ChatChat - Claudia Cragg

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Author  talks with Claudia Cragg her latest novel set in the aftermath of  .  offers a vivid, darkly humorous, bitingly real portrait of a particular moment in history, when a nation's dreams and ideals gave way to a culture of cynicism, lies, and fear. Beneath its high comic surface, the novel is a more serious consideration of immigration, of what it was like to live through the years, and of what it means to be an American.

The protagonist, Lula, is a 26-year old woman from living surreptitiously in New York City on an expiring tourist visa, hoping to make a better life for herself in America. When she lands a job as caretaker to Zeke, a rebellious high school senior in suburban , it seems that the security, comfort, and happiness of the American dream may finally be within reach. Her new boss, Mister Stanley, an idealistic college professor turned executive, assumes that Lula is a destitute refugee of the . He enlists his childhood friend Don Settebello, a hotshot lawyer who prides himself on defending political underdogs, to straighten out Lula's legal situation. In true American fashion, everyone gets what he wants and feels good about it.

 

But is it possible that Lula’s new American life is not so different from her old Albanian one?

Francine Prose, as described by in . “When Francine Prose finished her education in 1969 she took one look around, decided writing was the only thing she was good at, and never turned back. Thirty years later she has written nearly twenty books (among them novels, children's books, novellas, and short-story collections) and has contributed stories, articles, and reviews to almost every major American magazine and newspaper. She's also taught at prestigious writing programs (such as Sarah Lawrence and Warren Wilson), had two sons, and is currently an editor atDoubleTake. Francine Prose is a keen observer, and her fiction is full of wryly delivered truths and sardonic witticisms that come from paying close attention to the world. "Withering," one critic has written. "Mocking," another has said. But Prose's fiction does not ease into a fashionable cynicism; instead, it tends toward irony with heart. Trapped within their own heads, victims to the nervous din of their own inner voices, her characters are nevertheless endearingly rendered. Prose's journalism, the body of which covers a remarkably wide range of contemporary topics, lacks the ironic edge of her fiction but is never shy. Very little -- not foreign travel, marital sleep patterns, affairs of the heart, motherhood, nor the countless books that she reviews for Newsday-- escapes her sharply honed perceptions.”

of Francine Prose work at the

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Tahmima Anam  (born 1975) is a Londoner and a  writer and novelist. Her first novel, , was published by  in 2007 and was the Best First Book winner of the 2008 . Anam comes from an illustrious literary family in Bangladesh. Her father  is the editor and publisher of , Bangladesh's most prominent English-language newspaper. Her grandfather  was a renowned satirist and politician whose works in Bengali remain popular to this day

Anam was born in ,  but she grew up in , , and , largely due to her father’s career with the . After studying for her undergraduate degree at  she turned to anthropology earning a PhD from Harvard.

She was inspired to write her first novel (2007) “A Golden Age”, she says, by her parents who were freedom fighters during the . For that work, she stayed in Bangladesh for two years and interviewed hundreds of war fighters. She talks here with KGNU’s Claudia Cragg about her second novel ‘A Good Muslim’, the second in what Anam says is now to be a trilogy.

The framing narrative of memoir  is that of a young boy who hasn’t yet figured out that he’s gay. To survive, he becomes obsessed with TV pop culture (particularly with '' suffers from his parents’ neuroses, and believes he has magical powers that enable him to survive the traumas of growing up.'s Claudia Cragg speaks with him here about his journey. 

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Here KGNU’s Claudia Cragg meets poet and legendary feminist author of the 1970s for a lunchtime interview in New York to discuss Jong’s opus as a whole and an anthology she has just edited ‘Sugar in My Bowl’. The lively ambience provided excellent cover for a frank discussion of, among other topics, Jong’s invention of the ' (well, they had to say that since does not of course allow ****.) The interview itself, though, is not explicit.

In Erica Jong and a host of prominent female voices answer the question, What do women want? in essays that explore our fascination with sex and the realm of female desire - what it is, what sparks it, and what satisfies it.

The revelations are as varied as the writers. Daphne Merkin celebrates beautiful male bodies. Jennifer Weiner explores sex and death. Min Jin Lee pairs sex and racism. And Gail Collins offers an amusing take on the anti-sexuality of a Catholic education. Here, too, are the voices of a younger generation who reveal attitudes far more reserved than their liberated mothers. From wild nights to the innocence of inexperienced youth, "Sugar in My Bowl" explores women's sexuality with daring and candor, challenging us to examine ourselves and our own desires.

As Jong writes, 'The truth is-sex is life-no more, no less. As many of these stories demonstrate. It is the life force. If we attempt to wall it off in a special category of its own, we make it dirty. By itself, it is far from obscene. It is just a part of life-the part that continues it and makes it bloom.

Contributors include: ; ; ;;; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; , and l.

In this interview, Claudia Cragg speaks with Jim Geary who, in October 1981, formed the first support group in the world for people with AIDS and served as ’s executive director in San Francisco for seven years. He developed the agency into an internationally acclaimed model of  services.

 

Now he has recently released his memoir  which tells the story of his revolutionizing AIDS care and his "poignant crossing from joy to grief" as his lover faces his own AIDS diagnosis. Geary’s memoir concludes with journal entries he kept following his lover’s passing which are interwoven with "after-death" communications he believes he has shared with his now deceased partner of 20 years. 

 

The conversation begins with Geary’s recollection of his early to protest  and the emotional onslaught of the  in San Francisco of Supervisor  and  which coincided with the Jonestown "" in which many San Francisco residents took their own lives. [See also, ].

 

You can read more about Geary at