1. We'll begin by listening to an interview with John Grisham about his motivation for writing this non-fiction true crime story
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6248147
Grisham highlights a number of similarities between himself and Ron Williamson. He is fascinated with the police's adamant pursuit of Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz and the "flilmsy" case they jerrymandered to wrongly convict them. He describes the mistreatment that Williamson a bipolar manic depressive suffered while incarcerated. He is outraged that the state of Oklahoma never apologized for the injustice meted out to these flawed but innocent individuals. As far as Grisham is concerned, the monetary settlement Williamson and Fritz won against Ada, OK and the state of OK in no way makes up for the damage done by this miscarriage of justice
2. Why do you believe critics have given Innocent Man generally mixed or unfavorable reviews?
( http://www.metacritic.com/books/authors/grishamjohn/innocentman ) Do you think that Grisham's focus on the facts of the case weaken the overall narrative thread of the work? Or is it the absence of a sympathetic protagonist that infuriates Grisham's fiction fans?
3. The opening crime scene is meant to set up the most startling facts of the case for Grisham
a)"in the midst of all the fingerprinting and hairclippping ...Gore fell through the cracks. He either slipped away or was conveniently ignored, or was simply neglected."
b) "over three and a half years would pass before the Ada police finally took samples from Gore, the last person seen with Debbie Carter before her murder."
c) "it was inevitable that the police would find their way to Ron Williamson...the police now knew him as an unemployed guitar picker who lived with his mother, drank too much, and acted strange."
4. Chapters 2 and 3 provide a detailed biographical sketch of Williamson
a) He could be sweet and sensitive, unafraid to show his affection to his mother and sisters, and, a moment later, bratty and selfish, making demands of the entire family. His mood swings were noticed early in life but were the cause of no particular alarm"
b) [$50,000 signing bonus] "He bought himself a new Cutlass Supreme and some clothes. He bought his parents a new color television. Then he lost the rest of the money in a poker game.
c) "Ron was almost delusional in his belief that he could still play the game. And he was greatly troubled, even consumed by his failures."
d) As his world becme gloomier, Ron fought back with the only tools he had. He drank more, kept even later hours, chased even more girls, all in an effort to live the good life and escape his worries. But the alcohol fueled the depression, or maybe the depression required more alcohol--whatever the combination, he became moodier and more dejected. And less predictable."
e) He began hearing voices, but he wouldn't tell his mother whatthey said. Then he began answering them.
f) "Untreated, unmedicated and drinking, Ron became a regular at the local watering holes around Ada. He was a sloppy drunk, talking loud, bragging about his baseball career, and bothering women.
5. Grisham connects the Haraway and Carter murders and shows the "profound impact" of public outcry to solve both investigations and the unorthodox police tactics this pressure generated (cf. Tommy Ward's dream confession, Karl Fontenot's coached confession, )
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Dead Man Walking
1. Please discuss Sr. Helen's understanding of her vocation. How does she describe the reform movement within the Catholic Church that brought her to St Thomas? What is her definition of social justice and of the Gospel warrant for the work of the Sisters of St Joseph of Medaille?
2. What conflicting emotions torment Sr. Helen when she becomes spiritual adviser to a killer? How and when does she show empathy for the families of the murder victims (pp.229-231)?
3. Why did Pat and Eddie Sonnier murder David LeBlanc and Loretta Bourque?Whom do you believe was most responsible for the crime? In your opinion, do the crimes of rape and murder merit the death penalty? Are they crimes against the state? Is electrocution the most humane way of administering capital punishment?
4. Please comment on Sr. Helen's confession of a merciful God of steadfast love on p.21
I cannot believe in a God who metes out hurt for hurt, pain for pain, torture for torture. Nor do I believe that God invests human representatives with such power torture and kill. The paths of history are stained with blood of those who have fallen victim to God’s Avengers. Kings and Popes and military generals and heads of state have killed, claiming God’s authority and God’s blessing. I do not believe in such a God.
5. According to Millard, how do race and class undermine the fair administration of justice in Southern states such as Louisiana (pp.43-48)? In your opinion, is justice color-blind in Northern states such as Michigan? Please comment on Sunday's Free Press on incarceration in states such as Kansas http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008807130485
6. Where do you stand on the dispute between Archbishop Hannan, the local ordinary in New Orleans, and the US Conference of Catholic Bishops on the question of the death penalty (p.54)? http://www.usccb.org/sdwp/national/dea.shtml
Which position is more in keeping with the themes of Catholic Social Teaching http://www.usccb.org/sdwp/projects/socialteaching/excerpt.shtml? Which position honors the traditional Church teaching on subsidiarity http://www.osjspm.org/subsidiarity.aspx How does the George Bernard Shaw quote on p.100 about Chaplain Stogumber give credence to both positions?
7. Sr Helen refers repeatedly to the essay "Reflections on the Guillotine" by Albert Camus. Please comment on the following excerpt in light of Sr. Helen's assertion that "the death penalty is potentially relevant to only a very small pool of the 14 million-plus "index crimes" committed in this country every year." (p.129)
Could not justice concede to the criminal the same weakness in which society finds a sort of permanent extenuating circumstance for itself? Can the jury decently say: “If I kill you by mistake, you will forgive me when you consider the weaknesses of our common nature. But I am condemning you to death without considering those weaknesses or that nature"? There is a solidarity of ill men in error and aberration. Must that solidarity operate for the tribunal and be denied the accused? No, and if justice has any meaning in this world, it means nothing but the recognition of that solidarity; it cannot, by its very essence, divorce itself from compassion. Compassion, of course, can in this instance be but awareness of a common suffering and not a frivolous indulgence paying no attention to the sufferings and rights of the victim. Compassion does not exclude punishment, but it suspends the final condemnation. Compassion loathes the definitive, irreparable measure that does an injustice to mankind as a whole because of failing to take into account the wretchedness of the common condition. http://pewforum.org/deathpenalty/resources/reader/21.php
Please hold this thought in tension with the numerous crimes for which the Bible prescribes death as punishment
Dead Man Walking by Sr Helen Prejean (p.195)
8. Why does Sr. Helen keep her eyes open during Robert Willie's execution? How does she re-imagine her role as witness and advocate? How does hardship shape her transformation? Whom does she forgive? By whom is she forgiven (p.245)?
9. In light of the total work, how is the opening quote from Huck Finn a testament to Sr. Helen's ministry
I went right along, not fixing up any particular plan, but just trusting to Providence to put the right words in my mouth when the time come: for I’d noticed that Providence always did put the right words in my mouth, if I left it alone. – Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
10. Please highlight those elements within the narrative that make Sr. Helen's journey from innocence into experience unforgettable. Why do you think this story lends itself so easily to stage and screen adaptations?
Some passages worth considering
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17845521 (This I Believe: "Living My Prayer")
Dead Man Walking by Sr. Helen Prejean
Opening Quote:
“I went right along, not fixing up any particular plan, but just trusting to Providence to put the right words in my mouth when the time come: for I’d noticed that Providence always did put the right words in my mouth, if I left it alone.” – Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
p.3 I had also learned that the death penalty in the United States has always most rigorously applied in Southern states—mostly toward those who kill whites.
p.4 Almost all the killings here in St Thomas seem to erupt from the explosive mixture of dead-end futures, drugs, and guns. But when Chava describes what Sonnier has done, my blood chills. On November 4, 1977, he and his younger brother Eddie, abducted from a lovers’ lane a teenage couple, David LeBlanc and Loretta Bourque. They raped the girl, forced the young people to lie facedown, and shot them in the head.
p.5 I came to St. Thomas as part of a reform movement in the Catholic Church, seeking to harness religious faith to social justice. In 1971, the worldwide synod of bishops had declared justice a “constitutive” part of the Christian gospel.
p.5 The mandate to practice social justice is unsettling because taking on the struggles of the poor invariably means challenging the wealthy and those who serve their interests
p.5 In 1980 my religious community, the Sisters of St Jose[h of Medaille, had made a commitment to “stand on the side of the poor,” and I had assented, but reluctantly. I resisted this recasting of the faith of my childhood, where what counted was a personal relationship with God, inner peace, kindness to others, and heaven when this life was done. I didn’t want to struggle with politics and economics. We were nuns, after all, not social workers, and some realities in life were, for better or worse, rather fixed—like the gap between rich and poor.
p.6 Something in me must have been building toward this moment because there was a flash and I realized that my spiritual life had been too ethereal, too disconnected. I left the meeting and began seeking out the poor.
p.6 I did not then consider the “colored” people who worked for us as poor. They were just, well, “colored” people doing what “colored” people did, which was working for white people, and living where ”colored” people lived, which was usually in shacks out in the country or, in “nigger town” in the city.
p.8 “Well, now, Sister, we know drugs are going to pop up somewhere in every city. At least we know where they are.”
p.11 Before, I had asked God to right the wrongs and comfort the suffering. Now I know—really know—that God entrusts those tasks to us.
p.13 If he were allowed to work, his pay would be two and a half cents an hour. (The abolition of slavery in the Thirteenth Amendment of the Constitution does not extend to the incarcerated)
p.14 Federal court review of capital cases results in a high percentage of reversals—between 1976 and 1990, 40 to 60 percent of such cases were reversed
p.17 Quote from Jeremiah (31:15)
“A voice was heard in Ramah, sobbing and lamenting: Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted because they were no more.”
p.18 I sense the words he does not say, a reality he scrupulously omits. He never talks about the death the state has in store for him.
[descriptions of electrocutions; only man towalk away from an electric chair alive was 17 year old Willie Francis…eventually executed after Supreme Court split decision]
p.21 The victims are dead and the killer is alive and I am befriending the killer….Have I betrayed his victims? Do I have to take sides? I am acutely aware that my beliefs about the death penalty have never been tested by personal loss
p.21 I cannot believe in a God who metes out hurt for hurt, pain for pain, torture for torture. Nor do I believe that God invests human representatives with such power torture and kill. Te paths of history are stained with blood of those who have fallen victim to God’s Avengers. Kings and Popes and military generals and heads of state have killed, claiming God’s authority and God’s blessing. I don not believe in such a God.
p.23 [friend or spiritual adviser] I have no idea what difference the category will make. I later learn that a spiritual adviser may remain with the condemned man in the death house after 6:00 PM, when relatives and friends must leave. The spiritual adviser is allowed to witness the execution
p.24 [Angola] In antebellum days three cotton plantations occupied these 18,000 acres, worked by slaves from Angola in Africa. The name Angola stuck. Since its beginnings in 1901, abuse, corruption, rage, and reform have studded its history
p.24 [Heel-string Gang] 1n 1951 eight inmates...inaugurated the first reform at Angola by slitting their Achilles tendons with razor blades rather than go to the “long line” in the fields, where they were systematically beaten or shot by guards
p.25 [prison chaplain] He is strictly an old-school, pre-Vatican Catholic, and he shows me a pamphlet on sexual purity and modesty of dress that he distributes to the prisoners
dress code for nuns; flouting authority
p.31 For me, the un-negotiable moral bedrock on which a society must be built is that killing by anyone, under any conditions, cannot be tolerated. And that includes the government.
p.43 In Louisiana it’s unusual for a black man to be executed for killing another black man. Although the majority of victims of homicide in the state are black (90 percent of homicide victims in New Orleans in 1991), 75 percent of death-row inmates are there for killing whites. And when blacks do get death for killing other blacks, their victims typically fit a certain demographic profile: police or security guards, children, more than one person, or, more rarely, women.
p.47 It’s not a fluke, Millard says, that 99 percent of death-row inmates are poor. “They get the kind of defense they pay for.”
p.48 …prosecutors, judges, and juries, most of whom are white, are far more outraged when white people are murdered than when black people are. “White people identify more with other white people, you know what I mean?” he says
p.49 They don’t call Southern states the “Death Belt” for nothing” Millard says. Four states—Louisiana, Georgia, Texas, and Florida—carry out two thirds of all U.S. executions.
p.50 …race, poverty, and geography determine who gets the death penalty—if the victim is white, if the defendant is poor, and whether or not the local D.A. is willing to plea-bargain.
p.54 This had so dismayed the pro-death-penalty Catholic D.A. of New Orleans, Harry Connick, Sr. that he asked Archbishop Hannan “ as official spokesman for the Catholic Church” to give his position on the death penalty in writing. The archbishop had obliged him, setting forth a pro-capital-punishment position and assuring Catholics that they “ can in good conscience endorse capital punishment.” In the letter, which Connick brings to first degree murder trials and reads to jurors, the archbishop also asserts that “ the position of the U.S. Catholic Bishops does not express the official position of this archdiocese.”
p.62 [prayer]
Just this space, this time now, not yet in the rapids, not yet in the fire of debate, the points and counterpoints. Only me here and , you, God of truth, God of life, give me the words, essential words, words to pierce the conscience, to turn the heart.
p.80 words to "Be Not Afraid"
p.100 [Chaplain Stogumber in George Bernard Shaw's Joan of Arc]...I did a very cruel thing once because I did not know what cruelty was like . I had not seen it, you know. That is the great thing: you must see it. And then you are redeemed and saved..."
p.108 Letters [of outrage] to the editor
p.119 [Robert Lee Willie] ...there's a child sitting inside this tough macho dude ."
p.121 I run the fingers of my conscience along the fabric of this accusation [emotionally involved] and feel for the hard knots and tears that guilt brings.
p.123 How is it, I wonder, that the mandate and example of Jesus, so clearly urging compassion and nonviolence, could so quickly become accommodated?
...I can't accept that God has fits of rage and goes about trucking in retaliation
[Camus] solidarity against death and suffering
p.129 Along with media, politicians also distort public perception of crime...The truth is that the death penalty is potentially relevant to only a very small pool of the 14 million-plus "index crimes" committed in this country every year
p.133 "Great as the sea is thy sorrow"
p.147 I guess everybody's got a code of evil, a line beyond which they consider redemption impossible
p.162 Ain't nobody ever called me no son of God before
p.181 Look, no matter what reasons you give to justify killing criminals, when you're there and you see it, when you watch it happen with your own eyes and are part of it, you feel dirty. You're killing a man who can't defend himself and that is just as wrong as what he did.
p.183 [Robert Lee Willie] " The electric chair don't worry me, man. I haven't read much about it but I know electricity will fry your ass. I'm going willingly. I'll hold my head up. I've got pride. I don't run from nothin'"
p.193 John 10:17-18
p.195 numerous crimes for which the Bible prescribes death as punishment
p.197 the death penalty costs too much. Allowing our government to kill citizens compromises the deepest moral values upon which this country was conceived: the inviolable dignity of human persons
p.201 Psalm 51 (Miserere)
p.205 Ignatius of Loyola, Theresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Francis of Assisi-- every saint has taught the paradox that lies at the heart of the spiritual life: to love passionately but with freedom of spirit that does not cling even to life itself.
p.211 He looks at me and winks, and then they strap his chin, lower the mask, and kill hi. This time I do not close my eyes. I watch everything.
p.229 But I also realize I'm protecting myself. I've been avoiding the victims because I'm afraid they'll turn on me and attack me. I fear their anger and rejection. Plus, I feel so helpless in face of their suffering.
p.231 Late have I loved thee-- the words of St Augustine in his Confessions well up within me
p.238 [victims' families] Some talk of considering suicide, of staying in bed and sleeping, of numbing the pain with alcohol or drugs. They talk of confusion and bewilderment. But mostly they talk about carrying on
p.241 [black women] Seasoned sufferers, they have grace, tenacity, a great capacity to absorb pain and loss and yet endure. God makes a way out of no way. For these women this is no empty, pious sentiment. It is the air they breathe, the bread they eat, the path they walk.
p.245 Forgiveness is never going to be easy. Each day it must be prayed for and struggled for and won.
Pasted from <http://docs.google.com/a/divinechildhighschool.org/RawDocContents?docID=dgjgp2rf_77hrds8mfr&justBody=false&revision=_latest×tamp=1215527713261&editMode=true&strip=true>
2. What conflicting emotions torment Sr. Helen when she becomes spiritual adviser to a killer? How and when does she show empathy for the families of the murder victims (pp.229-231)?
3. Why did Pat and Eddie Sonnier murder David LeBlanc and Loretta Bourque?Whom do you believe was most responsible for the crime? In your opinion, do the crimes of rape and murder merit the death penalty? Are they crimes against the state? Is electrocution the most humane way of administering capital punishment?
4. Please comment on Sr. Helen's confession of a merciful God of steadfast love on p.21
I cannot believe in a God who metes out hurt for hurt, pain for pain, torture for torture. Nor do I believe that God invests human representatives with such power torture and kill. The paths of history are stained with blood of those who have fallen victim to God’s Avengers. Kings and Popes and military generals and heads of state have killed, claiming God’s authority and God’s blessing. I do not believe in such a God.
5. According to Millard, how do race and class undermine the fair administration of justice in Southern states such as Louisiana (pp.43-48)? In your opinion, is justice color-blind in Northern states such as Michigan? Please comment on Sunday's Free Press on incarceration in states such as Kansas http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008807130485
6. Where do you stand on the dispute between Archbishop Hannan, the local ordinary in New Orleans, and the US Conference of Catholic Bishops on the question of the death penalty (p.54)? http://www.usccb.org/sdwp/national/dea.shtml
Which position is more in keeping with the themes of Catholic Social Teaching http://www.usccb.org/sdwp/projects/socialteaching/excerpt.shtml? Which position honors the traditional Church teaching on subsidiarity http://www.osjspm.org/subsidiarity.aspx How does the George Bernard Shaw quote on p.100 about Chaplain Stogumber give credence to both positions?
7. Sr Helen refers repeatedly to the essay "Reflections on the Guillotine" by Albert Camus. Please comment on the following excerpt in light of Sr. Helen's assertion that "the death penalty is potentially relevant to only a very small pool of the 14 million-plus "index crimes" committed in this country every year." (p.129)
Could not justice concede to the criminal the same weakness in which society finds a sort of permanent extenuating circumstance for itself? Can the jury decently say: “If I kill you by mistake, you will forgive me when you consider the weaknesses of our common nature. But I am condemning you to death without considering those weaknesses or that nature"? There is a solidarity of ill men in error and aberration. Must that solidarity operate for the tribunal and be denied the accused? No, and if justice has any meaning in this world, it means nothing but the recognition of that solidarity; it cannot, by its very essence, divorce itself from compassion. Compassion, of course, can in this instance be but awareness of a common suffering and not a frivolous indulgence paying no attention to the sufferings and rights of the victim. Compassion does not exclude punishment, but it suspends the final condemnation. Compassion loathes the definitive, irreparable measure that does an injustice to mankind as a whole because of failing to take into account the wretchedness of the common condition. http://pewforum.org/deathpenalty/resources/reader/21.php
Please hold this thought in tension with the numerous crimes for which the Bible prescribes death as punishment
Dead Man Walking by Sr Helen Prejean (p.195)
8. Why does Sr. Helen keep her eyes open during Robert Willie's execution? How does she re-imagine her role as witness and advocate? How does hardship shape her transformation? Whom does she forgive? By whom is she forgiven (p.245)?
9. In light of the total work, how is the opening quote from Huck Finn a testament to Sr. Helen's ministry
I went right along, not fixing up any particular plan, but just trusting to Providence to put the right words in my mouth when the time come: for I’d noticed that Providence always did put the right words in my mouth, if I left it alone. – Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
10. Please highlight those elements within the narrative that make Sr. Helen's journey from innocence into experience unforgettable. Why do you think this story lends itself so easily to stage and screen adaptations?
Some passages worth considering
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17845521 (This I Believe: "Living My Prayer")
Dead Man Walking by Sr. Helen Prejean
Opening Quote:
“I went right along, not fixing up any particular plan, but just trusting to Providence to put the right words in my mouth when the time come: for I’d noticed that Providence always did put the right words in my mouth, if I left it alone.” – Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
p.3 I had also learned that the death penalty in the United States has always most rigorously applied in Southern states—mostly toward those who kill whites.
p.4 Almost all the killings here in St Thomas seem to erupt from the explosive mixture of dead-end futures, drugs, and guns. But when Chava describes what Sonnier has done, my blood chills. On November 4, 1977, he and his younger brother Eddie, abducted from a lovers’ lane a teenage couple, David LeBlanc and Loretta Bourque. They raped the girl, forced the young people to lie facedown, and shot them in the head.
p.5 I came to St. Thomas as part of a reform movement in the Catholic Church, seeking to harness religious faith to social justice. In 1971, the worldwide synod of bishops had declared justice a “constitutive” part of the Christian gospel.
p.5 The mandate to practice social justice is unsettling because taking on the struggles of the poor invariably means challenging the wealthy and those who serve their interests
p.5 In 1980 my religious community, the Sisters of St Jose[h of Medaille, had made a commitment to “stand on the side of the poor,” and I had assented, but reluctantly. I resisted this recasting of the faith of my childhood, where what counted was a personal relationship with God, inner peace, kindness to others, and heaven when this life was done. I didn’t want to struggle with politics and economics. We were nuns, after all, not social workers, and some realities in life were, for better or worse, rather fixed—like the gap between rich and poor.
p.6 Something in me must have been building toward this moment because there was a flash and I realized that my spiritual life had been too ethereal, too disconnected. I left the meeting and began seeking out the poor.
p.6 I did not then consider the “colored” people who worked for us as poor. They were just, well, “colored” people doing what “colored” people did, which was working for white people, and living where ”colored” people lived, which was usually in shacks out in the country or, in “nigger town” in the city.
p.8 “Well, now, Sister, we know drugs are going to pop up somewhere in every city. At least we know where they are.”
p.11 Before, I had asked God to right the wrongs and comfort the suffering. Now I know—really know—that God entrusts those tasks to us.
p.13 If he were allowed to work, his pay would be two and a half cents an hour. (The abolition of slavery in the Thirteenth Amendment of the Constitution does not extend to the incarcerated)
p.14 Federal court review of capital cases results in a high percentage of reversals—between 1976 and 1990, 40 to 60 percent of such cases were reversed
p.17 Quote from Jeremiah (31:15)
“A voice was heard in Ramah, sobbing and lamenting: Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted because they were no more.”
p.18 I sense the words he does not say, a reality he scrupulously omits. He never talks about the death the state has in store for him.
[descriptions of electrocutions; only man towalk away from an electric chair alive was 17 year old Willie Francis…eventually executed after Supreme Court split decision]
p.21 The victims are dead and the killer is alive and I am befriending the killer….Have I betrayed his victims? Do I have to take sides? I am acutely aware that my beliefs about the death penalty have never been tested by personal loss
p.21 I cannot believe in a God who metes out hurt for hurt, pain for pain, torture for torture. Nor do I believe that God invests human representatives with such power torture and kill. Te paths of history are stained with blood of those who have fallen victim to God’s Avengers. Kings and Popes and military generals and heads of state have killed, claiming God’s authority and God’s blessing. I don not believe in such a God.
p.23 [friend or spiritual adviser] I have no idea what difference the category will make. I later learn that a spiritual adviser may remain with the condemned man in the death house after 6:00 PM, when relatives and friends must leave. The spiritual adviser is allowed to witness the execution
p.24 [Angola] In antebellum days three cotton plantations occupied these 18,000 acres, worked by slaves from Angola in Africa. The name Angola stuck. Since its beginnings in 1901, abuse, corruption, rage, and reform have studded its history
p.24 [Heel-string Gang] 1n 1951 eight inmates...inaugurated the first reform at Angola by slitting their Achilles tendons with razor blades rather than go to the “long line” in the fields, where they were systematically beaten or shot by guards
p.25 [prison chaplain] He is strictly an old-school, pre-Vatican Catholic, and he shows me a pamphlet on sexual purity and modesty of dress that he distributes to the prisoners
dress code for nuns; flouting authority
p.31 For me, the un-negotiable moral bedrock on which a society must be built is that killing by anyone, under any conditions, cannot be tolerated. And that includes the government.
p.43 In Louisiana it’s unusual for a black man to be executed for killing another black man. Although the majority of victims of homicide in the state are black (90 percent of homicide victims in New Orleans in 1991), 75 percent of death-row inmates are there for killing whites. And when blacks do get death for killing other blacks, their victims typically fit a certain demographic profile: police or security guards, children, more than one person, or, more rarely, women.
p.47 It’s not a fluke, Millard says, that 99 percent of death-row inmates are poor. “They get the kind of defense they pay for.”
p.48 …prosecutors, judges, and juries, most of whom are white, are far more outraged when white people are murdered than when black people are. “White people identify more with other white people, you know what I mean?” he says
p.49 They don’t call Southern states the “Death Belt” for nothing” Millard says. Four states—Louisiana, Georgia, Texas, and Florida—carry out two thirds of all U.S. executions.
p.50 …race, poverty, and geography determine who gets the death penalty—if the victim is white, if the defendant is poor, and whether or not the local D.A. is willing to plea-bargain.
p.54 This had so dismayed the pro-death-penalty Catholic D.A. of New Orleans, Harry Connick, Sr. that he asked Archbishop Hannan “ as official spokesman for the Catholic Church” to give his position on the death penalty in writing. The archbishop had obliged him, setting forth a pro-capital-punishment position and assuring Catholics that they “ can in good conscience endorse capital punishment.” In the letter, which Connick brings to first degree murder trials and reads to jurors, the archbishop also asserts that “ the position of the U.S. Catholic Bishops does not express the official position of this archdiocese.”
p.62 [prayer]
Just this space, this time now, not yet in the rapids, not yet in the fire of debate, the points and counterpoints. Only me here and , you, God of truth, God of life, give me the words, essential words, words to pierce the conscience, to turn the heart.
p.80 words to "Be Not Afraid"
p.100 [Chaplain Stogumber in George Bernard Shaw's Joan of Arc]...I did a very cruel thing once because I did not know what cruelty was like . I had not seen it, you know. That is the great thing: you must see it. And then you are redeemed and saved..."
p.108 Letters [of outrage] to the editor
p.119 [Robert Lee Willie] ...there's a child sitting inside this tough macho dude ."
p.121 I run the fingers of my conscience along the fabric of this accusation [emotionally involved] and feel for the hard knots and tears that guilt brings.
p.123 How is it, I wonder, that the mandate and example of Jesus, so clearly urging compassion and nonviolence, could so quickly become accommodated?
...I can't accept that God has fits of rage and goes about trucking in retaliation
[Camus] solidarity against death and suffering
p.129 Along with media, politicians also distort public perception of crime...The truth is that the death penalty is potentially relevant to only a very small pool of the 14 million-plus "index crimes" committed in this country every year
p.133 "Great as the sea is thy sorrow"
p.147 I guess everybody's got a code of evil, a line beyond which they consider redemption impossible
p.162 Ain't nobody ever called me no son of God before
p.181 Look, no matter what reasons you give to justify killing criminals, when you're there and you see it, when you watch it happen with your own eyes and are part of it, you feel dirty. You're killing a man who can't defend himself and that is just as wrong as what he did.
p.183 [Robert Lee Willie] " The electric chair don't worry me, man. I haven't read much about it but I know electricity will fry your ass. I'm going willingly. I'll hold my head up. I've got pride. I don't run from nothin'"
p.193 John 10:17-18
p.195 numerous crimes for which the Bible prescribes death as punishment
p.197 the death penalty costs too much. Allowing our government to kill citizens compromises the deepest moral values upon which this country was conceived: the inviolable dignity of human persons
p.201 Psalm 51 (Miserere)
p.205 Ignatius of Loyola, Theresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Francis of Assisi-- every saint has taught the paradox that lies at the heart of the spiritual life: to love passionately but with freedom of spirit that does not cling even to life itself.
p.211 He looks at me and winks, and then they strap his chin, lower the mask, and kill hi. This time I do not close my eyes. I watch everything.
p.229 But I also realize I'm protecting myself. I've been avoiding the victims because I'm afraid they'll turn on me and attack me. I fear their anger and rejection. Plus, I feel so helpless in face of their suffering.
p.231 Late have I loved thee-- the words of St Augustine in his Confessions well up within me
p.238 [victims' families] Some talk of considering suicide, of staying in bed and sleeping, of numbing the pain with alcohol or drugs. They talk of confusion and bewilderment. But mostly they talk about carrying on
p.241 [black women] Seasoned sufferers, they have grace, tenacity, a great capacity to absorb pain and loss and yet endure. God makes a way out of no way. For these women this is no empty, pious sentiment. It is the air they breathe, the bread they eat, the path they walk.
p.245 Forgiveness is never going to be easy. Each day it must be prayed for and struggled for and won.
Pasted from <http://docs.google.com/a/divinechildhighschool.org/RawDocContents?docID=dgjgp2rf_77hrds8mfr&justBody=false&revision=_latest×tamp=1215527713261&editMode=true&strip=true>
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Arc of Justice
Here are some of the passages we will discuss
(p.5) The frenzy was shot through with condescension. White "slummers" thought black life exciting because it was "primitive" and vital.
(p.6) Fear of moral decay
(p.7) Everyone knew that Negroes were a breed apart , "... charming in their simplicity but also frightening in their volatility, their carnality, their utter incapacity to learn the lessons of civilized society
(p.9) As the structures of segregation hardened, white homeowners became more and more determined to protect their neighborhoods' racial purity. Those whites who could afford to do so left the ghetto. Those who had no black neighbors organized to keep their areas lily-white. They formed legal organizations, protective associations, they called them ...to write clauses into their deeds prohibiting the sale of their homes to blacks. They monitored real estate sales to make sure no one broke the color line. And if a black family somehow managed to breech the defenses, they could always drive them out, quietly if possible, violently if necessary
(p.5) The frenzy was shot through with condescension. White "slummers" thought black life exciting because it was "primitive" and vital.
(p.6) Fear of moral decay
(p.7) Everyone knew that Negroes were a breed apart , "... charming in their simplicity but also frightening in their volatility, their carnality, their utter incapacity to learn the lessons of civilized society
(p.9) As the structures of segregation hardened, white homeowners became more and more determined to protect their neighborhoods' racial purity. Those whites who could afford to do so left the ghetto. Those who had no black neighbors organized to keep their areas lily-white. They formed legal organizations, protective associations, they called them ...to write clauses into their deeds prohibiting the sale of their homes to blacks. They monitored real estate sales to make sure no one broke the color line. And if a black family somehow managed to breech the defenses, they could always drive them out, quietly if possible, violently if necessary
(p.14) in 1900, when Ford was first organizing his company, Detroit had 285,000 living within its city limits. By 1925, it had 1.25 million.
(p.15) Immigrants clustered on the east side of the city, the native-born on the west side, all of them paying premium prices for homes slapped up amid factories, warehouses, and railroad yards or along barren streetscapes
(p.23) Detroit's race relations had been deteriorating ever since the Great War, when Southern blacks had begun flooding into the city [55 blacks shot by police within the 1st six months of 1925; police department thick with Klansmen]
(p.83) For the huge middle range of jobs that didn't require any special skill-- increasingly Detroit's specialty-- most of the big employers hired the foreign-born.
(p.103) A city which is built around a productive process... is really a kind of hell. Thousands in this town are really living in torment while the rest of us eat, drink, and make merry. What a civilization! [Reinhold Niebuhr]
(p.103) The manufacturer's definition of citizenship "Each one in his sphere, keeping busy, doing honest work, and contributing to the sum total of wealth for the support of the nation."
(p.104) Ford's extremism fed fires of xenophobia smoldering among the city's Anglo-Saxon minority, blending anti-Semitism with anti-Catholicism, nativism, and a deepening racism."
(p.106) Like so many other parts of the North, Detroit's race relations had been decaying since the turn of the century. The Great Migration dramatically accelerated the decline
(p.108) In Detroit, the neighborhood color line was drawn in the same jagged way that segregation was imposed everywhere else in the city through a host of individual actions arbitrarily imposed.
(p.133) "Do you want to maintain the existing good health conditions and environment for your little children?" the flyer asked. "Do you want to see your neighborhood kept up to its present high standards?" Those who shared those goals were invited to organize "in self-defense" at what the Waterworks Park Improvement Association was calling a mass meeting.
(p.134) In the privacy of their flats, husbands and wives talked nervously of fragile family budgets, mortgage years fro being repaid, and the specter of plummeting property values. Children heard the fear in their parents' hushed voices and spun out the horrors that the Negroes would bring to their homes, terrifying and thrilling themselves with thoughts of assault and pillage. Out on the streets, there was rage at the audacity of the coloreds, moving where they didn't belong, buying the best goddamned house on the block.
(p.136) An acquaintance once remarked that Ois wasn't as articulate as his older brother. " The difference," Ossian bitingly replied, " is the difference between a Negro who has been educated in the North and one who has been educated in the South." Had they not been brothers, Ossian wouldn't have chosen Otis as a friend."
(p.138) When the Anglo-Saxon elite took control of city government in 1918, they made it a priority to restructure Detroit's criminal court, long known as Recorders Court, which they considered hopelessly soft on crime. To toughen it up, they increased the number of judges from five to seven, put control of case assignment in the hands of a presiding judge, then made sure that hard-nosed conservatives won election to four of the seven seats on the bench, enough to assure them a permanent hold on the presiding judgeship and this on all the court's activities. In short order, the conservatives launched a massive crackdown on petty crimes and the poor people who committed them, a judicial complement to police brutality rampant in the foreign-born and colored districts of the city."
(p.140) By 1923, there were twenty-two thousand Klansmen in Detroit, and the Invisible Order was ready to go public. Throughout that summer, the KKK held nighttime rallies on the far west side, complete with cross burnings so spectacular and speeches so incendiary they drew upward of eight thousand...And on Christmas Eve 1923, Klansmen marked the season by burning a six-foot tall cross in front of city hall, then cheering a hooded Santa Claus, come to entertain the kids.
(p.142) That Saturday night, upwards of fifty thousand gathered under a flaming cross in the western suburb of Dearborn-- Henry Ford's hometown-- to hear last-minute exhortations and the usual round of condemnations. Klan pickets kept nonmembers away, so no outsider knew precisely what was said. But the message was clear enough. The KKK was preparing for power.
(p.143) And in Detroit, there was no better way to fuel savage anger than to raise the specter of the Negro masses pouring across the color line into white man's land.
(p.147) Surely it crossed the parents' minds that their daughters soon would be sharing the street with brooding Negro men and sitting in classrooms next to colored boys whose passions knew no restraint. At least some people also felt in the rumor a blow to their pride. Having Negroes in the neighborhood would ruin standards, Harry Monet insisted, dragging whites down to the coloreds' level, degrading everything people up and down the block had worked so hard to achieve.
(p.157) " a single fatal riot would injure this city beyond repair."
(p.219) Johnson, however had to make sure that the story was spun in just the right way. For a campaign created on the run-its strategy and publicity shaped in the snatches of time the association's frenzied schedule permitted--it was very effectively fashioned. Beginning with the press release announcing that the NAACP "will throw its entire power to the defense of Dr. O. H. Sweet," sent out the day the defendants lost the preliminary hearing, Johnson never failed to link the Sweet case and the Washington Supreme Court challenge, companion pieces in a seamless struggle against residential segregation."
(p.219) Johnson, however had to make sure that the story was spun in just the right way. For a campaign created on the run-its strategy and publicity shaped in the snatches of time the association's frenzied schedule permitted--it was very effectively fashioned. Beginning with the press release announcing that the NAACP "will throw its entire power to the defense of Dr. O. H. Sweet," sent out the day the defendants lost the preliminary hearing, Johnson never failed to link the Sweet case and the Washington Supreme Court challenge, companion pieces in a seamless struggle against residential segregation."
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Bless Me Ultima
This lyrical book captures the magial surrealism of a forgotten age. Here are some questions for reflection:
1) Why does Antonio say "but then...who wil hear my confession?" when his mother suggests that he will be a priest?
2) Please comment on the syncretism in the following passage:
"I dreamed about the owl that night, and my dream was good. La Virgen de Guadalupe was the patron saint of our town. The town was named after her. In my dream I saw Ultima's owl lift la Virgen on her wide wings and fly her to heaven. Then the owl returned and gathered up all the babes of Limbo and flew them up to the clouds of heaven."
Does the owl most resemble the Holy Spirit of the Gospels or the Breath of God of the Hebrew Scriptures?
3) Have you seen "the beauty in the time of day and in the time of night?" Have you known the "peace in the river and the hills?" Have you listened to the mystery of the groaning earth or felt complete in the fullness of its time?
4) Anaya paints a realistic picture of post traumatic stress disorder in his portrayal of Lupito by the banks of the river, hidden in the darkness below the bridge, waving a pistol and screaming like a hunted animal. Why does he cry "bless me" as the second volley of shots finds its mark?
5) Please share your understandingof the Act of Contrition. Does it match Antonio's?
"Over and over through my mind ran the words of the Act of Contrition. I had not yet been to catechism, nor had I made my first holy communion, but my mother had taught me the Act of Contrition. It was said after one made his confession to the priest, and as the last prayer before death. (p.23)
6) What do you make of Antonio's transformation within the vision on p.26?
7) How do you interpret Antonio's words on p.27
"Where was Lupito's soul? He had killed the sheriff and so had died with a mortal sin on his soul. He would go to hell. Or would od forgive him and grant him Purgatory, the lonely, hopeless resting place of those who were neither saved nor damned. But God didn't forgive anyone."
Is his theology a hybrid of his mother's piety and his father's anti-clericalism?
Does he believe La Grande when she says " you must never judge who God forgives and who He doesn't"
Contrast this with the passage on p.44 that reads
"God was not always forgiving. He made laws to follow and if you broke them you were punished. The Virgin always forgave. God had power. He spoke and the thunder echoed through the skies. The Virgin was fullof a quiet, peaceful love."
8)Please comment on the following passage
"Then Abel, who had been pissing against the church wall, called outthat mass wasstarting and we all rushed to get the premium pews at the very back of the church"(p.38)
9) How would you describe " la tristeza de la vida" (p.59)?
10) Please comment on the stories of the golden carp and the Trementina sisters? What is Anaya's understanding of forgiveness and redemption?
11) What does Ultima mean when she says "I must work the magic beyond evil, the magic that endures forever." "Life is never beyond hope." " The smallest bit of good can stand against all te powers of evil in the world and it will emerge triumphant
12) Is there something bittersweet in the Nativity play that Anaya recounts on pp.151-157?
13) Please coment on the folowing passage
The townpeople had killed Lupito at the bridge and desecrated the river. Then Tenorio and his men had come upon the hill with hate in their hearts. My father had tried to keep his land holy and pure, but perhaps it was impossible. Perhaps the llano was like me, as I grew the innocence was gone, and so too the land changed." (pp167-8)
14) Please comment on the voice Antonio hears in his delirium: " You would have a God who forgives all , but when it comes to your personal whims you seek punishment for your vengeance."
15) How would you answer Florence's questions on pp. 196-7? Do you agree with Antonio that God comes in cycles?
16) Is Father Byrnes description of eternity convincing? (pp.201-2)
17) Why does Antonio agree to hear the children's confessions? Why do the penitents give him the Indian torture? (pp.212-215)
18) How do you explain the dream that Antonio has after Florence's tragic death? (pp.243-44)
19) Please comment on Gabriel's description of Ultima
"Ultima has sympathy for people, and it is so complete that with it she can touch their souls and cure them...no greater magic can exist."
Contrast it with Antonio's description
"For us Ultima personified goodness, and any risk in defense of goodness was right. She was the only person I had ever seen defeat evil where all else had failed."
20) What does Antonio mean when he says " I ran to save Ultima and I ran to preserve those moments when beauty mingled with sadness and flowed through my soul like the stream of time." (p.257)
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Summer 2008
Library Summer Hours
The DC library will be open M-F 10-4pm June
16th through July 30th. The library will support
1) Madonna online classes for DC students taking
college credit classes;
2) ACT prep classes
(M,T,TH 2-4pm 6/16-7/6);
3) Thursday Night
Book Club (see titles and times below);
4) Classics
for the College-Bound (see titles and times below);
5) "Educational Technology" professional
development class for faculty and staff
(www.madonna.edu/pages/EDUPDP.cfm ) . For
more information, please contactMr. Danielson-
Francois at serge@divinechildhighschool.org
Thursday Night Book Club ( see our blog
http://tnbookclub.blogspot.com)
Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights and
Murder in the Jazz Age by Kevin Boyle (6/19 7-
9pm)
Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of
the Death Penalty in the United States by Sr.
Helen Prejean (7/17 7-9pm)
The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a
Small Town by John Grisham (8/14 7-9pm)
Classics for the College-Bound http://
www.ala.org/ala/yalsa/bookl istsawards/
outstandingbooks/fictionoutstanding.cfm
( every Monday 12-1pm 6/16, 6/23, 6/30, 7/7,
7/14, 7/21, 7/28)
Anaya, Rudolfo. Bless Me, Ultima. 1972.
Ultima, a wise old mystic, helps a young Hispanic
boy resolve personal dilemmas caused by
the differing backgrounds and aspirations of his
parents and society.
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. Crime and Punishment.
1866. (over 2 weeks)
A sensitive intellectual is driven by poverty to
believe himself exempt from moral law.
Malamud, Bernard. The Fixer. 1966.
Victim of a vicious anti-Semitic conspiracy, Yakov Bok
is in a Russian prison with only his indomitable will
to sustain him.
O'Connor, Flannery. Everything That Rises Must
Converge. 1965. Stories about misfits in small Southern
towns force the reader to confront hypocrisy and
complacency.
Wright, Richard. Native Son. 1940. (over 2 weeks)
For Bigger Thomas, an African American man accused
of a crime in the white man's world, there could be no
extenuating circumstances, no explanations and only
death.
The DC library will be open M-F 10-4pm June
16th through July 30th. The library will support
1) Madonna online classes for DC students taking
college credit classes;
2) ACT prep classes
(M,T,TH 2-4pm 6/16-7/6);
3) Thursday Night
Book Club (see titles and times below);
4) Classics
for the College-Bound (see titles and times below);
5) "Educational Technology" professional
development class for faculty and staff
(www.madonna.edu/pages/EDUPDP.cfm ) . For
more information, please contactMr. Danielson-
Francois at serge@divinechildhighschool.org
Thursday Night Book Club ( see our blog
http://tnbookclub.blogspot.com)
Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights and
Murder in the Jazz Age by Kevin Boyle (6/19 7-
9pm)
Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of
the Death Penalty in the United States by Sr.
Helen Prejean (7/17 7-9pm)
The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a
Small Town by John Grisham (8/14 7-9pm)
Classics for the College-Bound http://
www.ala.org/ala/yalsa/bookl istsawards/
outstandingbooks/fictionoutstanding.cfm
( every Monday 12-1pm 6/16, 6/23, 6/30, 7/7,
7/14, 7/21, 7/28)
Anaya, Rudolfo. Bless Me, Ultima. 1972.
Ultima, a wise old mystic, helps a young Hispanic
boy resolve personal dilemmas caused by
the differing backgrounds and aspirations of his
parents and society.
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. Crime and Punishment.
1866. (over 2 weeks)
A sensitive intellectual is driven by poverty to
believe himself exempt from moral law.
Malamud, Bernard. The Fixer. 1966.
Victim of a vicious anti-Semitic conspiracy, Yakov Bok
is in a Russian prison with only his indomitable will
to sustain him.
O'Connor, Flannery. Everything That Rises Must
Converge. 1965. Stories about misfits in small Southern
towns force the reader to confront hypocrisy and
complacency.
Wright, Richard. Native Son. 1940. (over 2 weeks)
For Bigger Thomas, an African American man accused
of a crime in the white man's world, there could be no
extenuating circumstances, no explanations and only
death.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
May 15 discussion
Brother I'm Dying by Edwidge Danticat (National Book Award Finalist)
Please comment on Uncle Joseph's observations
p.39 Technological advances could help-- the telephone, the radio, microphones, megaphones, amplifiers. But if you had no voice at all, he thought, you were simply left outof the constant hum of the world, the echo of conversations, the shouts and whispers of everyday life.
p.40 As for permanently losing one's voice, the possibility seemed so remote that it almost appeared to bea curse that, as some of the members of my uncle's congregation declared, only American doctors could cross an ocen to put on you. People were either born mute or not.
Take a moment to consider the themes of technology and superstition jointly. Is a blog a way of amplifying one's voice or cursing someone far away? What do both these observations indicate about Uncle Joseph's understanding of community?
Please comment Edwidge's following reflection
p.44 The best place for me to make my announcement would have been at the family meeting the week before. This is probably what both my parents would have expected, and preferred, rather than my spitting something out and scurrying off. But that night I couldn't look into my father's faceand-- though I knew it would come very naturally tohim and my mother both-- ask they be happy for me.
Danticat returns often to ths theme of communication within families. Do you share her anxieties when you communicate with your family? Are some contexts more awkward than others?
p.55 "Fiercely independent and too proud to seek his involvement or ask for loans when the monthly allowance me father senther ran out, my mother continued my father's work, sewing school uniforms and flags. One Sunday morning when she had no money at all, my mother dropped us on my uncle's lap after church so we could have a proper Sunday meal with him and Tante Denise.
"One day this will stop," my mother told him. Then she ran home, crying.
This episode is one of many that highlight Haitian pride. Danticat prefers a narrative voice that tones down her own uneasiness about growing up in poverty. What is the effect of confronting the burden of poverty through her mother's tears?
p.68 Illness had brought Granme Melina from the mountains of Leogane, where she'd been living since her daughter had moved to Port-au-Prince with Uncle Joseph. Ravaged by arthritis, both her pale, liver-spotted hands were curled into clawlike grips, makingit impossible for her to do anything for herself. She spent most of her days sitting on the front gallery watching people go by. But as soon as the sun went down, shewould be at the center of things as she livened up and told stories. The neighborhood children rushed through their dinner and hastened to learn the next day's lessons so they could sit on the steps beneath Granme Melina's rocking chair and listen to her tales
Danticat regularly mines the wealth of intergenartional interactions around which she constructs her identity. What does the centenarian Granme Melina teach Edwidge and the other children gathered on the porch?
p.73 "Death is a journey we embark on from the moment we are born," he'd say. " an hourglass is turned andthesand starts to slip in a different direction as soon as we emerge from our mother's womb. Thank God those around us are too blinded by joy then to realize it. Otherwise there would be weeping at births as well. But if we weep at a death, it's because we do not understand death. If we saw death as another kind of birth, just as the Gospel exhorts us t, we wouldn't weep, but rejoice, just as we do at the birth of a child."
What is your opinon of uncle's standard funeral homily? Does it bring comfort?
p.83 He should have been more diligent, much more suspicious. Who marries a pregnant girl-- as Leone had asked-- even one as pretty and smart as MarieMicheline, unless there's something else behind it? In Pressoir's case, that something seemed to have been cruelty and madness.
Were you moved by the father's rescue of his abused daughter? Was he to blame for her abuse?
p.93 "New York, like today's Haiti... is a placewhere only the brave survive."
p.106 "You're now free to be with your parents. For better orfor worse."
How does the typewriter that Edwidge receives as a gift solve and exacerbate communication problems?
Danticat describes the torturous ordeal of immigration, specifically family unification. What words and expressions stand out for you?
Please comment on Mira's acerbic rejoinder
p.123" If I could do som,ething else...I'd be either a grocer or an undertaker. Because we all must eat and we all must die."
Compare it to Uncle Joseph's statement on p.131
" Science is God's way of shielding miracles"
and Tante Denise's protest on p.137 " ...she said that no one could convince her of a simpler truth: that watching the bullets fly, the violenceof her neighborhood, the rapid unraveling of her country, Marie Micheline had been frightened to death."
Please comment on the Angel of Death and Father God "folk tale" on pp.143-144. What does it mean to assert that God plays favorites and that Bel Air has suffered in the shadow of God's disfavor?
What does Danticat want the reader to think about the efficacy of prayer in the following passage
p.159 " His prayers were most often about his illness-- "God, if you see it fit to cure me, please do. If not, your will be done"-- but he also prayed for me and for my brothers , for our safety and well-being. He prayed for patience and strength for my mother , who was caring for him. He asked God to bless her for taking care of him. He prayed for a favorable outcome to the American presidential elections, for peace in Haiti and in the world in general.
What parts of the chapters entitled "Hell" and "Limbo" reminded you of our discussion of the Divine Comedy?
Is Hell "whatever you truly fear most?" (p.182)
Please comment on Uncle Joseph's observations
p.39 Technological advances could help-- the telephone, the radio, microphones, megaphones, amplifiers. But if you had no voice at all, he thought, you were simply left outof the constant hum of the world, the echo of conversations, the shouts and whispers of everyday life.
p.40 As for permanently losing one's voice, the possibility seemed so remote that it almost appeared to bea curse that, as some of the members of my uncle's congregation declared, only American doctors could cross an ocen to put on you. People were either born mute or not.
Take a moment to consider the themes of technology and superstition jointly. Is a blog a way of amplifying one's voice or cursing someone far away? What do both these observations indicate about Uncle Joseph's understanding of community?
Please comment Edwidge's following reflection
p.44 The best place for me to make my announcement would have been at the family meeting the week before. This is probably what both my parents would have expected, and preferred, rather than my spitting something out and scurrying off. But that night I couldn't look into my father's faceand-- though I knew it would come very naturally tohim and my mother both-- ask they be happy for me.
Danticat returns often to ths theme of communication within families. Do you share her anxieties when you communicate with your family? Are some contexts more awkward than others?
p.55 "Fiercely independent and too proud to seek his involvement or ask for loans when the monthly allowance me father senther ran out, my mother continued my father's work, sewing school uniforms and flags. One Sunday morning when she had no money at all, my mother dropped us on my uncle's lap after church so we could have a proper Sunday meal with him and Tante Denise.
"One day this will stop," my mother told him. Then she ran home, crying.
This episode is one of many that highlight Haitian pride. Danticat prefers a narrative voice that tones down her own uneasiness about growing up in poverty. What is the effect of confronting the burden of poverty through her mother's tears?
p.68 Illness had brought Granme Melina from the mountains of Leogane, where she'd been living since her daughter had moved to Port-au-Prince with Uncle Joseph. Ravaged by arthritis, both her pale, liver-spotted hands were curled into clawlike grips, makingit impossible for her to do anything for herself. She spent most of her days sitting on the front gallery watching people go by. But as soon as the sun went down, shewould be at the center of things as she livened up and told stories. The neighborhood children rushed through their dinner and hastened to learn the next day's lessons so they could sit on the steps beneath Granme Melina's rocking chair and listen to her tales
Danticat regularly mines the wealth of intergenartional interactions around which she constructs her identity. What does the centenarian Granme Melina teach Edwidge and the other children gathered on the porch?
p.73 "Death is a journey we embark on from the moment we are born," he'd say. " an hourglass is turned andthesand starts to slip in a different direction as soon as we emerge from our mother's womb. Thank God those around us are too blinded by joy then to realize it. Otherwise there would be weeping at births as well. But if we weep at a death, it's because we do not understand death. If we saw death as another kind of birth, just as the Gospel exhorts us t, we wouldn't weep, but rejoice, just as we do at the birth of a child."
What is your opinon of uncle's standard funeral homily? Does it bring comfort?
p.83 He should have been more diligent, much more suspicious. Who marries a pregnant girl-- as Leone had asked-- even one as pretty and smart as MarieMicheline, unless there's something else behind it? In Pressoir's case, that something seemed to have been cruelty and madness.
Were you moved by the father's rescue of his abused daughter? Was he to blame for her abuse?
p.93 "New York, like today's Haiti... is a placewhere only the brave survive."
p.106 "You're now free to be with your parents. For better orfor worse."
How does the typewriter that Edwidge receives as a gift solve and exacerbate communication problems?
Danticat describes the torturous ordeal of immigration, specifically family unification. What words and expressions stand out for you?
Please comment on Mira's acerbic rejoinder
p.123" If I could do som,ething else...I'd be either a grocer or an undertaker. Because we all must eat and we all must die."
Compare it to Uncle Joseph's statement on p.131
" Science is God's way of shielding miracles"
and Tante Denise's protest on p.137 " ...she said that no one could convince her of a simpler truth: that watching the bullets fly, the violenceof her neighborhood, the rapid unraveling of her country, Marie Micheline had been frightened to death."
Please comment on the Angel of Death and Father God "folk tale" on pp.143-144. What does it mean to assert that God plays favorites and that Bel Air has suffered in the shadow of God's disfavor?
What does Danticat want the reader to think about the efficacy of prayer in the following passage
p.159 " His prayers were most often about his illness-- "God, if you see it fit to cure me, please do. If not, your will be done"-- but he also prayed for me and for my brothers , for our safety and well-being. He prayed for patience and strength for my mother , who was caring for him. He asked God to bless her for taking care of him. He prayed for a favorable outcome to the American presidential elections, for peace in Haiti and in the world in general.
What parts of the chapters entitled "Hell" and "Limbo" reminded you of our discussion of the Divine Comedy?
Is Hell "whatever you truly fear most?" (p.182)
Thursday, April 10, 2008
April 17 discussion questions
1. Please read Paul Pillar's review of Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes in the March/April 2008 issue of Foreign Affairs http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20080301fareviewessay87211/paul-r-pillar/intelligent-design.html
Please comment on Dr. Pillar's summary of the book in light of your own reading of the Pulitzer Prize winning book
a) Do you agree that "calling for intelligence reform serves psychological and political purposes that have nothing to do with the intelligence agencies' successes or failures. Such calls remain a fixture of public debates because they satisfy Americans' deeply felt need to attribute bad things to a specific , fixable problem..."
b) Pillar also argues that " damning quotations are cherry picked, episodes are chosen to highlight failures and exclude successes, conversations are distorted, presidential desires are misrepresented and sweeping judgments and naked assertions are made with no apparent reference to any ...documents."
2. Weiner spends a great deal of time delving into the psyche of the Dulles brothers, both pious Catholics and virulent anti-Communists. To what extent was the CIA founded on the Johannine verse "and ye shall know the truth , and the truth will make you free" that graces the lobby at Langley?
3. In light of your reading of Legacy of Ashes, how do you assess the political fallout of the latest National Intelligence Estimate http://www.dni.gov/press_releases/20071203_release.pdf
4. Robert Kennedy is portrayed as a hands-on overseer of the agency under his brother's administration, hell-bent on covert operations. How does this portrait mesh with the "Family Jewels" report shared by current CIA director General Michael Hayden last June http://www.salon.com/books/authors/talbot/2007/06/24/family_jewels/ ?
5. Weiner asserts that the CIA played a role in misrepresenting Oswald's background to the Warren Commission. Do you see evidence of this in chapter 7 of the report http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/chapter-7.html ?
6. Weiner intends for the reader to draw parallels between the Vietnam "quagmire" and current U.S. foreign policy. Chapter 25 (" We Knew Then that We could Not Win the War") shines a light on then second lieutenant Bob Gates, future director of central intelligence and current Secretary of Defense . The chapter concludes with the statement " never had so much intelligence meant so little." What in your opinion is the value of intelligence (electronic intercepts, overhead reconnaissance, fielld reports, analyses and statistical studies) with regard to the conduct of war? How could General Westmoreland fail "to know the enemy" (p.288) with such intelligence?
7. Weiner describes CIA administration under director Helms as a "house of cards" built on dangerous ground" as the agency sought to "police the world by arming America's third world allies--771,217 foreign military and police officers in 25 nations." Is counterinsurgency practical in your opinion?
8. Secret government surveillance reached its peak under the Nixon presidency. Watergate damaged the agency irreparably. Bill Colby inherited this damaged agency upon Nixon's resignation. Director Colby is described by Weiner as "a deeply devoted Roman Catholic...who believed in the consequences of moratl sin." (p.328) What connection between religious belief and moral action is Weiner trying to make?
9. Weiner intends for Polgar's Saigon Office farewell (p.343) to give the reader pause and force him/her to reflect on the lessons of history. Internecine rivalries sappped the agency of its energy and potential. The Church Committee http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/Church_Committee_Created.htm uncovered a number of agendas and competing interests that unmoored the agency. President Carter's human rights agenda one administration later proved just as disastrous. The Desert One debacle in April 1980 is a case in point.
10. Bill Casey's CIA could have been scripted in Hollywood according to Weiner and successfully used disinformation , psychological warfare, sabotage, economic warfare, strategic deception, counterintelligence and cyberwarfare to "destroy a vigorous Soviet espionage team, damage the Soviet economy, and destabilize the Soviet state." (p.387) Weiner names this a form of terrorism. Do you agree?
11. Weiner also point to the Casey era Iran/Contra "neat idea" as the time when the CIA "was corrupted" This corruption undermined Operation Desert Storm (p.427) and set in motion a "tidal wave of history." Weiner indicts the entrepreurial spirit within the agency over the last two decades. Do you believe action or inaction has done the most harm?
12. The Aldrich Ames betrayal triggered an overhaul that shackled the clandestine service.
Bob Gates is quoted as saying the following (p.471) : The CIA [has] become less and less willing to hire"people that are different, people who are eccentric, people who don't look good in a suit and tie, people who don't play well in the sandbox with others. What type of person would you recruit (cf. William Sloane Coffin profile http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week752/profile.html )
13. Intelligence is a form of alchemy. Weiner paraphrases Jim Pavitt, chief of the clandestine service, on the WMD estimate when he writes (p.487) "the agaency produced a ton of analysis from an ounce of intelligence . That might have worked if the ounce had been solid gold and not pure dross."
14. Please comment on Weiner central questions (p.501) " How do you run a secret intelligence service in an open democracy? How do you serve thetruth by lying? How do you spread democracy democracy by deceit? "
Please comment on Dr. Pillar's summary of the book in light of your own reading of the Pulitzer Prize winning book
a) Do you agree that "calling for intelligence reform serves psychological and political purposes that have nothing to do with the intelligence agencies' successes or failures. Such calls remain a fixture of public debates because they satisfy Americans' deeply felt need to attribute bad things to a specific , fixable problem..."
b) Pillar also argues that " damning quotations are cherry picked, episodes are chosen to highlight failures and exclude successes, conversations are distorted, presidential desires are misrepresented and sweeping judgments and naked assertions are made with no apparent reference to any ...documents."
2. Weiner spends a great deal of time delving into the psyche of the Dulles brothers, both pious Catholics and virulent anti-Communists. To what extent was the CIA founded on the Johannine verse "and ye shall know the truth , and the truth will make you free" that graces the lobby at Langley?
3. In light of your reading of Legacy of Ashes, how do you assess the political fallout of the latest National Intelligence Estimate http://www.dni.gov/press_releases/20071203_release.pdf
4. Robert Kennedy is portrayed as a hands-on overseer of the agency under his brother's administration, hell-bent on covert operations. How does this portrait mesh with the "Family Jewels" report shared by current CIA director General Michael Hayden last June http://www.salon.com/books/authors/talbot/2007/06/24/family_jewels/ ?
5. Weiner asserts that the CIA played a role in misrepresenting Oswald's background to the Warren Commission. Do you see evidence of this in chapter 7 of the report http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/chapter-7.html ?
6. Weiner intends for the reader to draw parallels between the Vietnam "quagmire" and current U.S. foreign policy. Chapter 25 (" We Knew Then that We could Not Win the War") shines a light on then second lieutenant Bob Gates, future director of central intelligence and current Secretary of Defense . The chapter concludes with the statement " never had so much intelligence meant so little." What in your opinion is the value of intelligence (electronic intercepts, overhead reconnaissance, fielld reports, analyses and statistical studies) with regard to the conduct of war? How could General Westmoreland fail "to know the enemy" (p.288) with such intelligence?
7. Weiner describes CIA administration under director Helms as a "house of cards" built on dangerous ground" as the agency sought to "police the world by arming America's third world allies--771,217 foreign military and police officers in 25 nations." Is counterinsurgency practical in your opinion?
8. Secret government surveillance reached its peak under the Nixon presidency. Watergate damaged the agency irreparably. Bill Colby inherited this damaged agency upon Nixon's resignation. Director Colby is described by Weiner as "a deeply devoted Roman Catholic...who believed in the consequences of moratl sin." (p.328) What connection between religious belief and moral action is Weiner trying to make?
9. Weiner intends for Polgar's Saigon Office farewell (p.343) to give the reader pause and force him/her to reflect on the lessons of history. Internecine rivalries sappped the agency of its energy and potential. The Church Committee http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/Church_Committee_Created.htm uncovered a number of agendas and competing interests that unmoored the agency. President Carter's human rights agenda one administration later proved just as disastrous. The Desert One debacle in April 1980 is a case in point.
10. Bill Casey's CIA could have been scripted in Hollywood according to Weiner and successfully used disinformation , psychological warfare, sabotage, economic warfare, strategic deception, counterintelligence and cyberwarfare to "destroy a vigorous Soviet espionage team, damage the Soviet economy, and destabilize the Soviet state." (p.387) Weiner names this a form of terrorism. Do you agree?
11. Weiner also point to the Casey era Iran/Contra "neat idea" as the time when the CIA "was corrupted" This corruption undermined Operation Desert Storm (p.427) and set in motion a "tidal wave of history." Weiner indicts the entrepreurial spirit within the agency over the last two decades. Do you believe action or inaction has done the most harm?
12. The Aldrich Ames betrayal triggered an overhaul that shackled the clandestine service.
Bob Gates is quoted as saying the following (p.471) : The CIA [has] become less and less willing to hire"people that are different, people who are eccentric, people who don't look good in a suit and tie, people who don't play well in the sandbox with others. What type of person would you recruit (cf. William Sloane Coffin profile http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week752/profile.html )
13. Intelligence is a form of alchemy. Weiner paraphrases Jim Pavitt, chief of the clandestine service, on the WMD estimate when he writes (p.487) "the agaency produced a ton of analysis from an ounce of intelligence . That might have worked if the ounce had been solid gold and not pure dross."
14. Please comment on Weiner central questions (p.501) " How do you run a secret intelligence service in an open democracy? How do you serve thetruth by lying? How do you spread democracy democracy by deceit? "
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