There are about 186,579,300 immigrants in the world, according to the World Population Polices 2005 United Nations Report. Politics labels them differently: as aliens, foreigners, criminals, strangers, intruders, illegal, legal. The face of the individual dissolves into a stereotype—a faceless item to be manipulated through the agenda of the host country.
“We may have all these statistics, all this information of arrival, departure, economic status, but that doesn’t tell you anything about the person’s life, the person’s soul, the person’s sorrow, the person’s joy,” says Marjorie Agosin, a Chilean-American author and poet.
To solve that, three writers from different continents met recently in a chandelier-lit room at the Americas Society in New York City. Marjorie Agosin, Neil Bissondath and Amara Lakhous were there to challenge the boundaries of their language and ethnicity. Despite the differences in their backgrounds, the difficulties of migration and assimilation gave them a great deal to talk about.
A new language, culture-clash, racism, poverty and an overwhelming sense of homelessness: these are common themes in the stories of Agosin, Bissondath and Lakhous and other thousands of uprooted and displaced peoples. “Immigrants so often lead hidden lives,” says Bissondath, who moved from Trinidad to Canada at the age of 18.
This conversation of diverse storytellers was sponsored by a non-profit organization that publishes an online magazine of international literature called Words Without Borders, whose goal is to raise awareness of all the world’s “foreign” literature through translation.
It is the hope of all three writers that others with similar experiences can find solace in the characters that they create—to show them and their countries’ “natives,” as Agosin says, “how difficult it is to be the other. How difficult it is to have an accent. How difficult it is to be an outsider.”
“Every character is a sum of many characters,” says Lakhous, “many people I’ve met. I think immigrants or the experience of being an immigrant is the kind of experience that touches humanity, that touches all of us in one way or another.”
In fiction, “you find the human being,” as Bissondath puts it. “You don’t find the immigrant.”
Watch Video >> Marjorie Agosin on the emotional importance of literature written by immigrants.
Watch Video >> Neil Bissondath on telling the immigrant story.
Watch Video >> Amara Lakhous on the problems and opportunities of literature written by immigrants.
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Let’s be honest, waking up to an exhortation to “Be Good” staring you in the face from a bedroom wall might not be for everyone. But, in these troubled times, if it’s up your alley, it’s now out there, at San Francisco’s Good Hotel in the SOMA neighborhood. Not a bad alternative to gimmicks like sleeping in a concrete pipe.
The 117-room hotel, which opened up last month, is made of recycled and reclaimed materials and offers a lobby vending machine that dispenses only eco-friendly gifts. It’s recession-friendly, too, with special opening rates for rooms start at $89.
Condé Nast Traveler’s Brook Wilkinson attending a
All photos courtesy of the Good Hotel
READ »Islam-inspired comic book series The 99 got just a little closer to making its brand the Arab equivalent to Disney this week, when creator Naif al-Mutawa announced a television deal with global media-production company Endemol International.
It’s just one piece of al-Mutawa’s efforts to create a franchise that rivals Pokémon, a goal he had in mind before he scripted the first pages of The 99, which features a multicultural cast of young Muslim heroes (both secular and pious) and draws on the history of Baghdad’s 1258 invasion by Mongol forces.
In January, the first of six planned theme parks will open up in Kuwait City.
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Since June 21, narco-gunmen have been on a pre-announced rampage, resulting in the death of at least 41 people in Ciudad Juarez, the Mexican border town opposite El Paso, Texas, announced local authorities. Though the year is only half over, the city’s annual death count now exceeds 500, despite the Mexican government’s heavy deployment of federal troops and police to combat the country’s violent drug cartels. With thousands of Americans crossing the border every day—some just to take advantage of cheap gasoline prices—and with violence on the rise not just in border cities but in metropolitan areas like Monterrey and resorts like Acapulco as well, it’s inevitable that, sooner or later, American citizens will get caught in the crossfire. At this point, there is no evidence the violence will end any time soon. More than half of all Mexicans recently surveyed by Mexico City newspaper Reforma said they believe the cartels are defeating the federal and local forces that are undertaking the nationwide crackdown on Mexico’s cartels, while only 24 percent said they think the government is winning. Recently, Notivisa, a Mexican news channel, aired footage of a gun battle in Tijuana that appeared as if it could have been shot in Baghdad. The BBC also reported that the cartels are running commando-like training camps in the northern desert. How long can the U.S. afford to ignore this war on our border?
READ »Just as things seemed to calm down a bit (Bear Stearns already seems like very old news) the International Monetary Fund announced it expects total losses of almost $1 trillion from the ongoing and increasingly global financial crisis.
Half of those massive losses will be borne by banks, and the rest by pension funds, hedge funds, insurance companies and other investors.
If there is good news, it is that the banks have taken most of their losses—about $200 billion with another $80 billion to come. The bad news, of course, is that much of the rest of the losses are still scattered around the markets.
The real bad news is the IMF's conclusion that there is real potential for a big hit to U.S. growth, on top of the recession that has already begun.
Here is the full report:
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/gfsr/2008/01/pdf/text.pdf
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It seems that we might just leapfrog past the debate about whether to use the “r” word—as in recession—and go directly to the debate about the “d” word—as in depression. At least that’s what seems to be going on in the lofty world of the Fed and other central banks. First, the Fed dusted off authority not used since the 1930s to lend $29 billion to JP Morgan to buy Bear Stearns on the cheap. Then, it opened its lending facilities to investment banks—again something not done since the Great Depression—that are borrowing billions every day as they try to avoid Bear’s fate. American and foreign central bankers have begun talking publicly about more radical solutions to the global financial mess. They’re talking massive governmental purchases of bad loans and bad investments, suspension of accounting rules to make things at least look better, taxpayer-funded capital for shaky banks and temporary changes to rules that require banks to have solid capital bases. Nothing like these policies have even been discussed since Roosevelt was in the White House and all we had to fear was fear itself. If the world’s moneymen are worried enough to be acting like it is 1933 again, maybe the rest of us should, too. How worried are you?
READ »Journalist Shannon Brownlee, author of the best-selling book Overtreatment and the basis for our last issue's cover story on this topic, wrote a very interesting Sunday column in The Washington Post about how many doctors and some media have made many Americans feel more anxious by constantly reminding them to be on the lookout for illness. Check it out. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/28/AR2008032802972_pf.html
READ »“I do not believe it is fair or accurate to blame our regulatory structure for the current turmoil,” remarked Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, as he announced his proposal today to reform financial market regulation. In fact, what Paulson really seems to believe is that there has been too much regulation (hard as that is to believe). His proposal would combine several regulators and give the Federal Reserve enormous power—primarily to use in emergencies. At least Paulson is consistent. Since he doesn’t think the regulatory structure is the problem, he also doesn’t think more regulation is the solution. That conclusion flies in the face of the reality that Bear Stearns, and other firms, have been taking on too much risk with too little capital in reserve. It is a great way to make money when the markets are booming, but leaves taxpayers with the bill if the problems that emerge threaten “the system.” So the government commits $29 billion so JP Morgan could pay Bear Stearns shareholders $10 per share: The shareholders get something, JP Morgan gets a lot and taxpayers assume the risk. Clearly, a Republican is in the White House. Paulson’s proposal is already dead on arrival, for at least two reasons. First, Congress is deferring all serious decisions to whoever will take office next January. The Bush era of too much de- and un-regulation is over. Second, Paulson, a life-long investment banker, failed to recognize the one thing that most needs to be done: regulate all the commercial-banks-in-all-but-name—investment banks, insurance companies, hedge funds, etc.—because they expose investors, consumers and the country as a whole to unacceptable risks when things go wrong. We know who’s worrying about the bankers. Who is worrying about the rest of us?
READ »Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson loves bailouts—of large investment banks, not individuals losing their homes. Paulson sanctioned the Federal Reserve’s rescue of Bear Stearns’s shareholder—whose stock is worth $10 instead of being wiped out—and gave an even bigger gift to the shareholders of JP Morgan, who will end up with the good parts of what, after all, was one of the nation’s largest investment banks. The government (really, the taxpayers) are taking the bad pieces. Apparently, hard-pressed bankers are one thing. Hard-pressed homeowners are another. The Secretary’s big initiatives have been, first, to get bankers to put together a voluntary plan which even its supporters say might reach only a few percent of those who have defaulted on their mortgages and, second, the Bush administration’s knee jerk response of cutting taxes. Bushwhacked by MSNBC’s Chris Wallace, who last week accused Paulson of not having done much to address the human cost of the crisis, Mr. Paulson blurted out, “But this…this administration has been focused on this…I think, very early involved…very early, beginning in August. Working very hard to avoid foreclosures that are preventable, putting in place programs that are making a difference, are working. Are they going to, to prevent the inevitable correction in housing prices? No, but we’re working hard on that and again, I think we were early with the stimulus package." Well, $600 doesn’t go anywhere near as far as $61 million—the amount James Cayne, chairman of Bear Stearns, received when he sold his stock this week. Had Bear Stearns not been rescued, Cayne’s payday would have been zero. And that distinction —between financial rescue or support for individuals or for institutions and their shareholders— roughly defines the different proposals from the Democratic candidates on the one hand and the Bush administration and John McCain on the other. Clinton and Obama have been talking about multi-billion dollar rescue plans for homeowners. Paulson has been lecturing homeowners that “negative equity” is no excuse to walk away from a mortgage. McCain has insisted that anyone who bought a home he or she really couldn’t afford is a “speculator” and deserves to lose his or her house. It’s almost a caricature of Great Society-like help versus laissez faire economics (except for bankers). Who do you think is right? Let's debate in this blog our cover story for these two weeks.
READ »We will renew FLYP's content every two weeks, bringing you stories about politics, social issues, culture and lifestyle trends that affect America and Americans, today and tomorrow. We want to help connect the dots, providing ideas and insights in ways that really leverage the power of this medium. We also want to engage you in conversation, through this and other blogs we will launch, through your comments on specific articles, and through the content you share with us. The lead article in our launch edition raises the question whether politicians' obsession with the lack of universal health care insurance misses the core of the health crisis facing America. As a country we are obsessed with doctors, medical tests, drugs, and medical interventions.
"Take two aspirin and call me in the morning" seems to have been replaced with ordering up CT scans and blood tests and MRIs for almost anything that ails us. Our article is based in large part on the pioneering work of Shannon Brownlee, although we stand by our own reporting. But Shannon's work on OVERTREATMENT raises really profound questions about whether the country can afford--in terms of dollars, suffering, and mortality rates-- to continue on its current path. Surveys show that doctors think the system is close to collapse, and are worried about the quality of care they deliver to their patients. And almost every patient seems to have a horror story about something that went wrong in a hospital visit, or with the endless battery of tests they were subjected to or with some prescription medication that didn't provide the relief they expected. Are we too critical? Are these problems real? How do your experiences match up with some of the ones we describe? And what do you think are the solutions? Let's talk.
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