Nossa Senhora Aparecida

A couple of fine friends of mine in Brazil are about to make a pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady of Aparecida, in Portuguese Nossa Senhora Aparecida or Nossa Senhora da Conceição Aparecida. Here she is!

She is the patron saint of Brazil.

As you can see, she is a Black figure of Mary. She appeared to three fishermen, Domingos Garcia, Filipe Pedroso, and João Alves, in 1717.

A note on the reactions to the death of John Updike (R.I.P.)

This isn't really about John Updike, may he rest in peace, but about the descriptions of John Updike on the radio.

I found myself yelling at the radio this morning. Yes, me, yelling at my blessed NPR shows in the car on the short drive to work.

Updike was a great writer, no doubt about it, and an art critic and thinker and many other things. So this isn't a dissing of Updike.

What is getting to me is how everyone is speaking of him as a writer about (the United States of) America, American post-war life, the American middle.

Excuse me?!

Updike wrote about white American post-war life.

Of course, he wrote about other things too. I have had his novel about a fictional African country, The Coup, on my shelf for years and have been meaning to read it, and I will read it in memory of him. Updike was, as one critic said, kaleidoscopic.

But Rabbit is not (the U.S. of) America.

Is Rabbit a part of it? Of course. A significant part of it? Of course. The whole story? No. "Representative" (of the whole story)? No.

We are so (as the kids would say) not out of the era of white privilege.

If we're going to name the fact that people are chroniclers of Jewish life or Black life in these United States, then let's name the fact that people are chroniclers of White or White Protestant life in the United States. (Or, for that matter, of the U.S. white middle class, or of middle-class Northern men.)

Either that or I want the obits for Toni Morrison (long may she live and continue to write) to say as much as the obits for Updike that she wrote the Great American Novel.

'Cause if you think that slavery and its aftermath or love and work in Harlem or the U.S. South have not been as American as apple pie and as the life of suburban white businessmen, you are still thinking of white America as normative --as the rule, the standard, the "normal"-- and the rest of these United States as the exception or the other.

White privilege is not just present in what we do or in what happens to us, but in how we think and how we speak. *

Think about it.

*See, for instance, re: the American novel, item 7 in the list on the document at the "white privilege" link above.

Spirit, Structure, and Flesh: my friend Deidre Crumbley's new book

I am just back from the book party for my friend Deidre's new book, held at St. Ambrose, Raleigh, a historically African American Episcopal church. The publisher (a university press) priced the book high and it's a hardback, but I am happy to say that Deidre's friends showed up and bought a lot of books -- and the founder of the church's Jazz Mass Quartet came and played the saxophone! There was food, particularly some excellent spinach balls. And a big cake saying "Congratulations." Here's a reproduction of the book cover.


It's a fascinating book and Dr. Crumbley (that's Deidre) has worked on it for something like 20 years. Four years of field work in Nigeria, countless rewrites, and the search for a publisher, plus illness and search for funding and all manner of obstacles. I gather there was also a cat involved at some point. Of course.

Rejoice with Deidre in her great achievement!

By the way, there are now members of African Initiated Churches, including the Aladura churches in this book, here in the U.S. -- including here in North Carolina. As Deidre noted in her short talk at the party, the African Diaspora did not end with slavery; indeed, our President-Elect is a child of this diaspora. So the African Initiated Churches, which began in the 20th century as indigenous African forms of Christianity, have migrated to other continents and are undergoing changes there.

More on the book on the publisher's website here. The full name of the book is Spirit, Structure, And Flesh: Gendered Experiences in African Instituted Churches among the Yoruba of Nigeria.

Life with the old liberals, continued

Here we are again, on a Friday evening, having watched Bill Moyers. The show ended early because of the public television fund-raiser.

Tonight we watched in the bedroom rather than the living-room. My parents are both 90 now and tire more easily. I sat between them on the bed and massaged one of my mother's hands for a while (she has a lot of arthritis) and pumped my fist in the air when Russ Feingold, whom Moyers was interviewing, said something eminently sensible.

This was another show worth watching - if only for Moyers's fine introduction, which summed up with wit and accuracy the buzz around the Obama appointments. I am posting it below. Short and punchy.

After that came an interview with Feingold, bless his heart, who explained what being a progressive means if you are from Wisconsin, and who went on to have an intelligent conversation with Moyers about the Constitution, Obama, and other tiny topics. Two intelligent people speaking in complete sentences about the well-being of the nation. What a concept.

Then, after a little fund-raising break, came the second half of the show with Mark Johnson's musical project, Playing for Change, and if you haven't heard of it (I had not) you are in for a treat. It is one of the most heart-warming enterprises out there, and I do mean out there, since Johnson has traveled the planet for a decade and the project links people together in song (when in doubt, sing!) and instrument-playing across national and economic and religious and cultural boundaries.

Here's the Moyers introduction (read it aloud to get the full effect - and I dare you not to laugh at least once):

No sooner did President-elect Obama begin announcing his appointments to office than the chattering classes of print, the airwaves and cyberspace began The Great Debate:

Ah-hah, some said, this proves he will govern right of center. Karl Rove cackled with glee, and even Rush Limbaugh — from his underground bunker — hailed Obama's choice of Hillary as a shrewd political masterstroke.

Establishment Democrats watched the parade of familiar faces and exclaimed: we're back! Not so fast, shouted the Obama net-root activists who pounded their keyboards with fury all year. "In his heart you know he's one of us," they're saying. These appointments will give him cover to channel FDR.

And from their lofty perch above it all, Obama's fellow Brainiacs twirled their Phi Beta Kappa keys, smiled and said "Foolish ideologues." You know intellect will carry the day! And as always, corporate chieftains the country over rubbed their palms in anticipation of a New Age of Pragmatism, crossed Republicans off their Christmas list, and started writing checks to Democrats.

And Obama's not even President yet!

Moyers continues:

Meanwhile, the people most uncertain of where they stand right now are that political species known as progressives. They hold a healthy distaste for the orthodox ways of the Washington elites who seem to have a permanent grip on how things work, no matter who wins the election.
Progressives are holding their fire right now, giving Obama the benefit of the doubt, but unsure whether all those establishment figures Obama is gathering around him — largely from the Clinton administration — represent a brilliant strategy of co-option or a signal of his true intent.

So what does the leading progressive member of the United States Senate think about all this? We'll ask him.

Full transcript of the show here.

Brother and his Dearly Beloved arrive tomorrow.

P.S. Wireless internet in the retirement community!