A nation

It has been three days at I have finally finished The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. I have plenty to say on that later but since I'm rereading it to jot down all the useful Dominicanisms in the book, I am drawn back to the beginning of the book. The book opens with an excerpt from a Derek Walcott poem:

Christ have mercy on all sleeping things!
From that dog rotting down Wrightson Road
to when I was a dog on these streets;
if loving these islands must be my load,
out of corruption my soul takes wings,
But they had started to poison my soul
with their big house, big car, big time bohbohl,
coolie, nigger, Syrian and French Creole,
so I leave it for them and their carnival -
I taking a sea bath, I gone down the road.
I know these islands from Monos to Nassau,
a rusty head sailor with sea-green eyes
that they nickname Shabine, the patois for
any red nigger, and I, Shabine, saw
when these slums of empire was paradise.
I'm just a red nigger who love the sea,
I had a sound colonial education,
I have Dutch, nigger, and English in me,
and either I'm nobody, or I'm a nation."

Well, I've decided... I'm a nation.

Reading about Writing

I just finished The Situation and The Story: The Art of the Personal Narrative by Vivian Gornick. It's one of the many books on writing stacked up in my new Los Angeles "office." And what a read, it was more than a little overwhelming. By critiquing a number of great writers, Gornick attempts to convey what good personal narrative is made of and what it isn't. I say attempts because even though she succeeds, I haven't had a chance to chew on it all and fully grasp all the deeper meanings. Also, reading such good writing, even bad personal narrative that's good writing, gave me insecurity issues. Maybe I should get an MFA before I write this book. Am I qualified to write a book about my own life? Could my book be the ultimate way of humiliating myself? Anyway!

So, I'm at that point where I can't exactly tell you what Gornick's book is about but I have lots of ideas churning in my head. It made me think of my own writing in a different way. I now understand that the situation of my book is "Latina converts to Orthodox Judaism" but the story, the internal story, is the story of soul's survival against all odds. Wheew. I must have learned something, right?

Gornick's book is one of those books that I'm going to have to read, reread and come back to over longer periods of time and with some absences in-between. I've been trying to slog straight through it ever since my friend gave it to me earlier this month for my birthday (one month early because of my Los Angeles trip). I tried taking notes but soon enough I didn't know what to underline or how to fit all my little comments in the margins. The book is just so intense. I feel like I just finished a graduate course in literature! And G-d bless the lovely people who came up with the questions in the back (a study guide) that will help guide me when I use the book as a reference guide while doing my own personal narrative writing.

Next up? Reading The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (no relation) and some other book (Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott) on writing while I reread Julius Lester's Lovesong and listen to When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris. I like to seem ambitious. Or maybe I just don't know how to relax?

Reacting to Reader Responses

Just an update to let everyone know that The Jewish Planet has published my response to reader reactions towards my editorial on RCA conversion policy. I responded specifically to a particularly passionate letter from one convert. You can view both the reader's letter and my response here: Response to Reader Reaction to Conversion Editorial.

Unfortunately, space did not permit this positive response to be published:

"Hi Aliza,

I don't know if you remember me...we met at Aish a couple of months ago. I just wanted to let you know that I read your editorial in the Jewish [Planet] and I thought it was wonderful. Actually, someone at Ohab Zedek photocopied it and handed it out to my whole conversion class. We are all so upset about what is going on with this ruling, and it was comforting to see you address the topic so eloquently and with much emotion. Thank you for writing it, and for giving a voice to all of our concerns.

B."

Outside the box

The latest newsletter from Bechol Lashon (In Every Tongue), an organization that asks us to "imagine a new global Judaism that transcends differences in geography, ethnicity, class, race, ritual practice, and beliefs," introduced me to Lacey Schwartz.

Lacey's parents were good at keeping secrets. They didn't reveal that her biological father was black until Lacey was eighteen years old. Her story is the spark behind a documentary that her MySpace page claims will allows us to join "Lacey on her journey to confront her mother and two fathers about her mixed-race identity, and uncover the traditions, heroes, heritage, roots, and identity of the larger American Black Jewish community."

I love the title of the documentary, "Outside the Box." It encompasses in such few words the struggles of those of us with multiethnic, multicultural, multiracial identities and how those little boxes people try to force us into can't truly express our lifestyles.

Getting my money's worth

Here are some more of my "masterpieces" from my Figure Drawing class.

My patience was wearing a little thin this week with beginning every work with contour drawing (ie, outlining the figure). Plus, the teacher kept trying to coerce me to make up fantastical landscapes in the back of the figure instead of leaving the background empty. I actually listened to her (despite totally wanting to throw a tantrum: "I AM HERE TO LEARN TO DRAW THE FIGURE NOT FAKE BACKGROUNDS!!!"). And I'll admit the results are startling. These pieces look like almost finished pieces despite only about 20-30 minutes of work on each.

The beach background for the third piece came from my AM/PM Yoga DVD, ever the source of inspiration.

Representing...

Bess Greenberg/New York Times
Yosef Abrahamson, 16, right, with his mother, Dinah, and his sister, Sarah, near their home in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.

An recent article, "A Young Man From Omaha, Who May Perfectly Represent Brooklyn," by Susan Dominus for the New York Times Big City section portrays an interesting picture of some Jews of Color in Brooklyn. The article follows 16-year-old Yosef Abrahamson and his family. They are new Hasidic transplants to Crown Heights Brooklyn. There are also Jews of Color of mixed German Jewish and more notably, the article points out of African (Egyptian) and Panamian descent. They find acceptance from both the Jewish and African-American communities that have always been at odds in that are of Brooklyn. An African-American passerby proclaimed, "Now, I've seen everything" after watching the family walk home from shul.

If Yosef represents Brooklyn, then perhaps, I, as a Dominican Jewess, represent Washington Heights?

Naked People

I’m taking a Figure Drawing class out here in what my rabbi calls, “La la land.” I’ll admit that it’s strange to be classmates with George Clooney’s landscaper. Plus, I learned in my writing class that when people say they’re “in the industry,” they mean Hollywood.

The class, which is held at a local community college, is a lot of fun. Three hours, one night a week, for six sessions. I figured as long as I’m trying to get my creative juices going here, I meant as well let all of them working so aside from writing, I’ll be drawing here and there.

I’m not a big fan of my teacher, though she’s nice enough. She’s one of those “Fine Arts” buffs. She thinks that anyone who does art in any other way should be deprogrammed. She thinks starting a figure drawing with the top of the head is insane. She's having us do "contour" drawings of the figure, which basically means doing an outline of the entire figure (from the feet up to the head). Basically, it’s like the chalk outline police officers draw around a dead body. Then we're allowed to start our pieces. In fact, she used some colorful expletives to describe her feelings on commercial artwork. That was just a tad too intense for me. But I figure since I am paying her to teach me something, I might as well try to learn something from her without gritting my teeth too hard.

By the end of the three hours, my arms were in excruciating pain. Drawing is really taxing on my arms and back muscles. My little infusion of pain medication didn’t cut it at all. The teacher looked at me like I was totally crazy when I told her I was having a hard time rubbing in the charcoal with my hands to shade the figure. I tried to explain vaguely that it was because of a disability and she finally tried to help me figure out a different way of doing things. It still hurt. By that point, I couldn’t even tell if it hurt less to do things her way.

My husband almost had a heart attack when I told him about the class after we met up after his Spanish class, which he takes on the same nights I take Figuring Drawing. Apparently, I hadn’t mentioned earlier that in Figure Drawing class, we basically spend three hours drawing a nude model. He recovered eventually, though not too quickly. My in-laws, who heard about my class from my husband, apparently think the whole “drawing naked people thing” is uproarious. My mother-in-law asked if the model covered his “thing” with something and when I told her that he was totally naked, her eyes nearly crossed as she started laughing again.

Here are two pieces I created in my first class:

And here's a link to an article I wrote, Ugly Naked Guy, about my first Figure Drawing class in college: A personal essay about a modest girl's foray into Figure Drawing and the illuminating results.

Where Does Your Garden Grow

I was whisked away to a garden in a Beverly Hills backyard yesterday. It's part of my Los Angeles education program, which so far includes writing classes, art classes, driving lessons and garden-hopping. Above is a collage of the photos that nearly took out my Blackberry when I tried to email them to friends!

The pictures are a motley assortment of the vegetation growing all over the extensive gardens, which I was told were 25 years in the making and are maintained by a full-time staff that includes a UCLA professor. Along with tomato trees, I photographed some fresh basil, grapes, flowers, oranges, lemons and yummy scallions.

This is a long, long way from asphalt backyards in the Bronx. And the fruit picked from the various trees by our gracious hosts, which included oranges, plums, pears, peaches, nectarines and more, was infinitely more delicious than the raspberries we used to pick off a wild tree on Ft. George Hill in Washington Heights.