Guantanamo Hunger Strike & Gilvarry's From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant

Here's yesterday's Washington Post article, "Number of prisoners on hunger strike in Guantanamo rises to 97:"

The number of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay who are on a hunger strike has risen again.

Lt. Col. Samuel House said Friday that 97 men are now on strike, up three from the day before. He says 19 of them are receiving liquid nutrients through a nasal tube to prevent dangerous weight loss. Another five are under observation at the hospital on the U.S. base in Cuba. He says none have life-threatening conditions.

The hunger strike began in February, with prisoners protesting conditions and their indefinite confinement. Lawyers for the prisoners say the military is undercounting the number of hunger strikers. The U.S. holds 166 prisoners at Guantanamo, most without charges.

I have several recommendations for novels about Guantanamo.

For a satirical novel, try From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant by Alex Gilvarry:

Boyet Hernandez is a small man with a big American dream when he arrives in New York in 2002, fresh out of fashion school in the Philippines.  But on the brink of fame and fortune, there comes instead a knock on the door in the middle of the night: the flamboyant ex-Catholic is swept to America’s most notorious prison, administered a Qur’an and locked away indefinitely to discover his link to a terrorist plot.

Now, in his six-by-eight-foot cell, Boy prepares for the tribunal of his life with this intimate confession. From borrowed mattress to converted toothpick factory loft, from custom suit commissions to high-end retail, we are immersed in a wonderland of soirees, runways, and hipster romance in twenty-first-century Gotham... But behind the scrim of his wit and chutzpah is his present nightmare of detainment in the sun-baked place he calls No Man’s Land. The more Boy’s faith in American justice is usurped by the Kafkaesque demands of his interrogator, the more ardently he clings to the chimerical hope and humanity of his adoptive country.

For a novel about what what it's like to be an interrogator at Guantanamo, try The Prisoner of Guantanamo by Dan Fesperman:

When the body of an American soldier is discovered in Cuban waters near the U.S. detention facility at Guantánamo, Revere Falk, a former FBI agent, is reassigned from his job interrogating an accused al-Qaeda operative to investigate the soldier’s mysterious death.

Falk soon finds himself in a deadly game of intrigue that stretches from the charged waters of Guantánamo Bay to the polished halls of Washington. Every move Falk makes could be costly, and to make matters worse, a dark figure from his past reappears, brandishing a secret he thought he had safely buried.

For a young adult novel about what it's like to be a prisoner at Guantanamo, try Guantanamo Boy by Anna Perera:

Khalid, a fifteen-year-old Muslim boy from Rochdale, is abducted from Pakistan while on holiday with his family. He is taken to Guantanamo Bay and held without charge, where his hopes and dreams are crushed under the cruellest of circumstances. An innocent denied his freedom at a time when Western boys are finding theirs, Khalid tries and fails to understand what's happening to him and cannot fail to be a changed young man.

Finally, I also recommend M. Salahuddin Khan's Sikander, a book I previously recommended as a pairing to the debate over arming Syrian rebels:  

It's 1986. Seventeen-year-old Sikander dreams of studying and living in America, but in a blind rage after a family quarrel, he leaves his Peshawar, Pakistan home. 

Encountering mujahideen warriors, he joins them in their fight against the occupying Soviets in neighboring Afghanistan. American assistance is stepped up with advanced weapons, like the Stinger missile, and the mujahideen begin prevailing against the Soviets. 

After just two years following Sikander s arrival, a Soviet withdrawal begins and Sikander returns as a war-wise hero, settling down to build a normal life in Pakistan. 
Discovering romance, Sikander, becomes a happily married successful entrepreneur in Pakistan, when he finds his life abruptly thrown into turmoil as he s caught up in aftermath of 9/11. 

He must draw on the lessons from his mujahideen past as he takes on a perilous journey reaching as far as America, changing his life forever. SIKANDER takes us from the pricey suburbs of Peshawar to the primitive war-torn landscape of Soviet-occupied Afghanistan, to the placid serenity of Scotland, through the camps of Guantanamo...

Patenting Human Genes & Crichton's Next

From Thursday's Guardian article "US supreme court to decide if companies can patent human genes:"

The US supreme court will hear oral arguments next week to decide whether companies can patent human genes, in a landmark case which could alter the course of US medical research and the battle against diseases such as breast and ovarian cancer.

A coalition of scientists, cancer survivors, patients, breast cancer groups and professional medical associations, which has brought the case, will argue that genes are "products of nature", like organs of the body and should not be exploited for commercial gain. Such patents are illegal and violate the first amendment, they say.

They are challenging patents on two genes linked to breast and ovarian cancer owned by Myriad Genetics, a biotechnology company, because they say the patents have stymied research and the free exchange of ideas.

For a novel about gene patents, try Next by Michael Crichton:

Bestseller Crichton (Jurassic Park) once again focuses on genetic engineering in his cerebral new thriller, though the science involved is a lot less far-fetched than creating dinosaurs from DNA.

In an ambitious effort to show what's wrong with the U.S.'s current handling of gene patents and with the laws governing human tissues, the author interweaves many plot strands, one involving a California researcher, Henry Kendall, who has mixed human and chimp DNA while working at NIH. Kendall produces an intelligent hybrid whom he rescues from the government and tries to pass off as a fully human child.

Some readers may be disappointed by the relative lack of action, the lame attempts to lighten the mood with humor (especially centering on an unusually bright parrot named Gerard), and the contrived convergence of the main characters toward the end. Still, few can match Crichton in crafting page-turners with intellectual substance

Racist Alabama "Trial" & Feldman's Scottsboro

From yesterday's Guardian article "Scottsboro Boys pardon nears as Alabama comes to terms with its past:"

Sheila Washington vividly recalls the day she first learned about the terrible events that occurred in her small town in Alabama almost three decades before she was born. 

She was 17 years old and, rooting around for something beneath her bed, she discovered a dusty old book that bore the town's name in its title. Scottsboro Boy was a memoir by Haywood Patterson, one of nine young black boys who in 1931 became entangled in one of the most notorious miscarriages of justice of the Jim Crow era. Wrongfully accused of raping two white girls, the nine came close to being lynched by an angry mob, were rushed to trial in front of an all-white jury, and ended up serving many years in jail, eight of them on death row... 

[T]oday Washington is on the verge of making her own history in relation to the Scottsboro Nine. A campaign she started four years ago to clear the names of the nine is bearing fruit – the Alabama senate has already voted unanimously to introduce a new law that would pave the way for the posthumous pardon of the men, and this week the state's House of Representatives is expected to follow suit.

For a novel about this trial, try Scottsboro by Ellen Feldman:

Alabama, 1931. A posse stops a freight train and arrests nine black youths. Their crime: fighting with white boys. Then two white girls emerge from another freight car, and fast as anyone can say Jim Crow, the cry of rape goes up. One of the girls sticks to her story. The other changes her tune, again and again. A young journalist, whose only connection to the incident is her overheated social conscience, fights to save the nine youths from the electric chair, redeem the girl who repents her lie, and make amends for her own past. 

Intertwining historical actors and fictional characters, stirring racism, sexism, and anti-Semitism into an explosive brew, Scottsboro is a novel of a shocking injustice that convulsed the nation and reverberated around the world, destroyed lives, forged careers, and brought out the worst and the best in the men and women who fought for the cause.

Supreme Court's Gay Marriage Case & Anshaw's Aquamarine

In the LGBT arena, I’ve posted about transgender politicians and about the impact of HIV/AIDs on the gay community, but haven’t covered gay rights much – a glaring absence, especially considering how much gay rights have been in the press lately.

For example, here’s yesterday’s BBC headline story “Gay marriage ban: Supreme Court weighs California case:”

The justices of the US Supreme Court have questioned the meaning of marriage and the government's role in defining it, as they weigh whether the state of California may ban same-sex nuptials. Following Tuesday's arguments, the court could uphold the 2008 ban, narrowly overturn it, or invalidate all state same-sex marriage bans in the US. The ban's defenders argued the issue should be decided by individual states. Recent opinion polls have shown a rapid rise in support for same-sex marriage… 

All eyes are on Justice Anthony Kennedy, the swing vote in a court generally evenly divided between liberals and conservatives. This morning he seemed to have been uncomfortable with the case, describing the issue as "uncharted waters" and asking whether the case should have come to the Supreme Court. The court may decide simply not to rule on the case. That would leave same-sex marriage effectively legal in California. But it would not be the sweeping change some gay rights campaigners were hoping for.

For a novel about same-sex relationships, try Aquamarine by Carol Anshaw. Here’s a brief summary of Anshaw’s novel by Christopher Bram (SPOILER ALERT):

Anshaw’s most interesting take on gay marriage might be in her brilliant first novel, “Aquamarine,” which begins with a teenage swimmer, Jesse, competing in the Olympics in 1968. The night before the big race, she goes to bed with one of the other swimmers. Anshaw then imagines three different futures for Jesse 22 years later. In the first, she is unhappily married in Missouri. In the second, she is a college professor in New York living with a lover, an actress named Kit. In the third, she’s a happily divorced woman with her own teenage daughter in Florida. What remains the same from future to future is often as startling as what’s different. Lesbian Jesse is slightly happier than the other two Jesses, but not as radically as one might expect. And her “marriage” to Kit is important, but it doesn’t answer all her self-doubts, fears and concerns.

Here’s the link to Bram's entire NYT essay about the growing role of marriage in gay and lesbian fiction.

Creationism Trial & Lawrence's Inherit the Wind

So it looks like when Californians aren't fending for their lives across some dystopian civil war hellscape, they're trying to push American science back into the 19th century.  Hmmm...I think I'll take the hellscape, thanks.

From Monday's Guardian article “Creationist stakes $10,000 on contest between Bible and evolution:’

A California creationist is offering a $10,000 challenge to anyone who can prove in front of a judge that science contradicts the literal interpretation of the book of Genesis. Dr Joseph Mastropaolo, who says he has set up the contest, the Literal Genesis Trial, in the hope of improving the quality of arguments between creationists and evolutionists, has pledged to put $10,000 of his own money into an escrow account before the debate. His competitor would be expected to do the same. The winner would take the $20,000 balance. The argument would not be made in a formal court, but under an alternative dispute resolution model known as a minitrial. Mastropaolo said he would present the argument in favor of a literal interpretation of the creation story once he had found a willing scientist to argue that a non-literal interpretation of Genesis is more scientific.

This reminds me of something...oh yeah, it reminds me of a similar trial which largely settled this issue *ninety* years ago. Therefore I highly recommend that Dr. Mastropaolo, and anyone else looking for a good read, try Jerome Lawrence and Robert Lee’s play Inherit the Wind:

One of the most moving and meaningful plays in American theatre--based on the famed Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925, in which a Tennessee teacher was tried for teaching evolution… The accused was a slight, frightened man who had deliberately broken the law. His trial was a Roman circus, the chief gladiators being the two great legal giants of the century. Locked in mortal combat, they bellowed and roared imprecations and abuse.

Heliocentrists, you're next!

Sexual Harassment at Work & Crichton's Disclosure

From yesterday's Washington Post article "Judge sets aside $3.5 million civil verdict in sexual harassment case:"

A federal judge has set aside a $3.5 million jury award to a former public pool lifeguard in the District who alleged she was sexually harassed by a supervisor and then fired in retaliation for complaining about the conduct. Chief U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth, who presided over the trial last summer, wrote this week that the conduct alleged is “no doubt disgusting and extremely troubling, and the jury had good reason to be disturbed by the facts.” But he agreed with the District’s Attorney General that the jury’s award to the former Takoma Aquatic Center lifeguard was “so great as to shock the conscience” and “inordinately large.” Lamberth gave Carmen Jean-Baptiste 21 days to accept a smaller $350,000 award or chose a new trial on the issue of damages... At trial, Jean-Baptiste alleged that her supervisor, Rodney Weaver, spoke to her in sexually crude language, propositioned her and ogled her while she stood before him in her bathing suit, according to court documents. The District failed to respond to her complaints even after she spoke with six supervisors at various levels, she testified. Soon after filing a written complaint in October 2006, Jean-Baptiste was fired.

I imagine that there are probably a lot more instances of sexual harassment in the workplace, but we don't hear about it in the news because (a) it goes unreported or (b) if it is reported, it's handled in-house or quietly settled in order to avoid bad press.

For a novel about workplace sexual harassment, try Michael Crichton's Disclosure. My own disclosure to you is that it is becoming increasingly clear that Crichton, whose writing style I really admire (see last month's post on Airframe/airline glitches and Sunday's post on State of Fear/global warming), is a sexist.

When I first read Disclosure -- which, in addition to sexual harassment, also focuses on affirmative action policies -- it seemed like Crichton used the book as a means of exploring and debating affirmative action and that both sides get, more or less, a fair shake. But now that I'm re-reading the book, it's increasingly clear that while some characters do speak on behalf of the "women should hold more positions of power" perspective, those characters are usually despicable. Crichton's not as bad as Ayn Rand -- with her comic-book-worthy demi-god mouthpiece protagonists and her sniveling side characters that put forth straw-man arguments for all things Rand disagrees with -- but upon re-reading Disclosure seems sexist.  For example, the two main male characters which argue in favor of appointing a woman to the second-highest position in the company are the deranged boss and the two-faced lawyer.  Our near-flawless protagonist, the hard-working Tom Sanders, just wants positions to be decided by merit.  And of course, the woman in the novel who has been appointed to the company's second-highest position is not only less qualified than poor ol' Tom Sanders, but is also CRAZY.  Crichton writes well enough that you don't initially notice how contrived the whole scenario is.

Anyway: rant over! Here's the description of Disclosure (which, despite its flaws, is worth reading):

Beautiful, bright, and talented Meredith Johnson arrives at Digital Communications Technology company to become the head of a division, a position that Tom Sanders thought was going to be his. Meredith, his former lover, invites him to her office after hours and attempts to seduce him. When he rejects her, she accuses him of sexual harassment. Tom hires Louise Fernandez to defend him and reverses the accusation to name Meredith as the aggressor. To this plot, Crichton adds computer-industry sabotage, corporate mergers, video-linkups, stock options, CD-ROM jargon, and even a trip on a virtual-reality simulator to help Tom save his reputation and career.

As a final note, I find Demi Moore and Michael Douglas' exaggerated expressions on the book cover kind of hilarious.

UPDATE:  here's a longer review of Disclosure over at the Book in the Bag blog.

Steubenville Rape Trial & Anderson's Speak

From today's NPR article "Steubenville Rape Trial Begins:"

The case has already been "tried" in the social media, as The New York Times writes. But Wednesday in Steubenville, Ohio, a real court will be the setting as two high school football players in a town that's obsessed with high school football go on trial for the alleged rape of a 16-year-old girl last summer. It's a case...that has caused turmoil in Steubenville — where "accusations, recriminations and threats" have been flying in recent months as critics of the town's football culture charged that players have been allowed to get out of control and supporters of the team have tried to blame the accuser.

Whether or not the accused are guilty, I think it's important to consider what a rape survivor goes through. To get one take, try Laurie Halse Anderson's young adult novel Speak:

Melinda Sordino busted an end-of-summer party by calling the cops. Now her old friends won't talk to her, and people she doesn't even know hate her from a distance. The safest place to be is alone, inside her own head. But even that's not safe. Because there's something she's trying not to think about, something about the night of the party that, if she let it in, would blow her carefully constructed disguise to smithereens. And then she would have to speak the truth. 

UPDATE:  there's a good review of Speak over at Katie's Book Blog.

Oscar Pistorius case & Gordimer's The House Gun

From Friday's BBC story "Oscar Pistorius granted bail in Reeva Steenkamp case:"

South African athlete Oscar Pistorius, who faces murder charges over the fatal shooting of his girlfriend, has been granted bail after a four-day hearing. The Paralympic champion denies murder, saying he shot Reeva Steenkamp thinking she was an intruder at his home.

I also found interesting the NPR article "In South Africa, Crime And Violence Are Permanent Headlines," which goes into some of the deeper themes involved in the case:

No place has been as riveted by Oscar Pistorius and the Valentine's Day shooting death of his girlfriend as South Africa. But even before this sensational story burst into the headlines, South Africans were fiercely debating issues that are more or less permanent fixtures in this country — crime, and violence against women. Crime has always been high in poorly policed black areas, and whites have felt it more in recent years as well. It seems most everyone has been victimized, and many more than once. Well-off South Africans live behind high walls, they pay private security firms to patrol their neighborhoods, they have state-of-the-art security systems, and some of them are armed. So when Pistorius said in court that he mistook his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp for an intruder breaking into his home, he was offering an explanation that struck a chord with many of his countrymen. Yet South Africa is also a place where violence against women is out of control, from rape on the streets to abuse between a man and his female partner.

I'm not a huge fan of Nadine Gordimer's writing, but her novel The House Gun seems to have at least a little in common with the Pistorius case, and certainly delves into the theme of violence in South Africa:

Privileged whites in post-apartheid South Africa, Harald and Claudia Lindgard have managed to live the better part of 50 years without ever confronting the deepest shadows in their culture... When their architect-son, Duncan, is arrested for murder, both know that the charge is preposterous. But Duncan himself fails to deny his guilt, and his parents are brought by a harsh and ungainly process to accept the possibility that he has committed an unthinkable crime. Nadine Gordimer's The House Gun is a gravely sustained exploration of their long-delayed but necessary descent into an intimate acquaintance with the culture of violence that surrounds them.

The Death Penalty & Grisham's The Chamber

From this week's NPR story "Georgia Death Penalty Under Renewed Scrutiny After 11th-Hour Stay:"

A Georgia inmate's execution was halted Tuesday night with less than an hour to go. Prison officials had already given Warren Lee Hill one of the drugs when a federal appeals court stepped in. Hill has an IQ of 70 and his attorneys have long claimed that he's mentally impaired. His case is now raising questions about Georgia's law, which makes it difficult for defendants to prove they should be exempt from execution. The 52-year-old Hill is in prison for killing his girlfriend, whom he shot 11 times, in 1986. Then, while in prison in 1990, he used a wooden board with nails to beat another inmate to death. More than a decade ago, three state doctors that examined Hill said he was not what was then called "mentally retarded." But all three have changed their opinion.

Want a novel set on death row that explores both sides of the capital punishment argument? Try John Grisham's The Chamber. I don't like the book jacket descriptions, so instead I'll use an Amazon review from Jessica Lux:

Grisham manages to make the reader just as torn as the other characters about whether Sam deserves to/should die in the gas chamber for his crimes. I got totally immersed in the book, and spent a lot of time contemplating the death penalty in general. This is a masterful story and a good book for anyone who wants to look at the grey areas of the law and what is right and wrong.