Words Matter…Ideas Matter…and Guide
Dear Friends,
Welcome to November’s Substack.
I hope you’ll enjoy this month’s blog Words Matter…Ideas Matter…and Guide. The audio version is available by clicking the link in the blog itself or clicking the link below for all podcasts. https://joanneleedomackerman.substack.com/podcast
The Writers at Risk section focuses on the case of Innocent Bahati, a popular Rwandan poet and critic of the government who disappeared February 2021.
The Books to Check Out section features People and Trees: A Trilogy, a translated collection of novellas by renowned Azerbaijani novelist Akram Aylisli, who has been a de facto prisoner of conscience under house confinement for years and a new novel The Younger Girl, a fictionalized true story of a murder in the family of friend Georgia Jeffries, writer of Emmy Award-winning dramas.
Book News shares upcoming events and brief news and a new interview.
In the Scene section you’ll find a photo along with text from The Far Side of the Desert.
Thank you to friends and new readers who’ve come to bookstores, libraries, book clubs and online to share my new novels The Far Side of the Desert and Burning Distance. If you’re interested in having me speak at a venue or with a book club, you can click here. I look forward to staying in touch and meeting readers at future events. Thank you for sharing my books with friends and for leaving reviews with online booksellers. Word of mouth is a powerful engine!
I hope you enjoy this free monthly Substack On the Yellow Brick Road and also share it with friends!
Words Matter…Ideas Matter…and Guide
I’m writing this blog on the eve of one of the U.S.’s most fraught—and many feel consequential—presidential elections, at least in my lifetime. By the time many read this, the results may be in, or contested. Recently one of my earlier blogs popped up in my email—I don’t know why—but I followed the link. Written in 2008, the blog addressed ideas that still resonate. I offer it here, slightly edited, with recognition that certain ideas endure and matter.
Words That Matter, March 4, 2008:
I’m writing this, my second blog, on the birthday of my oldest son and a day when much of the U.S. is watching presidential primary results. I find myself thinking about words, action and change—three concepts that have been debated relentlessly on the airwaves in this U.S. primary season. How do words link to actions that bring about change?
Let me start with my son who spends his days in abstract thought. He is a mathematician, a logician, whose thoughts and work are understood by only a very small number of people around the world. He’s taught more accessible math at universities, but his research time is spent thinking and then writing in words and symbols which only a few understand. When I asked him once how his ideas might be applied a hundred years from now, he smiled his patient smile and asked, “Mom, do I ask you how your literature might apply?”
All right, I get that. I understand the value of pure ideas, ideas for their own sake. I understand the need to think and to add to the universe of thought even if one doesn’t know the value the thoughts may have and even if they are shared with only a few. It is a way of ordering, discovering and revealing the harmony of the universe.
Now I want to jump—I wonder how I will do that—to take this narrative to the next idea—well, it’s my blog, no editor—so I can just jump any way I want. Sixty years ago, two documents came into being. One preceded the other by a few months. I have worked with and been inspired by the words and ideas in each. Both documents have brought about a lifting of the global consciousness. Because of these ideas, actions have been undertaken and at least some change has resulted. The first document is known by many in the worldwide community of writers and the second is known by the world at large. Both were developed in the aftermath of the atrocities of world wars. The first is the Charter of PEN International and the second is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
PEN’s Charter was 22 years in the making, and its articles were said to have been consulted by those working on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. PEN International’s first president John Galsworthy wrote the first three articles in 1926 after an argumentative gathering of writers from the East and West in the first international meeting held in Berlin after World War I. The articles he drafted were approved and served as “a touchstone of P.E.N. action.” Eventually they became part of the P.E.N. Charter, which affirms among other ideas that literature should “remain common currency between nations” and works of art “should be left untouched by national or political passion” and members of PEN should use their influence “in favor of good understanding and respect between nations.” The fourth article of the Charter which dealt with censorship was developed after the Second World War. The Charter in its entirety was approved at the Copenhagen Congress of P.E.N. in 1948 shortly before the Universal Declaration of Human Rights came into being.
Both documents were framed in an idealism that confronted the nihilism of the Second World War. The one document was developed by writers, who are suspected of idealism anyway; the other was drafted by experienced politicians, who labored to articulate ideals to which the world might strive.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights pledges nations to “promote universal respect and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms.” It was ratified by 48 members of the United Nations with no votes against and eight abstentions. The Declaration is the most translated document in the world today.
It is fair to question whether the words in these documents have led to actions that have brought about progressive change in the world. I suspect the conclusion would be that they have not. Yet it is worth pausing to ask where we would be without the articulation of these ideals set down decades ago.
It is just past the 75th anniversary of both documents now. I want to pause to acknowledge and to celebrate the value of words and ideas, to share an optimism that in the long run of history, ennobling ideas and the words that frame them matter and can guide us even in the most fractious times as we set out to shape the future.
I hope you’ll join me later this month on November 21 for the book launch for Akram Aylisli’s People & Trees. You can find my review below in the Books to Check Out section.
In November I’m also looking forward to speaking at a Welcome to Washington International Club event and others. Details of events past and future can be found on the Speaking page of my website.
I’m delighted to share a recent interview “Behind the Book” with Book Notions on the background and writing of my novel The Far Side of the Desert.
Thank you to all who have come together and shared readings and conversations around my novels.
Selected recordings of events and interviews:
Why Baldwin Matters Series, The Alan Cheuse International Writers Center
Malaprop’s Bookstore and Café in Asheville, NC
Kinokuniya Bookstore in New York City with Salil Tripathi
Baum on Books on WSHU Public Radio
Interview with Anna Roins of Authorlink
Interview with Deborah Kalb
For more podcasts, videos and interviews, click here
"Joanne Leedom-Ackerman is a new voice for me, and I wish I had met up with her fiction earlier. Her latest novel The Far Side of the Desert shows what I may have been missing: an engaging storyteller who moves confidently in exotic climes (she’s vice president of PEN International); an informed observer of geo-politics who creates real-world adventure; and a narrator who knows how to generate suspense and avoid clichés. She’s also shrewd enough to leave some domestic and political complications unresolved, as they often are in life….The Far Side of the Desert is, in short, a moving novel about the far side of Humanity."
—Joan Baum, WSHU Public Radio
Burning Distance (Oceanview Publishing, 2023 and recent paperback in 2024) was honored by the 2024 American Book Fest International Book Awards as a Finalist in the Best Mystery/Suspense and Thriller/Adventure categories.
"…A mystery solved by an audacious young lady’s wit and cunning. It has overtones somewhat comparable to a cross-cultural rendition of the Bard’s classic, Romeo and Juliet…this tale that could have been written by a contemporary Jane Austen, with a hint of John le Carré espionage seasoning.”
—BookReporter
Innocent Bahati (Rwanda)
(Sources include PEN International, PEN America, and Human Rights Watch)
When a writer disappears, or is disappeared, the community around him/her, including PEN International, rallies as is the case with Innocent Bahati, a popular poet in Rwanda, whose work has focused on social and human rights issues which he presents on YouTube.
On February 7, 2021, Innocent Bahati was in the Nyanza area researching and preparing a new poem when he received a call from an unidentified person who asked to meet him at a local hotel, according to one of Bahati’s close friends. The poet never returned from that meeting, and his mobile phones were disconnected.
Family and friends contacted the Rwanda Investigation Bureau (RIB) which said it would investigate, but it has not located him. Some at RIB have suggested Bahati crossed into Uganda to coordinate clandestine activities with “anti-Rwanda” elements though no evidence has been offered.
His friends and family remain concerned that Innocent Bahai has been detained or worse. They point to media reports of a speech in March 2021 attributed to the Rwandan secretary of state in charge of culture, Edouard Bamporiki. Bamporiki is reported to have said that “when poetry loses its way, it can mislead the public. It is for this reason that I ask you to forget the difficulties that Rwandan poetry community has known in recent times, but rather to do our part to advise and reprimand those amongst who stray from the right path.”
In one of his last interviews, Bahati pleaded for more humanity: “We might perish if we lose our humanity in the pursuit of material wealth,” he said. In his poem “Muvunyi” (2020), he addressed Muvunyi, his unborn son to whom he wanted to share values of humanism while criticizing excesses of contemporary Rwandan society. His poem “Mfungurira” (meaning “Please feed me”) was his last work published before his disappearance. In it he addressed the hunger facing unemployed youth who cannot find work even as construction workers despite their diplomas.
Bahati was detained in 2017 for criticizing a government’s decision to move the Kigali Institute of Education campus from Kigali to Rukara, Eastern Province. That detention, his current criticism of government policies, and the pattern of mysterious disappearances of government critics in Rwanda have caused human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch and PEN International, to treat the disappearance of Innocent Bahati as suspicious. The more time that passes, the concern increases.
To Take Action for Innocent Bahati:
Please send appeals to the authorities of Rwanda, urging them to:
Immediately make public the outcome or progress of investigations into the disappearance of Innocent Bahati, and if in the custody of the Rwandan state, disclose his whereabouts;
Guarantee Bahati’s safety, wellbeing, and human rights, including the right to freedom of expression;
Respect Rwanda’s constitutional guarantees on freedom of expression and to desist from arbitrary use of state power to suppress freedom of expression and silence critics; and
Comply with Rwanda’s obligations under International Human Rights law and standards on protection of the right to freedom of expression, including artistic freedom.
Send your appeals to:
Paul Kagame
Role: President of the Republic of Rwanda
Twitter: https://twitter.com/PaulKagame
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Presi...
Email: info@gov.rw
Jeannot K. Ruhunga
Role: Secretary General of the Rwanda Investigation Bureau (RIB)
Twitter: https://twitter.com/RIB_RW
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Rwand...
Email: info@rib.gov.rw
Send appeals to the Embassy of Rwanda in your own country. Embassy addresses may be found here: https://www.embassy-worldwide.com/country/rwanda/
An attack on a writer, the shutting down of a publishing house, the torching of a newspaper reduce the space in the world where ideas can flow. Freedom of expression is vital to writers and to readers but is challenged daily around the world. Listed here are organizations whose work on human rights and in particular issues of freedom of expression I’ve been engaged with directly and indirectly over the years. Some of the organizations have broader agendas, but all have contributed to keeping space open for the individual voice.
PEN International (with its 147 centers in over 100 countries)
PEN American Center
English PEN
PEN/Faulkner Foundation
Human Rights Watch
Amnesty International
Amnesty International USA
International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX)
Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)
Article 19
Index on Censorship
Poets and Writers
Authors Guild
International Center for Journalists
Akram Aylisli’s People & Trees: A Trilogy, translated beautifully by Katherine E. Young, brings to English readers for the first time the story of young Sadyk, who observes and narrates his life in the mountains of Azerbaijan. One of Azerbaijan’s most noted writers, Aylisli shows life in early Soviet Azerbaijan in three novellas and a short epilogue.
Beginning with the departure of many of the men to fight in World War II, the story focuses on the lives of the women left behind who must raise the children and seek emotional and physical comfort as best they can. Traditional Azeri society is transformed under the Soviets with private land collectivized, mosques turned into factories or destroyed to construct buildings for the state. Sadyk and the women have to find a way to survive these upheavals, including famine.
Through his lyrical prose and close attention to detail, Aylisli draws the reader into the physical setting of the looming mountains and into the interior and emotional landscape of the community.
Because the author has criticized the government, and in his novel Stone Dreams has suggested understanding and mutual accountability with Armenians, Aylisli has been the target of criminal investigations and restrictions and now in his late eighties lives under virtual house-arrest.
From People & Trees: A Trilogy:
My mother died the day I was born, and for the first two months, Aunt Medina had to carry me from house to house where there were nursing children. During winter evenings my aunt loved to talk about that time; listening to her in the warm darkness of the room, I saw clearly how she walked along, slipping and stumbling on the icy path that stretched beside the irrigation canal toward the spring. If Aunt Medina took me out in the yard before bedtime, I tried not to look at the mountain towering above our path—it seemed to me that the stars were whispering about something with its peak, as if they were plotting evil. I heard the whispers of the stars later, too, in a dream: Aunt Medina was carrying me to the mother of Selim, Azer, or Fikret, the same ones with whom I played pebble jacks during the day, and above us the stars were whispering to one another. I also dreamed that I was suckling from the clouds and from fat, gray cows that looked like heavy clouds.
Spearmint curled along the path, blackberries ripened in dark clusters, and later, when fall set in, the walnut trees lining the irrigation canal covered it with their yellow leaves. Perhaps Aunt Medina had carried me here all of one time, but for some reason, of all the roads along which she wore herself out to get milk for me, I fixed on this one in particular: now and then it seemed to me that the traces of her feet were sometimes still visible on the narrow path.
Georgia Jeffries’ new novel The Younger Girl draws the reader into a decades-old family tragedy and mystery surrounding the murder of Joanna Morse’s aunt, her father’s beloved sister Aldine. When her father’s brother dies, Joanna and her father return to the family home in Illinois for the reading of the will. Father and daughter walk the precarious memory lane which undoes them both and includes investigating the circumstances around Aldine Younger’s murder.
Based on Jeffries’ own family history, this true crime story unravels with the quiet intensity of memoir and the relentless progression of a crime drama. The past threatens the present with eerily unfolding facts and a confluence of present events.
An Emmy-award winning writer and producer of such television dramas as Cagney and Lacey and China Beach, Jeffries teaches film at the University of Southern California and brings her multiple story-telling skills to this novel, which was decades in the researching and writing.
From The Younger Girl:
The trouble with being a beauty queen is that nothing lasts forever.
How sweet it was to stand tall and untouchable in a circle of light, looking across the church of true believers praying for their favorite. The air pulsed with electricity as the country club ballroom settled into a silent hush. Then the master of ceremonies reached for the microphone…
“Joanna Morse!”
A dozen scarlet roses fell into her arms as last year’s winner transferred the tiara to a newly crowned head. Joanna adjusted the bouquet to make sure that the stiffness in her left shoulder did not betray any damage from the accident—all imperfections must be invisible tonight—then descended the long runway toward the end of the ramp where her proud father stood cheering, whistling, and applauding with the abandon of a twelve-year-old at the World Series. What the new queen would always remember, more than the dozen roses with no thorns and the rhinestone halo that adorned her long dark hair, was when the table flipped over. China and silver and crystal tumbled off blush-colored linen into a sea of green carpet. Nobody seemed to mind. The cheering man who knocked everything to kingdom come had simply boiled over in hot joy.
Sharing here images and passage of text from The Far Side of the Desert:
Monte’s key was still in the box. She sprinted up the wide mahogany stairs. In her room velvet curtains closed out light, and only a night-light illumined the space. The same dim glow came from Monte’s adjoining room.
“Monte . . . !” She switched on the chandelier. The queen-size bed, the dark wood dresser and desk, which seemed so elegant when she checked in twenty-four hours ago, now seemed foreboding. “Monte . . . ?”
She hurried through the connecting door and flipped on a standing lamp. Monte’s nightclothes were folded on the green velvet chaise in the corner. Monte’s suitcase sat closed on the luggage stand. In the bathroom, housekeeping had laid out Monte’s toiletries—toothpaste, toothbrush, powder, lipstick, hairbrush—on a white hand towel. Samantha caught her breath. Monte had not been back to her room, not even to brush her teeth, which she did three or four times a day.
(Over the years I’ve accumulated a running list of words I haven’t known from two main sources: WordDaily and WordGenius)
Immiserate / Immiseration
/i(m)ˈmizəˌrāt/
Part of speech: Verb /adjective/noun
1. Cause to become poor or impoverish
2. To make miserable
Example:
“The colonial policy immiserated the populace.”
“The most immiserated parts of Eastern Europe…”
”Rapid modernization had an impact on he level of urban immiseration.”
Deontology
/dee-on-tol-uh-jee/
Part of Speech: Noun
1. Ethics, especially that branch dealing with the study of the nature of duty, moral obligation and right action.
Examples:
“The Bible's Ten Commandments are an early example of deontology.”
”The golden rule is one of the most basic principles of deontology — treat others how you wish to be treated.”
”After studying deontology in her Intro to Philosophy class, she decided to create a rulebook for her roommates to follow.”
I’ve spoken at bookstores, university classes, book luncheons and in-person and zoom book clubs and look forward to more ahead. I enjoy giving readings and addressing audiences in many venues and moderating discussions on a wide range of topics and most of all meeting readers.
Click here for a list of future and past public events.
Or fill out the speaking request form to schedule an event.
I like engaging with readers so if you are in a Reading Group or Book Club and read one of my books, I’m glad to be in touch by email, zoom, or when possible in person. I can also suggest discussion topics.
Fill out the reading group form here to schedule a meeting.
