much friendship. One wonders in the end how they could have been such close friends. Bruhm works through "Telleny" which is possibly by Wilde, maybe pseudo-Wilde. This is a pornographic work, the first of its kind to have been attributed to a literary man of genius such as Wilde.

Also of note is his chapter on Nabokov.The book is not at all boring to read even though it treats some very boring literature (I mean Freud). Bruhm includes plenty of humor while sustaining his polemic throughout. The one regret is that he did not prove (to me at least) how Narcissus is a same-sex love story. I mean, I can see how it might be read that way but I am not sure that even Ovid meant it that way. I think that Bruhm's argument toward such a same-sex narrative might have been bolstered by a closer examination of Philostratus' "Imagines" and an historically valid look at the appearance of Narcissus in ekphrastic works of the second century. Louise Vinge hinted at the scholarship available on the Philostrati as well as other post-Ovidian works that treated it before the onslaught of Christian based compulsory heterosexuality.

Despite these quibbles of mine I think this book is an excellent addition to queer theory.

This book is a fascinating, well written book not only about Norwegian folk medicine but also about Norwegian culture. If you've ever wondered what made your Norwegian ancestors tick, this is the book to read. This is one of the best books about Norwegians I have ever read. A thoroughly enjoyable read.

This remarkable, possibly unique, and forgotten book would have the title of my review if it was published today. Read it and cure your ills, especially - but not exclusively - those whose effects you had not noticed. From emotions, thru thought and piles, to evolution and our poor, suffering body/brain.

Joy James surpasses most cultural critics and intellectuals with her sound research and insight. I highly recommend this book!!

This book is a must read for not only haitian americans but anyone interested in understanding the cruel system of slavery that is still in place today in Haiti. The author takes us through his painful youth as a child slave, or restavec, into his adulthood.

Although this book was sad in many respects, I really enjoyed reading it as it really opened my eyes to abuses in Haiti I had no idea existed. The author also spends time dealing with his experience with "black America" and how as a haiitan man he had difficulties in relating to the black experience/culture of the U.S, and the inherent racisim that comes with the skin color from whites, and the prejuduice that comes from blacks.

GOOD READ!

I was apprehensive when, early on, Cedric Johnson footnotes Hardt and Negri and other 'autonomist Marxists' as useful theoretical guides (if this is the alternative to black nationalism, give me Baraka). And my apprehension deepened when Johnson scolded Harold Cruse for not embracing certain approaches to culture that have become fashionable in academia thirty years after the publication of The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual. But then I was surprised. Johnson sets aside his theoretical predispositions (or at least buries them in the text) and offers a sympathetic, but highly critical history of the way in which Black power rhetoric ultimately paved the way for conventional ethnic-brokerage politics. The problem--not so surprising in basic theoretical outline, but Johnson closely explicates how it works in practice--is that the unity claimed around Black identity masks divergent ideologies and class interests. It impairs a detailed understanding of the contradictions of the American political economy, and also complicates producing coalitions that would cross identity lines.

For those who care (and I know we're not huge in numbers, but we matter!), the book marks a step forward in the historiography of the American left. In recent years, there has been a backlash against works written primarily by white liberals that glorify the early days of SDS or SNCC, and then trash the later radical turn. Newer works, like Max Elbaum's Revolution in the Air, insist on the validity and nobility of the radical turn. Johnson moves the debate forward by sympathetically describing many of the limitations of the forms of radicalism adopted, particularly Black nationalism and the Marxist Leninism of the mid seventies (which addressed emergent contradictions in the Black Power movement by retreating to doctrinaire ideology).
One complaint--Johnson looks entirely within the movement to describe its weaknesses. But it was also a problem that it was making history under conditions not of its choosing. For example, the American union movement basically adopted a reactionary attitude towards social movements until, at the earliest, the mid-nineties (and up to the present, it has not yet opened itself up and fully dealt with racism in its leadership practices). This did a lot to push the movement in some directions and not in others.
Presently, we are seeing some glimmerings of more complex formulations about organizing with both class and race in mind. Johnson praises (with justification, in my thinking) some of the writings of Bill Fletcher, Jr. Reading Johnson's book, and understanding fully some of the dead ends of the past, may help improve the prospect that these approaches can work better in the future.

I sailed with Marlin when he first got down to Lake Poncetran 1996 and oh my what an interesting man. What a beautiful boat. I saw the boat again in 2003 a little shabby but still beautiful. Read it

The Seamus Heany poem says it all: Once in a lifetime the longed-for tidal wave of justice can rise up and hope and history rhyme.