{"id":597,"date":"2014-04-22T01:26:00","date_gmt":"2014-04-22T01:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=597"},"modified":"2018-11-20T05:40:43","modified_gmt":"2018-11-20T05:40:43","slug":"a-few-random-notes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=597","title":{"rendered":"A Few Random Notes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Some links to book news I found interesting over the past week:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><i>Traveling Pants<\/i> author Ann Brashares has written a&#8230;time travel dystopian novel? It&#8217;s called <i>The Here and Now<\/i>, and you can read about it&#8230;now. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/2014\/04\/20\/301574757\/traveling-pants-author-tries-traveling-in-time\" target=\"_blank\">On NPR<\/a>. <\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>Gabriel Garcia Marquez isn&#8217;t the only notable author we lost this month. Perhaps lesser known, if no less important for other reasons, we lost Doris Pilkington Garimara, who wrote the book <i>Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence<\/i>. The <i>NY Times<\/i> wrote up a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2014\/04\/21\/arts\/doris-pilkington-garimara-novelist-is-dead-at-76.html\" target=\"_blank\">nice tribute<\/a> and discussed the importance of her writing in the context of aboriginal writing in Australia, as well as the shocking discrimination that mixed-race aboriginal children faced for decades. <\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>When we think about Pakistan these days, the first words that come to mind are not necessarily CREATIVITY or PLURALISM or LITERATURE. And that&#8217;s sad. Luckily, there are determined souls in Pakistan trying to change that&#8211;and over 45,000 people turned out as a result, enjoying the intellectual and artistic atmosphere of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/2014\/04\/15\/301458738\/in-pakistan-literary-spring-is-both-renaissance-and-resistance?sc=tw\" target=\"_blank\">Lahore Literary Festival<\/a>. This quote from historian Ayesha Jalal really struck me:<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<blockquote class=\"tr_bq\"><p>\n<i>&#8220;If you look at Latin America, you&#8217;ll see that art has flourished in the most coercive, authoritarian regimes,&#8221; Jalal says. &#8220;And Pakistan is no different. I think collective failure is matched often by personal, individual success, spectacular success. Those are not unusual. &#8230; And in Pakistan I think we&#8217;ve had a collective failure on many scores and there have been individuals who have done work of great brilliance, in the world of art, in the world of literature and music.&#8221;<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote class=\"tr_bq\"><p>\nI find that incredibly heartening. As someone with Pakistani\/Indian heritage on my father&#8217;s side, I <i>want<\/i> to feel like the great artistic legacy that has existed in that region in the past is still encouraged, because that&#8217;s part of my own artistic heritage. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li>Last but not least, the latest issue of UC Santa Barbara&#8217;s <i>Journal of Critical Mixed Race Studies<\/i> is <a href=\"http:\/\/escholarship.org\/uc\/ucsb_soc_jcmrs\" target=\"_blank\">available for free online<\/a>. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some links to book news I found interesting over the past week: Traveling Pants author Ann Brashares has written a&#8230;time travel dystopian novel? It&#8217;s&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2,60,47,15,10],"class_list":["post-597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-af","tag-book-news","tag-ethnicity-and-ya-literature","tag-random-notes-and-errata","tag-views"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=597"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8013,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597\/revisions\/8013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}