One mango at a time

In 1996, a relatively peaceful time in Haiti, I traveled there with Global Exchange and was struck—despite the deforestation, despite the outbreaks of violence—by what a vibrant, welcoming, and even beautiful country it was. I wrote an article about the trip called Haiti as a Tourist Destination.

About a year later, I came upon a book of photos from Haiti that made me wonder—beginning with the seeming village idiot pictured on the cover—whether the photographer had been to the same place. “Steeped in Voodoo and brutalised by its rulers,” the book’s description read, “it is a country where human life is cheap and animals hardly worth life.”

Along with a surprising amount of help and compassion after the earthquake in Haiti, there has been a strong undercurrent of contempt and condescension. Once the compassion has faded, I’m afraid the contempt will continue. Long-term assistance and development requires a recognition that Haiti is worth developing.

For that reason I was pleased to see an op-ed in the New York Times called Building Haiti’s Economy, One Mango at a Time. Here’s an excerpt:

Haiti is by far the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, and yet it need not be so, because unexploited economic opportunities abound there. Some of the best mangoes in the world grow in Haiti — though too many of them rot, offshore from the world’s largest market, for want of adequate roads and well-governed ports. Excellent coffee is grown in the Haitian mountains, but much of it is sold informally across the border to coffee producers in the Dominican Republic, who reap most of the profits.

Haiti also has many qualities attractive to tourists: a warm climate; magnificent white-sand beaches and turquoise water; Tortuga, the famous pirate island off the northern coast; and the Citadel, a mountain fortress erected after Haiti’s independence in the early 19th century to fend off colonial powers, now a World Heritage site. Still, it is one of the least visited places in the Caribbean.

Richard Wright stamp

While I was on the USPS website, I discovered to my surprise that a stamp honoring Richard Wright came out last year.

It looks nice, but it’s a 61-cent stamp. Who uses 61-cent stamps? If you really want to honor a major American writer, wouldn’t you put him (or her) on a first-class stamp? Instead we have Bob Hope, Gary Cooper, and the Simpsons. 

Dennis Brutus 1924-2009

When I think of Dennis Brutus, I remember a photo I once saw of him standing in front of a portrait of Frederick Douglass. His graying mane and stoic expression gave him a certain resemblance to Douglass, which I’m sure he was well aware of. I met him several times when I was doing anti-apartheid work in the 1980s, and I was sorry to read of his death.

I once helped organize a fundraising event at Harvard where Brutus spoke about his efforts to have South Africa banned from the Olympics, and about his attempt to escape after his arrest in 1963. Finding himself with his guards on the streets of Johannesburg, he broke free and ran, thinking that they would never be reckless enough to shoot him on a crowded street.

He was wrong. A bullet passed through his body, and before long he was serving an 18-month sentence on Robben Island.

I was carrying a copy of his book A Simple Lust, and before the event I mentioned to him that I liked his poem “The companionship of bluegum trees.”

To my surprise, he stopped what he was doing, sat down, looked up the poem, and read it to me: the only time that I have been privileged enough to be an audience of one for a poet.

The companionship of bluegum trees
their sheen and spangle against the midday
winter sun
and the companionable nudge of my heart
knocking against my mind and memory
with evocation of my student hazy days
condemns me once again
labels me poet dreamer troubadour
unreal unworldly muddle-headed fool
while the trees nod and swagger
and the level sunlight flows.

Malcolm Gladwell and Atticus Finch

For some reason I never read To Kill a Mockingbird when I was young, and for years I intended to fix that omission. (Despite my degree in English and American Literature and Language, I haven’t read Pride and Prejudice either—though I did read Emma for a survey course, and enjoyed it.) I had seen the movie on TV, at least in parts, and when I did finally read the book a couple of weeks ago I didn’t find much that was unfamiliar, though I was pleased with the assurance of the storytelling, the touches of humor, and the lack of cuteness (mostly).

Having just finished the book, I was surprised to open the New Yorker and see that the subject of Malcolm Gladwell’s latest essay is not quirks of human behavior that can benefit businesspeople, but To Kill a Mockingbird.

Gladwell addresses a controversy that I was unaware of, about whether it is right to see Atticus Finch (and it is impossible to read the book without thinking of Gregory Peck) as a hero for his lonely defense of a black man unjustly accused of rape. The point, which Gladwell agrees with, is that Atticus Finch would rather appeal to the better angels of our nature than work for structural change.

Finch will stand up to racists. He’ll use his moral authority to shame them into silence. He will leave the judge standing on the sidewalk while he shakes hands with Negroes. What he will not do is look at the problem of racism outside the immediate context of Mr. Cunningham, Mr. Levy, and the island community of Maycomb, Alabama.

Gladwell is right, if we take him on his own terms. Atticus Finch is not an activist, a Freedom Rider, or even a full-time civil rights lawyer. His actions, and those of people like him, were not going to get more rights for black people, let alone end racism. But I don’t think Harper Lee ever meant to say that they were.

What Finch does in his small Southern town is not everything, but it is something. It requires more moral courage than most people have. And the existence of people like Finch, and their influence on their neighbors, helps prepare the ground for change.

Jenn’s first publication

Jenn’s first published article appears today (on her birthday!), at the online magazine Strange Horizons. It’s an interview with Sheree Thomas, editor of the sci-fi anthology Dark Matter. Sheree was one of the first people Jenn and I invited to appear at our bookstore. She came with several of the authors in the book, and it was a great event.