Isabel Allende
[2.15.06]
Isabel Allende will be a major contributor to an International Women's Day project sponsored by The International Museum of Women. The 2006 global project, "Imagining Ourselves: A Global Generation of Women," will commence on March 8, 2006. Of the project, Allende has this to say: "Giving voice to the unheard women of the world through the power of storytelling and conversation will help create understanding and change at a time when it is most needed."

[2.10.06]
In case you missed it: Ms. Allende was one of eight women to carry the Olympic flag into opening ceremonies at the Games in Turin, Italy, representing the continent of South America. The honor was doubly rewarding, as it was the first time that women were allowed to carry the flag for the international ceremony. The Marin Independent Journal reports that Allende said she would "remember Turin for its youthful energy and passion…There were signs all over the city—'Passion Lives Here.'"

[2.09.06]
A recently released revision of the 2001 anthology, Her Fork in the Road : Women Celebrate Food and Travel [Lisa Bach, ed.) includes short fiction from Ms. Allende, along with work by foodie laureates M.F.K. Fisher, Ruth Reichl and Frances Mayes. Definitely worth checking out.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez
[2.23.06]
J.M.Coetzee writes a thoughtful comparative analysis between Gabo's Memories of my Melancholy Whores, Cervantes's Don Quixote and Yasunari Kawabata's House of the Sleeping Beauties for The New York Review of Books.

Toni Morrison
[2.18.06]
Today is Ms. Morrison's 75th birthday! We wish her many, many more!

[2.18.06]
The Toni Morrison Society will present Morrison with an inaugural “bench by the road,” as part of a new community outreach initiative at Princeton University in New Jersey. Ten signature benches are planned, with each commemorating sites that are significant to both African American history and Morrison's novels. Suggested locations for future roadside benches include Harlem; the site of Emmett Till's death in Mississippi; certain train station sites in Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi; and an all-Black town in Oklahoma. Each of the benches created for the project, expected to meet completion by 2011, will include a commemorative plaque, the donor's name, the Society's name, and the date.

[2.15.06]
Robert P. Waxler's new manual, Finding a Voice: The Practice of Changing Lives Through Literature, includes a discussion of Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. Waxler is co-founder, with former Bristol County District Court justice Robert Kane, of the 15-year-old "Changing Lives Through Literature" program at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, which exclusively enrolls probationers, a probation officer and a judge. According to Waxler, most offenders sentenced to the program are intelligent but come from marginalized communities. "They feel like they've lost their voice," he said in a Standard-Times article, explaining the origin of the title of his book. Does teaching literature like Morrison's help to reconnect probationers with mainstream life, to guide them to resolve personal issues, to assist in building them into better citizens, to prevent their further criminal behavior? It's hard to say, but these are certainly great reasons for promoting literature, we think.

Salman Rushdie
[2.07.06]
The infamous Danish cartoons of recent note, which have stirred violent controversy among Moslems, certainly bring back memories of 18 years ago, when a fatwa was launched against Salman Rushdie, his family and his publishers for his notably blasphemic sentiments in Satanic Verses. To draw comparisons to the current violence surrounding the cartoons, you might want to check out comments made by Rushdie expert, professor Pnina Werbner of Britain's Keele University, who says in an interview with Spiegel Online that "there are some lessons (the British) learned from The Satanic Verses that I'm afraid others in Europe still need to learn."
[The Spiegel Online link refers to their English language site.]

According to the New York Press, Rushdie expressed that he thought it was "quite understandable and reasonable for people not to print the cartoons out of fear." As for Blair and Clinton's "pandering" to Islamic fundamentalism, he was more blunt, describing their strategies as "completely chickenshit.”

Rushdie knows about that fear. But interestingly, if you think Rushdie was ever taken off the hook for his "crimes" against Iran back in the 80s, think again. On February 14, the anniversary of the 1989 edict issued by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran's fatah renewed the infamous death sentence against the British author, citing that the condemnation will remain in force "forever." One can't help but wonder if Rushdie's back to looking over his shoulder again, despite his judgments of Blair and Clinton…