Showing 1491 - 1500 of 3444 annotations

Moma Lola: A Voodou Priestess in Brooklyn

Brown, Karen McCarthy

Last Updated: Nov-28-2006
Annotated by:
Clark, Stephanie Brown

Primary Category: Literature / Nonfiction

Genre: Biography

Summary:

Brown, anthropologist and Professor of Anthropology of Religion at Drew University, describes the life, religion and healing practices of Marie Therese Alourdes Macena Margaux Kowalski, also known as Alourdes or Moma Lola, a priestess of Voodou, who emigrated to the U.S. from Port-au-Prince in Haiti at the age of 24. What began as an ethnographic research project on immigrant Haitians, turned into a deep personal friendship between Moma Lola and Brown, and a privileged look at the practices and patients of a priestess, and at the socio-cultural lifeworlds of the Haitian community in Brooklyn and in Haiti between 1978 and 1986.

The book presents an intimate description of an alternative healing tradition through a number of perspectives. Brown alternates between a personal, an analytical, and a descriptive narrative of Moma Lola’s own history and her encounters with patients. In some chapters, Brown fictionally reconstructs the patient’s stories, so that the book is part traditional ethnography, and part fiction.

View full annotation

Sunday at the State Hospital

Ignatow, David

Last Updated: Nov-20-2006
Annotated by:
Coulehan, Jack

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

The narrator is visiting a patient in a mental hospital and sits chewing his sandwich. He has also brought a sandwich for the patient (his brother? father? friend?), but the patient just holds his sandwich motionless in front of his mouth. The narrator tries to accept this as ordinary; he keeps chewing. But his "past is sitting in front of" him, trying unsuccessfully "to bring the present to its mouth."

View full annotation

Catharsis: On the Art of Medicine

Szczeklik, Andrzej

Last Updated: Nov-16-2006
Annotated by:
Shafer, Audrey

Primary Category: Literature / Nonfiction

Genre: Collection (Essays)

Summary:

This erudite collection of twelve essays by a physician-scientist weaves allegory, myth, clinical experience, science, and western history and religion (particularly Catholicism) with ruminations on the meaning of medicine and health. The author is the chair of the Department of Medicine at Jagiellonian University School of Medicine in Cracow, Poland – a university founded in 1364 and which counts Copernicus and Pope John Paul II as alumni. Hence it is with this sense of history that the author addresses such topics as cardiology, pain and its relief, genomics, critical care, infectious disease, health care financing. For instance, in Chapter VII “A Purifying Power” Szczeklik traces the word “katharsis” (the title of the book in the original Polish) to the Greek chorus, Pythagoras and Aristotle, then explores the interplay between music and medicine.

Some of the memorable clinical tales are of the reanimation of a frozen man and the resuscitation of a man who drags himself to the newly opened critical care unit and then very cooperatively codes. The narratives about research, such as the self-experimentation with prostacyclin just after its discovery in the 1970s, are also riveting.

The scope includes the realms of science and religion. For instance, Szczeklik mentions both the Papal Academy of Sciences session on evolution (Pope John Paul II: “The scientific theory of evolution is not at odds with any truth of the Christian faith.” p. 128) as well as religious overtones to metaphoric declarations about the power of the genome (“the language of God” p. 125).

View full annotation

Quartet in Autumn

Pym, Barbara

Last Updated: Nov-16-2006
Annotated by:
Mathiasen, Helle

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Novel

Summary:

Pym’s novels depict ordinary life among middle class Englishmen and women with compassion, humor, and irony. The quartet denoted in this title consists of two men and two women in their sixties, the autumn of their lives. These characters hold menial jobs at the same office in London during the nineteen-seventies; two live in rented rooms, and two own their own small houses. Pym’s opening chapter catches them going to the library, because it is free. She clues us in to their personalities by describing their hair: Edwin’s hair is “thin, graying and bald on top”; Norman’s hair is “difficult”, as he is; Letty wears her faded brown hair too long and soft and wispy. Marcia’s hair is “short, stiff, lifeless” and home dyed. (1-2)

Only Letty visits the library because she likes to read; the others take advantage of the shelter it offers. Edwin frequents the local churches when there are masses or holiday celebrations with sherry and perhaps free food. Pym depicts their office routines, conversations, and uneventful lives. When Letty and Marcia retire, the (acting) deputy assistant director wonders what they have done during their working life: ”The activities of their department seemed to be shrouded in mystery – something to do with records or filing, it was thought, nobody knew for certain, but it was evidently ‘women’s work’, the kind of thing that could easily be replaced by a computer.” (101)

Letty moves in with another woman, and Marcia, alone in her house, wears her old clothes and forgets to eat. She resists the well-meaning social worker knocking on her door. Letty begins thinking of her failures: she did not marry, and she has no children or grandchildren. After some time, Edwin arranges a reunion at a restaurant; Letty tries to be upbeat: ”She must never give the slightest hint of loneliness or boredom, the sense of time hanging heavy.” (134) Marcia complains about the social worker and brags about her “major operation”, a mastectomy. She takes the bus to her surgeon’s, Mr. Strong’s, house to spy on him, and her encounters with him are her happiest moments. After Marcia’s decline into dementia and lonely death, the three office mates meet at her house, which Marcia has willed to Norman. Here they divide up the contents of her cupboards: the tins of sardines, butter beans, and macaroni cheese. They find an unopened bottle of sherry and toast each other as they remember their deceased friend.

View full annotation

homage to my hips

Clifton, Lucille

Last Updated: Nov-15-2006
Annotated by:
Aull, Felice

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

these hips are big hips says the woman narrator, as she begins a 15 line celebration of her body and its power. With rhythmic progression, the poem evokes the forward movement of swaying hips--hips that "have never been enslaved", that are "mighty" and "magic" and can "put a spell on a man . . . . "

View full annotation

Something the Lord Made

Sargent, Joseph; Def, Mos; Rickman, Alan

Last Updated: Nov-04-2006
Annotated by:
McEntyre, Marilyn

Primary Category: Performing Arts / Film, TV, Video

Genre: Video

Summary:

This film tells the remarkable story of Vivien Thomas (played by Mos Def), an African-American fine carpenter, who found his way into medicine through the back door and changed medical history. Hired when jobs were in short supply to work as a custodian and sometime lab assistant to Dr. Alfred Blalock (Alan Rickman), a research cardiologist, Thomas quickly becomes an irreplaceable research assistant. His keen observations, his skill with the most delicate machinery and, eventually, in performing experimental surgery on animals, make clear that he has both a genius and a calling.

Though the relationship has its tensions (Blalock, as a Southern white man and a doctor, has some blind spots in the matter of mutual human respect, though he highly values Thomas’s skills) it lasts for decades. The two move their families to Baltimore, where Blalock becomes Head of Surgery at Johns Hopkins and, much to his colleagues surprise and to some of their dismay, brings Thomas in to perform groundbreaking open heart surgery on a blue baby. It is not until after Blalock’s death that Thomas is granted an honorary doctorate from Johns Hopkins, where he continues to work in research until his own retirement.

View full annotation

Oleanna

Mamet, David

Last Updated: Oct-29-2006
Annotated by:
Duffin, Jacalyn

Primary Category: Literature / Plays

Genre: Play

Summary:

Act One: The professor, John, receives his student, Carol, who is seeking help with an essay. She readily admits that she does not understand the premise of the course. During the interview, he is animated and cavalier about her difficulty. He is also distracted by preoccupations from home and allows their encounter to be interrupted by phone calls about the sale of his house. Insisting that academic work is not as difficult as some would pretend, he suggests that she simply come to see him from time to time.

Act Two: Carol and John meet again in his office. She has reported to his tenure committee, accusing him of sexism, elitism, grandiosity, and offering good grades in exchange for coming to see him. He is upset and angry because he thinks she has misinterpreted his offer. He had considered himself a good and original teacher. More than insulting, the accusations now mean that he is in financial trouble because he had bought a house on the strength of his bid for tenure. He asks how he can make amends. She interprets the question as attempt to force a retraction. She moves to leave, he moves to restrain her, and she screams.

Act Three: Carol comes to John’s office at his request and against advice. There has been an investigation and he is to be disciplined. He refers to her complaints as “allegations,” but she insists that they are “proven facts.” She has asked that his book be banned, and is considering criminal charges for battery and attempted rape. His career and perhaps also his marriage are ruined. Outraged he starts to beat her—but suddenly stops as if he finally understands her position.

View full annotation

The Cenci: A Tragedy in Five Acts

Shelley, Percy Bysshe

Last Updated: Oct-29-2006
Annotated by:
Duffin, Jacalyn

Primary Category: Literature / Plays

Genre: Play

Summary:

The young Beatrice Cenci (1577-1599) is kept with her stepmother, Lucretia, in the appalling isolation and darkness of a forbidding castle outside the Papal States by her cruel father, Francesco, whose enormous debts and misdeeds make him unable, as well as unwilling, to support his offspring. He wants to prevent Beatrice from marrying to avoid paying a dowry. She has suitors, among them a “smooth” prelate, but is unhappily resigned to her lot until her father rapes her.

With the support of her brother, Giacomo, she commands two servants--Olimpio and Marzio--to kill her father, but they waver in their resolve. She taunts them and they return to strangle the man, tossing his body below a balcony as if he had fallen. She rewards them with a bag of coins.

Suspicions about the death are raised almost within the moment of its discovery because of the wounds on the body, bloody evidence in the bedchamber, and the apparent lack of grief in the family. Confessions are extracted by torture.

The defense argued sexual abuse of Beatrice as a mitigating circumstance, but failed to convince the court. Beatrice, her stepmother, Lucretia, and Giacomo are to be executed while a younger brother is forced to watch. In the doleful final scene, the family accepts their fate with tenderness and courage.

View full annotation

A Tale for Midnight

Prokosch, Frederic

Last Updated: Oct-29-2006
Annotated by:
Duffin, Jacalyn

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Novel

Summary:

The young and beautiful Beatrice Cenci (1577-1599) is kept with her stepmother, Lucretia, in appalling isolation and darkness in a forbidding castle by her cruel father, Francesco, whose enormous debts and misdeeds make him unable as well as unwilling to support his offspring. He wants to keep Beatrice from marrying to avoid paying a dowry.

He suffers from a horrifying skin disease, possibly syphilis, that covers his lower body in itchy painful sores. He requires Beatrice to rub him nightly with a rough towel, and he is careless to the point of exhibitionism about his sexual and eliminatory functions.

Beatrice decides that he must be killed if her lot is to improve. She begins an affair with Olimpio the married seneschal of the castle—giving herself to obtain his allegiance; soon she is pregnant. She appeals to her brother in Rome for help. He sends poison, but Beatrice cannot use it, because Cenci has her sample all his food and drink.

Angry and impatient with her situation and fearing her father’s wrath when he discovers the affair with an underling, she insists that Olimpio kill Francesco immediately. With the help of the peasant, Marzio, Olimpio smashes the sleeping man’s skull with a hammer and together they stuff his body through a hole in the balcony to make the crime look like an accident.

Suspicions about the death are raised almost within the moment of its discovery because of the wounds on the body, blood in the bedchamber, and the apparent lack of grief in the family. Time passes. Beatrice and Lucretia go back to the family mansion in Rome. Olimpio leaves his own wife to be with Beatrice, and he blackmails the Cenci family into treating him as an equal. Her brother, Giacomo, barely tolerates him.

Beatrice gives birth and the child is handed to the nuns for care. Eventually charges are laid and confessions are extracted by torture on the wheel. Marzio dies in prison of his wounds. Olimpio roams freely but is himself murdered for a ransom.

The lawyer for the defense argued that the father’s sexual abuse of Beatrice was a mitigating circumstance, but he failed to convince the court. Beatrice is beheaded along with her stepmother, while her brother is tortured, drawn and quartered. Because the killig of a parent is the most odious of crimes, the executions are staged as a public spectacle in front of Hadrian’s tomb. Beatrice’s corpse is escorted by a vast crowd to its final resting place near the altar of San Pietro Montorio by Rome’s Gianicolo garden.

View full annotation

The Road

McCarthy, Cormac

Last Updated: Oct-25-2006
Annotated by:
Miksanek, Tony

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Novel

Summary:

The world as everyone knew it ended years earlier when "the clocks stopped at 1:17" [p 45] and power was lost. Not many people are still alive. The landscape is charred and hostile with "cauterized terrain" [p 12], "ashen scabland" [p 13], and "the mummied dead everywhere" [p 20]. A father and his young son travel south towards the coast. The boy's mother has committed suicide. Papa and the child wear masks and tote knapsacks. The father pushes a shopping cart filled with potentially useful items that he has collected during the journey. The man keeps his pistol close. It only contains two bullets - one reserved for him and one for the boy.

The father and son follow a road towards the ocean, but they scurry and hide like two animals. Papa's biggest worries are marauders, food, and shoes. The world is cold. Rape and cannibalism are common occurrences. Although their goal is to remain alive and reach the coast, father and son wonder if the destination is any more hospitable than the rest of the dying world. Often hungry and freezing, both of them become sick. The boy contracts a febrile illness. The man frequently coughs blood and is wounded in the leg by an arrow.

Father and child ultimately reach the ocean, but it too is cold and dead. Not long after arriving at the coast, Papa dies. A stranger finds the grieving boy and invites the child to join his family - wife, son, and daughter. He assures the boy that he is a good man. He tells the child that his family does not eat other people. He advises the boy to hold onto his father's pistol.

View full annotation