Post-reading notes: I, Tituba, Black Witch Of Salem

Tituba's influence on the white Christians in the book is really interesting. She uses "witchcraft" or voodoo to slowly and painfully kill one of them, a literal influence, which haunts her the rest of her life. However, her more subtle influence as a non-Puritan on the young girls who she encourages to break a few rules in their religion only to improve their health, has dire consequences for everyone but Tituba. When her suggestions proves successful, it seems the girls turn on her and accuse her of witchcraft but they also accuse everyone who is different or has inconvenienced them of the same thing and turn the whole town against each other. They seem more possessed by Satan than anyone else! So in reality, it seems the girls lost their faith. It's usually those who are most insecure who accuse others of insecurities, usually the same insecurities that they have, which here means feeling in scheme with the devil. It's interesting that for a Puritan, losing faith is suggested as being tantamount to switching to the devil's side but this may be because they see the devil in everything that isn't Puritan. Tituba, by the way, doesn't believe in either God or Satan.

I also thought that the discussions between Tituba, her mother, Mama Yaya, and Hester about gender are really interesting. Everyone else believes involvement with men brings nothing but misfortune to women, which in this novel is generally true, Tituba's life and the plot of the novel, is almost just a string of Tituba's romantic involvements and how they precipitate the events of her life and eventually lead to her hanging. Still, Tituba, who was conceived through rape, seeks involvement with men for the sexual comfort. Tituba is, above all else, a character who wants to trust people.

I like what this story and what Mama Yaya says about the struggle of slaves for freedom. That they are inclined to violent means to gain back the dignity taken from them with such violence. However, it is through Tituba's care for people, whether slave or master, which undoes society. If that isn't a huge shout out to MLK and the Civil Rights Movement, I've never heard one.

Finally, thinking about this book, maybe because it talks about a slave woman's influence on religion, I thought of Roots and I thought of how horrifying it must have been for a Muslim woman to be taken as a slave the way Europeans took the Africans as slaves. Yes, the there are slaves in the Quran but Muslims are urged to treat slaves with humility and promised rewards for freeing slaves. Not that I don't sympathize with enslaved males Muslims but Muslimah taken as a slave is the twisting of the knife in my belly.

"The Essential Rumi, borrowed from the library"

Before I read the mystic's words,
the flowers of your perfume,
curled between pages you held long and close,
dreamed our release into a tangled garden
of cornflowers, violet and green.

And we, red and gold, hair loosened by poetry,
flew wings of kept birds out of the house
into the glory of that conjured place,
praying for tree houses and swings
with no words, just whooping, sublime and serene.

Information Marxism

One of my interests is branding. Products are often sold with fine print that threatens to contractually bind us into expressing certain personalities, attitudes, or traits. This is why you can answer the question: what's the difference between someone who owns a Mac and someone who owns a PC?

The truth is, there doesn't have to be any difference. It's like asking what the difference is between someone who owns cows and someone who owns goats. Maybe somewhere there's stereotype, but it hasn't been used to sell anything, at least not successfully, so most of us can't answer this question. But the real answer is the same: there doesn't necessarily have to be a difference.

When materialism was synonymous with shopohilism, caring about brands made you a shallow person. These days, if you don't care about brands, you aren't socially conscious. However, caring is no longer superficial but requires a lot of research. In the information age, a lack of social consciousness makes you information impoverished, lazy, inept, inconsiderate, and/or awkward. Still, honestly, social consciousness is a "brand" itself, and I have mixed feelings about branding.

First, how much of our identity is created through what we purchase? Everything you buy says something about you because everything you buy is a vote and an investment in the retailer, company, and product and how you vote and invest reflects upon you. Beyond bare necessities, your choices reflect your values or the values a brand convinces you you should have. That last part is pivotal. Do your choices reflect your values or the values advertising convinces you to have?

This came into perspective for me as a minority. The values my parents have are not the same as those held by the larger society I live in. Furthermore, my parents are rather religious and have only become more so over the course of my life. Though their cultural values are still pretty deeply held, religion gives them a more canonized and therefore more accessible way to examine their values against a standard they trust. Their cultural values tend to be more arbitrary but because religion plays such a large cultural role in my family, I have overall adapted a stance of re-examination of values.

It's not just the private sector that perpetuates branding. Schools, which are government regulated, perpetuate the American brand. Or what officials have decided is the American brand. It could be said that's politics in general.

When I was writing graduate school applications, one of the best questions I came across about information access is Randy Stoecker's concern over whether internet access gives underprivileged, dispossessed people a superficial or false sense of belonging to larger culture. Implied in this criticism is a distrust for larger culture, which is created through assertive branding and seeks to profit only the business owners.

The best answer to this question, I believe, comes from Hans Enzensberger, on whom I haven't done enough research but first encountered here. I have been interested in "new media" since I encountered Amir Ahmad's Islam in the Age of New Media project. Basically, the idea is the mass, radical manipulation of media. Branding is created through media but everyone has access to the creation of media, it gives everyone access, if they wish, to branding as well. Rather than only consuming pre-packaged brand values, people are given the chance to package and perpetuate the values they choose. This is also, in my opinion, one of the best uses of the internet. Already, the internet is being limited by big brands. That can't be allowed to happen. Branding, especially in the realm of the internet, needs to be put into the hands of socially conscious community leaders. Maybe that sounds like tribalism but if we are to be united, it has to be on fair terms.

Shades of Grey and Brown

Fifty Shades of Grey recently hit the library bookshelves. I've had some interesting conversations with housewives and overheard interesting conversations among the ladies in the office. They're more or less unabashed, although I didn't spot anyone talking about it with or around too many men. It basically reminds me of the scene in Madmen when the ladies pass around a copy of Lady Chatterley. I don't think it's anything all that new and I don't think I'll be reading it, either.

But something good has come out of this for me, nonetheless. While trying to explain why I would not be reading it to a fellow lover of literature, I said that, right now, there are other ways that I'm more interested in developing my imagination.

And then it hit me. Ever since I was in the middle of my B.A., I have been conflicted about what I should be reading. I wasn't even sure what I wanted to read. There were a lot of people telling me what I, as a student of literature, should read. On the grounds of studying literature and yet studying post-colonial literature, which is anti-literature, in the classical sense, as much as movements in modernism are, and yet feeling as though there was something missing, all I knew was the my love for reading was in shambles and if it were to die, a part of me I loved would die with it. But the question I needed to ask myself was: What part of my imagination do I need/want to develop?

When I was in middle school, a well-meaning school librarian suggested I read a fiction book by a Muslim author with Muslim characters in a Muslim country. I don't even remember what book. Flustered, I told her I didn't want to. Between Harry Potter books, I was more interested in the Alice series by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor. I was interested in anything written by Avi or Rodman Philbrick. I remember liking a series of fairy tales re-written as novels from the point of view of a different character. Growing up sheltered, I wanted to know about the culture beyond my house, a culture I desperately wanted to take part in or at least relate to.

Even then, I knew I wasn't interested in mainstream culture-- I was self-aware enough to know I was different and geeky and be able to appreciate that about myself. But I remember being afraid of being shaped wrongly by the book she suggested. I was afraid it would change me in a way I had no control over. I was afraid it would hit uncomfortably close to home. I was also afraid it would miss and make me feel too different, an unreachable other. Even as I started reading global, post-colonial literature in college, I was a apprehensive about reading anything by Indian, Bengali, or Muslim writers.

As I became more exposed to writing closer to my experience, started reading and enjoying a few books, even becoming overwhelmed by volume of literature I could still read about it, it became less important for me to be able to completely relate to a work by a Muslim or from a Muslim country. It made me realize that there were a lot of people like me, but not exactly like me and that this is a good thing. Even though there's still a part of me that's afraid that if I read one more book about being from the Indian subcontinent, being an immigrant, being Muslim, on top of which, being feminist, I'm going to alienate myself, now I think that it's something I need to develop more of an imagination for.

In a way, this focus it does limit me. I don't read very much mainstream literature and I'm not that interested in much of the literary canon and because of these reasons, it's not enough for me to meet someone who loves to read to feel an immediate connection with them-- like it was in middle school. But I do still connect with people who love literary fiction of most varieties. I also recently discovered my love for sci-fi. The biggest difference is that I now relate most to people developing shades of grey within their imagination of Muslim, immigrant, female, religious, subcontinental experiences because as someone of these experiences and an American on top of that, to do otherwise would require me to believe these descriptors are limits upon myself and believe they should be for other people, too.

Who's making your future?: An introduction to mine.

“There is no such thing as unmanipulated writing, filming, or broadcasting. The question is therefore not whether the media are manipulated, but who manipulates them. A revolutionary plan should not require the manipulators to disappear: on the contrary, it must make everyone a manipulator." -Hans Enzensberger (Rust Belt Visions: The 2011 Allied Media Conference)

It is a commonly held notion that the world around us isn't good enough. Maybe with the exception of people who belong to the elite class of luxury and excess, most of us look around us and see things that need to be improved. Most of us are willing to work towards improvement, if only for a good night of sleep following a hard day's work. We don't want our effort to line the pockets of the elite or further the damage already surrounding us.

For change to happen, we need resources. Knowing that one of the problems we face is a shortage of resources, some of us choose to directly address this need. I respect that effort, especially because to do it honestly it requires skillful navigation between the corporate creation of scarcity and actual need.

Apparent in my penchant for literature, rooted, perhaps, in the immigrant tradition, I want to address our need for resources by helping both people seeking to provide resources and the people in need of them think about what they really need and to best provide and/or obtain it, and I want to do it by addressing our escapist tendencies.

Next, though you might not immediately see how this comes next, a good story caters to the escapism of entertainment and a really good story teaches you something important at the same time. Though I have spent years of my life with my nose, nay my entire head, in some book, I know that most people escape into music, television shows, movies, video games, or, the biggest one of all: the internet. And though I was an English major, I know that most if not all media contains a message. The message is usually simple: consume more media from this source/follow this message.

BUT the original conception of the internet was not one prompting us to consume but to create. It was not to create another platform for corporate manipulation but to give us access to creating information. Dave Winer from Wired.com equates internet access with having access to your own personal printing press. And the more digitized media becomes, the future we can take that. Why not your own radio or TV station? Video game? Record company? Art gallery? Why not? It seems like the ultimate escapism until you realize the internet is a place where change can happen. In fact, it is happening but the change is being enacted by corporations and that needs to change.

The next question is that of creating media with messages in good faith. In other words, creating media in the context of creating a better world, not just one into which we can escape, as has been its historical corporate function. This is probably the hardest part. While I was English major, dissecting the worlds created in literature-- even though literary fiction is often a prompt to dissect the intentions of the world around us, facing the intentionality in the world around us is an incredibly difficult task. Before using literary analysis, which tries to pinpoint the techniques used by the author to create the message of the book, I never really thought of books as being authored, forget the process by which they are. The way I learned to read as an English major and the way I read before were entirely different and the difference nearly ruined the pleasure of reading for me.

But there are people who face intentionality at its worst everyday. People who face racism or sexism, for example, and know they should be judged as an individual rather than through prejudice. Especially when prejudice is encountered everywhere, it becomes apparent as being constructed with the intention to justify the mistreatment of others. People who struggle against it can tell you how important it is to know the historical context of both the force they reckon with and of their struggle as it proceeds.

For example, when part of a struggle against prejudice, such as the revolutionary movement of hip-hop, is commercialized and made into "pop," it's context (the Civil Rights Movement) disappears. So how do you create media in good faith? You make sure it is connected with the context of it's intention. Don't trust anything without context.

But simply providing context is not enough. Judith Butler, on addressing the lack of centrality/representation/leadership in feminism states that gender, to remain relevant and to avoid coercion, must function as platform for the interpretation of gender. For feminists, gender is a conversation starter, not a lecture. Gender is a context but without the opportunity to continually edit the contained content, it morphs into the polar opposite of what feminists (and humans in general) need it to be. Given, the next step is to empower people to contribute to the creation of information and media.

So, my goal is to help people become aware of information manipulation (giving them context) while giving them the skills to dismantle the sway of the current methods of manipulation as content contributors. This will not only help people become more aware of commercially created "need" but hopefully also help us find our actual context within which we can assess our actual needs. Believe it or not, you can learn all the necessary skills to do what I want to do at a good Library and Information Science program. So that's where I'm headed next.

Listen up, mankind.

In feminism (if your eyes just glazed over, you are a chauvinist and you don't deserve to read what I have to say), a point that is often made to justify the discourse is that man is often equated with the universal standard, prototypical humanoid, which leaves women to be "other" because she is "not a man" and is therefore "deficient." Some claim that defining women this way is even tantamount to their non-existence.

That is one way to look at it. Another way to look at it as that using the word "man" to refers to all people is actually more harmful to men. How can you see yourself as an individual, rather than a generalization/stereotype if the word that refers to your group refers to all groups put together, as well? If everyone were divided into 1, 2, 3, and 4 and the set [1, 2, 3, 4] is called 1, it is problematic to state 2, 3, and 4 are not represented in the group's name yet fail to recognize that 1 has lost it's identity to that of the group. In this alternative way of thinking, women are both included and distinguished within the group whereas as men are inclusive and undistinguished. What can be perceived as the dominance of men can also be perceived as a hindrance to the perception of individuality just as easily as the projection of any other stereotype or bias.

I think the problem posed here is more of a problem with a desire to be indistinguishable, a mere face in the crowd. Any feminist can agree that different is not the same as deficient, so how is that leap in reasoning made? Historically, there unfortunately seems to be an answer to that question, but logically, I don't think there is. Women don't want to be treated differently than men even though they are different and men are different from them, too. And there are people who are more different or different in other ways. And I'm not just talking about sex and gender. But no, different is bad. Let's all be the same. Let's all be like heterosexual men. Commercialized identity, ftw!

But with more college educated folks who know it's wrong to think different is bad, it's cool to be different. But the problem is, most college educated folks aren't "different." They're normal and the more "normal" you are, the harder you have to try to be "different." The better you fit into the dominant culture, the more likely it is that you are impossibly indistinguishable, the more likely it is that you cultivate eccentric, local, obscure, and even distasteful tastes and habits and pointedly disregard anything adopted by "the masses." If the masses do it, they will only do it ironically. This is the result of claiming reclamation for distinctiveness that is mistaken for being downtrodden and denying it to what could be viewed as privilege but turns out not to be so. I'm not saying feminism is at fault. But it is certainly exemplary, particularly in its "western" form, in contributing to the problem.

Learning To Draw Again

I'm going to learn to draw again.
I'll learn to look things straight in the eye
and memorize the gesture
of being seen.

I have grown too accustomed
to the pursuit of
the gaze of
privilege.

I have grown too accustomed
to seeing and not being seen.

I have grown too accustomed
to my supernatural position
as a ghost.

I'm going to learn to draw again.
I'll learn to look things straight in the eye
and internalize the gesture
of being seen.

"In the world, in my body"

Eve Ensler on the interconnectedness of our bodies and world in which we live. Contains mature content.