Week 52: I am not your Negro

This week marks a year of 60 Weeks, 60 Books, and it also marks over 60 years since a landmark TV programme was broadcast in June 1963. This documentary, The Negro and the American Promise, comprises three interviews linked by the presentation of Professor Kenneth Clark, a psychologist. I first came across this programme as clips in Raoul Peck's 2016 documentary and book, I am not your Negro. 

At the time, I had been asked by one of my students to act as supervisor for his extended essay. Fascinated by the lyrics and styles of a range of rap artists, he struggled to produce a coherent research question or thesis that would fit the IB bill. We had several conversations about this, and in one session, we began looking at the roots of the civil rights movement. As we began looking up the internet, we came across a book and a film, released simultaneously the previous December. It helped my student develop a clear thesis for his essay, and for me, it was the text that in some way embodied my disillusionment with the US.

After Brexit, after the election of Trump, I am not your Negro crystallised for me a realisation that we humans are fundamentally tribal, unavoidably fearful and resentful of the other. I understood that after all the education, all the effort of the years since my childhood to challenge and tackle bigotry, discrimination, overt racism, still, too many people, especially white people, were storing in their hearts and minds a terrible rage against the complexities and paradoxes of navigating a multi-cultural society. This is a world in which we are at once dependent on people from elsewhere to keep our hospitals and care homes operating, to work in construction or hospitality, whilst building resentment against them. 

Now, revisiting the book eight years later, with Trump resurgent and populism apparently gaining ground around the world, Baldwin's fundamental question remains unanswered. Why is it that so many of us believe that someone other, someone different must be inferior, oppressed, vulnerable to violence and exploitation? 

In the podcast, I refer to the teacher Jane Elliott's extraordinary Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes experiment, which she first conducted in 1968, the day after the assassination of Martin Luther King, with her 3rd grade class. It was clear immediately that her eight and nine year old pupils could clearly understand the dynamics and mechanics of discrimination, prejudice and its terrible effect on their own behaviour. Sadly, it is an experiment we need to keep repeating. Twenty seven years later, the documentary A Class Divided retells the story of Elliott's game. 

Podcast available here:

Amazon: https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/20e22980-5365-4b32-8841-49cf967dac38/60-weeks-60-books

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/60-weeks-60-books/id1671355016

Acast: https://shows.acast.com/60-weeks-60-books

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2rjETzBj253SxYwQkgpolC?si=c7a4c5521b674bca

Week 51: The Mighty Dead - Why Homer Matters

Although I did not need to read The Mighty Dead when it first came out, I am very glad I did. Adam Nicolson's enthusiasm for Homer is contagious, his reading of both the Odyssey and the Iliad so perceptive and his broader frame of reference enriches and enhances any reread of either epic. The book is based on his own tracking of archaeological, historical and linguistic research into the epics and their context. His writing is immediate, joyous and unexpected. Rereading certainly confirmed its place in the 60/60 list, even as I wonder how I came to leave out this book or that. 

Given the eruption of books based on myth, like Madeline Miller's Circe and Song of Achilles, Nathalie Haynes's Pandora's Jar, A Thousand Ships, Pat Barker's The Silence of the Girls, not to mention Stephen Fry's bestselling Mythos, Heroes and Troy, many of us are returning to the source texts. Therein lies a challenge: which translation to read? 

When teaching the Iliad and the Odyssey, I used EV Rieu's prose renditions from the 1940s/1950s, which were our recommended texts when I studied Classical Civilisation in the early 1980s. The other modern option then was Richmond Lattimore's translations, updated about 12-13 years ago. I also read Christopher Logue's War Music, which is a partial translation of some books of the Iliad - well worth reading, but not a complete rendition. In 1990 and 1996, Robert Fagles produced two amazing poetic renditions of The Odyssey and the Iliad respectively. It was Fagles' Odyssey that reintroduced the then 47 year old Nicolson to Homer after what was clearly a miserable time wrestling with the original Greek at school for exam purposes. 

I loved the Fagles translations, but more recently, Emily Wilson, another able American scholar, has produced two magnificent, highly accessible translations. The Odyssey was published in 2017 to wide acclaim, followed by The Iliad last September. I have been listening to The Illiad as an audiobook and started reading it alongside the audio. These would be my starter recommendations for anyone wanting to read either epic. They are fast-paced, direct, vivid and exciting to read, the introductions are helpful and both books come with helpful maps and background. 

To listen to the podcast, as always, click on links below:

Amazon: https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/20e22980-5365-4b32-8841-49cf967dac38/60-weeks-60-books

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/60-weeks-60-books/id1671355016

Acast: https://shows.acast.com/60-weeks-60-books

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2rjETzBj253SxYwQkgpolC?si=c7a4c5521b674bca

Week 50: Antony & Cleopatra

Well! 50 Weeks, holy cow! And here we are, Antony & Cleopatra, the fourth of five plays by Shakespeare that feature in this collection. If you had asked me as a young woman what I thought of Antony and Cleopatra, I would not have had much time for it - as my description of the cataclysmic Vanessa Redgrave/Timothy Dalton production in 1986 on the podcast (links below) explains. There are two productions I deeply regret missing: the Dench/Hopkins production in 1987, which had absolutely glowing reviews, and must have been mesmerising; the second is the Mirren/Rickman production in 1998 which again had a rapturour reception. These were both National Theatre productions, as was a recent wonderful production which I did see whilst in Surrey as an NT Live screening. Sophie Okonedo was Cleopatra, Ralph Fiennes was Mark Antony. They were amazing, delightful, chaotic and brilliant. 

Looking at these star-strewn productions, it is clear that A&C is one for the actors. They love it! The key roles in addition to the eponymous tragic hero and heroine are Cleopatra's ladies, Charmian and Iras, and on the Roman side, Octavius Caesar, driven, chilly and determined in his drive to transform into Augustus Caesar, the first Roman Emperor as well as the cynical lieutenant Enobarbus, a wry commentator on his master's love for the Egyptian queen. 

Rereading and reflecting on this extraordinary play, it struck me how contemporary it is: a political play about power and how that can be derailed, a sweeping epic covering years and swathes of territory, and a human tale of hubris and downfall with added zesty gossip mainly trashing Cleopatra who seems to have quite a bit in common with Amy Winehouse.

For a closer look, head to the podcast:

Acast: https://shows.acast.com/60-weeks-60-books

Amazon: https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/20e22980-5365-4b32-8841-49cf967dac38/60-weeks-60-books 

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/60-weeks-60-books/id1671355016

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2rjETzBj253SxYwQkgpolC?si=b5cde102e578473d 

Week 49: Reading Lolita in Tehran

This book was published just over twenty years ago, and was based on the experiences of the author, her family, friends and students between her return to Iran from studying in the US in 1979, just after the revolution which overthrew the Shah and her final departure from Iran in June 1997. 

Nafisi's family were privileged, educated, and sophisticated. She was sent to school first in the UK and then in Switzerland, before studying at the University of Oklahoma, where she took both undergraduate and postgraduate degrees. 

Nafisi worked as a university professor and witnessed a range of conflicts and struggles between students and university authorities, students versus students and students fighting both for and against the state and the various types of control it sought and still seeks to impose on its people. 

When I first read RLIT, I was shocked by the stories it told of initially trivial but then increasingly serious forms of oppression and subjugation experienced by women across the Islamic Republic. It was not simply requirements to wear scarves and veils, to ensure that not a strand of hair escaped the stranglehold of the veil, to dress and act modestly, to be married and have children, putting these new people before oneself. There was an erasure of self implicit in the way that women have been required to present themselves in Iran. 

Then it got worse - RLIT was the first time I heard of just how brutal police and other authorities were towards what they perceived as wayward young women requiring schooling. I had heard - of course I had heard, written letters as part of Amnesty campaigns. Throughout my university years and as I began working, switched careers, I was always aware of just how limiting life was for women in Iran. Then I read the book and came across the stories of women falsely imprisoned, or given disproportionately long sentences, of molestation and assault, of grievous torture and ultimately rape and execution. 

The book is full of questions that demand an answer. Nafisi herself seems at once baffled by the extent of cruelty and barbarism she witnesses and also determined to see it, recognise it and write it, despite the personal danger this might have attracted. It is about a book group, but it is also about so much more: what it is to fight for what one believes in; what it is to be defeated, captured, imprisoned and damaged and yet to go on; what it is to have even one's imagination under threat from authorities who feel so threatened by freedom of thought, let alone speech. 

In addition to the book, I also refer to a couple of movies and a more recent book, links below if you click on the titles.

Taxi Tehran (2015) - available to rent/buy on amazon, apple and youtube. 

A Separation (2011) - available again on amazon, apple and youtube.

City of Lies, Ramita Navai (2014) available from amazon or waterstones

Podcast is here:

Acast: https://shows.acast.com/60-weeks-60-books

Amazon: https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/20e22980-5365-4b32-8841-49cf967dac38/60-weeks-60-books 

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/60-weeks-60-books/id1671355016

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2rjETzBj253SxYwQkgpolC?si=b5cde102e578473d