I like this question because some people responded with books that help them fulfill their reading resolutions, while other folks shared books that help them accomplish non-reading goals, like healthy eating or learning web design.

I already noted that my New Year’s resolution is to read the Qu’ran so that I understand the religion off many of my friends around the world. I have a few other goals that reading nonfiction will support.

1. One of the many worlds I inhabit is a politicized one focused on organizing and movement-building. As an anthropologist and journalist, I’m pretty good at understanding and writing about conditions and power in situations of injustice, but I lack experience with the strategies for changing those situations. To help me better understand community organizing, this winter I plan to read Autobiography of La Causa by Cesar Chavez and The Long Haul by Myles Horton.

2. I’ve felt like I reached a plateau in my photography for a while now, so I’d like to start reading some digital photography books. It’s a broad topic, though, and I haven’t figured out what I want to focus on yet.

What about you? Got any book-related new year’s resolutions or goals that you’ll use books to help you achieve?

Cameras have some wonderful metaphoric qualities that are part of why I love teaching photography to kids; they can help us learn about perspective, power, and framing (the ability to include or exclude information). But when we focus just on the product, or photos as the “proof” that something happened, we lose sight of the process and miss out on the experiences—of photographing and living.

Communities Rising child playing with a volunteer's sunglasses and camera, Vikravandy, India. January 2011

January 2012

This is Hance Park next to the Phoenix public library. What you can’t see in this photo is the homeless population—youth and adults—who spend their days here. They are hidden by the trees or around the corners. That’s how we prefer to keep it, isn’t? Instead of problems to be addressed, homelessness and poverty are realities to keep outside our field of vision.

I’ve been told that the concrete structures at Hance Park used to be working fountains, but city officials shut them off because of sanitation issues with people bathing in the water.

This is one of those unfinished posts from a former journey. It contains bits and pieces of what I observed and thought about food culture while living in Hyderabad. I had planned to write further notes, but I never got around to it, so take it as is!

Fruit vendors, Secunderabad 2010

An emic perspective: What I eat

Besides the usual figuring out what everything on the menu is, one of the first food-related habits I took notice of here was the common question, “Had your lunch?” In Palestine someone asking you about whether you’d eaten yet meant that you were about to be served delicious but excessive amounts of food, no matter what your answers. In those first days here, not being fully adjusted to Andhra food yet, I was reluctant to ingest unfamiliar substances just before teaching a class, so I tended to say “yes, had my lunch,” regardless of whether it was true. Now I’ve learned that the question is as hum-drum as “How was your weekend?” My first clue to that fact was when 6-year-olds started asking me whether I’d had my lunch. Obviously they weren’t about to serve me food.

The other question I’m asked with alarming regularity is whether I eat Indian food. I truly don’t understand what the people asking (i.e. everyone I meet) think that I’m eating, since Hyderabad does not have options OTHER than Indian food, but regardless, I was looking forward to eating the food before I arrived. I was warned that Andhra cuisine is particularly spicy, but it hasn’t been quite as troublesome as I expected, perhaps thanks to the existence of yogurt (a.k.a. dahi, curd, raitha).

Idly, which is usually a breakfast food. Hyderabad 2010

An etic perspective: What they eat

So, really, being someone who doesn’t isolate herself in an expatriate bubble, the emic perspective is a bit difficult to separate from the etic perspective: what “they” eat IS what I eat…

Biryani is by far the most beloved dish of Hyderabad. It’s like soft pretzels to Philadelphia or kunafeh to Nablus. Residents take pride in Hyderabadi biryani, and non-residents crave it. I like it on occasion, but usually I’d rather a curry with pulka or roti. Sometimes it’s difficult to find any of those options, though, as restaurants are very regimented in the hours they will serve meals: no lunch before noon or after 2pm, no dinner before 7pm. In the intervening hours, a diner is relegated to chaat or light tiffins. Since most of the foods in those categories are fried I find the word “light” and “snack” to be misleading.

Street food is everywhere in India. This is a wheelbarrow full of nuts, but my favorite were the carts where vendors sold fresh pineapple slices. Secunderabad 2010

The relationship between this Japanese book and my memories of India doesn’t stop with CK, though. Several of the feelings this book evoked for me are similar to how I responded to Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie–one of the books I read while in Hyderabad. Both are characterized as magical realism.

Kafka on the Shore has two interrelated plots. The odd chapters focus on Kafka, a 15-year-old boy who runs away from home and winds up working at a small private library. Even chapters revolve around Nakata, an old man who experienced childhood trauma that limited his mental capacity. “Nakata’s not too bright,” he often tells people; yet he also strange/supernatural abilities, like talking to cats and opening “the entrance stone.”

The first similarity between Kafka on the Shore and Midnight’s Children is its sheer density and thus the time it took to read. It’s not that the plot was difficult to follow, but that at the end, I felt that I would need to read it again to catch more of the themes and subtleties. I don’t think I’m alone, since Murakami has said the following:

The key to understanding the novel lies in reading it multiple times. Kafka on the Shore contains several riddles, but there aren’t any solutions provided. Instead several of these riddles combine, and through their interaction the possibility of a solution takes shape. And the form this solution takes will be different for each reader.

The novel’s other significant similarity to Midnight’s Children is that in both novels the author plays with the idea of time and inevitably. Although the relationship between the plot’s events isn’t always totally clear, the fact that the pieces must connect moves the story along. This modality is encapsulated on page 435 of Kafka on the Shore:

Time weighs down on you like an old, ambiguous dream. You keep on moving, trying to slip through it. But even if you go to the ends of the earth, you won’t be able to escape it. Still, you have to go there–to the edge of the world. There’s something you can’t do unless you get there.

In sum, Kafka on the Shore, like Midnight’s Children, is a labyrinth for literature lovers: you can enjoy the basic story and skillful narrative, or you can dive deeper and lose yourself in twists and turns of the author’s mind.

1. I lived in a college dorm. Eek!
2. I didn’t have a passport. Believe it or not, my first ever international trip was when I visited friends in England in the summer of 2007.
3. Where’s Palestine? I knew nothing about this place or its people until I started an internship with a human rights nonprofit in February 2007. What a journey that began!
4. Trade  justice on my mind. The AU trade justice club was very active that semester, learning about the Farm Bill and the global impact of agricultural subsidies.
5. National Cathedral with Andrew and Rachel on MLK Day. I don’t recall the event at all, but I do remember visiting their apartment for the first time afterwards. That was the first of many fond memories at the Palace.

Palace apartment friends.

]]> http://rogueanthropologist.wordpress.com/2012/01/20/friday-5-january-2007/feed/ 0 RogueAnthropologist singing group 1 http://rogueanthropologist.wordpress.com/2012/01/18/sheriff-joe/ http://rogueanthropologist.wordpress.com/2012/01/18/sheriff-joe/#comments Wed, 18 Jan 2012 06:23:34 +0000 RogueAnthropologist http://rogueanthropologist.wordpress.com/?p=1712 ]]> Joe Arpaio is the current sheriff of Maricopa County, where Phoenix is located. Nationally known for his “tough on immigration” tactics, Arpaio has come under signficant criticism since the Department of Justice declared in December that his office has conducted widespread discriminatory policing with racial profiling and unlawful stops, detentions, and arrests of Latinos. This came after the DOJ’s three-year investigation into abuses at the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.

The DOJ has given Arpaio the chance to address these problems without litigation. He claimed he was willing to cooperate but appears not be, making demands like the names of officials in his office who gave testimony against him. Arpaio and his deputies have also been accused of not investigating hundreds of sex crimes in Maricopa County.

In light of these injustices, on Friday Jan. 13, Puente Arizona launched the “Arrest Arpaio Not the People” campaign with a march from Cesar Chavez Plaza in downtown Phoenix. Below is a brief audio slideshow from the protest.

Breeze is the artist.

Aerosol is the medium.

A 30-foot section of wall is his canvas.

To see visit Breeze’s site, click here.

Some demonyms are predictable, like Parisians in Paris, and some are funny, like Harrisburgers. Some demonyms are surprising, like Bajan for people from Barbados, or  Phoenicians, which refers to the people of Phoenix but makes me think of an ancient civilization in the fertile crescent.

In general, I think demonyms are fascinating. (Did you know the people of Botswana are called Batswana, but a singular person from Botswana is Motswana?) There’s even a whole book full of them that I’d love to have on my (metaphoric) coffee table.