Uwem Akpan -- Say You're One of Them

The e-grist of this blog mill has been and will always be petty schadenfreude and reckless snark. But once in a while my cold heart thaws a little and I have something nice to say about someone or something. And this post is an example of that rarest of mind-birds. The spirit of Munificence has visited my person, and, imbued with it, I share with you.

But first, a bit more self-indulgent meditation on my own nature: To wit, when this perfectly nice kid I knew from back in the day became a famous (at least in Brooklyn and Silver Lake and Austin) hard-drinking indie rock and roller, I seethed. When this other, very sweet girl I knew from back in the day wrote a silly blog and then blew up and became something of a pundit, I seethed. When the jovial and dashing South African fellow who lived down the hall from me freshman year became an international correspondent on CNN, I seethed. I know I should be happy for these people and their successes, but I am human, tragic and flawed, and I am wickedly jealous when perfectly normal-seeming people whom I know stumble into fame and riches.

That said, once in a while, a supremely nice person comes along, he treats you very kindly, is humble about his own talents, and is gracious and laudatory of yours, meager though they are. Once in a while you meet such a person and you think this person deserves much from this world; in the least this person deserves fame and riches. One such person is Uwem Akpan.

Tomorrow he will be chosen as Oprah's newest Book Club inductee. His enormously moving debut short-story collection, Say You're One of Them, will be 2009's first Oprah selection, and he will be launched into the literary stratosphere.

I met Uwem for the first time a few years ago in the frigid college town in which I spent some time. I was doing a reading of a short story I had written for our law school literary journal (best not to ask), and he, friendly with the editor, showed up for the opening night event. Afterwards, he introduced himself to me, told me how much he enjoyed my story, and, eventually, revealed that he too was a writer. As a result of this conversation, I made my way onto Uwem's email list. This is how I learned that he managed to get a second story published in the New Yorker in June of 2006. I read this story, prepared to hate it or hate him for his success. But neither came to pass. I then read the first story he had published, "An Ex-Mas Feast," and I felt stunned by what he had achieved.

A couple of years later, Uwem's book -- which Oprah has now selected -- came out and I bought it immediately. I re-read the New Yorker stories and felt neither jealousy nor hate. I felt in awe. Then I read one of the final stories in the collection, "Fattening for Gabon," which ends in a way that arrests the heart, and I thought, everyone should read this. Everyone.

Thanks to Oprah, from tomorrow, about one bajillion more people will read Uwem's book. Uwem, who is also a Jesuit priest ministering to a congregation in Nigeria, not some latte-drinking malcontent in Park Slope, will have earned all his success, and I for one will come to know genuine happiness for another human being. You should buy his book.

uh-O

did oprah approve of spring awakening or something? what's to explain whiny whinerson jonathan franzen's vitriol directed against duncan sheik's musical? don't get me wrong - as an entire genre musicals are insufferable, but franzen's reaction seems a little over-the-top to me. this guy just seems like he'd be the worst dinner guest, ever. don't invite this dude to disneyland, kids.

Televising the Revolution

You will remember Ludacris and 50 Cent's dust-up with Oprah last year, but in case you forgot, here's a reminder: After appearing on her show to promote Crash, Luda told GQ, "What I got was that by having rappers on her show, she feels like she is empowering in them..I don't see why Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle, who I am huge fans of, it's OK for them to go on Oprah. They speak the same language as I do, but they do it through comedy, so I guess that's acceptable to her." Now, Luda--whose lyrics, granted, are insanely misogynistic--did have a point: Why the free pass for the non-corn-rowed comedians? Why the total absence of any MC's on the Oprah show?

Well, that moment seemed to pass, but now comes word that Wynton Marsalis (pictured, err, depicted) also hates hip hop, except, unlike back-pedaling Oprah, he's not equivocating. This is the salient bit from his recent interview with the Guardian:

Old school minstrels used to say they were 'real darkies from the real plantation'. Hip-hop substitutes the plantation for the streets. Now you have to say that you're from the streets, you shot some brothers, you went to jail. Rappers have to display the correct pathology. Rap has become a safari for people who get their thrills from watching African-American people debase themselves, men dressing in gold, calling themselves stupid names like Ludacris or 50 Cent, spending money on expensive fluff, using language like 'bitch' and 'ho' and 'nigger.'

It's clear that there are generational and class divisions at work here, and far be it from me to opine about an issue that goes to the heart of contemporary black American society, being that, well, I'm not black, but still why is it that Marsalis, Oprah, Bill O'Reilly and others seem to think the paragons, the torch-bearers, of an entire genre of music--an entire aesthetic, an entire culture (not subculture, mind you)--are its worst offenders?

Okay, that's a rhetorical question. I can imagine what Nelly's album sales look like when compared to Jurassic 5's, but once, just once, I'd like to hear what universally renowned musical geniuses like Wynton Marsalis have to say about Mos Def's Black on Both Sides or Tribe's Low-End Theory or anything Viktor Vaughn's released. Hip hop may include all of the things that Marsalis hates it for--all of the things that I too hate about it--but, still, I know I'm not alone when I say, it's the greatest artistic invention of our lifetime.

In that spirit, and in honor of today's news that Scooter Libby is likely jail-bound, I give you Akon and Styles P's "Locked Up," which includes this gem, "Locked up, they won't let me out/ And I had a long day in court. Shit stressed me out."