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Picks from the Inner Circle
Joel Whitney
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Joel Whitney is a founding editor of Guernica: A Magazine of Art and Politics. In 2003, he was awarded a Discovery/The Nation Prize by the 92nd Street Y and The Nation for his poetry. Co-founder of Guernica |
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 Many are cramming to see Oscar-nominated films they missed. If you haven't, see the riveting documentary Burma VJ. It is the story, through smuggled and secret footage, of Burma's 2007 protests against the dictatorship. It is one of those works where the process of making it is as extraordinary as the film itself; the reporters risked their lives (some were arrested and disappeared) to tell this story and they record in real time things you never see: Soldiers killing a journalist then lugging away the evidence, a chief of police caught scheming to suppress the footage, citizens' courage boiling over in impassioned chants on the streets. It's not playing in many U.S. theaters anymore. But you can watch it here (consider a donation to the Democratic Voice of Burma, which made the film possible) or buy it here (in the U.K.). |
Joel Whitney
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Joel Whitney is a founding editor of Guernica: A Magazine of Art and Politics. In 2003, he was awarded a Discovery/The Nation Prize by the 92nd Street Y and The Nation for his poetry. Co-founder of Guernica |
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One of my favorite nonfiction books from 2009 was Mark Dowie's Conservation Refugees. The definition of wilderness brought over from Europe by the likes of John Muir ensured that "America's greatest invention," as Ken Burns referred to our national parks, would have no humans in them. But parks without people were not inevitable. Some early proponents of Yellowstone wanted to set up an "Indian park" there, and Dowie describes Ansel Adams taking his iconic images of Yosemite while shooing the native Miwoks out of the frame. Social scientists now understand that the wilderness Europeans "found" here in the new world had actually been tended for many millennia by natives like the Miwoks. A new documentary currently looking for a U.S. broadcaster, A Place Without People, explores the effects of these same European myths about wilderness on the Maasai in Tanzania's Serengeti National Park. |
Joel Whitney
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Joel Whitney is a founding editor of Guernica: A Magazine of Art and Politics. In 2003, he was awarded a Discovery/The Nation Prize by the 92nd Street Y and The Nation for his poetry. Co-founder of Guernica |
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 I like Media Matters for America, although they take everything so literally. When President Obama's team teased Fox News for its imaginative use of facts, commentators repeated ad nauseam Rupert Murdoch's claim that Fox News' ratings went "through the roof." Wasn't it ironic that this light teasing from the White House actually helped Fox News? Along comes Media Matters armed with their Nielsen reports. "In fact, not only did Fox News' overall ratings not soar," writes buzzkill Eric Boehlert on Media Matters' Web site. "Instead, in the two weeks following the initial verbal jousts with the White House, Fox News' total day ratings virtually flatlined." I wish Media Matters would lighten up. I'll keep reading them just to see if they do. |
Joel Whitney
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Joel Whitney is a founding editor of Guernica: A Magazine of Art and Politics. In 2003, he was awarded a Discovery/The Nation Prize by the 92nd Street Y and The Nation for his poetry. Co-founder of Guernica |
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My Guantánamo Diary by Mahvish Khan. Imagine that a young idealistic American who happened to speak Pashto had been let inside Guantánamo to interview prisoners? Mahvish Khan was. This Pashtun-American, working as a legal aide, heard story after story of American torture. The problem with much of the current debate on torture is we seem to have reduced it to waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and uncomfortable positions and temperatures. All of these are gruesome. But in My Guantánamo Diary out in paperback this month, it becomes clear that Americans soldiers also resorted to rape, and often tortured prisoners to death. This is what the U.S. condemns countries like Burma for. |
Joel Whitney
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Joel Whitney is a founding editor of Guernica: A Magazine of Art and Politics. In 2003, he was awarded a Discovery/The Nation Prize by the 92nd Street Y and The Nation for his poetry. Co-founder of Guernica |
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Double X is a new site "written mostly for women, but not only for them." It grew out of Slate's Double X blog, launched to cover the presidential election through the lens of women's issues. I like Meghan O'Rourke's piece, Spock Is From Mars, Kirk Is From Venus. The Secret Dreams of Famous Women by Amy Bloom, Dominique Dawes, Margaret Cho, Vivian Gornick, Sandra Day O'Connor, Amanda Palmer, Amanda Peet, and Jane Smiley is also fun to read. It's a smart site and, while I may be from Mars myself, I vacation on Venus. |
Joel Whitney
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Joel Whitney is a founding editor of Guernica: A Magazine of Art and Politics. In 2003, he was awarded a Discovery/The Nation Prize by the 92nd Street Y and The Nation for his poetry. Co-founder of Guernica |
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 The PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature in New York City. When PEN announced its 2009 lineup on March 25, festival chairman Salman Rushdie quoted Kevin Costner. Regarding the festival Rushdie had co-founded five years ago, he quipped, If you build it, they will come. He was referring to the lack of international literary festivals in the city prior to PEN's, and the fantastic audiences. It is indeed a treasure. I look forward to the week of fantastic writers from around the world. |
Joel Whitney
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Joel Whitney is a founding editor of Guernica: A Magazine of Art and Politics. In 2003, he was awarded a Discovery/The Nation Prize by the 92nd Street Y and The Nation for his poetry. Co-founder of Guernica |
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Zoya Phan of the Burma Campaign. Zoya speaks out with passion and clarity against a regime that some say is engaged in genocide against her people, the Karen. She reminds us, as we mark the 60th anniversary of the UN's Declaration of Human Rights, that we can always do more to make those rights universal. Zoya suggests a UN arms embargo against Burma. The Burma Campaign wants these companies to leave Burma. |
Joel Whitney
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Joel Whitney is a founding editor of Guernica: A Magazine of Art and Politics. In 2003, he was awarded a Discovery/The Nation Prize by the 92nd Street Y and The Nation for his poetry. Co-founder of Guernica |
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How much change are we truly in for? In answering this, President-elect Obama will surely be friendlier to the arts than his predecessor, possibly because he understands what Orwell was keen to point out, that sloppy politics begins as sloppy language and thinking. Along those lines, Monica Ferrell's debut poetry collection, Beasts for the Chase (out last month), should probably come with a warning: freedom and invention are indeed threats to all that came before them. These days we celebrate this as a good thing. |
Joel Whitney
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Joel Whitney is a founding editor of Guernica: A Magazine of Art and Politics. In 2003, he was awarded a Discovery/The Nation Prize by the 92nd Street Y and The Nation for his poetry. Co-founder of Guernica |
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EarthRights International, a non-profit focusing on human and environmental rights, is definitely one to keep an eye on. Their website keeps readers up to date on the brave suits they take on against governments who partner with powerful corporations. ERI is co-counsel this fall in another suit against Chevron, this time for the company's alleged use of Nigerian security forces for an oil project in the Niger Delta. The "security forces" opened fire on non-violent protesters in 1998, according to the suit. With their blend of on-the-ground organizing on behalf of the voiceless alongside high-level legal action, ERI made history when they busted Chevron for similar rights violations in Burma, and their efforts were documented in the fantastic film, Total Denial. |
