Book Review: Babel

• By R. F. Kuang

• Pub Date: 2022

• Where I bought this book: The Book Loft, Columbus, Ohio 

• Why I bought this book: It called out to me

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     This is an extraordinary tale that uses magic and fantasy to explore the realms of language as it's used and abused to use and abuse people.

    It revels in the history and decadence of language, its twists and turns, its meanings and context. We see its glory and honor, and its brutalities and  tragedies. We see it as homey and friendly with a welcoming smile. We see it as elite and fastidious, with a smirk and ridicule.

    And in this story about the fictional history of the revolt and strike by the translators of Oxford, we see that language is used by the privileged and powerful for their own ends. And, of course, those privileged and powerful are white men. The translators include some women and a small cohort of people of color, but only as necessary to perform the difficult if unpretentious tasks.

    The setting is Oxford, England, a small college town some 50 miles from London, but several hundred years removed from what's described as a stinking, bustling, crime-infested city of thieves and thugs and foreigners. Oxford is determinately quaint, sophisticated, and, well, well-educated.

    The time is the early 19th Century. The Silver Revolution is in fill swing, its magic providing clean water, quick transportation, and a better life for those who deserved it. 

Book jacket photo

Author R. F. Kuang is a remarkable woman.

She is a translator with master's degrees from

Cambridge and Oxford in Chinese studies, 

and who is studying for a doctorate in East

Asian languages from Yale. She has written

six books, and has been nominated for 

the Hugo, Nebula, Locust and several other

awards for her works. She is 26 years old.

    The characters are few -- the translating cohort of Robin, "rescued" from the slums of Canton, China, who can pass for white if you don't look too closely; Ramy, a lad from Calcutta, proudly brown-skinned but aware of the dangers from the bigoted; Victoire, a Black French woman originally from Haiti, and Letty, the "English Rose," who is both part of the privileged high society but a second-class citizen because she's a woman.

    Other characters include the high-minded if mysterious Professor Lovell, who takes in Robin to prepare and raise him for a spot at Oxford. Others -- several who become instrumental to the plot -- come and go and are well-rounded, if there only to serve specific purposes in the story.

    Indeed, even the main characters are plot specific, and serve as representations of larger societal issues. Even the plot points are metaphors: the Silver Revolution is the Industrial Revolution, if more intellectual -- and magical. 

    (In this world, silver and words combine to bring power, and the translators do the dirty work. England obtains silver bars from elsewhere, through means nefarious, but which it deems legal. The translators perform the magic, inscribing paired words from various languages, which allows the bars to provide a way to make possible train travel, electricity, and other modern wonders.)

    The story is heavily about the class structure of the British Empire, and its exploitation -- for goods, for money, for knowledge -- of the rest of the world through violence. This England is relentless in getting what it wants, regardless of the cost to other cultures and lands. The book doesn't demonize England; it simply highlights is schemes, its murders, and its wars for its own purposes.

    Even our cohort of four translators are assimilated to exploit their own countries -- China, India, and parts of Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas -- and accept their work as being the price of their comfort and intellectual life. But slowly, they come to realize what they are doing, and what the Oxford translators do.

    That realization and its consequences are at the heart of the book, and Kuang tears our hearts out as she tells the tale. We find ourselves sympathizing with the dilemma the four face, and understanding their choices, and why they are made.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Carlo Goldoni

Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, in podcasts, and in books. 

Today is a story of February 25th

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    It is the 56th day of the year, leaving 309 days remaining in 2023.

   

    On this date, the Italian playwright, Carlo Goldoni, was born in Venice.

    He told his stories with wit and charm and realism, a rich use of the Venetian language, and the use of tightly constructed plots. His plays portrayed the emerging middle class of the time, giving them an honest assessment of themselves.

    He is often considered the founder of Italian realistic comedy.

    He was born what was then the Kingdom of Venice. His first love was the theater, and despite training in the law, he began writing plays at the age of 16. After a time of actually practicing law, he returned to the theater, writing plays in French, but mostly in the Italian-Venetian dialect. He also wrote occasionally for the opera.

    His first play, the tragedy, Amalasunta, was a flop. Indeed, many of his early works were in the old style. But in his 1750 play, La Pamela, he did not use the traditional masked characters of the commedia dell'arte style.

    In 1750-51, writing for Teatro Sant'Angelo, Goldoni produced some 16 plays, including I pettegolezzi delle donne (Women's Gossip), Il bugiardo (The Liar) and Il vero amico (The True Friend), all written in different styles. But over the next 10 years, writing for various theater companies, he began to find his own style and voice, and increasingly used realistic characters. foregoing the stilted style and repetitive dialogue in favor of a more descriptive and robust voices.

    His style sometimes caused controversy in the theater world, and for a time he lived and worked in France.  

    He died in 1793

Almanac of Story Tellers: Ishmael Reed

Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, in podcasts, and in books. 

Today is a story of February 22nd

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    It is the 53rd day of the year, leaving 312 days remaining in 2023.

   

    On this date in 1938, the writer Ishmael Reed was born.

    He tells his stories, often about the oppressed fighting their oppressors, with sardonic language, satire, and unorthodox political and racial commentary. He injects ironic humor into his prose and poetry, exposing human excesses and absurdities and turning stereotypes upside down.

     His writings combine standard English with language from the streets, music, film, and African-American culture, combining their dialect, slang, and rhythms to create a language that is familiar, yet unique.

     One poem, written in 2007, questions the tired views of the cowboys and the Indians.

                    The pioneers and the indians 

                    disagree about a lot of things

                    for example, the pioneer says that

                    when you meet a bear in the woods

                    you should yell at him and if that

                    doesn't work you should fell him

                    The indians say that you should

                    whisper to him softly and call him by

                    loving nicknames

                    No one's bothered to ask the bear

                    what he thinks

    Reed's first novel, written in 1967, was The Freelance Pallbearers, about the Bukka Doopeyduk, who revolt against their despotic leader, Harry Sam, the ruler of the nation of Harry Sam. Perhaps his best known novel is Mumbo Jumbo, published in 1972, about a voodoo priest in Harlem battling the Wallflower Order, which is dedicated to wiping out the jes grew virus, a personification of ragtime, jazz, polytheism, and freedom.

    One of Reed's plays, The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda, staged in 2019, critiques the author of the musical Hamilton, in part by having historical figures not in the musical confront Miranda about the omissions. He also says Miranda whitewashes Hamilton's views and actions, along with those of George Washington.

     While living in New York City in the 1960s, Reed co-founded the underground newspaper, The East Village Other. Moving to the west coast in the 1970s, he taught at Berkeley for 35 years. He has written a dozen novels and seven collections of poetry.

    His novels have been nominated for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. In 1998, he was awarded the genius grant from the John T, and Catherine C. MacArthur Foundation. 

    Reed lives in Oakland, Calif.

Book Review: When the Stars Go Dark

 

•  Author: Paula McLain

• Where I bought this book: The Strand, New York 

• Why I bought this book: It seemed like a pretty good read

*****

    The story is good and well plotted. The writing pulls you into the story and keeps you there.

    But the backstories that come in the early pages tend to drag on, and you wonder just when the actual tale will start. Then the tropes of the mystery-detective genre enter and are there for all to see, and they distract from that tale.

    First, there is the all-knowing, brilliant detective who has special insight into people and their crimes. It's the "Monk syndrome" after the TV detective played by Tony Shalhoub. His life was otherwise a mess, but he had that special feel for solving crimes, don't you see?

    Indeed, the only flaw in these investigators is they care too much. They let their own lives falter: they work too hard; they drink too much; their only hobby is work. They suffer, and their families suffer. Their lives spin out of control.

    But their special crime-solving ability is because they have lived the life. They have been there. There have suffered the indignities they are investigating. They are survivors (spoiler alert: No, they aren't), and now they want to end the suffering for anyone and everyone, so they put their superpower to work.

    Enter Anna Hart, a product of the mostly failed foster-care system, who is a San Francisco detective with -- you guess it -- a special aptitude for solving crimes dealing with missing children. When something bad happens to Detective Anna, which we don't know the details of until later on, she escapes to the only place she was happy -- Mendocino, Calif., where she spent her teen years in the care of a good foster couple. She plans to relax and recuperate.

The author mentions Time and the Maiden. a statue
in downtown Mendocino. It seems kind of creepy.

    But, don't you know, Anna stumbles into a couple of missing child cases, and the local sheriff, a childhood friend, asks for her help. She jumps in head first.

    The rest is mostly predictable, if well told. It's a linear tale, with some jumping around to keep you interested. And while the author depends on tropes, she avoids the worst -- the dragging out of the final scenes, the great chase, the dangerous climax, until you just want it to end. You'll finish satisfied with its conclusion.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Dr. Dre

Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, in podcasts, and in books. 

Today is a story of February 18th

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    It is the 49th day of the year, leaving 316 days remaining in 2023.

 

    On this date in 1965, the rapper Dr. Dre was born.

    He tells his stories while he helped invent new forms of rap and hip-hop music, particularly in the genre now known as gangsta-rap. It includes explicit descriptions of street violence and drug dealing. He also helped create part of the West Coast style, which used a synthesizer, heavy, plodding beats, and samplings from 1970s funk.

    He has since moved mostly to the business side, finding and recruiting new artists, and founding such companies as Death Row Records, Aftermath Entertainment and Beats Electronics.

    He was born as Andre Romell Young of musically inclined parents, who broke up when he was a young child. He first found fame as a 20-year-old with the group World Class Wreckin' Cru, and later with N.W.A., where he helped perfect the violence of gangsta rape.

    With fellow rappers Eazy-E and Ice Cube, they released Straight Outta Compton, which told of the violent street life that Dr. Dre grew up with. One of their popular early recordings was Fuck tha Police, which brought the group a warning letter from the FBI.

    Dr. Dre then went solo, releasing The Chronic's, which garnered him his first Grammy Award for Let Me Ride.

    While keeping a hand on the performing side, he also produced albums, including Snopp Dogg's debut album Doggystyle; he formed Death Row Records and signed 2Pac, and later started Aftermath and signed Eminem. He continues to perform, including at the halftime show of Super Bowl LVI in 2022, for which he won an Emmy Award.

    He also has won six Grammy Awards. He lives in Los Angeles.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Gregory Mcdonald

Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, in podcasts, and in books. 

Today is a story of February 15th

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    It is the 46th day of the year, leaving 319 days remaining in 2023.

   

    On this date in 1937, the novelist Gregory Mcdonald was born.

    He told his stories in scintillating and rugged dialogue, spoken by characters with wit and a roguish charm. The stories were mysteries, mostly, but also character sketches, adventures, and musical tales.

    His career as a writer could be considered a reversal of many biographies. Working as a high school teacher in 1964, he wrote Running Scared, a novel about a college student's suicide. He used this to obtain a reporting job at the Boston Globe, where he worked for seven years.

    He returned to novels in 1974, penning Fletch, a ribald tale about drugs, sex, and murder on the police beat. It was a hit, winning the Edgar Award for Best First Novel from the Mystery Writers of America. He followed that with Confess, Fletch in 1976.

    That also won an Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original, becoming the first time a novel and its sequel won back-to-back awards.

 

A selection
 of Mcdonald's books
in my library

  Fletch soon was adapted for the movie screen, with Chevy Chase in the leading role. Mcdonald went on to write nine novels about Irwin Maurice Fletcher -- who as a journalist, investigator and cad, used the byline I.M. Fletcher (get it?) -- along with four  books about a spinoff character, Inspector Francis Xavier Flynn (who somehow happens to be the only inspector in the entire Boston Police Department).

    In all, Mcdonald wrote 26 books, including Love Among the Mashed Potatoes, about a male advice columnist in the 1970s; the Times Squared Quartet, four books about time that were published out of sequence; and the Skylar series, about the cultural differences between the South and the North in the United States.

    Mcdonald died in 2008.  

Almanac of Story Tellers: Carl Bernstein

Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, in podcasts, and in books. 

Today is a story of February 14th

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    It is the 45th day of the year, leaving 320 days remaining in 2023.

    On this date in 1944, the investigative reporter Carl Bernstein was born.

   

    He tells his stories about politicians -- some of them corrupt, which means he must do a lots of digging. He is best known for digging into the political story of our time, Richard Nixon and Watergate, which led to the only presidential resignation in U.S. history.

    Along with Bob Woodward, a fellow reporter at The Washington Post, they broke the story of the Watergate conspiracy. They told how Nixon and his aides covered up the story of how and why his 1972 re-election campaign broke into Democratic headquarters in the Watergate office complex.

Bernstein and Woodward

    Woodward and Bernstein, then young reporters at The Post, were often alone in their quest to investigate the Nixon administration's actions. Backed only by their newspaper, they uncovered dozens of presidential activities that shocked the nation, led to Congressional investigations, grand jury indictments, and a House committee voting to impeach the president. Nixon resigned before that action took place.

    The pair and their newspaper won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973 for Public Service.

    Bernstein started working at 16 as a copy boy for the old Washington Star. He then worked as a reporter for The Elizabeth (N.J.) Daily Journal before returning to Washington as a reporter for The Post.

      He wrote two books with Woodward after the Watergate sage: All The President's Men, the story of what happened and how; and The Final Days, about the president's resignation. 

    In the years after Watergate, Bernstein has continued working as a journalist and commentator, mostly in television news. He has written books on Hillary Clinton and Pope John Paul II. His most recent book is a memoir, Chasing History: A Kid in the Newsroom.

    He lives in New York.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Lydia Maria Child

Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, in podcasts, and in books. 

Today is a story of February 11th

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    It is the 42nd day of the year, leaving 323 days remaining in 2023.

    On this date in 1802, Lydia Maria Child, an author, abolitionist, and advocate for American Indians, was born in  Massachusetts.

    She wrote stories about those who were outcasts from society, rejected for their sex or race, subjected to discrimination, slavery, or slaughter. At a time when a woman was relegated to a private existence, and stories about Americans were positive and gung-ho, she wrote poems and books and leaflets about the horrors of slavery and the massacre of natives.

    Her first novel, written at the age of 22, was Hobomak, A Tale of Early Times. It tells the story of the early Puritan settlers of Massachusetts from a woman's perspective -- a woman who rebels against religious and racial bigotry by marrying a Native American, and later an Episcopalian. Its subject matter scandalized her friends and neighbors, but somewhat surprisingly, also helped to make it a success.

    For a time, Child edited a children's magazine, The Juvenile Miscellany. She wrote a popular collection of advice for women under the title, The Frugal Housewife. Throughout her long life, she wrote stories for children, poems about American traditions such as Thanksgiving, and books and articles decrying slavery and the treatment of the natives. 

    In one book, The First Settlers of New England; or, Conquest of the Pequods, Narragansets and Pokanokets, she told the story -- in the voice of a mother to her child -- of the atrocities the colonists committed on the native tribes. It was not your typical treatment of the historical narrative, either then or now.

    She handled her anti-slavery activism in a similar way. In one book, she helped write one of the first stories from the perspective of a slave girl. Working with Harriet Jacobs, Child edited and promoted Jacobs's memoir, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, which is exactly what it presents itself to be. 

    After the Civil War, she worked for and wrote about efforts to assist former slaves to move into a free and equal life with their enslavers. One of her books was The Freedmen's Book, written in 1865. It has been called a primer, anthology, history, and self-help manual that includes stories and biographies of prominent Black people in history.

    

    Child died in 1880.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Richard A. Long

Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, in podcasts, and in books. 

Today is a story of February 9th

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    It is the 40th day of the year, leaving 325 days remaining in 2023.

   

    On the date in 1927, Richard A. Long, a polymath who also was a student and professor of African-America art and culture, was born in Philadelphia.

    His told his stories in literate language, about many things which passed his fancy that he studied and appreciated. This included linguistics, Haitian art, foreign languages, dance history, African-American art, and  medieval literature, just to cite a few.

    He was an author of books, a public intellectual, a mainstay in the Atlanta community, and a professor and teacher at several universities, including Emory University, Atlanta University, Harvard University, and others in France and throughout Africa.

    He served on numerous boards of cultural organizations and institutions, including the national Endowment for the Arts, The Smithsonian Museum of African Art, The Society of Dance History Scholars, and the Zora Neale Hurston Festival. 

    He founded the New World Festivals of the African Diaspora, and was the U.S. committee member at the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture that was held in Lagos, Nigeria, in the 1970s.

    And he wrote scholarly books: Black Americana, published in 1985; The Black Tradition in American Dance, in 1989; Grown Deep: Essays on the Harlem Renaissance, in 1998; and its follow-up, One More Time: Harlem Renaissance History and Historicism, in 2007.

    Long died in 2013. 

Almanac of Story Tellers: Sinclair Lewis

Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, in podcasts, and in books. 

Today is a story of February 7th

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    It is the 38th day of the year, leaving 327 days remaining in 2023.

   

    On this date in 1885, the novelist Sinclair Lewis was born in Sauk Center, Minn.

    He told his stories in satirical novels, made realistic by the use of authentic dialogue and the genuine mores and customs of the time. His descriptions of people and places was praised for being original and convincing.

    He was the first person from the Americas to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, with the board in 1930 citing "his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of characters."

    Sinclair attended Yale University for five years, working a number of newspaper jobs and editing the Yale Literary Magazine. It was there he first published his own writings -- poems and short stories. In 1912, he published his first novel, Hike and the Aeroplane, under a pseudonym. He wrote several more novels during the teens.

    In 1920, he wrote Main Street, a satirical novel about small-town America as seen through the eyes of an young urban woman who moves to Gopher Prairie, Minn., after marriage. It was popular and well received by critics, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and since has become the textbook novel of small-town provincialism. 

    Two years later, Lewis wrote Babbitt, another satirical novel, this time about small-town boosterism and commercial culture. He continued to write satire, against evangelical preachers in Elmer Gantry, and the privileged and affluent in Dodsworth.

    Arrowsmith, about a doctor who struggles with the ethics and culture of science, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1926, but Lewis rejected it because, he said, the Pulitzer board prized conformity over excellence.

    His 1935 novel, It Can't Happen Here, a cautionary tale about the rise of fascism in the United States, had a revival in popularity during the presidency of Donald Trump.

    Lewis died in 1951.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Ralph McGill

Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, in podcasts, and in books. 

Today is a story of February 5th

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    It is the 36th day of the year, leaving 329 days remaining in 2023.

 

  On this date in 1898, the newspaperman Ralph McGill was born.

    As a white man writing for newspapers in the Deep South, McGill told the story of the U.S. Civil Rights movement with passion, understanding, and clarity. He opposed segregation and wrote about its harmful effects. He explained to his mostly white readers the passive and non-violent actions the Black men and women took in their struggle for equal rights, and inspired other newspapers to follow his lead.

    He wrote editorials that influenced this social change. As a columnist who was syndicated around the national, McGill attempted to explain the South to his readers, He also quietly advised Presidents Kennedy and Johnson about their actions during that time.

    Born in rural southeastern Tennessee, he was educated at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. He did not graduate because he was kicked out after writing an editorial critical of the school's administration.

    He first worked for the old Nashville Banner and later moved to the Atlanta Constitution, where he spent the majority of his career and served as executive editor, editor, and publisher. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1958 for editorial writing. In 1964, President Johnson awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

    He is the author of several books about the south, including Southern Encounters: Southerners of Note in Ralph McGill's South, and The South and the Southerner.

    McGill died in 1969.

Book Review: Tom Seaver: A Terrific Life

 

•  Author: Bill Madden
• Pub Date: 2020

• Where I bought this book: Joseph-Beth, Norwood, Ohio 

• Why I bought this book: Tom Seaver was my boyhood idol 

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    I cheered when Tom Seaver won the 1969 Cy Young Award the same year the Miracle Mets won their first World Series. I cringed when the Mets spitefully traded Seaver to the Cincinnati Reds in 1977. And I cried when Seaver died at his California home on Aug. 31, 2020.

    All that I knew. As a result, much of this biography -- Seaver's early days in Fresno, the Mets being able to sign him because the team's name was picked from a hat, and his glorious early career as "The Franchise," the player who led the Mets through their Amazin' days -- was a trip down memory lane. 

    I even knew about some of his later days in baseball -- his only no-hitter with the Cincinnati Reds, his 300th win with the Chicago White Sox, and his being on the field in a Boston Red Sox uniform when the Mets won their second World Series in 1986. After all, as a youngster I grew up reading every story I could find about his life, and I stayed enamored of him even after he was no longer a Met, even after I was no longer living in New York.

    Still, I was surprised by what I did not know: How Seaver was sometimes considered arrogant and distant by some teammates in his later years, how some of his best friends were his catchers, how he idolized Gil Hodges and later Tony La Russa, and how he considered quitting after the Mets let him go to Chicago in 1983 because of sheer incompetence.

    He had a falling out with the Mets over that fiasco, and the author notes that the Mets did little to alleviate the situation. The owners from the late '80 to 2020 often ignored the Mets' history and former players. When Shea Stadium was demolished in favor of Citi Field in 2009, Seaver and others lamented that it looked more like a shrine to the old Brooklyn Dodgers than the Mets. No memorials then existed for the franchise's star players.

    So, while it's a positive history, this is no hagiography. Still, it's a great read, with the workman-like sports writing and compelling insights of a newspaperman. Of course, because Madden's an older newspaper guy writing about an old player, some of the analysis isn't exactly modern.

    Statistics, for example. Whenever the author wants to show how Seaver was facing the best of the best players, he gives the hitters' stats from the old days -- BA-HRs-RBIs. No slashlines, no OBP, no WAR needed. He does the same with the pitching stats -- Seaver's prominence is always proved with wins, strikeouts, and ERA. Again, no WAR, no BABIP, no ERA+.

     And both Seaver and the author scoff at pitch counts. Seaver was appalled that starting pitchers today seldom go more than six innings. And while he acknowledges pitch counts are a legitimate measure, he says they were much higher in the good old days. Today, pitchers top out at 80 or 90 pitches per game. Seaver says he often threw 140 pitches a game. Teammate Nolan Ryan often threw 150 or more.

    Still, it's a fun book, and Seaver is overall a likeable guy who led a good life.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Betty Friedan

Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, in podcasts, and in books. 

Today is a story of February 4th

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    It is the 35th day of the year, leaving 330 days remaining in 2023.

   

    On this date in 1921, the author and activist Betty Friedan was born.

    She told her stories about women, their histories, their wants, and their often unfulfilled desires. Her seminal work, The Feminine Mystique, is considered the bible of the modern feminist movement that began in the 1960s. 

    Using surveys she created, compiled, and reviewed from her fellow Smith College graduates, she wrote how women's lives were lonely and desperate, caught in the illusion they should be happy and dignified because they were meant to be wives and mothers.

    After graduating from Smith College, Friedan started working as a journalist, particularly for a number of labor publications. But after marrying and becoming pregnant with her second child in 1952, she was fired. She started writing freelance articles for several magazines. After compiling her survey, she began to write articles about it, and later expanded the project into a book.

    The Feminine Mystique was popular, selling more than 1 million copies. 

    A few years later, she helped to found the National Organization for Women, dedicated to seeking full equality for women in their work, family, and lives. She supported and worked for the Equal Rights Amendment, while continuing to write about feminist movements.

    Among those later books was The Second Stage, which expanded on the idea of full equality for women and discussed issues that affected the generation after hers. These included the social and political backlash to feminism, and the need for women to be better represented in all business fields, in addition to re-defining and recognizing the value of traditional women's occupations, such as teaching and nursing.

    She received several honorary doctorates, and was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1993.

    She died in 2006.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Aleksis Kivi

Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, in podcasts, and in books. 

Today is a story of February 2nd

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    It is the 33rd day of the year, leaving 332 days remaining in 2023.

   

Aleksis Kivi statue
in his hometown of Nurmijävi

 On this date in 1870, Seitsemän velijestä was published, becoming what is believed to be the first novel published in the Finnish language.

    Seven Brothers (the novel's title in English) tells the story of a roguish band of young men who move to the forest outside of their town to live a life of drinking, debauchery, and adventure before returning to their community to become responsible adults. A humorous book, it is a classic form of realism and romanticism.

    It was written by Aleksis Kivi, a playwright and a poet. And although he died penniless and in an asylum, he has since become a revered figure in Finland. 

    He is considered a national icon, and one of the country's greatest writers. His works are regarded as classics and are part of the Finnish canon. A national book award is named after him. A bronze memorial stands in front of the Finnish National Theater in Helsinki.

    Kivi was born Alexis Stenvall in 1834 in Nurmijävi, in what was then the Grand Duchy of Finland.

    His first play was Kullervo, based on a tale from Finnish folklore. A collection of poems, Kanervala, published in 1866, was rejected and criticized during his life but saw new appreciation after his death for its departure from poetic conventions of the time. 

    He wrote a dozen plays, including the 1865 comedy, Nummisuutarit (in English, The Cobblers on the Heath), which won a national prize and is still performed today.

    He died in 1872.