THE STANDARD READER
The Standard Reader Books in Brief Embracing the Firebird: Yosano Akiko and the Birth of the Female Voice in Modern Japanese Poetry by Ja-nine Beichman (University of Hawaii Press, 340 pp., $55)....
...She reports in such detail because Japanese poetry lives as much by context as by content—and thus differs from Western poetry, which aspires to freedom from the circumstances of composition...
...In her account of how the poems came to be written, Beichman presents the poet's life almost blow by blow...
...While never enamored of the Chicano power movement, Chavez worked to recruit Mexican Americans for Boulder's new affirmative action program, and she recalls her frustration at the university's lax standards for the new students...
...But then, it consists of interviews with people who have spent three decades hearing how historic they are and can't be expected to cast that off just now without intensive therapy...
...Her alienation was sealed when she taught in an affirmative action program at UCLA...
...Some students read at grade school level, and attempts at classroom discussion devolved into name-calling sessions...
...And readers learn that, according to both friends and those not so friendly, Eddie Murphy was a comedy prodigy...
...Beth Henary Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live, edited by Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller (Little Brown, 566 pp., $25.95...
...Along the way we see her shift from left to right—though at times the transformation seems more a process of putting the proper labels on her beliefs...
...For SNL fans and observers of pop culture, it's a candid, gossipy, and fun read...
...A few surprises spill out...
...Laurance Wieder An Unlikely Conservative: The Transformation of an Ex-Liberal by Linda Chavez (Basic, 262 pp., $26...
...The editors assembled their interviews into a chronological history, from how producer Lorne Michaels pitched the idea to NBC, to the philosophical shift that transformed SNL from a stronghold of take-no-prisoners, semi-improvisational comedy to a corporate star factory...
...It was a sensation in Japan: Pressing my breasts / I softly kick aside / the curtain of mystery / How deep the crimson / of the flower here—poems such as this breathe immediacy into classical short forms of Japanese poetry...
...Still, translations or no, poems that shake off the chains of their creation possess the impact of telling snapshots, and transcend time and explanation...
...Through her husband and other students at the University of Colorado, Chavez joined up with the anti-Communist socialists and the United Mexican-American Students...
...This book gives the unsubtle impression that Saturday Night Live is the most influential achievement since humans first walked upright...
...In her introduction, Beichman quotes the mature Akiko on women's wisdom and Buddhist discipline: "When she gets to be my age, even an uneducated woman has attained a degree of enlightenment of which a man meditating cross-legged on a chilly wooden platform can barely catch a glimpse, if that . . . . For women, Zen meditation is unnecessary...
...Yosano Akiko has slipped under most literary radars, an oversight corrected by Janine Beichman's literary biography...
...Chavez describes how civil rights and racial preferences intersected with her life...
...Michael Long...
...Chevy Chase comes off as utterly unaware of the arrogance he radiates...
...As documentation of TV history, this is a treasure...
...She admits that early in her career she was a handy Hispanic to plug into government positions, and affirmative action no doubt landed her at a plum graduate school...
...But Chavez seeks to empower others, especially Hispanics, so they won't experience her sense of shame...
...While her vision of federal contracting and university admissions without affirmative action has not yet been realized, the push for English-only education, for which she is an outspoken advocate, continues to gain momentum nationwide...
...A fusion of Sappho, Emily Dickinson, and Lady Murasaki, Yosano Akiko published her first book, Tangled Hair, in 1901 at age twenty-three...
...Born to working-class parents in Albuquerque, Chavez thought twice about attending college, even modeling briefly before enrolling...
...A number of translations in Embracing the Firebird attain that independent vitality...
...Akiko was a celebrity and a heroine of domestic politics...
Vol. 8 • November 2002 • No. 10
