The Princess and the Prophet: The Secret History of Magic, Race, and Moorish Muslims in America

 

A truly fascinating book, The Princess and the Prophet: The Secret History of Magic, Race, and Moorish Muslims in America by Jacob S. Dorman, examines the  proliferation of groups of African Americans in the late nineteenth and twentieth century who formed organizations professing resistance narratives to white Christian religion and society – often under the guise of some form of Islam.  

This came about through curious twists and turns.  Dorman shows how European Orientalism had a profound influence in America, and its most common expression was in circuses, sideshows, and world fairs.  Black men and women played Moors, Hindus, and other “exotic” peoples who had power and charisma.  At this time the Shriner movement of the Fez hats arose, which had its own Orientalist origins as a secret society with Islamic roots.  As African Americans moved north these organizations became increasingly popular, and powerful among a dislocated people.  Organized Shrinerism and Circus Orientalism combined in novel and powerful ways  

Dorman’s subject, the Moorish Science Temple of America, was the direct antecedent of The Nation of Islam.  His work helps to explain why a man like Malcolm X knew so little of Islam, yet called himself a Muslim in his early years in the Nation of Islam (before he embraced more “normative” Islam).  Moorish and Islamic movements were trying on guises that were in direct contraction to the narrative of white supremacy with amazing results.

Via November

 

Via November

Of brown and gray

The downward day

Hissing grasses

And naked trees

Asleep for eternity 

Scapegoats of the Empire: The True Story of Breaker Morant's Bushveldt Carbineers

 

Scapegoats of the Empire: The True Story of Breaker Morant's Bushveldt Carbineers by George Witton is an unfortunate book. Witton is not a writer, and has little sense of how to tell his story.  If you have not seen the 1980 Australian film, or are aware from another source of the war crimes that Witton, Morant and Handcock allegedly committed, this book would be completely cloudy.

In the end, this book does nothing to prove the crimes of Witton, Morant and Handcock were anything but that, crimes.  Even if orders existed to kill Boer prisoners, it was an unethical order, and should not have been obeyed.  Their defense that war on the Northern Transvaal was simply of this nature, irregular and total, is also no excuse.  This is like the defense that I am not culpable because all cars are traveling seventy in a fifty-five mph zone, I do not deserve to get a ticket if stopped.  The illegal actions of others is no excuse for my own illegal actions.

This case, and this book, really calls out for the dire need for a military to maintain discipline and order.  In the stress and turmoil of war, a lack of discipline is the slippery slope toward war crimes.

Book as Bomb

Does a book really matter?  Is the world better if a book is published?  In The Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, the CIA, and the Battle Over a Forbidden Book, the authors prove that a book can really have impact in the world, especially when it is entangled in politics and ideology.  The tug of war over Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago is a fascinating case study of how in times and places of political turmoil, the written word can be a weapon and a piece of art, even for art’s sake, a bomb.

The Truth of War

What is war like without jingoism or a distorting ideological lens or patriotic glorification? Madness Visible: A Memoir of War by Janine di Giovanni is one of the most honest accounts of war and its costs I have encountered.  

The author recounts her experiences in the Balkans in the 1990s and early 2000s, and is exposed to the extreme limits of the utter barbarism our species is fully capable of achieving.  Her book is the closest to war one can experience on a page.

This is also an achievement of pure journalism.  Certainly, di Giovanni did not have report in the Balkans as it disintegrated into war, death, ethnic cleansing, systematic rape,  forced expulsions  and genocide.  The people around her in Kosovo and Sarajevo had no choice but to be in the war.  But she went as a professional calling and duty, detailing crimes that we always say should no longer happen, but ultimately, and sadly, are replicated.

If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future

 

In Jill Lepore’s If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future, we learn of a data collection company which anticipated, in many ways, our current era of Big Data.  Lepore does an excellent job of showing how the scientists at Simulmatics were ahead of their time, and although formal failures in most of the tasks they set to predict, showed the path to the future.

Yet the book is underwhelming at many points.  Lepore is not consist in showing her interest and enthusiasm in telling in the topic.  When parts like these occur in the book, I wondered why I should be interested as well.   The Vietnam section  is far too long for the payout.  The book would have been better served, I believe, if it was shorter.  This way, the author could have maintained her interest in the topic she wants us to read enough to write a book. 

The Testaments: A Novel

The Testaments: A Novel by Margaret Atwood is extremely savvy.  Atwood always delivers quality books; most may not be masterpieces, but she consistently tells interesting stories, in a register that is wide enough to be of interest to many people.

Normally, a sequel to her extremely successful The Handmaid’s Tale would be a daunting task.  But she gets help here.  The extremely successfully TV series has given her a leg up.  She was and is involved in this series, and the first novel, the series, and this sequel, work together in lock step.  And all of it is high quality material.  The pro-Canadian anti-American jabs are quite fun, too

Searching for Zion: The Quest for Home in the African Diaspora

 

Searching for Zion: The Quest for Home in the African Diaspora, by Emily Raboteau, tells the fascinating story of the connection between Zion as a concept and place of homeland among the world’s far flung Africans.  

This is also a personal journey, as Raboteau has a father with African ancestry and a mother of European ancestry.  As she does not look “African” she is constantly negotiating not only her own self of identity, but how others place her in their own categories of identity.  Her search for Zion, for home, is therefore both social and personal.

Raboteau is an often harsh observer of those living in African diasporas' Zions.  She has a difficult time reconciling herself with how people of African descent have adjusted the concept of Zion to their own circumstances, and the ideal of Zion. 

She realizes this, I believe.  Zion is not in Israel, or Ethiopia, but instead ourselves and our communities.  No home is really “home.”  Home is something we must work to create through our own ethical and moral behaviors.  Zion lives in us.

The Rules Do Not Apply

Memoir always strikes me as a particularly cruel genre.  This is certainly the case with Ariel Levy’s The Rules Do Not Apply.  The work is well-written, at times funny and self-depreciating, honest and open, but also grating and mean.  She has a lot of beefs and expressively tells us about them. There is a lot to admire in this work, and a great deal of honesty that is just plain cruel.  I cannot discount Levy’s obvious talent.  She has told her truth with great precision and painful beauty. This work is worth reading.  But one cautionary note: if you become close with Levy be wary.  You might become grist for her mill.