newyorker--2020-09-08--Is America a Myth?

Is America a Myth?

The United States feels like it is unravelling .
It ’ s not just because of a toxic election season , a national crisis over race , unemployment and hunger in the land of opportunity , or a pandemic that ’ s killing tens of thousands every month .
The foundation of our nation has deepening cracks—possibly too many to repair any time soon , or , perhaps , at all .
The ideas and imagery of America face existential challenges—some with reason , some without—that no longer come only from the fringes .
Rage consumes many in America .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the election , and for the next four years , no matter who wins .
Our political and cultural fissures have generated growing doubt about the stability of a country that long considered itself an anchor , a model , and an exception from the rest of the world .
Scholars , political scientists , and historians even posit that trying to unite disparate states , cultures , ethnic groups , and religions was always illusory .
“ The idea that America has a shared past going back into the colonial period is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the author of “ Union : The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood , ” told me .
“ We are very different Americas , each with different origin stories and value sets , many of which are incompatible .
They led to a Civil War in the past and are a potentially incendiary force in the future.
” The crisis today reflects the nation ’ s history .
Not much , it turns out , has changed .
The country was settled by diverse cultures—the Puritans in New England @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the Scots-Irish dominating Appalachia , and English slave lords from Barbados and the West Indies in the Deep South .
They were often rivals , Woodard noted : “ They were by no means thinking of themselves belonging to a protean American country-in-waiting.
” The United States was “ an accident of history , ” he said , largely because distinct cultures shared an external threat from the British .
They formed the Continental Army to stage a revolution and form the Continental Congress , with delegates from thirteen colonies .
Almost @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a country six times its original size claims to be a melting pot that has produced an “ American ” culture and a political system that vows to provide “ life , liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
” Too often , it hasn ’ t .
Centuries later , the cultural divide and cleavages are still deep .
Three hundred and thirty million people may identify as Americans , but they define what that means—and what rights and responsibilities are involved—in vastly different ways .
The American promise has not delivered for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Asian-Americans , myriad immigrant groups , and even some whites as well .
Hate crimes—acts of violence against people or property based on race , religion , disability , sexual orientation , ethnicity , or gender identity—are a growing problem .
A bipartisan group in the House warned in August that , “ as uncertainty rises , we have seen hatred unleashed.
” When Athens and Sparta went to war , in the fifth century B.C.
, the Greek general and historian Thucydides observed , “ The Greeks did not understand each other @ @ @ @ @ @ @ same language.
” In the twenty-first century , the same thing is happening among Americans .
Our political discourse has become “ civil war by other means—we sound as if we do not really want to continue to be members of one country , ” Richard Kreitner wrote , in the recently released book “ Break It Up : Secession , Division and the Secret History of America ’ s Imperfect Union.
” At different times in America ’ s history , the Union ’ s survival was produced as much by “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and political will .
“ At nearly every step it required morally indefensible compromises that only pushed problems further into the future.
” The attempt to reckon with our unjust past has produced more questions—and new divisions—about our future .
In Washington , D.C. , last week , a group commissioned by the city ’ s mayor , Muriel Bowser , recommended , in a report , that her office ask the federal government to “ remove , relocate , or contextualize ” the Washington Monument , the Jefferson Memorial , and statues @ @ @ @ @ @ @ among others .
The committee compiled a list of people who should not have public works named after them , including Presidents James Monroe , Andrew Jackson , and Woodrow Wilson , the inventor Alexander Graham Bell , and Francis Scott Key , who wrote the national anthem .
After a deluge of criticism , Bowser said on Friday that the report was being misinterpreted and that the city would not do anything about the monuments and memorials .
But a question remains , not just because we live in the era of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about today ?
And is it any different from its deeply flawed past ?
There was always an ambiguity about what the United States was supposed to be , Woodard said .
Was it supposed to be an alliance of states ( as the European Union , with twenty-seven distinct governments , is today ) , or a confederation ( like Switzerland , with its three languages and twenty-six cantons ) , or a nation-state ( like post-revolutionary France ) , or even a treaty mechanism , to prevent intra-state conflict ?
After @ @ @ @ @ @ @ solution ” was to celebrate the shared victory against the British ; core differences were not addressed .
Today , America is still conflicted about its values , whether over the social contract , the means of educating its children , the right to bear or ban arms , the protection of its vast lands , lakes and air , or the relationship between the states and the federal government .
Last week , President Donald Trump threatened to withhold federal funds to four major cities—New York , Washington , D.C. , Seattle @ @ @ @ @ @ @ activities during weeks of protests .
“ My Administration will not allow Federal tax dollars to fund cities that allow themselves to deteriorate into lawless zones , ” the President ’ s five-page memo said .
It was the latest of many acts by Trump that have further divided the nation , although the trend did not start with him .
Since the eighteen-thirties , the United States has gone through cycles of crises that threatened its cohesion .
The idea of a revolutionary republic committed to equality ( at the time , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ erode as regional differences surfaced and the first generation of revolutionaries died out .
States or territories have repeatedly pushed for independence—Vermont formally joined the Union in 1791 after spending fourteen years as an independent republic .
The State of Muskogee , a multicultural republic of Native Americans , escaped slaves , and white settlers around Tallahassee , lasted from 1799 until 1803 .
In 1810 , a small group of settlers captured a Spanish fort in Baton Rouge and declared the creation of an independent Republic of West Florida ; their capital @ @ @ @ @ @ @ elected a president , wrote a constitution , and designed a flag ( a white star on blue ) ; the movement died after President Monroe annexed the region .
There were others , including the Republic of Fredonia , in Texas , the California Republic , and the Indian Stream Republic , in New England .
The biggest rupture , of course , was in the eighteen-sixties , when eleven states—Texas , Arkansas , Louisiana , Tennessee , Mississippi , Alabama , Georgia , Florida , South Carolina , North Carolina , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Wide divides again threatened to cause a breakup of the nation in the nineteen-thirties , the nineteen-sixties , “ and now again ?
” the Yale historian David Blight told me .
Today , America is littered with prideful secessionist movements .
Mirroring Brexit—Britain ’ s exit from the European Union—they advocate for Texit ( Texas ) , Calexit ( California ) , and Verexit ( Vermont ) .
In 2017 , a Vermont poll found that more than twenty per cent of Vermonters believed that the state should consider “ peaceably leaving @ @ @ @ @ @ @ republic , as it was from 1777 to 1791.
” The Texas Nationalist Movement , which claims hundreds of thousands of members , is demanding a state referendum on secession .
Then there ’ s the more fanciful proposal for Cascadia , a progressive bio-republic carved out of northern California , Oregon , Washington , and the Canadian provinces of British Columbia and Alberta .
The trend is bipartisan and transregional ; secessionist sentiment has even emerged in the last two states to join the union—Alaska and Hawaii .

The United States feels like it is unravelling. It’s not just because of a toxic election season, a national crisis over race, unemployment and hunger in the land of opportunity, or a pandemic that’s killing tens of thousands every month. The foundation of our nation has deepening cracks—possibly too many to repair anytime soon, or, perhaps, at all. The ideas and imagery of America face existential challenges—some with reason, some without—that no longer come only from the fringes. Rage consumes many in America. And it may only get worse after the election, and for the next four years, no matter who wins. Our political and cultural fissures have generated growing doubt about the stability of a country that long considered itself an anchor, a model, and an exception to the rest of the world. Scholars, political scientists, and historians even posit that trying to unite disparate states, cultures, ethnic groups, and religions was always illusory.
“The idea that America has a shared past going back into the colonial period is a myth,” Colin Woodard, the author of “Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood,” told me. “We are very different Americas, each with different origin stories and value sets, many of which are incompatible. They led to a Civil War in the past and are a potentially incendiary force in the future.”
The crisis today reflects the nation’s history. Not much, it turns out, has changed. The country was settled by diverse cultures—the Puritans in New England, the Dutch around New York City, the Scots-Irish dominating Appalachia, and English slave lords from Barbados and the West Indies in the Deep South. They were often rivals, Woodard noted: “They were by no means thinking of themselves belonging to a protean American country-in-waiting.” The United States was “an accident of history,” he said, largely because distinct cultures shared an external threat from the British. They formed the Continental Army to stage a revolution and form the Continental Congress, with delegates from thirteen colonies. Almost two hundred and fifty years later, a country six times its original size claims to be a melting pot that has produced an “American” culture and a political system that vows to provide “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Too often, it hasn’t.
Centuries later, the cultural divide and cleavages are still deep. Three hundred and thirty million people may identify as Americans, but they define what that means—and what rights and responsibilities are involved—in vastly different ways. The American promise has not delivered for many Blacks, Jews, Latinos, Asian-Americans, myriad immigrant groups, and even some whites as well. Hate crimes—acts of violence against people or property based on race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, or gender identity—are a growing problem. A bipartisan group in the House warned in August that, “as uncertainty rises, we have seen hatred unleashed.”
When Athens and Sparta went to war, in the fifth century B.C., the Greek general and historian Thucydides observed, “The Greeks did not understand each other any longer, though they spoke the same language.” In the twenty-first century, the same thing is happening among Americans. Our political discourse has become “civil war by other means—we sound as if we do not really want to continue to be members of one country,” Richard Kreitner wrote, in the recently released book “Break It Up: Secession, Division and the Secret History of America’s Imperfect Union.” At different times in America’s history, the Union’s survival was produced as much by “chance and contingency” as by flag-waving and political will. “At nearly every step it required morally indefensible compromises that only pushed problems further into the future.”
The attempt to reckon with our unjust past has produced more questions—and new divisions—about our future. In Washington, D.C., last week, a group commissioned by the city’s mayor, Muriel Bowser, recommended, in a report, that her office ask the federal government to “remove, relocate, or contextualize” the Washington Monument, the Jefferson Memorial, and statues to Benjamin Franklin and Christopher Columbus, among others. The committee compiled a list of people who should not have public works named after them, including Presidents James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, and Woodrow Wilson, the inventor Alexander Graham Bell, and Francis Scott Key, who wrote the national anthem. After a deluge of criticism, Bowser said on Friday that the report was being misinterpreted and that the city would not do anything about the monuments and memorials. But a question remains, not just because we live in the era of Black Lives Matter: What is America about today? And is it any different from its deeply flawed past?
There was always an ambiguity about what the United States was supposed to be, Woodard said. Was it supposed to be an alliance of states (as the European Union, with twenty-seven distinct governments, is today), or a confederation (like Switzerland, with its three languages and twenty-six cantons), or a nation-state (like post-revolutionary France), or even a treaty mechanism, to prevent intra-state conflict? After the American Revolution, the “ad-hoc solution” was to celebrate the shared victory against the British; core differences were not addressed. Today, America is still conflicted about its values, whether over the social contract, the means of educating its children, the right to bear or ban arms, the protection of its vast lands, lakes, and air, or the relationship between the states and the federal government.
Last week, President Donald Trump threatened to withhold federal funds to four major cities—New York, Washington, D.C., Seattle, and Portland—because of “anarchist” activities during weeks of protests. “My Administration will not allow Federal tax dollars to fund cities that allow themselves to deteriorate into lawless zones,” the President’s five-page memo said. It was the latest of many acts by Trump that have further divided the nation, although the trend did not start with him.
Since the eighteen-thirties, the United States has gone through cycles of crises that threatened its cohesion. The idea of a revolutionary republic committed to equality (at the time, only for white men) started to erode as regional differences surfaced and the first generation of revolutionaries died out. States or territories have repeatedly pushed for independence—Vermont formally joined the Union in 1791, after spending fourteen years as an independent republic. The State of Muskogee, a multicultural republic of Native Americans, escaped slaves, and white settlers around Tallahassee, lasted from 1799 until 1803. In 1810, a small group of settlers captured a Spanish fort in Baton Rouge and declared the creation of an independent Republic of West Florida; their capital was St. Francisville, Louisiana. They elected a president, wrote a constitution, and designed a flag (a white star on blue); the movement died after President Monroe annexed the region. There were others, including the Republic of Fredonia, in Texas, the California Republic, and the Indian Stream Republic, in New England. The biggest rupture, of course, was in the eighteen-sixties, when eleven states—Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia—seceded to form the Confederacy.
Wide divisions again threatened to cause a breakup of the nation in the nineteen-thirties, the nineteen-sixties, “and now again?” the Yale historian David Blight told me. Today, America is littered with prideful secessionist movements. Mirroring Brexit—Britain’s exit from the European Union—they advocate for Texit (Texas), Calexit (California), and Verexit (Vermont). In 2017, a Vermont poll found that more than twenty per cent of Vermonters believed that the state should consider “peaceably leaving the United States and becoming an independent republic, as it was from 1777 to 1791.” The Texas Nationalist Movement, which claims hundreds of thousands of members, is demanding a state referendum on secession. Then there’s the more fanciful proposal for Cascadia, a progressive bio-republic carved out of northern California, Oregon, Washington, and the Canadian provinces of British Columbia and Alberta. The trend is bipartisan and transregional; secessionist sentiment has even emerged in the last two states to join the union—Alaska and Hawaii.
The need for internal trade and the dangers of external threats have helped hold America together. Disparate factions throughout the country rallied to counter British aggression in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; the Germans and the Japanese, in the twentieth; and Al Qaeda, after the 9/11 attacks, in the twenty-first. But, now, without outside threats, the nation is increasingly turning on itself. “We are definitely not united,” Blight said. “Are we on the brink of secession of some kind? No, not in a sectional sense. But, in the interior of our minds and our communities, we are already in a period of slow-evolving secession” in ways that are deeper than ideology and political beliefs. “We are tribes with at least two or more sources of information, facts, narratives, and stories we live in.” The United States today, Blight said, is a “house divided about what holds the house up.”


newyorker--2020-09-08--Douglas Stuart Reads “The Englishman”

Douglas Stuart Reads “The Englishman”

Douglas Stuart reads his story from the September 14 , 2020 , issue of the magazine .
Stuart published his @ @ @ @ @ Bain , ” earlier this year .

Photograph by Martyn Pickersgill
Douglas Stuart reads his story from the September 14, 2020, issue of the magazine. Stuart published his first novel, “Shuggie Bain,” earlier this year.


newyorker--2020-09-08--How Washington State Holds Its Elections by Mail

As the Trump Administration escalates its campaign to gut the U.S .
Postal Service and discourage voting by mail , Washington ’ s Secretary of State , Kim Wyman , has emerged as an advocate for mail voting .
After a particularly inflammatory tweet in which President Trump suggested delaying the November election , Wyman released a statement inviting Trump to Washington State to “ see firsthand ” what safe and secure mail voting looks like .
Wyman is an expert on the voting-by-mail process .
A Republican who has served as Washington ’ s secretary of state since 2013 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tenure insuring the safety and fairness of elections in one of the five states that conducts almost all of its voting by mail .
Recently , she has been taking calls from leaders in other states because mail-in ballots are expected to reach record numbers across the country over the next three months .
I recently spoke with Wyman by phone .
During our conversation , which has been edited for length and clarity , we discussed her biggest concerns about states quickly ramping up mail voting , what she thinks is really @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and why she remains a member of the Republican Party .
How did you become an expert on voting by mail ?
When was your first exposure to it , and what has Washington tried to do with it ?
I actually was a local election official before I was secretary of state .
I started in 1993 as the election director here in Thurston County , and that was the year that our legislature allowed any voter to become what we call a permanent absentee voter , where they could have that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to be part of the ramp-up of that , and our county really promoted absentee voting and vote-by-mail elections , and we were also granted the authority to run certain elections by mail .
So , by the late nineteen-nineties , our county was pretty ingrained with doing vote-by-mail elections and heavy absentee voting .
Then we had the closest governor ’ s race in the country ’ s history , in 2004 .
That was when our state really realized that about sixty per cent of our voters were voting by mail @ @ @ @ @ @ @ absentee voters , and we couldn ’ t do both kinds of elections well .
We couldn ’ t do a full absentee election and a full site election at the same time , and so our legislature , in 2005 , allowed for counties to move to vote-by-mail elections if they wanted to .
Most of our state did , including my county , and then it took our state another five years to really completely move over to vote by mail , in 2011 .
What do you see as the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ?
Putting aside the pandemic for a minute , what is it about the system that you think is good for people ?
It ’ s very convenient .
It empowers voters because they can choose when and where they want to vote .
If they want to vote at their kitchen table or in their car , or wherever it is , they can do that , and they can do it on their own time .
If you have someone that ’ s working a shift or has trouble getting to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ kids—and they have to run kids to soccer practice and cook dinner and all—it gives them a wider time period to be able to vote .
I think that ’ s huge .
When you build a system , like Washington ’ s , that has a really good balance of access and security , you inspire confidence that it ’ s a well-run election .
I think that ’ s what we ’ ve really done in the nearly sixteen years since that governor ’ s race—being able to put in those @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on every return envelope against the signature on the voter-registration record .
We certainly have our critics , like anyone does .
When you actually walk them through the process and the accountability that ’ s happening , it ’ s harder for them to make the case for voter fraud , for example , or even voter suppression .
I know it ’ s hard to compare election to election , but do you have some sense of what voting by mail does for turnout ?
For big elections , like the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2018 , I don ’ t think vote by mail really makes a huge difference .
I think we ’ re always within the top six to ten states in the country in any given election for turnout .
But where it really makes a huge difference is in odd-year local elections .
Those nonpartisan races for city and town councils , for fire commissioners , school-board members—quite frankly , the very positions that really do affect people ’ s daily life .
That ’ s where we see a real surge in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I think that that ’ s really the strength of vote by mail .
What would you be advising your counterparts in other states who are ramping up ?
I ’ ve actually been giving a lot of this advice to my colleagues .
The biggest one is : really look at the capacity and capability of your local election officials to be able to deal with the high volumes that they ’ re going to see .
We certainly saw , in primary elections across the country this spring and summer , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ maybe a fifty-to-seventy-five-per-cent increase in the number of absentee ballots you ’ re going to process .
So it ’ s really important that you have that capacity .
Second is to have the controls in place .
So , how are you going to verify that the ballots that were returned were returned by the voter they were issued to ?
In our state , it ’ s with the signature verification .
Then , how are you going to have the control measures to account for all those ballots ?
One @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is that you have to be very accurate .
You have to be able to , at the end of the election , account for every single ballot that was returned and be able to tell a voter whether or not it was counted .
And if it was rejected , why it was rejected .
That takes a lot of security and control measures and chain-of-custody things .
Then , beyond that , just being consistent .
Most states have multiple counties or local municipalities that actually conduct their elections .
They @ @ @ @ @ @ @ being incredibly consistent in the way that they handle voter-intent issues .
How are they dealing with a voter who circles the names of the candidates on the ballot rather than filling in the oval ?
Mail votes or absentee votes get rejected at a higher rate than in-person votes .
Why is that ?
Is the crucial thing there voter education and having time to mail the ballots in ?
Oh , absolutely .
I think voter education is really the critical element .
What we found when we started doing vote-by-mail @ @ @ @ @ @ @ two big reasons that ballots were rejected .
The first one was a late postmark .
In our state , you have to have the ballot postmarked before Election Day .
So there were late postmarks—people throwing them in a blue mailbox on Election Day , after that final pickup , and thinking that that was good enough .
And then the other one is signature matching—either voters forgetting to sign their ballot envelope entirely , or the signature on the envelope not matching the signature on file .

As the Trump Administration escalates its campaign to gut the U.S. Postal Service and discourage voting by mail, Washington’s Secretary of State, Kim Wyman, has emerged as an advocate for mail voting. After a particularly inflammatory tweet in which President Trump suggested delaying the November election, Wyman released a statement inviting Trump to Washington State to “see firsthand” what safe and secure mail voting looks like.
Wyman is an expert on the voting-by-mail process. A Republican who has served as Washington’s secretary of state since 2013, she has spent much of her tenure insuring the safety and fairness of elections in one of the five states that conducts almost all of its voting by mail. Recently, she has been taking calls from leaders in other states because mail-in ballots are expected to reach record numbers across the country over the next three months.
I recently spoke with Wyman by phone. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed her biggest concerns about states quickly ramping up mail voting, what she thinks is really going on with the Postal Service, and why she remains a member of the Republican Party.
How did you become an expert on voting by mail? When was your first exposure to it, and what has Washington tried to do with it?
I actually was a local election official before I was secretary of state. I started in 1993 as the election director here in Thurston County, and that was the year that our legislature allowed any voter to become what we call a permanent absentee voter, where they could have that ongoing absentee status indefinitely. I got to be part of the ramp-up of that, and our county really promoted absentee voting and vote-by-mail elections, and we were also granted the authority to run certain elections by mail. So, by the late nineteen-nineties, our county was pretty ingrained with doing vote-by-mail elections and heavy absentee voting.
Then we had the closest governor’s race in the country’s history, in 2004. That was when our state really realized that about sixty per cent of our voters were voting by mail every election, because they were permanent absentee voters, and we couldn’t do both kinds of elections well. We couldn’t do a full absentee election and a full site election at the same time, and so our legislature, in 2005, allowed for counties to move to vote-by-mail elections if they wanted to. Most of our state did, including my county, and then it took our state another five years to really completely move over to vote by mail, in 2011.
What do you see as the advantages of voting by mail, generally? Putting aside the pandemic for a minute, what is it about the system that you think is good for people?
It’s very convenient. It empowers voters because they can choose when and where they want to vote. If they want to vote at their kitchen table or in their car, or wherever it is, they can do that, and they can do it on their own time. If you have someone that’s working a shift or has trouble getting to the polling place because they have three kids—and they have to run kids to soccer practice and cook dinner and all—it gives them a wider time period to be able to vote. I think that’s huge.
When you build a system, like Washington’s, that has a really good balance of access and security, you inspire confidence that it’s a well-run election. I think that’s what we’ve really done in the nearly sixteen years since that governor’s race—being able to put in those control measures, like checking every signature on every return envelope against the signature on the voter-registration record. We certainly have our critics, like anyone does. When you actually walk them through the process and the accountability that’s happening, it’s harder for them to make the case for voter fraud, for example, or even voter suppression.
I know it’s hard to compare election to election, but do you have some sense of what voting by mail does for turnout?
For big elections, like the Presidential-year elections or high-profile elections, like 2018, I don’t think vote by mail really makes a huge difference. I think we’re always within the top six to ten states in the country in any given election for turnout. But where it really makes a huge difference is in odd-year local elections. Those nonpartisan races for city and town councils, for fire commissioners, school-board members—quite frankly, the very positions that really do affect people’s daily life. That’s where we see a real surge in turnout compared to other states, and I think that that’s really the strength of vote by mail.
What would you be advising your counterparts in other states who are ramping up?
I’ve actually been giving a lot of this advice to my colleagues. The biggest one is: really look at the capacity and capability of your local election officials to be able to deal with the high volumes that they’re going to see. We certainly saw, in primary elections across the country this spring and summer, that you’re going to see maybe a fifty-to-seventy-five-per-cent increase in the number of absentee ballots you’re going to process. So it’s really important that you have that capacity.
Second is to have the controls in place. So, how are you going to verify that the ballots that were returned were returned by the voter they were issued to? In our state, it’s with the signature verification. Then, how are you going to have the control measures to account for all those ballots? One of the things we learned in 2004 is that you have to be very accurate. You have to be able to, at the end of the election, account for every single ballot that was returned and be able to tell a voter whether or not it was counted. And if it was rejected, why it was rejected.
That takes a lot of security and control measures and chain-of-custody things. Then, beyond that, just being consistent. Most states have multiple counties or local municipalities that actually conduct their elections. They need to make sure that they are being incredibly consistent in the way that they handle voter-intent issues. How are they dealing with a voter who circles the names of the candidates on the ballot rather than filling in the oval?
Mail votes or absentee votes get rejected at a higher rate than in-person votes. Why is that? Is the crucial thing there voter education and having time to mail the ballots in?
Oh, absolutely. I think voter education is really the critical element. What we found when we started doing vote-by-mail elections in the nineteen-nineties is there are two big reasons that ballots were rejected. The first one was a late postmark. In our state, you have to have the ballot postmarked before Election Day. So there were late postmarks—people throwing them in a blue mailbox on Election Day, after that final pickup, and thinking that that was good enough. And then the other one is signature matching—either voters forgetting to sign their ballot envelope entirely, or the signature on the envelope not matching the signature on file.


newyorker--2020-09-08--The Soothing Pleasures of “The Victorian Kitchen Garden,” a Vintage BBC Docuseries

Some time this past spring , I had my annual realization that if I wanted to plant a garden this year I should have got started weeks , maybe months , earlier .
Then I set about my annual task of Googling how to make a garden happen .
A few days later , clearing out my hundreds of open browser tabs of horticultural-advice forums , I paused over an open Web page that I hadn ’ t noticed : a grainy upload on the mysterious and vaguely European video-hosting Web site Dailymotion .
“ The Victorian Kitchen Garden - @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” it said .
Curious , I pressed play , and a gentle wave of clarinet arpeggios sounded from my laptop speakers , and a mist-veiled greenhouse appeared on the screen .
My breathing slowed , my jaw unclenched .
After watching several episodes in a row , sinking deeper into relaxation with each passing half hour , I paused to confirm that the show was real and not a coping mechanism conjured by my subconscious to soothe my then-acute anxieties about the then-new coronavirus pandemic .
“ The Victorian Kitchen Garden , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ only real—a documentary miniseries produced , in 1987 , for BBC2—but had been something of a sensation at the time of its release .
It follows a master gardener , Harry Dodson , through his yearlong attempt to revive the long-fallow walled garden of Chilton Lodge , a country estate in Berkshire , using entirely Victorian-era plants , tools , and methods .
Each of the series ’ thirteen parts ( an introductory episode , and then one for each calendar month , January through December ) is narrated , on- and offscreen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ horticulturist whose elbow-patched tweeds and air of perpetual wonderment harmonize wonderfully with Dodson , a plainspoken sixty-something man with cheeks as pink as rhubarb , who drops his “ H ” s and works the soil in a shirt and tie .
The two men unhurriedly introduce viewers to the particularities of Victorian horticulture—much of it drawn from “ The Beeton Book of Garden Management , ” a companion to the enduringly popular “ Mrs .
Beeton ’ s Book of Household Management , ” the author of which Thoday persistently , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” The grand experiment begins on a frigid January morning , as Dodson and his hardy assistant , Allison ( “ recently qualified in fruit culture , ” Thoday informs us ) , dive into resurfacing the garden ’ s original gravel paths , pruning apple trees , and planting boxwood to line the rows .
As the months unfold , from one episode to the next , Thoday and Dodson wander and converse , marvelling at peaches and tut-tutting at wilted , overwintered broccoli .
As he narrates the progress of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rambling side journeys to illustrate the exquisite ecosystem of flora , weather , manmade structure , and labor that went into Victorian horticulture : warmth-giving garden walls containing hidden furnaces , seed catalogues spanning hundreds of pages , and the game-changing “ patent India-rubber hose , ” which liberated gardeners from the literal burden of the watering can .
Dodson ’ s role isn ’ t just to run the throwback garden—he also provides a human portal to the heyday of such an operation .
Born into a family of manor-house gardeners , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of industrial agriculture and the postwar dissolution of the British servant class .
He ’ s a font of wisdom both practical ( “ When pruning the fig trees , you should always start at the bottom , ” he says while pruning the fig tree from the bottom , adding , “ If that sap is allowed to fall onto your hands or your arms , and is allowed to dry there , it causes great irritation ” ) and managerial : during the strawberry harvest , he explains , the foreman @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fell silent , he would know that they were eating instead of picking .
He demonstrates how to make a mousetrap “ out of two bricks and a simple ’ azelnut , ” and how to use an old “ cucumber glass , designed by an old gentleman in the eighteen-hundreds , ” to keep the vegetable growing straight .
The strawberry harvest , in the July episode , set up what was , for me , the series ’ most unexpectedly poignant moment : to keep hungry blackbirds and pigeons away , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , for which Thoday gently chides him .
Dodson says that , back in his day , they had the best bird deterrent around : people , dozens of them , at work in the garden at all hours .
A half century later , it ’ s just Dodson and his assistant , two lonely bodies , and the camera crew that follows them .
Perhaps inevitably , “ The Victorian Kitchen Garden ” romanticizes the era it looks back on , wrapping the rigid and vast class divisions of the period @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the grounds of a Victorian great house may be the domain of its head gardener , the show makes it abundantly clear that its fruits are for the pleasure of his employer .
The garden ’ s intricate network of steam pipes and glasshouses , extraordinary as they are , existed to satisfy the tastes of the wealthy for the fruits of warmer climes— “ for the wealthy gentleman , it was a matter of pride to have a melon on his table throughout the year , ” Thoday explains in one episode @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the garden ’ s melons are ready to harvest—vines trellised across the ceiling of a glasshouse , the heavy fruits cradled beneath in soft nets—Dodson explains that he must not allow them to become overripe and , consequently , lose their elegant stems .
“ No self-respecting grower or gardener would go and have such a melon placed on his employer ’ s table , ” he says , with a little shake of the head .
By the time the show aired , the garden was Dodson ’ s own—after serving as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ thirty years , the property ’ s owner deeded the garden to him .
Dodson died in 2005 ; in his obituary , in the Independent , he is quoted saying , of the garden , “ Only three of us were in charge here in the last hundred-odd years , and I have done the longest.
” Since my first , accidental encounter with “ The Victorian Kitchen Garden , ” the show has been a regular companion for me—a calm background presence as I cook or straighten up or , in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ onscreen , prune my sad little potted orange tree and de-sucker the tomato plants growing on my Brooklyn balcony .
As a serene display of domestic competence , “ The Victorian Kitchen Garden ” is of a type with a show like “ The Great British Bake Off ” —but even that famously tender program has an element of competition .
In “ The Victorian Kitchen Garden , ” there are no face-offs , no judgments , no losers .
Even the slugs who get at Dodson ’ s lettuce are worthy of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ chappies that does the harm !
” he cries , upon discovering the little slimers , his voice rosy with delight .
Part of the show ’ s appeal , too , comes from the idiosyncrasies of streaming : after much dithering , I finally ordered a DVD of the series , which is on its way across the Atlantic .
But , in the meantime , the only way I ’ ve found to watch the series is on Dailymotion , where the episodes are inexplicably tagged as “ Crime TV ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
I watched enraptured , in the March episode , as Dodson went looking for period-appropriate cardoon seeds—and then the video distorted and froze .
April was nowhere to be found online , so I jumped forward to May : Dodson in a sweater vest , instructing a team of young assistants as they shuffle in unison across the garden beds to pack down the new soil .
Somehow these glitches only heighten the show ’ s soothing effect , its sense of bridging space and time .
I ’ m here , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ America , watching two men in England , thirty years in the past , who are tending a garden more than a century old—very gently , and with great care , coaxing it back to life .

Some time this past spring, I had my annual realization that if I wanted to plant a garden this year I should have got started weeks, maybe months, earlier. Then I set about my annual task of Googling how to make a garden happen. A few days later, clearing out my hundreds of open browser tabs of horticultural-advice forums, I paused over an open Web page that I hadn’t noticed: a grainy upload on the mysterious and vaguely European video-hosting Web site Dailymotion. “The Victorian Kitchen Garden - S01 - E01 - The Beginning,” it said. Curious, I pressed play, and a gentle wave of clarinet arpeggios sounded from my laptop speakers, and a mist-veiled greenhouse appeared on the screen. My breathing slowed, my jaw unclenched.
After watching several episodes in a row, sinking deeper into relaxation with each passing half hour, I paused to confirm that the show was real and not a coping mechanism conjured by my subconscious to soothe my then-acute anxieties about the then-new coronavirus pandemic. “The Victorian Kitchen Garden,” it turned out, was not only real—a documentary miniseries produced, in 1987, for BBC2—but had been something of a sensation at the time of its release. It follows a master gardener, Harry Dodson, through his yearlong attempt to revive the long-fallow walled garden of Chilton Lodge, a country estate in Berkshire, using entirely Victorian-era plants, tools, and methods. Each of the series’ thirteen parts (an introductory episode, and then one for each calendar month, January through December) is narrated, on- and offscreen, by Peter Thoday, a mustachioed horticulturist whose elbow-patched tweeds and air of perpetual wonderment harmonize wonderfully with Dodson, a plainspoken sixty-something man with cheeks as pink as rhubarb, who drops his “H”s and works the soil in a shirt and tie.
The two men unhurriedly introduce viewers to the particularities of Victorian horticulture—much of it drawn from “The Beeton Book of Garden Management,” a companion to the enduringly popular “Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management,” the author of which Thoday persistently, and endearingly, miscalls “Mr. Beeton.” The grand experiment begins on a frigid January morning, as Dodson and his hardy assistant, Allison (“recently qualified in fruit culture,” Thoday informs us), dive into resurfacing the garden’s original gravel paths, pruning apple trees, and planting boxwood to line the rows. As the months unfold, from one episode to the next, Thoday and Dodson wander and converse, marvelling at peaches and tut-tutting at wilted, overwintered broccoli. As he narrates the progress of the garden, Thoday offers historical asides and rambling side journeys to illustrate the exquisite ecosystem of flora, weather, manmade structure, and labor that went into Victorian horticulture: warmth-giving garden walls containing hidden furnaces, seed catalogues spanning hundreds of pages, and the game-changing “patent India-rubber hose,” which liberated gardeners from the literal burden of the watering can.
Dodson’s role isn’t just to run the throwback garden—he also provides a human portal to the heyday of such an operation. Born into a family of manor-house gardeners, Dodson came of age before the rise of industrial agriculture and the postwar dissolution of the British servant class. He’s a font of wisdom both practical (“When pruning the fig trees, you should always start at the bottom,” he says while pruning the fig tree from the bottom, adding, “If that sap is allowed to fall onto your hands or your arms, and is allowed to dry there, it causes great irritation”) and managerial: during the strawberry harvest, he explains, the foreman would tell the gardeners to whistle—if they fell silent, he would know that they were eating instead of picking. He demonstrates how to make a mousetrap “out of two bricks and a simple ’azelnut,” and how to use an old “cucumber glass, designed by an old gentleman in the eighteen-hundreds,” to keep the vegetable growing straight. The strawberry harvest, in the July episode, set up what was, for me, the series’ most unexpectedly poignant moment: to keep hungry blackbirds and pigeons away, Dodson employs sheets of decidedly un-Victorian plastic, for which Thoday gently chides him. Dodson says that, back in his day, they had the best bird deterrent around: people, dozens of them, at work in the garden at all hours. A half century later, it’s just Dodson and his assistant, two lonely bodies, and the camera crew that follows them.
Perhaps inevitably, “The Victorian Kitchen Garden” romanticizes the era it looks back on, wrapping the rigid and vast class divisions of the period in a gauze of wistfulness. Although the grounds of a Victorian great house may be the domain of its head gardener, the show makes it abundantly clear that its fruits are for the pleasure of his employer. The garden’s intricate network of steam pipes and glasshouses, extraordinary as they are, existed to satisfy the tastes of the wealthy for the fruits of warmer climes—“for the wealthy gentleman, it was a matter of pride to have a melon on his table throughout the year,” Thoday explains in one episode. When, several months later, the garden’s melons are ready to harvest—vines trellised across the ceiling of a glasshouse, the heavy fruits cradled beneath in soft nets—Dodson explains that he must not allow them to become overripe and, consequently, lose their elegant stems. “No self-respecting grower or gardener would go and have such a melon placed on his employer’s table,” he says, with a little shake of the head. By the time the show aired, the garden was Dodson’s own—after serving as Chilton Lodge’s head gardener for thirty years, the property’s owner deeded the garden to him. Dodson died in 2005; in his obituary, in the Independent, he is quoted saying, of the garden, “Only three of us were in charge here in the last hundred-odd years, and I have done the longest.”
Since my first, accidental encounter with “The Victorian Kitchen Garden,” the show has been a regular companion for me—a calm background presence as I cook or straighten up or, in a dismal contrast to the goings on onscreen, prune my sad little potted orange tree and de-sucker the tomato plants growing on my Brooklyn balcony. As a serene display of domestic competence, “The Victorian Kitchen Garden” is of a type with a show like “The Great British Bake Off”—but even that famously tender program has an element of competition. In “The Victorian Kitchen Garden,” there are no face-offs, no judgments, no losers. Even the slugs who get at Dodson’s lettuce are worthy of affection. “That’s the chappies that does the harm!” he cries, upon discovering the little slimers, his voice rosy with delight. Part of the show’s appeal, too, comes from the idiosyncrasies of streaming: after much dithering, I finally ordered a DVD of the series, which is on its way across the Atlantic. But, in the meantime, the only way I’ve found to watch the series is on Dailymotion, where the episodes are inexplicably tagged as “Crime TV” and the uploads are patchy and imperfect. I watched enraptured, in the March episode, as Dodson went looking for period-appropriate cardoon seeds—and then the video distorted and froze. April was nowhere to be found online, so I jumped forward to May: Dodson in a sweater vest, instructing a team of young assistants as they shuffle in unison across the garden beds to pack down the new soil. Somehow these glitches only heighten the show’s soothing effect, its sense of bridging space and time. I’m here, in the present, in a ravaged America, watching two men in England, thirty years in the past, who are tending a garden more than a century old—very gently, and with great care, coaxing it back to life.


newyorker--2020-09-08--The New “Mulan” ’s Uncomfortable Relationship with China’s Past and Present

Early in Maxine Hong Kingston ’ s book “ The Woman Warrior : Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts , ” from 1976 , the narrator asks , “ What is Chinese tradition and what is the movies ?
” “ The Woman Warrior ” is told from the perspective of a second-generation Chinese-American girl , growing up amid her Chinese immigrant mother ’ s ghost stories .
She comes to understand her history by narrating the fifteen-hundred-year-old legend of Fa Mu Lan , the folk hero who fought in her aging father ’ s stead out of filial duty @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been told and retold in China , and , starting with Kingston ’ s novel , it circulated widely in America as well , most prominently in a Disney animated version , released in 1998 .
The new , live-action “ Mulan , ” which recently premièred on the Disney+ streaming platform , begins by acknowledging its predecessors .
“ There have been many tales about the great warrior Mulan , ” its opening voice-over says , “ but ancestors : this one is mine.
” Oddly , perhaps , “ Mulan , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Caro and credited to four screenwriters , gives the voice-over a body in Mulan ’ s father .
Although most Americans associate the folktale with its proto-feminist heroine , this movie is framed as her father ’ s story—he is the film ’ s definitive narrator .
It is not the only dissonance in the new “ Mulan.
” The film is , put crudely , an Americanized celebration of Chinese nationalism , on a two-hundred-million-dollar budget .
In the film , a courageous Chinese imperial army fights and defeats the proto-Mongol invaders—a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Liu Yifei , the Chinese actress who portrays Mulan , has openly supported the Hong Kong police against protesters ; her stance clashes with her portrayal of a feminist underdog and has galvanized boycott campaigns , including one by the # MilkTeaAlliance , a cohort of pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong , Thailand , and Taiwan .
When the twenty-three-year-old activist Agnes Chow was detained in Hong Kong , a meme took flight anointing her as “ the real Mulan.
” And , this week , viewers of the film noticed that the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Xinjiang , where parts of “ Mulan ” were filmed , and where hundreds of thousands of Uighur Muslims have been held in internment camps .
( At one point , a title card presents “ Northwest China ” —that is , Xinjiang—as “ an inalienable part of China that Mulan must defend for her father , her family , and her emperor , ” as Jeannette Ng writes in Foreign Policy .
“ That ’ s not the historical reality—or even the reality of the original poem the stories are based on.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ that Liu , the film ’ s star , would create so much P.R .
grief .
Disney reportedly auditioned more than a thousand actresses before settling on Liu , who was born in Wuhan and lived in Queens for part of her childhood , as exactly what we want our contemporary female superheroes to be : quietly courageous , uninterested in sex , and possessed of perfectly blown-out hair that somehow never gets in her eyes , even when she ’ s shooting arrows or briskly mounting horses .
When she transitions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Mulan , ” the film tracks her in slow motion as she undoes her bun , wavy locks cascading , armor falling away : she is Oriental Wonder Woman .
If only she weren ’ t played by a supporter of police brutality .
It is somewhat customary for adaptations of “ Mulan ” to rework the heroine ’ s filial piety into national commitment .
The Shanghai film “ Mulan Joins the Army , ” from 1939 , made during Japan ’ s occupation of China , became a popular sensation and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stardom .
( As Weihong Bao writes in her book “ Fiery Cinema , ” the film caused its own controversy : during a screening in 1940 , in Chongqing , Nationalist China ’ s wartime capital , audience members stormed the projection room and set the reels on fire . )
In 1964 , the famous Shaw Brothers Studio , in Hong Kong , made a musical version titled “ Lady General Hua Mulan , ” which instructed residents of Hong Kong , which the British had recently colonized , to remember @ @ @ @ @ @ @ often exported to America for a Chinese-American diasporic community , including San Francisco ’ s Chinatown .
Before Disney tried to export Mulan back to Chinese audiences , China was already sending its Mulan remakes to Chinese-Americans .
Some of these Chinese film versions of “ Mulan ” as the literary critic Colleen Lye has argued , likely influenced Kingston ’ s “ The Woman Warrior , ” which conveyed the myth to an American readership in the political context of the Cultural Revolution .
( Disclosure : Lye is my academic adviser @ @ @ @ @ @ @ based on Kingston ’ s own girlhood , “ Warrior ” bends and blurs genres , incorporating Mu Lan ’ s mythical upbringing into Kingston ’ s own autobiographical narration .
The early section “ White Tigers ” opens by explaining how Mu Lan enters the narrator ’ s imagination through a range of sources , and , incidentally , doubles as a fairly accurate description of the opening scene in the live-action “ Mulan ” : “ The Woman Warrior ” is arguably still Asian-America ’ s definitive text , with Mulan @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Asian-American experience .
In the decades following its publication , it was one of the single most-taught books in American colleges .
David Henry Hwang ’ s first play , “ F.O.B.
, ” which premièred at the Public , in 1980 , centered the Mu Lan of Kingston ’ s book specifically as a Chinese-American , not Chinese , literary character .
Kingston herself expected the book to be read in largely political terms , “ from the women ’ s lib angle and the Third World angles , the Roots angle @ @ @ @ @ @ @ If Disney ’ s “ Mulan ” feels ideologically overburdened today , so , too , was Kingston ’ s fictional one when it was published .
The intergenerational mother-daughter plot stages a central dynamic of contrast and contradiction , which was key to Mao ’ s vision for China ’ s revolutionary future .
And although China ’ s influence on far-left politics in America might feel distant today , in the mid-seventies , the notion of radical American politics borrowing from Maoist revolutionaries was still fresh in readers ’ minds .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ Mulan ” has focussed on its COVID-19-induced straight-to-streaming distribution model , and how it might affect the film ’ s clear ambitions for the box-office in China , where theatres have reopened .
The animated version bombed when it arrived in China , in 1999 , at a time when Disney badly needed a hit : in 1997 , Martin Scorsese ’ s “ Kundun , ” about the Dalai Lama , who is exiled from Tibet , ruffled enough feathers that the Chinese Communist Party began to pull much of its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by permitting the release of “ Mulan , ” Disney hoped that the film might function as a kind of peace offering , appealing specifically to China ’ s nationalist interests .
Yet while the movie enjoyed worldwide success—dubbed into thirty-five languages and popularizing the myth at an unprecedented scale—it failed in mainland China , where it was seen as an overly slapstick and Americanized perversion of Mulan ’ s story .
It grossed only one-sixth of its anticipated box-office revenue there—a mere $ 1.3 million .
In appealing to today ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ leaned toward something like magical realism—no one sings in this rendition , though falcons do transform into women warriors—but nothing like historical accuracy : those tulou houses in the trailer are about a thousand years out of date .
The movie is pure commodity , but , then again , so are most movies .
This commodity might have been easier to sell , though , if it had connected with anything that makes the Mulan myth so vital to twentieth-century Chinese political history .

Early in Maxine Hong Kingston’s book “The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts,” from 1976, the narrator asks, “What is Chinese tradition and what is the movies?” “The Woman Warrior” is told from the perspective of a second-generation Chinese-American girl, growing up amid her Chinese immigrant mother’s ghost stories. She comes to understand her history by narrating the fifteen-hundred-year-old legend of Fa Mu Lan, the folk hero who fought in her aging father’s stead out of filial duty. Mu Lan’s story has been told and retold in China, and, starting with Kingston’s novel, it circulated widely in America as well, most prominently in a Disney animated version, released in 1998. The new, live-action “Mulan,” which recently premièred on the Disney+ streaming platform, begins by acknowledging its predecessors. “There have been many tales about the great warrior Mulan,” its opening voice-over says, “but ancestors: this one is mine.”
Oddly, perhaps, “Mulan,” directed by the New Zealander Niki Caro and credited to four screenwriters, gives the voice-over a body in Mulan’s father. Although most Americans associate the folktale with its proto-feminist heroine, this movie is framed as her father’s story—he is the film’s definitive narrator. It is not the only dissonance in the new “Mulan.” The film is, put crudely, an Americanized celebration of Chinese nationalism, on a two-hundred-million-dollar budget. In the film, a courageous Chinese imperial army fights and defeats the proto-Mongol invaders—a triumph of border control. Offscreen, Liu Yifei, the Chinese actress who portrays Mulan, has openly supported the Hong Kong police against protesters; her stance clashes with her portrayal of a feminist underdog and has galvanized boycott campaigns, including one by the #MilkTeaAlliance, a cohort of pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong, Thailand, and Taiwan. When the twenty-three-year-old activist Agnes Chow was detained in Hong Kong, a meme took flight anointing her as “the real Mulan.” And, this week, viewers of the film noticed that the credits offer thanks to government agencies in Xinjiang, where parts of “Mulan” were filmed, and where hundreds of thousands of Uighur Muslims have been held in internment camps. (At one point, a title card presents “Northwest China”—that is, Xinjiang—as “an inalienable part of China that Mulan must defend for her father, her family, and her emperor,” as Jeannette Ng writes in Foreign Policy. “That’s not the historical reality—or even the reality of the original poem the stories are based on.”)
No one could have foreseen that Liu, the film’s star, would create so much P.R. grief. Disney reportedly auditioned more than a thousand actresses before settling on Liu, who was born in Wuhan and lived in Queens for part of her childhood, as exactly what we want our contemporary female superheroes to be: quietly courageous, uninterested in sex, and possessed of perfectly blown-out hair that somehow never gets in her eyes, even when she’s shooting arrows or briskly mounting horses. When she transitions from her male persona into “Hua Mulan,” the film tracks her in slow motion as she undoes her bun, wavy locks cascading, armor falling away: she is Oriental Wonder Woman. If only she weren’t played by a supporter of police brutality.
It is somewhat customary for adaptations of “Mulan” to rework the heroine’s filial piety into national commitment. The Shanghai film “Mulan Joins the Army,” from 1939, made during Japan’s occupation of China, became a popular sensation and launched the actress Chen Yunshang into national stardom. (As Weihong Bao writes in her book “Fiery Cinema,” the film caused its own controversy: during a screening in 1940, in Chongqing, Nationalist China’s wartime capital, audience members stormed the projection room and set the reels on fire.) In 1964, the famous Shaw Brothers Studio, in Hong Kong, made a musical version titled “Lady General Hua Mulan,” which instructed residents of Hong Kong, which the British had recently colonized, to remember their Chinese roots. These films were often exported to America for a Chinese-American diasporic community, including San Francisco’s Chinatown. Before Disney tried to export Mulan back to Chinese audiences, China was already sending its Mulan remakes to Chinese-Americans.
Some of these Chinese film versions of “Mulan” as the literary critic Colleen Lye has argued, likely influenced Kingston’s “The Woman Warrior,” which conveyed the myth to an American readership in the political context of the Cultural Revolution. (Disclosure: Lye is my academic adviser.) Initially marketed as a memoir based on Kingston’s own girlhood, “Warrior” bends and blurs genres, incorporating Mu Lan’s mythical upbringing into Kingston’s own autobiographical narration. The early section “White Tigers” opens by explaining how Mu Lan enters the narrator’s imagination through a range of sources, and, incidentally, doubles as a fairly accurate description of the opening scene in the live-action “Mulan”:
Night after night my mother would talk-story until we fell asleep. I couldn’t tell where the stories left off and the dreams began, her voice the voice of the heroines in my sleep. And on Sundays, from noon to midnight, we went to the movies at the Confucius Church. We saw swordswomen jump over houses from a standstill; they didn’t even need a running start.
“The Woman Warrior” is arguably still Asian-America’s definitive text, with Mulan framed as its orienting plot for the Asian-American experience. In the decades following its publication, it was one of the single most-taught books in American colleges. David Henry Hwang’s first play, “F.O.B.,” which premièred at the Public, in 1980, centered the Mu Lan of Kingston’s book specifically as a Chinese-American, not Chinese, literary character. Kingston herself expected the book to be read in largely political terms, “from the women’s lib angle and the Third World angles, the Roots angle,” as she put it. If Disney’s “Mulan” feels ideologically overburdened today, so, too, was Kingston’s fictional one when it was published. The intergenerational mother-daughter plot stages a central dynamic of contrast and contradiction, which was key to Mao’s vision for China’s revolutionary future. And although China’s influence on far-left politics in America might feel distant today, in the mid-seventies, the notion of radical American politics borrowing from Maoist revolutionaries was still fresh in readers’ minds.
Much of the discussion around the live-action “Mulan” has focussed on its COVID-19-induced straight-to-streaming distribution model, and how it might affect the film’s clear ambitions for the box-office in China, where theatres have reopened. The animated version bombed when it arrived in China, in 1999, at a time when Disney badly needed a hit: in 1997, Martin Scorsese’s “Kundun,” about the Dalai Lama, who is exiled from Tibet, ruffled enough feathers that the Chinese Communist Party began to pull much of its business with Disney. When they relented by permitting the release of “Mulan,” Disney hoped that the film might function as a kind of peace offering, appealing specifically to China’s nationalist interests. Yet while the movie enjoyed worldwide success—dubbed into thirty-five languages and popularizing the myth at an unprecedented scale—it failed in mainland China, where it was seen as an overly slapstick and Americanized perversion of Mulan’s story. It grossed only one-sixth of its anticipated box-office revenue there—a mere $1.3 million.
In appealing to today’s Chinese market, the Disney+ version has leaned toward something like magical realism—no one sings in this rendition, though falcons do transform into women warriors—but nothing like historical accuracy: those tulou houses in the trailer are about a thousand years out of date. The movie is pure commodity, but, then again, so are most movies. This commodity might have been easier to sell, though, if it had connected with anything that makes the Mulan myth so vital to twentieth-century Chinese political history.


newyorker--2020-09-08--“Cuties” (“Mignonnes”), the Extraordinary Netflix Début That Became the Target of a Right-Wing Campa

“Cuties” (“Mignonnes”), the Extraordinary Netflix Début That Became the Target of a Right-Wing Campaign

On Wednesday , Netflix releases “ Cuties ” ( “ Mignonnes ” ) , the remarkable first feature from the French filmmaker Maïmouna Doucouré .
Unfortunately , the platform ’ s misleading advertising has given rise to a scurrilous campaign against the film itself .
The promotional image , showing young girls in bikini-like clothing dancing in provocative ways , matched with an inaccurate description , has been taken to suggest that the film celebrates children ’ s sexualized behavior .
In fact , the subject of the film is exactly the opposite : it dramatizes the difficulties of growing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ media culture .
I doubt that the scandal-mongers ( who include some well-known figures of the far right ) have actually seen “ Cuties , ” but some elements of the film that weren ’ t presented in the advertising would surely prove irritating to them : it ’ s the story of a girl ’ s outrage at , and defiance of , a patriarchal order .
The girl is Amy Diop ( Fathia Youssouf ) , an eleven-year-old of Senegalese descent , who lives in France with her observant Muslim family @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , she moves with her mother , Mariam ( Maïmouna Gueye ) , and her two younger brothers into a new apartment in a Parisian housing project .
The apartment has a secret : a room , kept locked , that Amy is ordered to avoid .
Amy ( short for Aminata , and pronounced with a short “ a , ” like the French word ami ) is a dutiful child , kept in line lovingly but sternly by Mariam and by “ Auntie , ” her great-aunt ( Mbissine Thérèse Diop @ @ @ @ @ @ @ traditions that she passes along to her niece .
Amy , who ’ s quiet and shy , is also socially isolated—she has no cell phone , knows no one at school , and isn ’ t inclined to express herself or introduce herself .
As for her father , he ’ s away , visiting the family ’ s homeland .
Much is being made of the festive plans for his return—but Amy learns , accidentally , that the point of his trip is to take a second wife , and that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Paris with her .
The sealed room in the family ’ s apartment will be the new wife ’ s bridal chamber .
Amy takes this news as a betrayal of her mother—especially after she discovers that Mariam , who is made miserable by the news , is being coerced , by Auntie and by the entire social structure of their community , into celebrating her husband ’ s polygamy and welcoming the new bride into her home .
At an all-female prayer meeting that Amy and Mariam attend in the building ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a woman , decrees , “ We must remain modest .
We must obey our husbands.
” Auntie tells Amy , “ Do everything you can to please your mother.
” Now that order of modesty strikes Amy as part of a system that subjugates women , and pleasing her mother means deferring to that system .
Instantly , Amy enters a state of revolt , which is all the more emotionally wrenching for her lack of a vocabulary to discuss her feelings and her lack of friends to discuss them with .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ with oppression , and so she acts out , overthrowing both in a series of increasingly reckless actions .
Soon after moving in , Amy sees a neighbor and classmate , Angelica ( Médina El Aidi-Azouni ) , doing a hip-hop dance while doing laundry in the building ’ s basement .
Soon thereafter , Amy sees Angelica similarly dancing with three other girls near an abandoned train yard .
At first , they insult her and throw rocks at her .
When she approaches them at school , they tell her that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ competition ( the group ’ s name is the Cuties , les Mignonnes ) .
Amy knows that the girls are trouble—she sees them defying teachers and getting disciplined in the schoolyard and running wild in a supermarket—but she resolves to join them .
She soon finds that their dancing is inseparable from their sexual curiosity and brazen provocations , which are matched by their ignorance about sex .
Angelica , in particular , is a gleeful troublemaker , at times seeming nearly sociopathic , as when she steals her older brother ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s computer to the floor , and assaults another member of the group .
As a sort of virtual hazing at school , the Cuties push Amy into the boys ’ bathroom to video-record a boy ’ s genitals .
Her membership in the group involves her self-aware misconduct , transgressions that she undertakes quickly and coldly : stealing a cell phone from a cousin , stealing money from her mother , fighting with another girl , making herself an object of social-media scandal , even several acts of potentially grave violence @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Cuties means more than a new activity or a new set of friends—it means forging for herself a new , self-chosen identity , which she clings to desperately , at great risk and great cost .
Before becoming a filmmaker , Doucouré was in the sciences ( she has a degree in biology ) , and there ’ s something admirably analytical about her cinematic methods .
Though “ Cuties ” is a sharply dramatic film that sticks closely to Amy throughout and observes her actions in detail , Doucouré brings background ideas @ @ @ @ @ @ @ abstract considerations alongside the sharp delineation of character .
She shows Amy undergoing the many tribulations of maturing—and , in each of these anecdotally depicted events , extracts from them an element of cultural context .
( For instance , when Amy gets her period , Auntie says that , at Amy ’ s age , she was engaged and was married a few years later—a fortune that she wishes on Amy , too . )
The subject of “ Cuties ” isn ’ t twerking ; it ’ s children , especially @ @ @ @ @ @ @ deprived of the resources—the education , the emotional support , the open family discussion—to put sexualized media and pop culture into perspective .
Left on their own—Angelica , for instance , is virtually unsupervised by parents who are working very hard to keep their restaurant afloat—they ’ re unable to find or even to seek the line between liberation and exploitation , between independence and imitation .
“ Cuties ” is about the absence of knowledge and absence of reasonable discourse about sex and sexuality , power and desire , that help young @ @ @ @ @ @ @ constructively—or , at least , not too destructively .
Lacking those things , Amy latches on to a mode of revolt that is itself a trope of a misogynistic order .
“ Cuties ” is a film of the center , and it ’ s aesthetically of the center—it depicts the unconsidered without advancing to the realm of the subjective , and it doesn ’ t allow its young protagonists much discourse , outer or inner .
It ’ s not a movie of introspection and self-consideration ; it ’ s more a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ exception , of what ’ s unduly extraordinary about the effort to live an ordinary life .
As such , it ’ s a story of French society at large—its exclusions and the exertions demanded to overcome them .
Though many of Amy ’ s actions are dubious , her spirit of revolt is nonetheless sublime and heroic .
“ Cuties ” dramatizes what people of color and immigrants endure as a result of isolation and ghettoization , of not being represented culturally and politically—and of not being represented in French national mythology @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of personal identity to public identity—and the urgency of transforming the very notion of French identity , of changing the idea of who ’ s considered the representative face of France .
That idea is brought to the fore in an extraordinary , brief , symbolic ending ; it ’ s enough to give a right-winger a conniption .

On Wednesday, Netflix releases “Cuties” (“Mignonnes”), the remarkable first feature from the French filmmaker Maïmouna Doucouré. Unfortunately, the platform’s misleading advertising has given rise to a scurrilous campaign against the film itself. The promotional image, showing young girls in bikini-like clothing dancing in provocative ways, matched with an inaccurate description, has been taken to suggest that the film celebrates children’s sexualized behavior. In fact, the subject of the film is exactly the opposite: it dramatizes the difficulties of growing up female in a sexualized and commercialized media culture. I doubt that the scandal-mongers (who include some well-known figures of the far right) have actually seen “Cuties,” but some elements of the film that weren’t presented in the advertising would surely prove irritating to them: it’s the story of a girl’s outrage at, and defiance of, a patriarchal order.
The girl is Amy Diop (Fathia Youssouf), an eleven-year-old of Senegalese descent, who lives in France with her observant Muslim family. At the film’s beginning, she moves with her mother, Mariam (Maïmouna Gueye), and her two younger brothers into a new apartment in a Parisian housing project. The apartment has a secret: a room, kept locked, that Amy is ordered to avoid. Amy (short for Aminata, and pronounced with a short “a,” like the French word ami) is a dutiful child, kept in line lovingly but sternly by Mariam and by “Auntie,” her great-aunt (Mbissine Thérèse Diop), who’s steeped in traditions that she passes along to her niece. Amy, who’s quiet and shy, is also socially isolated—she has no cell phone, knows no one at school, and isn’t inclined to express herself or introduce herself. As for her father, he’s away, visiting the family’s homeland. Much is being made of the festive plans for his return—but Amy learns, accidentally, that the point of his trip is to take a second wife, and that he’ll soon be returning to Paris with her. The sealed room in the family’s apartment will be the new wife’s bridal chamber.
Amy takes this news as a betrayal of her mother—especially after she discovers that Mariam, who is made miserable by the news, is being coerced, by Auntie and by the entire social structure of their community, into celebrating her husband’s polygamy and welcoming the new bride into her home. At an all-female prayer meeting that Amy and Mariam attend in the building’s common room, the preacher, a woman, decrees, “We must remain modest. We must obey our husbands.” Auntie tells Amy, “Do everything you can to please your mother.” Now that order of modesty strikes Amy as part of a system that subjugates women, and pleasing her mother means deferring to that system. Instantly, Amy enters a state of revolt, which is all the more emotionally wrenching for her lack of a vocabulary to discuss her feelings and her lack of friends to discuss them with. She associates modesty with misogyny and obedience with oppression, and so she acts out, overthrowing both in a series of increasingly reckless actions.
Soon after moving in, Amy sees a neighbor and classmate, Angelica (Médina El Aidi-Azouni), doing a hip-hop dance while doing laundry in the building’s basement. Soon thereafter, Amy sees Angelica similarly dancing with three other girls near an abandoned train yard. At first, they insult her and throw rocks at her. When she approaches them at school, they tell her that they’re preparing for a dance competition (the group’s name is the Cuties, les Mignonnes). Amy knows that the girls are trouble—she sees them defying teachers and getting disciplined in the schoolyard and running wild in a supermarket—but she resolves to join them. She soon finds that their dancing is inseparable from their sexual curiosity and brazen provocations, which are matched by their ignorance about sex. Angelica, in particular, is a gleeful troublemaker, at times seeming nearly sociopathic, as when she steals her older brother’s work shirt, slams another girl’s computer to the floor, and assaults another member of the group. As a sort of virtual hazing at school, the Cuties push Amy into the boys’ bathroom to video-record a boy’s genitals. Her membership in the group involves her self-aware misconduct, transgressions that she undertakes quickly and coldly: stealing a cell phone from a cousin, stealing money from her mother, fighting with another girl, making herself an object of social-media scandal, even several acts of potentially grave violence. For Amy, belonging to the Cuties means more than a new activity or a new set of friends—it means forging for herself a new, self-chosen identity, which she clings to desperately, at great risk and great cost.
Before becoming a filmmaker, Doucouré was in the sciences (she has a degree in biology), and there’s something admirably analytical about her cinematic methods. Though “Cuties” is a sharply dramatic film that sticks closely to Amy throughout and observes her actions in detail, Doucouré brings background ideas to the foreground, inviting sociological and abstract considerations alongside the sharp delineation of character. She shows Amy undergoing the many tribulations of maturing—and, in each of these anecdotally depicted events, extracts from them an element of cultural context. (For instance, when Amy gets her period, Auntie says that, at Amy’s age, she was engaged and was married a few years later—a fortune that she wishes on Amy, too.)
The subject of “Cuties” isn’t twerking; it’s children, especially poor and nonwhite children, who are deprived of the resources—the education, the emotional support, the open family discussion—to put sexualized media and pop culture into perspective. Left on their own—Angelica, for instance, is virtually unsupervised by parents who are working very hard to keep their restaurant afloat—they’re unable to find or even to seek the line between liberation and exploitation, between independence and imitation. “Cuties” is about the absence of knowledge and absence of reasonable discourse about sex and sexuality, power and desire, that help young people to avow and confront these drives constructively—or, at least, not too destructively. Lacking those things, Amy latches on to a mode of revolt that is itself a trope of a misogynistic order.
“Cuties” is a film of the center, and it’s aesthetically of the center—it depicts the unconsidered without advancing to the realm of the subjective, and it doesn’t allow its young protagonists much discourse, outer or inner. It’s not a movie of introspection and self-consideration; it’s more a story of the rule than of the exception, of what’s unduly extraordinary about the effort to live an ordinary life. As such, it’s a story of French society at large—its exclusions and the exertions demanded to overcome them. Though many of Amy’s actions are dubious, her spirit of revolt is nonetheless sublime and heroic. “Cuties” dramatizes what people of color and immigrants endure as a result of isolation and ghettoization, of not being represented culturally and politically—and of not being represented in French national mythology. Its underlying subject is the connection of personal identity to public identity—and the urgency of transforming the very notion of French identity, of changing the idea of who’s considered the representative face of France. That idea is brought to the fore in an extraordinary, brief, symbolic ending; it’s enough to give a right-winger a conniption.


newyorker--2020-09-08--Sarah Huckabee Sanders Lends Her Impeccable Reputation for Honesty and Credibility to Defending Trum

Sarah Huckabee Sanders Lends Her Impeccable Reputation for Honesty and Credibility to Defending Trump

WASHINGTON ( The Borowitz Report ) —Refuting reports that her former boss disparaged fallen soldiers , Sarah Huckabee Sanders has lent her impeccable reputation for honesty and credibility to defending Donald J. Trump .
White House officials breathed a deep sigh of relief after Sanders , widely considered one of the most trustworthy and sincere figures in the nation , called the allegations “ malicious lies.
” “ If the comments attributed to the President have alarmed any voters , Sarah ’ s vouching for him should put an end to that , ” one aide said .
“ When @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Sanders is the gold standard.
” The aide said that Sanders ’ s candid and straight-shooting performances at the White House podium made her legendary as “ one of the most honest people ever to work in this building.
” “ People talk about George Washington and Abraham Lincoln , but Sarah Huckabee Sanders has to be in that conversation , too , ” he said .
The aide said he hoped that Sanders ’ s repudiation of the damning claims will encourage other beacons of truth to come forward to defend Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , we ’ re golden , ” he said .

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Refuting reports that her former boss disparaged fallen soldiers, Sarah Huckabee Sanders has lent her impeccable reputation for honesty and credibility to defending Donald J. Trump.
White House officials breathed a deep sigh of relief after Sanders, widely considered one of the most trustworthy and sincere figures in the nation, called the allegations “malicious lies.”
“If the comments attributed to the President have alarmed any voters, Sarah’s vouching for him should put an end to that,” one aide said. “When it comes to truth-telling, Sarah Huckabee Sanders is the gold standard.”
The aide said that Sanders’s candid and straight-shooting performances at the White House podium made her legendary as “one of the most honest people ever to work in this building.”
“People talk about George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, but Sarah Huckabee Sanders has to be in that conversation, too,” he said.
The aide said he hoped that Sanders’s repudiation of the damning claims will encourage other beacons of truth to come forward to defend Trump. “If Kellyanne Conway speaks out, we’re golden,” he said.