Imagine you're living in China, trying to work your way out of the family date farming business (which garners approximately $450 annually). You do all the right things. You apply for (and receive)
Communist Party membership. You study literally to the point of collapse, and despite coming from coal-town origins, you score high on your
gao kao ("high test," more-or-less the only thing that matters in getting into a Chinese university). Your already-poor family goes
deep into debt to send you to college, and you even manage to come out with a degree. Classic rise-up-by-your-own-bootstraps tale, right? However, finally, when you go to apply for a job—
your state-sanctioned educational, occupational, and political records are inexplicably, awfully gone. What has happened to that plain manila folder (!) that serves as your only legitimate, official history in Chinese society?
Probably stolen and sold so a party official's child can get everything you worked so hard for. And then,
of course, your family is detained by party officials when your parents demand to know where the hell your life went. Of course.
[more inside]
posted by Keter
on Jul 27, 2009 -
47 comments
She interviewed Mussolini. She wrote plays for Eugene O'Neill's Provincetown Players. She got letters from Trotsky. Freud and Helen Keller were in her address book. She married journalist
John Reed, and Diane Keaton played her in
Reds. And she was nearly forgotten. Now,
Louise Bryant is remembered.
More here and much more here.
posted by digaman
on Nov 9, 2005 -
4 comments
Joe Valentine has Two Mommies --
..."It's no different than having a mother and father," he said. "These are the two women who raised me, and they are wonderful people. It's just not a big deal to me. Why should it be?"
In an enlightened world, it shouldn't. But major league baseball is to enlightenment what Pauly Shore is to career longevity. ...
Meet the
Cincinnati Reds relief pitcher--
"...a baseball player who was raised by two wonderful, loving mothers. How can anyone criticize that?"
posted by amberglow
on May 3, 2005 -
41 comments
Press Box Red For 50 years,
Lester Rodney was a forgotten footnote in perhaps the
most controversial American sports
story of the 20th century:
Jackie Robinson and the
breaking of
baseball's
color barrier. Now, the 93-year-old Rodney is getting his due. In the decade before
Robinson debuted with the
Brooklyn Dodgers, Rodney was the
sports editor of the
Daily Worker, a newspaper (the
FBI files are
here on .pdf) better known as the house
organ of the
American Communist Party. With strident editorials and feature stories about what he dubbed "
The Crime of the Big Leagues," Rodney was an early, often lonely voice in the struggle to end segregation in baseball.
But Rodney's contribution was never acknowledged, because of that "
sickening Red tinge". Many baseball historians were staunchly anti-communist, and didn't want to acknowledge the contributions of the Communist Party. So Rodney's
role (.pdf file) was left out of the official story. With the publication of his
biography, Rodney's place in baseball's epochal story has introduced him to a new generation of admirers. "I wanted that ban to end because it was so unfair; I saw the tragedy of these great black ballplayers, like the
catcher Josh Gibson, who didn't get a chance to play. It's unimaginable today, but look at Barry Bonds: Imagine if he had been born earlier and been unable to play."
(login details for LATimes story in the main link: sparklebottom/sparklebottom)
posted by matteo
on Jul 12, 2004 -
35 comments
