Jean’s Pick of the Week (watch video): Inside Islam: Wham, Bam, Islam! The Power of Comics: There were so many refreshing dimensions to our show with Dr. Naif Al-Mutawa, the creator of The 99, the first comic book series to come out of the Middle East, featuring 99 Muslim superheroes based on the 99 attributes of Allah. This was truly an Inside Islam show in that Naif was candid about his complex intention: to erase western misconceptions about Islam, but also to “try to fix Islam from the inside.” He’s concerned about the black and white world view that so many of his fellow Muslims seem to be stuck in. His own work has been banned. He’s also very concerned with issues of intolerance, and came to writing comics out of his experiences as a clinical psychologist working with torture victims – former prisoners of war in Kuwait and the Survivors of Political Torture unit of Bellevue Hospital in New York. He’s fast, he’s funny, and he’s just what the world needs right now.
Monday: Fortunate Sons (encore): What happened when the Qing dynasty sent 120 boys to go to school in the US in 1872? The boys got good at baseball and picked up nicknames like By-Jinks Johnnie and Fighting Chinee. But they also confronted a struggle between traditionalism and modernity that ended up influencing both China and the U.S. (Rebroadcast from 2/3/11)
Tuesday: Beyond the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (encore): In the last 20 years Noir has gone global, with Swedish fiction writer Stieg Larsson copping the number two place as best selling author in the US, and crime fiction showing up in countries like Algeria, Turkey, and India. Join us with Detectives Beyond Borders blogger Peter Rozovsky and Delhi Noir editor Hirsh Sawhney. (Rebroadcast of "Tracking the Global Gumshoe" from 8/5/09)
Wednesday: Tuesdays with Morrie, Russian-Style: In the 1980’s, Wisconsinite Lisa Paul was a college student in Moscow studying Russian under the wing of an outspoken Jewish Soviet dissident. In her new book, Swimming in the Daylight, she tells the harrowing story of how she put her own life on the line in her campaign to win freedom for her beloved teacher.
Thursday: On a Wing and a Prayer: Could anything be crazier than a Muslim-American learning to fly a plane in post 9/11 USA? I met Monem Salam a few months ago at a conference in Bloomington, Indiana, where he told his hilarious and touching story of how he fulfilled his lifelong dream to become a pilot in spite of his bad timing, and lived to make a PBS award-winning documentary film about it.
Friday: Beyond the Pasta: Mark Leslie didn’t just want to eat Italian food; he wanted to learn how to cook from a real Italian family. From the family in Viterbo that took him in, he not only learned how to cook, but how to live in a whole new way.
I’ll be attending a summit on US Citizen Diplomacy with Wisconsin’s former Lieutenant Governor Barbara Lawton on Monday and Tuesday of next week – back on Wednesday.
Stay tuned!
Jean
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