Nonfiction November 3: Diversity and Nonfiction

Week 3 is hosted by Rebecca at I'm Lost in Books. Diversity and Nonfiction: What does “diversity” in books mean to you? Does it refer to book’s location or subject matter? Or is it the author’s nationality or background? What countries/cultures do you tend to enjoy or read about most in your nonfiction? What countries/cultures would you like nonfiction recommendations for?

To answer this prompt fully would require an entire essay - much too long for a mere blog. It is such a hot topic in the blogosphere with many more qualified and more articulate bloggers weighing in on the issue that I feel overwhelmed even thinking about writing some sort of comprehensive theses or manifesto on my relationship with diverse reading. So instead of doing so, here are a few random, under-developed ideas about the issue:

• For me, reading about diverse subject matter is more important and interesting than reading books by "diverse" authors. You can read five YA romance novels by 5 completely different authors (gender, race, age, etc.) that all pretty much reveal the same themes and ideologies. If, however, you read about different ideas/people/places in different genres, you are more likely to learn something about people who are not you...IN MY EXPERIENCE.
• Diversity is so focused on race/ethnicity that I think we miss out on a giant chunk of diverse reading. IN MY EXPERIENCE, great social dividers have more to do with economic class than race or ethnicity. This may be in large part due to where I live but that's why I have the "in my experience" disclaimer. And even beyond economics, we have stories about people with disabilities, non-hetero sexual orientation, non-Christian-Muslim religions, older people (which in current trends could really be anyone over the age of 30), and so on.
• I do not feel that people should be required to read diversely, regardless of the definition. I do not look down on bloggers or people in general who read only books about white upper middle class people written by white upper middle class authors. Reading is a personal pleasure, not a learning experience for everyone. That being said, I really do think people are missing out if they don't read diversely. IN  MY EXPERIENCE, reading only one type of story is remarkably boring and neither satisfying nor edifying.
• The white men who wrote all of those canonical books kicked ass and not reading those classics because they were written by privileged white dudes is doing yourself a disservice IN MY EXPERIENCE. Seriously Shakespeare, Homer, Dickens, Doyle, Twain, and so on rocked. But you also shouldn't miss out on the Brontes, Austen, Harper Lee, Hurston, Woolf, Achebe, Morrison, Du Bois, and the such not because they rocked too.
• If you really want to read diversely, read some Ancient Lit. IN MY EXPERIENCE, it's awesome and we have amazing works from a variety of cultures. The Upanishads, Ramayana, Hammurabi's Code, Beowulf, Gilgamesh, Panchatantra, I Ching, Art of War, there is just a ton of work to peruse and learn from.

So those are a few of the thoughts I have on diversity in reading. I would like to point out that every bullet point has the words "in my experience" within it because I recognize that a question like this (as with so many important questions) is answered from the particular point of view of the answerer.

The Search for Fairy Tales (Experts)

Week 2's Nonfiction November prompt is hosted by Leslie at Regular Rumination. Three ways to join in this week! You can either share 3 or more books on a single topic that you have read and can recommend (be the expert), you can put the call out for good nonfiction on a specific topic that you have been dying to read (ask the expert), or you can create your own list of books on a topic that you’d like to read (become the expert).

While my original "Expert" post for this week focused on Freak Shows, I also have long been fascinated with Fairy Tales, so I thought I would take this opportunity to research some books which will:

1. Provide me with the ORIGINAL iterations of fairy tales
2. Compare the originals with the "softer" versions we have today and hopefully expound upon the socio-cultural shifts which necessitated those changes
3. Analyze the importance and effect of fairy tales on both children and adults

This was most definitely not as easy as I thought it would be. Trying to find a collection of original fairy tales - which are actually the originals - is proving quite difficult. The Grimm Brothers certainly collected the original tales; however they had to tone down the tales they collected for their entirely unintended young audience. As such, some of the anthologies claiming to be the "original" stories are actually just the first sanitized versions.

Charles Perrault, the Grimm Brothers predecessor, never, I believe, sanitized the tales he told, so it's quite possible that books by him, like Perrault's Fairy Tales, do have the originals. If any of you have read books that are the actual original fairy tales, please let me know in the comments!

For information on the differences between the original tales and their current versions, there's a ton of articles and sites you can find online. For example, we have a Huffington Post article about the real life origins of some of our most famous fairy tales, and here's another from Huffington about the original iterations of a handful of fairy tales. In the Books section of the UK's Stylist, we have an article listing the 8 Darkest Fairy Tales along with their original authors. Any other online sources you find useful on this topic?

Fairy tales themselves are classified as nonfiction, but I wanted some secondary sources as well, and these are the most interesting sounding ones I have found so far (summaries from GoodReads):

From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and their Tellers by Marina Warner: In this landmark study of the history and meaning of fairy tales, the celebrated cultural critic Marina Warner looks at storytelling in art and legend-from the prophesying enchantress who lures men to a false paradise, to jolly Mother Goose with her masqueraders in the real world. Why are storytellers so often women, and how does that affect the status of fairy tales?

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Women Writers Explore Their Favorite Fairy Tales by Kate Bernheimer: A collection of original essays by leading women writers, including Margaret Atwood, Anne Beattie, Julia Alvarez, Joyce Carol Oates, A. S. Byatt, Rosellen Brown, and many others, explores the various fairy tales that have shaped their lives and their work.

The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales by Bruno Bettelheim: The famous child psychologist, explains how fairy tales educate, support, and liberate the emotions of children.

The Witch Must Die: The Hidden Meanings of Fairy Tales by Sheldon Cashdan: In The Witch Must Die, Sheldon Cashdan explores how fairy tales help children deal with psychological conflicts by projecting their own internal struggles between good and evil onto the battles enacted by the characters in the stories.

If you have any other suggestions, please let me know!

Nonfiction November 2: A Freak Show Expert

Week 2's Nonfiction November prompt is hosted by Leslie at Regular Rumination. Freak Shows are about to (re)become remarkably popular due to the release of the newest American Horror Story - Freak Show. I am no exception. No matter the "correctness" of it, I am fascinated, and so for Nonfiction November's Be The Expert/Ask the Expert/Become the Expert I thought I would look up - and hopefully read - some of the top books on Freak Shows.

First, the prompt:

Three ways to join in this week! You can either share 3 or more books on a single topic that you have read and can recommend (be the expert), you can put the call out for good nonfiction on a specific topic that you have been dying to read (ask the expert), or you can create your own list of books on a topic that you’d like to read (become the expert).

I started an Essentials List on Barnes and Noble for all the books I found. Here are a few of the most promising, whether due to subject matter or price (it's crazy how expensive some of these books are!):

Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit
Robert Bodgan, 1990
Robert Bogdan's fascinating social history brings to life the world of the freak show and explores the culture that nurtured and, later, abandoned it. In uncovering this neglected chapter of show business, he describes in detail the flimflam artistry behind the shows, the promoters and the audiences, and the gradual evolution of public opinion from awe to embarrassment. I read this one last month and put up my review last week.

Jay's Journals of Anomalies
Ricky Jay, 2003
The multitalented Ricky Jay (sleight-of-hand artist, actor, author, and scholar of the unusual) wrote and published a unique and beautifully designed quarterly called Jay's Journal of Anomalies. Already coveted collector's items, the sixteen issues are now gathered here in a complete set, with significant new material and illustrations. A brilliant excursion into the history of bizarre entertainments, the journal was described inThe New York Times as "beautiful and elegant...a combination of rigorous scholarship and personal rumination."

Circus and Carnival Ballyhoo: Sideshow Freaks, Jabbers and Blade Box Queens
A.W. Stencell, 2010
Here is the history of the North American side show at circuses and carnivals, along with the stories of freaks and other side show acts in other venues such as dime museums, store front shows, in vaudeville, on movie theatre stages — and even at touring whale shows. The book follows the development of the circus side show with interviews and stories from side show workers that explain the role of freaks, working acts, managers, and talkers — and explores how important grift was to circuses and how it became located inside the side show.

Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body
Rosamarie Garland Thomson, 1996
The book's essays fall into four main categories: historical explorations of American freak shows in the era of P.T. Barnum; the articulation of the freak in literary and textual discourses; contemporary relocations of freak shows; and theoretical analyses of freak culture. Essays address such diverse topics as American colonialism and public presentations of natives; laughing gas demonstrations in the 1840's; Shirley Temple and Tom Thumb; Todd Browning's landmark movie Freaks; bodybuilders as postmodern freaks; freaks in Star Trek; Michael Jackson's identification with the Elephant Man; and the modern talk show as a reconfiguration of the freak show. I'm reading this one right now. 

Freaks: We Who Are Not As Others
Daniel P. Mannix, 1999
Another long out of print classic book based on Mannix's personal acquaintance with sideshow stars. Read all about the notorious love affairs of midgets; the amazing story of the elephant boy; the unusual amours of Jolly Daisy; the fat woman; the famous pinhead who inspired Verdi's "Rigoletto"; the tragedy of Betty Lou Williams and her parasitic twin; the black midget, only 34 inches tall, who was happily married to a 264-pound wife; the human torso who could sew, crochet and type; and bizarre accounts of normal humans turned into freaks-either voluntarily or by evil design!

I also have a few online resources if you are interested:

• Freakshows in the United States - Disability Social History
• Freakshows - National Fairground Archive
• Freakshow Gallery - British Library
• Very Informative Article - things said and done blog
• The Human Marvels - actual discussions
• Cult of Weird - quick bios of some of the most popular "attractions"

There is, of course, A LOT more out there on this fascinating, taboo, socially and culturally relevant topic. I highly recommend reading about this controversial piece of history.

I couldn't settle on one topic for this prompt, so tomorrow I have a post going up about the original fairy tales; be sure to check it out!

Freak Show by Robert Bogdan

Robert Bogdan is a Professor of Cultural Foundations of Education and Sociology and the Director of the Social Science Doctoral Program for the Center on Human Policy, Law, and Disability Studies at Syracuse University. His book, Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit, looks at the history and practice of the freak show through a social lens.

He directly states his thesis early in the book: "Our reaction to freaks is not a function of some deep-seated fear or some "energy" that they give off; it is, rather the result of our socialization, and of the way our social institutions managed these people's identities. Freak shows are not about isolated individuals...they are about organizations and patterned relationships between them and us. Freak is not a quality that belongs to the person on display. It is something that we created: a perspective, a set of practices - a social construction."

Focusing on the heydey of Freak Shows, 1840-1940, Bogdan covers the history of the presentation of freaks in conjunction with the circus, dime museums, carnivals, world fairs, the amusement industry in general. What interested me most about the history was the transition of freaks from impressive curiosities to diseased dangers to society. Freak shows drew large crowds, were extremely popular attractions, and in many cases, "freaks" settled down into "normal" communities both at retirement and when on break from the show. It wasn't until the early 1900s when doctors claimed freaks as the property of science that people started to find freaks pitiful. Science both demystified their abnormalities and changed their uniqueness into diseases.

True to the thesis, Bogdan doesn't focus on individual freaks, he discusses their modes of presentation. Constructing a "freak" was all about backstory and presentation. People were displayed in either the exotic or aggrandized mode. Those presented in the exotic mode were passed off as a strange wonder from a remote part of the world. Some of these performers didn't even have a unique physiology; they were just from a different country - or merely presented as being from a different country.

In the aggrandized mode, the performer is presented as a pinnacle of society, someone who is truly talented because of or in spite of his/her difference. And these people certainly had an interesting life. Many of them hobnobbed with the American elite and European royalty.

Of course, not every performer had an actual abnormality. We have the gaffs - people faking difference - and self-made freaks and novelty acts - those who learned a skill like sword swallowing or people who covered their bodies in tattoos.  Even those performers with real abnormalities, however, were deceiving the audience in some way. I could go on and on about this. It was fascinating, both to learn the constructed modes of presentation and to learn about the people who performed. Speaking of learning....

The book is not structured chronologically, so information is repeated chapter to chapter, the history, the people, and the theory. Rather than being annoyingly redundant, this repetition actually enhanced the reading experience for me. I feel like I learned more this way.

I will leave you with another restatement of his thesis because I think it is not only an important part of the book, but a very true, very important statement: "How we view people who are different has less to do with what they are physiologically than with who we are culturally."


This book counts towards my reading for Nonfiction November.

Nonfiction November 1: My Year in Nonfiction

Hosted by Kim at Sophisticated Dorkiness, week 1's topic for Nonfiction November is to take a look back at your year of nonfiction and reflect on the following questions – What was your favorite nonfiction read of the year? What nonfiction book have you recommended the most? What is one topic or type of nonfiction you haven’t read enough of yet? What are you hoping to get out of participating in Nonfiction November?

I have not read much nonfiction this year, which is really not a surprise as I haven't read much at all - only 31 books, roughly 40 books down from a normal (as in pre-child) year. The nonfiction I have read, however, has been wonderful:

Warrior Women: An Archaeologists search for History's Hidden Heroines by Jeannine Davis-Kimball is an accessible, academic, and narrative tale about Davis-Kimball's archaeological discovery of evidence indicating...you guessed it Warrior Women. The book is brimming with interesting tidbits that are both entertaining and insightful.

Pilgrim's Wilderness by Tom Kizzia: Oh my Jehoshaphat ladies and gents, this book was crazy reading. I was horrified, I was morbidly awed, I was politically outraged, I was personally offended, I was arrogantly disbelieving, I was floored. In a nutshell, it is about a incestuous, narcissistic, bible-thumping madman who homesteads in Alaska with his brainwashed wife and 15 kids, and ends up taking on the National Park Service and the law for his sins. 

Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke the book is a collection of letters Rilke wrote to a young poet named Franz Xaver Kappus. These are life lessons from the truly deep mind of a man who believed in solitude as the great tool of the artist. Every line is infused with a truth that is beautiful, arguable, and insightful. 

Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit by Robert Bogdan focuses on the heyday of Freak Shows, 1840-1940. Bogdan covers the history of the presentation of freaks in conjunction with the circus, dime museums, carnivals, world fairs, the amusement industry in general. The book focuses on a simple but powerful argument: "How we view people who are different has less to do with what they are physiologically than with who we are culturally." My review of this one will be up later this week.

Stitches by David Small: Emotionally smacking me in the face on page 12, Stitches hooked me in and I devoured this intense graphic novel in about 20 minutes. Small mirrors form and content, using minimal words to relate a story about loss of voice (both literal and figurative). The images really shine here, telling as much of the story, if not more, than the actual text. 

84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff, a collection of letters between Hanff and a used-book seller in London, unveils a friendship that lasted 20 years. Hanff's quirky personality and Frank's blend of the personal and the professional really add life to their letters. Whether they were talking about books, family, or the odd tidbit, I was consistently interested in what they had to say. And I liked this one so much I actually chose it for my nonfiction selection for Introduction to Literature.

My favorite of the above is difficult to pin-down as they are remarkably different books. Warrior Women and Freak Show are academic, informative, fascinating books; Letters, Stitches, and 84 are lyrical and deep. But Pilgrim's Wilderness will haunt me - has  haunted me - and it is the one I am most likely to recommend to others. 

My plans for nonfiction reading include another book about freak shows - Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body, edited by Rosemarie Garland Thomson which I've already started but I may be a bit "freaked" out right now. Then I plan on attacking two books on literary theory, textbooks for my Graduate Studies in Literary Theory course, which sounds geeky and fantastic. I also have a small stack of nonfiction I hope to read in the next month or so - and a giant shelf of them I hope to read in the next year.

So are you guys participating in Nonfiction November? What has your nonfiction reading been like this year?