Kia DuPree, Tonight!

Author Talk: Kia DuPree
Wednesday, February 24, 6 p.m.

Calling all urban fiction fans! Watha T. Daniel/Shaw Interim Library will host award-winning author Kia DuPree, who will talk about her new book, Damaged.

"Dupree's debut offers readers an unvarnished look at the troubled, violence-filled lives of inner-city youth in Washington, D.C., frequently through the eyes and experiences of Camille Logan. Ten-year-old Camille is placed with the Brinkleys, yet another foster family, where she suffers extreme mental and sexual abuse for years, until she's rescued by Chu, a low-level drug dealer who actually loves and looks after her. But when Chu is murdered in a drug deal gone wrong, Camille makes a desperate choice to join a cruel pimp's stable, where she faces her situation and struggles to change her life."1

DuPree, who now lives in Washington, D.C., was an assistant editor at St. Martin's Press in New York. In 2005 she received the Fiction Honor Book Award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association for her debut novel, the self-published Robbing Peter. DuPree earned a B.A. in Mass Media Arts from Hampton University, as well as an M.A. in English from Old Dominion University.

Copies of Damaged will be available for purchase and for check out at the reading.

1Review: Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.

Wintry Mix

I've absolutely loved spending the last few days at home staying warm and dry from the snow. I spent the time watching movies with friends, baking, and working on a new quilt. We're open today and if you make it before the next wave of snow hits you can come and pick up some entertainment to help you and your family get through this historic snow storm.

Here are a few wintry suggestions to get you started.

Movies

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Snow Dogs
Why Did I Get Married
The Shining
30 Days of Night

Books

The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats

Snow by Uri Shulevitz

The Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling

The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman

Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist

The Coldest Winter Ever by Sister Souljah

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson

Democracy in America

" Democracy in America " by Alexis de Tocqueville, tranlated by George Lawrence, edited by J.P. Mayer, Penguin Press, Selection of Watha T Daniel Book Club

Because of the recent debates about Health Care and Environmental legislation there has been a companion discussion by many about the nature of how the popular will should be expressed in a democracy and consideration of a possible manipulation of the voters by populist organizations. In my group house in Takoma there are skeptics about the validity of these groups and those who really feel their protest is valid. This discussion inspired me to take a new look at the classic work on democracy, “Democracy in America” by the French traveler Alexis de Tocqueville. "Democracy in America” is important because it is the first study that attempted to create a portrait of how government and society in a democracy actually worked. It was written during the emerging democracy of the United States during the Jackson Administration in the early Nineteenth Century.

What I found when I looked into this work was a surprise. This is a profound book that sheds light on the causes and conditions for real democratic expression in the United States, even in our own day. De Tocqueville came up the idea of the reality of society, society was apart from the state, politically significant. It was an idea that revolutionized the understanding of political science and has great import for us today. Alexis de Tocqueville believed that there were two distinct realities: the patterns or habits of social life and the governmental structures of the state. They influenced each other but were separate.

In de Tocqueville’s view, democracy was not so much a government as a way of life, as a set of patterns of political participation and expression that were connected to how relationships within families, among neighbors and life in larger communities were conducted. American society itself, then, established habits of political activism that were part of the personality and associations of each citizen. They were patterns established by the mores of the early settlers and shaped the town meeting and other institutions of early American democracy.

Now with regard to the controversies today about health care and other issues, one can conclude that every kind of expression of opinion, even the rancorous ones, may have some value, because it is an expression of the people’s habitual expression of concern. This may be true even if the message is not well thought-out or articulate. It is still an expression of a determination to have one’s say. Democracy is nourished by these movements even if they come in the form of strident statements. It seems one has to take a larger view regarding the import of these events and view them as part of a continual back and forth movement of ideas that is part of our political culture. Even though there was strong expression of dislike for a specific health care program in those town meetings and this was expressed in a rude and strident way that expression may not be by itself destructive.

These movements can be seen as part of the pattern of direct expression of the passions of a particular group in society that feels threatened. Overall, it is an expression that is healthy for both the body of society and the government that represents it. As de Tocqueville found in his tour of America in the 1830s, the expression of popular sentiment in politics causes disorder and disturbs governance. Democratic debate is a messy business that often offended the sensibility of Alexis de Tocqueville as an aristocrat. But he saw how those habits of political participation were deeply ingrained in American social life. It was those long held patterns that are the foundation for a well functioning republican government. We can take heart today to find that our political life is just as disorderly and disturbing as it was in the times of the early republic when de Tocqueville observed it.

The Literary Mashup

I have to admit, that when I read in today's New York Times that Electronic Arts is releasing a video game loosely based on Dante's Inferno, I had to both laugh out loud and then consider whether or not I would actually buy this game for myself. Having a PlayStation 3 at home, and having read Inferno for a medieval history class it is quite tempting to see the, um, differences. Dante as a sword wielding, body-building crusader, clad in armor and trailing shredded ribbons of clothes... Far from the casual observer of the epic poem.

But that got me thinking. With all of these mashups of classical literature like Inferno the video game, Beowulf the animated adventure starring Angelina Jolie as Grendel's mother, the Manga Shakespeare series, the novel Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (which also has ninjas), and the forthcoming Android Karenina, what could possibly be next? What other classics could they turn into action packed thrill rides?

Here's a few of my thoughts.

Sid Meier's War and Peace the video game. Civilization Revolution is already half-way there, it's just a quick jump to focusing solely on Napoleon's invasion of Russia.

Don Quixote where his delusions are actually a result of the aliens who implanted a device controlling his mind.

The Sun Also Rises MMORPG where you gain experience points by drinking your way across Europe and going to bull fights in Pamplona.

Moby Dick the fishing simulator where you work your way up from catching little minnows and guppies to going after the great white whale.

What do you think the next great classic novel mashup will be?

Halflings, Half-Nerds, Worms...

A lot of my friends are half-nerds. What I mean is they've seen and read The Lord of the Rings trilogy and agree the books are better. They love Blade Runner, but they've probably never actually read a book by Philip K. Dick. They've never been serious about Dungeons & Dragons or those Dragon Lance books, but they can recite more than one popular Star Wars quote. Some of us listened to Rush, a band who wrote concept albums about fantastical planets. While these all rest comfortably in fantasy worlds, their prevalence in modern pop-culture allows non-nerds do nerdy things without being labeled. Err...

This bit of labeling tomfoolery is partly to make fun of the labeling process that, like it or not, still exists in high schools, colleges and only slightly seriously into adulthood. Then we get to Dune. The book was given to me by an artsy friend in college, and after a few pages (on several occasions) I decided that there was no better treatment for insomnia than reading Dune.

However, after being successfully seduced by the books-on-iPod reading method, I had to revisit the books I'd wanted to read but never could. The only annoying part about reading Dune on iPod was importing the eighteen discs into iTunes. Since then, I've waded into a fantasy world that, secretly, I prefer to Tolkien's. The idea of humans cultivating their own natural potential into a sort of half-magic is much easier for me to get into. As a half-nerd. Ahem...

Great Coffee, Great Books

Starting in February the Watha T. Daniel Library will be partnering with the Starbucks Coffee shop in Logan Circle to bring you an all new book club program outside of our library walls. Join us for Great Coffee, Great Books, a monthly book discussion group held at 7:00 p.m. on the final Wednesday of the month at Starbucks Coffee, 1429 P St NW.

Our book for February 24 will be The Reader by Bernhard Schlink

For 15-year-old Michael Berg, a chance meeting with an older woman leads to far more than he ever imagined. The woman in question is Hanna, and before long they embark on a passionate, clandestine love affair which leaves Michael both euphoric and confused. For Hanna is not all she seems. Years later, as a law student observing a trial in Germany, Michael is shocked to realize that the person in the dock is Hanna. The woman he had loved is a criminal. Much about her behaviour during the trial does not make sense. But then suddenly, and terribly, it does - Hanna is not only obliged to answer for a horrible crime, she is also desperately concealing an even deeper secret.

Great Coffee, Great Books
Final Wednesdays
7:00 p.m.

Held at Starbucks Coffee in Logan Circle
1429 P St NW
Washington, DC

To RSVP please contact the Watha T. Daniel Library at 202-671-0265 or email librarian Paul Sweeney: paul.sweeney@dc.gov

Her Father's Daughter

"Who's the Daddy?" is a question most often posed in paternity episodes of the Maury Povich show (not that I've ever watched it) or in the pages of celebrity rags discussing the newest "baby bumps" in Hollywood (not that I ever read them while standing in line at the grocery store). "Who's the Daddy" is also a fitting turn of words for a host of fiction and non-fiction books. I uncovered no less than 17 books in the D.C. Library catalog with the title, The [insert occupation here]'s Daughter.

For example:


The Calligrapher's Daughter
The Doctor's Daughter
The Gerbil Farmer's Daughter
The Alchemist's Daughter
The Professor's Daughter
The Agitator's Daughter
The Impostor's Daughter
The Fat Man's Daughter

You'll find these titles in our new "Who's the Daddy?" display. Of course there was a time when one's patrilineal descent meant everything. It can still carry great influence (see Bush 41 and 43), or serve as another type of transformative force in one's life, as President Obama has described through his tenuous relationship with his own father. The father/daughter memoirs here also have fascinating stories to tell. In The Agitator's Daughter, a Georgetown University law professor recounts growing up in a family of civil rights activists that goes back four generations, and the family ruin brought about by her father's relentless pursuit of justice. In the graphic novel The Impostor's Daughter: A True Memoir, the narrator tells how she grew up in awe of her war veteran father, only to discover later that his stories of heroism and adventure were lies.

The daughters in these books remain nameless until you flip open their covers. Come and check one out!