Talk to Me by James Vlahos

“How Voice Computing Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Think” is the subtitle of a new non-fiction book, TALK TO ME, by author James Vlahos. He argues that we are entering the era of voice computing and that like previous technological disruptions (e.g., changes with mainframes, desktops, internet search and mobile computing), it will involve a paradigm shift and platform war. Vlahos divides his text into three parts labeled Competition, Innovation and Revolution, with about ten percent allocated to notes and an index. Of course, there’s quite a bit of discussion about Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft, plus chatbots, conversational artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language systems. Some of the historical background describes the roughly twenty-five-year development of Siri and “her component technologies” and briefly touches on the choice of Alexa as a wake word. Later, there is an entire chapter devoted to personalities, noting our penchant to personify and to invest more emotionally when a digital assistant is anthropomorphic (if you doubt this, take a moment and think back to Microsoft’s annoying on-screen helper, Clippy). Vlahos also discusses some of the reasons why female voices were chosen and the potential for truly individualized AIs in the future (described in US Patent 8,996,429) whereby “the bot can present the best possible personality to any given user.” Other factors like the impact of virtual companionship on one’s desire to socialize, and downsides such as eavesdropping or privacy concerns are included. Overall, Vlahos succeeds in making the potential advances of voice computing understandable and relevant, thereby captivating student interest with TALK TO ME.

If You Want to Make God Laugh by Bianca Marais

IF YOU WANT TO MAKE GOD LAUGH by Bianca Marais deserves a spot in your “to be read” pile. The story takes place in South Africa in the mid-1990s as Mandela is elected president.  There are three narrators: Delilah, a former nun and aid worker; Ruth, her flamboyant, alcoholic sister who is about to get a divorce; and Zodwa, a young Zulu girl struggling with her sexual orientation and an unexpected pregnancy. Originally from South Africa, Marais intertwines the characters’ stories with the changes in that country, its racial conflicts and attitudes, and the growing AIDS epidemic. The white middle-aged sisters, who had been estranged for decades, reunite at their family home and are forced by economics to learn to live together. Delilah carries guilt and regret for past actions, saying “the past wasn’t a place you could just walk away from; it was something you carried with you your entire life, and year upon year as your arms got weaker, the burden just got heavier and harder to bear.” Ruth sees signs in everything and alludes to her “belief that I’ve been having a lifelong conversation with the universe just as profound as the one she’s [Delilah’s] been having with God.” One of those signs is a pair of knitted blue booties and the subsequent abandonment of a newborn baby on their porch. The decision to foster this black child is not an easy one and the story is full of loss and hardship mingled with love and courage. There’s a thread of feminism, too, with comments on “it was a girl’s duty to grin and bear it. No matter what any man did, she absolutely wasn’t to make a fuss. … a dysfunctional way to be raised.” Yet, the sisters and Zodwa persevere and find their way in this well-written second novel.  As Ruth says, “Maybe we’re all born with that piece of us missing and our life’s journey is about finding it. Finding the one thing that makes us whole.”

The Gifted School by Bruce Holsinger

THE GIFTED SCHOOL by Bruce Holsinger is a work of fiction with recent parallels in the news about admissions and financial aid scandals, including today’s front page story, “Guardianship Ploy Taps Aid for College” in The Wall Street Journal. In the novel, set in a fictionalized town reminiscent of Boulder, Colorado, four families are vying for admission to a new exclusive school named Crystal Academy. I generally agree with Ron Charles’ review in The Washington Post; the story begins a bit slowly since there are so many characters and relationships to introduce, but they are treated with empathy, not satire. In essence, they are a composite of people we know: medical researcher Rose whose “plodding” husband Gareth is a stay-at-home Dad, locally raised Azra with ex-husband fun-loving Beck (he struggles with balancing two families), widow Lauren, “smugly obsessed” with the abilities of her children, and Samantha and Kev, well-off and well-connected. These parents, despite their relatively affluent and privileged lifestyle, experience concerns that Holsinger aptly describes – and their children feel the pressure. One child is “always sorry. Sorry for sounding too smart, sounding too stupid, eating too fast, …” Another is described as “a living, breathing benchmark, a proof of concept for the over invested parenting they all practiced with varying degrees of obliviousness and guilt.” A relatively quick and entertaining summer read, THE GIFTED SCHOOL received starred reviews from Kirkus and Publishers Weekly. It is sure to keep generating buzz – meaning local book groups will likely be reading this.

Hands Up, Don't Shoot, Exposing Hate and Notes from the Field

Some members of our faculty and administration are in the midst of reading White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo this summer. Here are comments regarding a few other related texts.

HANDS UP, DON’T SHOOT by Jennifer E. Cobbina will be published by New York University Press on July 30th which is extremely timely considering its subtitle (Why the Protests in Ferguson and Baltimore Matter, and How They Changed America) and the way that Baltimore has been in the news in the last several days. Cobbina is Associate Professor in the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University and she worked with other academics to interview participants at protests following the deaths of Michael Brown and Freddie Gray. In a half dozen chapters, she describes findings on race and policing, writes about Black police officers, and explores why protestors marched. In addition to providing some historical context, she offers a suggestion that “the issue is not exclusively about the race of police officers but about the nature of police organizations and how they systematically police poor communities of color.” In addition, Cobbina was able to conduct and review interviews from almost 200 people and to look for patterns, concluding in part that “the most involved and committed protestors vowed to engage in future activist efforts …. while, for those who were less committed, oppressive tactics by police appeared to serve as a deterrent.” She goes further and provides a look at some of the complex factors involved (e.g., unemployment rates, poverty levels, single parent households, social media influence). Roughly a fourth of this well-researched text is devoted to appendices (on demographics of the protestors and research methods), notes, references, and a helpful index. HANDS UP, DON’T SHOOT received a starred review from Library Journal and will be an invaluable resource for our students, especially those in Civics and/or Psychology classes (perhaps investigating the flashpoint model, culture of resistance, implicit bias, etc.) as well as others interested in this multi-faceted topic for Junior Theme research.

EXPOSING HATE by Michael Miller explores “Prejudice, Hatred, and Violence in Action” and Booklist calls it “a necessary book on a hot-button social issue.” Geared to high school students, this non-fiction text is only 144 pages long. A possible starting point for research, it simply defines a hate group as “an organization that attacks or harms an entire group of people for characteristics they cannot change.” In addition, Miller notes statistics from the Southern Poverty Law Center which officially recognized 457 hate groups in 1999 as opposed to the increased number of 954 active hate groups in 2017. He writes about hate crimes both against people and against property, noting that hate groups “promote extremist views,” and discusses racially motivated events in Charlottesville and Charleston.  Although, Miller provides examples of anti-gay, anti-immigrant, and anti-Semite actions, other groups (e.g., indigenous peoples) are largely overlooked. He does acknowledge that “research shows that when a person meets and gets to know something about someone who is different from them, they gain a better understanding of the other person.  They begin to rethink existing prejudices.” EXPOSING HATE has a glossary, well-documented source notes (often from media outlets), a selected bibliography and a very helpful list of relevant books, films, and websites. Students could pair parts of this with the “go back” stories recently published by the New York Times.

NOTES FROM THE FIELD by Anna Deavere Smith, a native of Baltimore, focuses mostly on the school-to-prison-pipeline. This work was originally performed as a one person play and is the most recent installment in what Smith, an award-winning actress and activist, considers her “life’s work:” a series of plays titled “On the Road: A Search for American Character.” Smith says “central to my creative process is active listening” and she therefore interviewed about 250 people from around the country (Maryland, South Carolina, Northern California, and Pennsylvania).  The monologues that she performs represent about seventeen voices selected to “reflect the variety of people caught up in the school-to-prison-pipeline: students, parents, counselors, administrators, prisoners, preachers and politicians.”  The first features Sherrilyn Ifill, President and Director-Counsel of NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Others are meant to voice views about the death of Freddie Gray or comments from James Baldwin, Bryan Stevenson and Congressman John Lewis, all of which are incorporated later in the work. First performed in 2015, NOTES FROM THE FIELD was subsequently made into a movie for television by HBO. Since this work can actually be performed with any number of actors, I have already spoken with faculty members about possible projects for our students. Anna Deavere Smith herself hopes that her work "can usefully contribute to an ongoing debate;" she makes a call for "a reimagining that requires courage, empathy and action."