[Balan, Haiti; November 12. Image via Getty]

A Haitian child nurse checks the weight of a child during a food distribution event from the United Nations World Food Program, Programme Alimentaire Mondial (PAM) on November 12, 2009 in Balan a suburb of Ganthier. AFP PHOTO Thony BELIZAIRE (Photo credit should read THONY BELIZAIRE/AFP/Getty Images)

[Port-au-Prince, November 1. Image via Getty]

Haitian women taking part in a Voodoo ritual during 'Day of the Dead' celebrations at the national cemetery in Port-au-Prince on November 1, 2009. AFP PHOTO Thony BELIZAIRE. (Photo credit should read THONY BELIZAIRE/AFP/Getty Images)

But first they read. Danticat picked an excerpt from her story "Ghosts," in which an aspiring radio journalist dreams of starting a program on his violence-wracked Haiti neighborhood. She read,

He would open with a discussion of how many people in Bel Air had lost limbs. Then he would go from limbs to souls, to the number of people who had lost family-siblings, parents, children-and friends. These were the real ghosts, he would say, the phantom limbs, phantom minds, phantom loves that haunt us, because they were used, then abandoned, because they were desolate, because they were violent, because they were merciless, because they were out of choices, because they did not want to be driven away, because they were poor.

Diaz (author of Drown and The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao) read from a personal essay about his dad, and it's a testament to his command of both humor and pain that his father's favorite insult — "when you grow up, I am going to find you in an alley somewhere, and I am going to shoot you" — got a huge laugh. After they finished reading, and after a discussion of their long-standing friendship (which Danticat said was about "more life things than writing things"), a listener asked Diaz about the science fiction references in Oscar Wao. Diaz said he'd been pilloried in the mainstream nerd press (only sort of an oxymoron) in a way that smacked of racism. He then made a point about scifi that doesn't get made often enough:

If it wasn't for people of color's experiences and women's experiences, the genre wouldn't exist.

Scifi frequently gets portrayed as a refuge for socially awkward white boys, but everything from Isaac Asimov to Battlestar Galactica is permeated with issues of otherness, or, as Diaz puts it, "questions of alien contact." Stories of new worlds and interspecies warfare can be a way of representing the experiences of immigrants — or of people whose bodies, for reasons of race or gender or size or shape or ability — don't conform to the established norm. People who write about scifi are starting to accept this — female science fiction and fantasy writers are getting more attention, and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay brought the related issue of sexual orientation in superhero comics to the fore. But the nerd backlash against Oscar Wao shows how eager some marginalized groups are to marginalize others, especially in the literary world, and how jealously (and dumbly) geeks sometimes guard their geek fiefdoms against those who could be allies.

Despite his experience with the nerd police, Diaz also advanced the somewhat debatable point that reading teaches compassion. He said reading a book was "one of the clearest ways to come into communion with another subjectivity," and that, moreover, the process of writing forced him to be a better person. "When I come up short as a writer," he added, "there's always a shortcoming in my character." Danticat responded that becoming a mother (that's her and her daughter above) had changed her as a writer — "when your life is layered in a certain way," she said, "you have more in your soul to go to." She got in a little dig at the Hemingway school of "life experience," in which the way to broaden yourself as a writer is to "go shoot animals," and her words were a powerful response to the idea that women can't both have families and make great art. But does making great art really require you to be a good person? And does it make good people of those who consume it?

Later in the conversation, Diaz said, "this life makes it so difficult to engage in civic- and justice-minded projects." By "this life," I assumed he meant American life, with its relative comfort and its myriad distractions, but it's also true that a life spent writing fiction — or reading it — invites escape into fictional worlds. I'm not a fan of the notion, popular when I was in grad school, that the best writers are assholes and the best fiction speaks to what is most evil in the reader's soul — both because I think it's a limiting view of literature and because, as a writer, I like having friends. And I believe that reading and writing do teach a willingness to explore other kinds of lives. But they also teach absorption in the mind and not in the world, and while this isn't always a bad thing, it doesn't necessarily lead to social change. Of the racist new Dominican Constitution and of injustice the world over, Diaz said, "everybody in every place in every way they can has to find a way to resist." And while reading fiction is many things, it's not (at least in America) active resistance.

New Yorker Festival [Official Site]
Ghosts [New Yorker]

• Obama says, "And dating I think will be an issue because I have men with guns surrounding them at all times, which I'm perfectly happy with, but they may feel differently about it." [Huffington Post]

• Rumor has it that Carrie Prejean is trying to back out of subbing on Fox & Friends next week. Maybe she's holding out for The View? [Fishbowl LA]
• Greta Van Susteren's husband, John Coale, who joined the Palin camp as a major PUMA, tried to get Sarah Palin to help retire Hillary Clinton's remaining campaign debts. She declined, because she's a fucking Republican, not a Symbol of Feminism. [Politico]
• The UN is naming Bill Clinton its special envoy to Haiti. [CBS News]
• Even the Pope thinks the Catholic bishops with their panties in a wad over Obama's Notre Dame speech need to shut up and actually listen to what the President has to say. [MSNBC]
• CIA Director Leon Panetta warned Nancy Pelosiabout alleging that the CIA lied to her. [Politico]
• The town of Hardin, Montana has offered to become the new home of 100 Gitmo detainees in order to bring jobs to the area... unlike the tax cuts constantly promoted by the GOP. [ThinkProgress]
• Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm is going to be in D.C. for an event on fuel economy standards and, some suspect, an interview for that open slot on the Supreme Court. [Washington Post]
• Ta-Nehisi Coates watches the following video of Republicans attacking Nancy Pelosi's looks because they disagree with her politics, and says, "Amazing. Don't they know who the fuck votes? Do they really think Sarah Palin can fix this?" [Ta-Nehisi Coates]

[Port-au-Prince, Haiti; April 16. Image via AP]

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visits a factory in Port-au-Prince, Thursday, April 16, 2009. Clinton is on a one-day visit to Haiti. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)

• A member of Israel's "modesty patrol," an all-male vigilante group, has been sentenced to four years in prison for the brutal gang assault of an Israeli divorcee. • Bone tests reveal that Chinese athletes have been faking their ages to compete in junior events. • Ugh: Last week the Arizona House voted to impose new restrictions on women seeking to have abortions, including an enforced 24 hour waiting period and a mandatory lecture. The bill also allows pharmacists to refuse EC, even to rape victims. • Not even sex is recession-proof: sex toy sales have fallen in France, according to sector specialists. • Thanks to Twilight author Stephanie Meyer, French teens are rediscovering Emily Brontë's classic dark novel Wuthering Heights. • Monday got you down? Here are some adorable pictures of a baby panda. • With 670 women dead per 100,000 live births, Haiti has one of the highest rates of maternal mortality in the Western hemisphere. • A study from Cornell University found that women with advanced math abilities are more likely to chose a field not related to mathematics than men with similar skills. • According to Sociological Images Singapore Airlines are known for their advertising featuring "Singapore Girls" - pretty, smiling girls who "have become a symbol of Singapore itself." • Most Australian voters in Beaudesert, Queensland say that they don't really give a crap about parliamentary candidate Pauline Hanson's nude photo scandal. • At 80, Jaswantiben Jamnadas Popat is the only surviving member of a group of housewives who founded Lijjat Papad, a multimillion dollar company which sells the popular Indian wafers called poppadoms. • Today, two female cops became the first women to direct traffic in Rome's Piazza Venezia. • New research from Denmark shows that early pacifier use may lead to shorter periods of breastfeeding. • Drew Peterson's stepbrother Tom Morphey went on Good Morning America today and confessed to suspicions about Peterson's involvement with his wife Stacy's disappearance. "He was planning on killing somebody," Morphey said. • 

Filmmaker Xanthe Hinchey visits the slums of Haiti and interviews the head of the Ministry of Women, Myriam Merlet, along with several rape victims. Merlet attributes the extremely high rate of sexual assault (up to 50% of the women living in the slums have been attacked) to political turmoil. Street gangs play a major role in sexual violence in Haiti, but police officers have also been known to prey upon the women and girls living in the slums. To make matters even worse, the justice system has a terrible record with rapes – only 12 rapes make it to court each year. Haiti only made rape a crime in 2005. [Guardian]

According to the BBC, 10 UN "peacekeepers" gang-raped Elizabeth in a field. "They grabbed me and threw me to the ground and they forced themselves on me... I tried to escape but there were 10 of them and I could do nothing…I was terrified. Then they just left me there bleeding." When village elders tried to report the abuse, they were ignored.

Save the Children suggests that a global watchdog organization be formed to monitor these kinds of abuses, supplemented by local complaints mechanisms and public awareness campaigns. In the meantime, the UN says it has a zero tolerance policy when allegations of sexual abuse are at hand, and last year 100 Sri Lankan soldiers stationed in Haiti were sent home when it became evident that they were paying for sex.

Charity: Aid Workers Raping, Abusing Children [CNN]
Sexual Abuse Of Children By Aid Workers Too Often Unreported [Save the Children]
Peacekeepers 'Abusing Children' [BBC]

Earlier: If You Can't Afford Rice In Haiti, You Eat Dirt

A product known as LifeWrap can stabilize a woman who is hemorrhaging. It's like a partial wet suit, made of neoprene and Velcro, costs $160 and can be used 50 times. (The company gladly accepts donations.) A study by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health also found a relatively inexpensive way to treat mothers and reduce blood loss. Researchers reduced the number and severity of episiotomies at public hospitals in Latin America and increased the use of the hormone oxytocin - which is given to mothers to make their uterus shrink and bleed less during the third stage of labor. Paul Farmer and Ophelia Dahl of Partners in Health, have been working in Haiti and Rwanda, where health care for women (and especially girls) is the key to breaking the cycle of poverty. Writes Dr. Famer: "Obscene though it is, death during childbirth isn't the end of the story. In the world's poorest areas, many orphaned children wind up destitute and on the streets within a few years of their mothers' deaths, sometimes resorting to desperate or criminal measures for food, shelter, clothes or school fees."

Brigid McConville is the director of White Ribbon Alliance in London, an international organization to promote safe motherhood. She notes that African women have a 1 in 16 chance of dying from a pregnancy, compared with 1 in 1,400 in Europe. ""These are needless and preventable deaths. This is not a strange illness that requires science to find a cure," McConville says. "If you get it right for mothers, you've got the health staff in place in the community, you've got the referral system to the next level, you've got the operating theater, the anesthetist, the electricity and communications. All of this will benefit a man with a broken leg or a child with a respiratory illness."

The only question here is this: If saving the lives of pregnant women increases the heath of humans on a global level, why doesn't the cause get more attention? And why can't we meet the goal the UN has set?

Battling To Take Death Out Of Birth In Africa [Reuters]
Simple Innovation Saves Women's Lives [Our Bodies Our Blog]
Keeping New Mothers Alive [Washington Post]
Related: LifeWraps [University Of California San Francisco]
Partners In Health
White Ribbon Alliance

[Image via Oh! My God! I Miss You ]

But it's a scary reminder of how prohibitively expensive basic needs have become in the Third World, thanks to famine, oil prices and our fucking ethanol subsidies (which I'll remind you again, only McCain seems to oppose.) Two cups of rice at the market in Haiti cost sixty cents these days, which is awfully high, but Haiti is an island and a net importer of food. Bangladesh is suffering a similar fate, though the government has stepped in to lower the cost of basic food commodities.

And with that I suppose I should tell you that if you just started jonesing for a Mississippi mud pie with a side order of Rocky Road, um, you're a terrible person but you are not alone.

Poor Haitians Resort to Eating Dirt
Kevin Sites In The Hot Zone: Haitian Mud Pies [Yahoo]
Related: Why Is Haiti So Poor?
Bangladesh Steps Up Food Aid For Poor
Next Power Antibiotic Born From Haitian Dirt [Boston]
Pica and Pregnancy
Earlier: Will The 'End Of Cheap Food' Make Us Thin Again?

She's not exactly Princess Di, but Krabacher was invited to Buckingham Palace to receive the Rose Award, presented by the foundation established to further Princess Diana's commitment to the poor. While the MSNBC story doesn't mention it, Krabacher has a troubled past: Sexual abuse, the psychiatric breakdown of her mother, multiple foster homes, a brother's suicide. It's no wonder that there are rumors of a film deal. America loves a story of redemption, and Susie Scott Krabacher has one — with nudity! So we're wondering: Who will play Krabacher in the movie of her life? (We think she looks a little like Dina Lohan.)

Ex-Centerfold Is Unlikely Savior For Haitian Kids [MSNBC]