Ways of Seeing: Art Perception

Ways of Seeing: Art Perception

By Shaynin Jade Richardson

John Berger's "Ways of Seeing"
book cover. 

This book was very fascinating to read, but it actually proved quite difficult for me to interpret it's main focus. Ways of seeing by primarily John Berger consists of four essays that attempt to interpret hidden ideologies in popular visual images like these. Through a collection of art work, John Berger takes his readers through a discussion and interpretation of the images. 

English art critic, novelist,
painter and poet, Mr. John Berger.

I began reading this book while enrolled in an introductory art history course a couple of semesters ago and really enjoyed the images along with the discussions of the different ways of viewing and interpreting certain works of art. The discussion of the depiction of women in advertisements and oil paintings is the most interesting to me, because it gives a detailed description and interpretation of the depiction of women in pieces all throughout the history of our imagery world. I really enjoyed looking at works from different times in history that portrayed women in similar ways.

While researching a bit more about the book, I recently learned that there was a television series covering the same material and that the books are actually the shows script and I was actually able to find some of those episodes on YouTube! If you’re into interpreting different aspects of art, this book will guide you through a great discussion of interpretations and ways of seeing art, along with providing the images to view while reading.

Stern Belief in ZERO*

Stern Belief in ZERO*
By Shaynin Jade Richardson

Caryl M. Stern's book cover

I Believe in Zero by Caryl M.Stern, is an enthralling story about the experiences that the president and CEO of the U.S. Fund of UNICEF, Caryl M. Stern,  has while traveling with the UNICEF mission. She tells about the places she goes all around the world and captivates the stories of the people she meets along the way

            I enjoyed most aspects of the book and appreciate the emotional appeal that Stern presents to her reader. I believe that Stern’s prestigious ranking gave the book more credentials and even though the book was not a direct product of UNICEF, they will benefit from it tremendously. She mentions that all proceeds of the book go to UNICEF but UNICEF had nothing to do with its publication. I felt that occasionally Stern would drift away from her main focus of defining the UNICEF mission, but since the book is not a direct product of UNICEF, Stern has not reason for justifying her interpersonal experience that may have only applied to her. When she expresses those incidents, I believe it introduced a more intimate discussion of UNICEF’s operation. 

            I liked Stern’s approach and execution of this book. It simply and emotionally attaches the reader to the UNICEF mission giving it some kind of importance. Stern’s involvement with the mission gives me a deeper appreciation for UNICEF as a whole.

 Check out this inspirational video about UNICEF's ZERO mission:

The World Outside My World

Source: unicef.ie

By: Vivian Salamanca  

I Believe in Zero

Caryl. M. Stern

254 pages

McMillan Publishers

“If she could give birth with so little and fight so hard to ensure that her child is free from AIDS, then there had to be more I could do to help. I wanted to travel to other new places that would challenge me and shift my perspective.” 

    With a fresh outlook, Caryl M. Stern described her determination after encountering Rosa, a new mother who was infected with the AIDS virus, but was forced to go through lengths to prevent her newborn to be cursed with the same fate. This excerpt from the novel appropriately provides light into the process of coming to terms with the reality of the cruel world we live in and the hope one finds when joining the good fight.

Source: unicefusa.org

Stern was raised, as some would describe, as privileged growing up in Westchester, NY. Not knowing true hardships, her world came to a screeching halt after she quickly took over a position she had little background in within UNICEF. This position quickly opened her eyes to the brutal realities of the world outside, but also the possibilities where one can relate. Throughout her novel, she carefully uses a healthy balance of empathy and inspiration to describe real stories she embarked on, helping the reader relate to this injustice within real families. This particular injustice is just that—an injustice due to a lack of attention. The issue of disease and poverty in these malnourished countries can be prevented with proper attention, if attention is brought to it, and Stern does just that. 

Source: unicef.ie

These powerful messages convicted with a fight for justice and freedom are laced within stories of hope and passion. Stern beautifully provides the light in this deep, troubled tunnel. Among the convicting stories, Stern also challenges the public to step out of the comfort zone, much like she did many years ago, and react to this global tragedy. This public challenge can be countered with a simple donation or intentional action. Take your pick and respond to the world challenges we live in.

One man's place...

by Eva Vaitanaki

One man’s place

Annie Ernaux

96 pages

Seven Stories Press

Paperback: $11.79 (Amazon)

Source : http://chantalserriere.blog.lemonde.fr

                One interesting fact about this book is the way Annie Ernaux writes about her life with a neutral and distant tone, even when she broaches the saddest moments in her life such as her father’s death.

Annie Ernaux is a French writer and Professor of Literature. Most of her writings are autobiographical and usually deal with sociology. Born in 1940, Annie Ernaux belongs to the middle-class. Her parents who were laborers became storekeepers by owning a coffee-grocery store. Mrs. Ernaux had been rewarded for many of her writings, which even resulted in the creation of the Aninie-Ernaux Prize.

One of her book that was really interesting to me is One man’s place (1983), for which she received the Renaudot Prize. In this book, the author describes her life from her birth to the death of her father, which is both the beginning and the end of One man’s place. All along the book, Annie Ernaux tells the reader in which environment she used to grow up, an environment she hated, an environment that was not always stable, where her parents argued a lot too much concerned by insecurity-related issues. This environment differs a lot from her high school, where she spends time with people from the upper middle class.

Source : Amazon.com

The book is written differently compared to autobiographical books we can read nowadays. The tone is always cold and distant which gives the readers a diverse approach to her story. In other words, the cold and distant tone used in her book does not make the reader feel some pity towards her, even in the worst moments.

With this autobiography, Mrs. Ernaux comes back to several events that marked her life. She seems to do an analysis of her life, what made her do what she does now, and especially the peculiar relationship she had with her father who passed away. I would recommend this book simply because the story is interesting as well as the way it is written in both formal and familiar language.

You can either buy this book on Amazon or on Google Books (E-version).

Saying is one thing, acting is another.

by Eva Vaitanaki

I Believe in Zero.
Carly M. Stern
254 pages
St. Martin’s Press
Hardcover: $19.19 (Amazon)

Source: Cindy Ord/Getty Images North America.

                One episode that was really striking to me is when Carly M. Stern goes to Darfur. This chapter let the reader know why she is so concerned by humanitarian action, how much she cares about it, how people survive after horrible things happened to them.

Carly M. Stern is the current President and CEO of the U.S. Fund for UNICEF. For most of her life, Carly M. Stern has served as the Chief Operating Officer and Senior Associate National Director of the Anti-Defamation League; the founding Director of ADL’s A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE Institute; and the Dean of Students at Polytechnic University. Really involved in humanitarian projects, Ms. Stern also wrote books to share her experience with the world, revealing some aspects of some countries that some people are not always aware of.

Photos courtesy of Bryan Kasm/HSN

Her last book I Believe in ZERO deals with her new position as a CEO of the U.S. Fund for UNICEF, the bad conditions in which people live and are exposed to everyday in some disadvantaged countries. The book is written in such a way that you can easily identify to the author, as if we were here when the scenes she describes, happened. Very easy to read and to understand, Ms. Stern broaches many aspects of people’s lives, from the good to the bad sometimes comparing our lives to theirs.

Through her writing, Carly M. Stern makes us, as readers and individuals, aware of the situation in those countries as well as realize how lucky we are. I would strongly recommend that book.

If you want to help those people in need, please feel free to go on their website and donate. Or if you want to get involved in UNICEF Missions, you can follow them on Twitter, Facebook.

How does a slave Be loved?

The novel "Beloved" written by
Toni Morrison and published by
Vintage in 2004

“Sethe," he says, "me and you, we got more yesterday than anybody. 

We need some kind of tomorrow.” 

This quote by one of the characters in Beloved holds a haunting reality any reader cannot ignore. In this scene, the language of the character is important because it gives the reader a picture of his environment. The character, Paul D, was a slave, and slaves were given no form of education.  Also, while the word choices made by the author are simplistic, they hold a deep meaning behind them that is far from simplistic.  This simple line shows the pasts of these characters are constantly haunting them.  These former slaves have enslaved themselves through an obsession with their pasts, almost destroying their identities completely.  Author Toni Morrison shows how a writer's choice of words and ability to tell stories are keys to bringing them in to the realities of the characters.  

"Her face is polished in places and fissured in others, like the weathered stone of Mount Rushmore: the first black woman Nobelist, who’s lived long enough to speak to the first black president. Born only two years after Martin Luther King Jr., she’s a great-grandmother of assimilation—and she looks the part." -Boris Kachka, New York Times  

Author Toni Morrison has her photograph taken during
an interview for the New York Times on April 29, 2012.

Morrison was born on February 18, 1931 in Lorain, Ohio.  She attended Howard University in Washington, D.C. and received her bachelor's degree in English. She went on to receive her master's degree in English at Cornell University and afterwards started teaching English at a university. She was married to Harold Morrison, but the couple got a divorce in 1964, sending Morrison on with her two sons to New York City, where she was an editor for Random House Publishing. She has published ten novels which all capture life for a black living in America, but hold universal truth and application for all readers. On October 7, 1993 Morrison became the eighth woman and the first black woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. In 1996, the National Endowment for the Humanities granted Morrison the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. government's highest honor for the humanities. She also received the National Book Foundation's Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. Her novel, Beloved, was written in 1987 and captured a reality of life for many black Americans.

Slavery. Racism. 

Looking at those two words as I write causes me to shudder. Those two words are the primary reasons for the novel's existence, as Morrison tells a story about an 18th century slave woman who decides to kill her own child rather than allow the girl to live in the reality of slavery that she would be constricted to. I think the terms "slavery" and "racism" are viewed obliviously by many people, for while they may know the definitions of these words, they have no idea what a devastating reality of life these words created.  Morrison uses personal narrative, story telling, symbolism, motif, and facts to bring the meaning of those words to life through the characters of her novel.

The main character Sethe gives a look of painful horror at the slaveowner during a scene in the movie 'Beloved' directed by Johathan Demme.

I believe Morrison creatively captured a difficult subject to understand for many people.  The black people who were thrown into slavery experienced torture and ridicule beyond comprehension.  However, when you look through the eyes of a little girl, one who watched men torture her mother and take milk from her mother's breasts, you can't help but feel the pain rise up inside you, and the anger that wants to stop this injustice.  Morrison tells stories and takes the reader through thoughts of the characters, where you get to glance into the way the characters thought.  The novel has this vulnerability about it and raw truth that makes you feel so personally connected to it.  I think Morrison wanted the reader to walk through the life of the main character, Sethe, the slave woman who killed her own daughter to keep her daughter from being confined to slavery for her lifetime. You immediately find yourself asking the question, "was she justified in killing her own daughter?" By the end of the novel, however, you have grown to love that woman, a woman so completely broken, physically and emotionally, and you no longer want to answer that question.  You want her to experience healing and forgiveness, because the treatment she experienced was evil and no one would desire to bring a child to live in evil.  Through other characters who are aged older than Sethe, or male enslaved men, we are taken back into memories of slavery as a reality for those individuals.  The memories are different but equally haunting. I have no critique for Morrison's novel, as I, a reader, journeyed with the characters that all gave me a vision of what the words "slavery" and "racism" mean, words I will fight against for the entirety of my life. 

Read Beloved.  

To be haunted by reality is to be haunted by truth, not so that we stay in that state but so that we create passion to see a world where all people are loved.   Morrison's novel will find you immersed in the literary images, as well as the symbolism behind color and trees and names.  She tells stories you will be pained to hear, but forever inspired by. She will redefine those two terrible words, "slavery" and "racism" so that you know the souls that lived through them.

Tina: Feminist, Actress, Comedian, and Also an Average Person

Source: Little, Brown and Company

by Vivian Salamanca  

Bossypants

Tina Fey

275 pages

o

Little, Brown and Company

       “So, my unsolicited advice to women in the workplace is this. When faced with sexism, or ageism, or lookism, or even really aggressive Buddhism, ask yourself the following question: “Is this person in between me and what I want to do?” If the answer is no, ignore it and move on. Your energy is better used doing your work and outpacing people that way. Then, when you’re in charge, don’t hire the people who were jerky to you.” 

                                     –Tina Fey

o

 A conversation with anyone has never felt as relaxed as having a “conversation” while reading her autobiography  with Tina Fey, herself. This very useful and appropriate piece of advice holds a hint of all things Tina: respect, humor, intellectual advice, and professionalism that goes a long way. But after the fact that there is weight behind her words, it’s how she says it that the public finds charm and wit.

Personally, I have always been a fan of Fey. She has taken the weight behind her words, and turned her words into comedy, novels, satire, and multiple award-winning television shows. Exhibiting few limits, Fey embarks on finding humor in reality. She is capable of relating to her public on a very personable level, with everyday frustrations and problems. Throughout her success, Fey has not hindered in her work and continues to share laughable moments of her personal life and pop culture itself in her genius work, Bossypants. 

Although an autobiography might not be your common "go-to" read, this insightful work grasps the reality that is women rising in power and fame, tied with the humor Fey never lacks. With 5/5 stars, I highly recommend this lighthearted read to anyone looking for facts, encouragement, or simply a good laugh.