The Brooklyn Book Festival

I went to hear Dave Eggars, the editor of the literary journal McSweeney's Quarterly Concern in conversation with the Nigerian-born author, Chris Abani. Eggars most recently wrote What is the What, a novel based on the life story of a Sudanese Lost Boy, Valentino Achak Deng. All author proceeds to the Lost Boys of Sudan.
Achak Deng, 26, wasn’t at this talk – he’s studying international diplomacy at a college in Pennsylvania. “It’s strange for him,” said Eggars. “One day he’s a sophmore, but next week he’ll come to New York to speak at the Clinton’s Global Initiative.”
Eager to take any money made from the book to Marial Bai in Sudan to build a primary school, Achak Deng waited patiently for four years for Eggars to finish the book. Now he has started the Valentino Achak Deng Foundation in Sudan. He’ll take it over once he has completed his studies.
Eggars’ slide show showed the village of Marial Bai, razed to the ground during the war, now rebuilt as a returnee camp. “We went to see what could be done,” explained Eggars. “It was a listening tour.”
Achak Deng is particularly concerned with assisting young women in getting a secondary education. “Eventhough attitudes in Sudan are changing, it is still the tradition to marry off 13 and 14 year olds.”
One slide showed Achak Deng talking to two fourteen year old girls. One wanted to be a doctor; the second, a nurse. “Valentino who is usually very optimistic, told me that they will not reach their goals, not in this generation, but in the next,” said Eggars. “The men are becoming open to change and to women’s empowerment. The returnees like Val have brought with them a more progressive attitude from their time in the West.”
After taking in the needs of Marial Bai, Achak Deng has changed his original plan. “We realised that there are enough primary schools. So everything was adjusted according to the community’s needs,” explained Eggars. “Now he’ll set up a teacher training college, a secondary school, and a micro loan program for single mothers who are entrepreneurs.”
Eggars and Achak Deng are also working on another book that will form part of the McSweeney’s Oral Histories collection. They are telling the stories of women who survived the war. While listening to the stories, Eggars said that many times he and Achak Deng had to stop and ask the women if they were OK to continue. “They would say, ‘I’m not afraid. Let’s keep going’,” says Eggars. Many Sudanese girls were kidnapped and sold into slavery or to men who they would be forced to marry. They often endured horrific beatings and rape.

By Nadine Rubin. A version of this appeared as my Made in Manhattan column in the South African Sunday Times.

On The Box

A review in The New York Times this past February described The Box thus: "A pedigreed crew is behind this surrealistic dinner-theater on the Lower East Side. Owners include Simon Hammerstein, the 28-year-old grandson of Oscar;
Randy Weiner, the “Donkey Show’’ writer; and Serge Becker, the night life impresario. The actors Jude Law and Rachel Weisz sit on the board of the opera house-cum-concert saloon. The entertainment will be eccentric: Thai fighters one night and opera singers in Mexican wrestling masks the next."

Dinner and a table from which to watch the nightly show that begins at 1am costs $125, or you can stand for a more affordable $25.

Currently on at the Box, however, is the rather uninspired and cliched show called Pandora. It’s hosted by a former Cirque Du Soleil star, MC Raven O, and boasts variety acts that are billed to be in the spirit of Ziegfeld and Busby Berkley. All that translated into rather average burlesque interspersed with a magician, a lasso champion, and a fire eater. And then there was this: overly raunchy, S&M-style acts thrown in, I would imagine, to shock. I’m no prude, so trust me when I say that they were simply not sexy even though they featured full male and female nudity. One saw MC Raven O, wearing nothing but a pig’s snout and a white blood-smeared butcher’s apron, masturbate (yes, really) and snort like a pig as a trapeze artist did the splits above his head. In another, a large woman in a leather waist-corset -- and nothing else -- pulled out a butcher's knife and ran it through her lips, spattering fake blood onto her fetish-sized breasts. The rowdy and rather drunk crowd roared their approval leaving me to wonder about the American psyche.
When it comes to sexual violence or humiliation – even if it’s make-believe – I’ve discovered I’m a Mother Grundy. If instead of Dita von Teese spinning about in a cocktail glass there’s going to be a bloody Marilyn Manson-style scene, shouldn’t there be some sort of disclaimer?

By Nadine Rubin. A version of this appeared as my Made in Manhattan column in the South African Sunday Times.