In Print
Sandy Tawake's "Cultural Rhetoric in Coming Out Narratives: Witi Ihimaera's The Uncle's Story" appears in the August/November 2006 issue of World Englishes (25).  According to Tawake: "The article considers the representations of self in the novel created by New Zealand Maori Witi Ihimaera that both challenge and sustain essential notions of sexual identity and contemporary theories of rhetorical practice."  From the publisher of The Uncle's Story (2000): "Armed with his uncle's diary, Michael Mahana goes searching for the truth, about the secret the Mahana family has kept hidden for over thirty years, and what happened to uncle Sam.  Set in the war-torn jungles of Vietnam and in present day New Zealand and North America, Witi Ihimaera's dramatic novel combines the superb story telling for which he is so renowned with the unflinching realism that made The Whale Rider a literary and cinematic success.  A powerful love story bravely told, it courageously confronts Maori attitudes to sexuality and masculinity and contains some of Ihimaera's most passionate writing to date."  For more information about Ihimaera, please see: http://www.bookcouncil.org.nz/writers/ihimaerawiti.html

Mikko Tuhkanen's afterword to the first Finnish publication of Frederick Douglass's 1845 narrative: "Kuolema ja kirjallisen kokemus: Frederick Douglass orjuutta vastaan," [Death and the Experience of the Literary: Frederick Douglass Against Slavery] appears in Frederick Douglass, Amerikkalaisen orjan omaelamankerta, translated by Pekka Jaaskelainen  (Helsinki: Like, 2006).

Pat Bizzaro's poem, "Turning Fifty: Listening to Wynton Marsalis' 'The Midnight Blues' appears in the Jazz Issue of the Asheville Poetry Review 13.1 (2006).  The poem is dedicated to Billie Collins.  Also, Bizzaro's essay "Poetic Fictions: Narrative Fictions and Point of View" appears in this same issue.  Asheville Poetry Review, edited by Keith Flynn, is "a biannual literary journal that publishes 160–200 pages of poems, interviews, translations, essays, historical perspectives and book reviews.  Since its inception, Asheville Poetry Review has published over 600 new and established writers from 14 different countries, including Robert Bly, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Joy Harjo, Gary Snyder, Sherman Alexie, Eavan Boland, R. S. Thomas, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Fred Chappell, Ciaran Carson and Colette Inez.  From its first regional issue, Asheville Poetry Review has grown into an international publication with distribution in 35 states and 5 European countries."

Michael Aceto's "Statian Creole English: an English-derived language emerges in the Dutch Antilles" appears in the August/November 2006 issue of World Englishes (25). According to the abstract: "This paper examines data gathered via fieldwork from St Eustatius, an island in the Dutch Caribbean. This English variety displays a handful of correspondences with other Englishes spoken in geographically proximate areas, but what is most noteworthy about this restructured English is that so much of its grammar is significantly different from many of those same nearby varieties. Historical, linguistic, and ethnographic data are interwoven to make the case that Statian English sounds different from most other Englishes of the Caribbean basin because the colonizing and settlement patterns of the island differed from plantation societies focusing on the production of cash crops. St Eustatius was a commercial center instead, offering an entrepôt for goods (and, at times, slaves) for sale to customers from the eastern rim of the Americas. In this import-export context, English as a lingua franca of trade emerged with its own distinctive cluster of features."   For the full article, please  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1467-971X.2006.00480.x

Don Palumbo's review of Debbora Battaglia's E. T. Culture: Anthropology in Outer Spaces is included in the December issue of The Journal of American Culture (29:4).  From the publisher:  "Anthropologists have long sought to engage and describe foreign or 'alien' societies, yet few have considered the fluid communities centered around a shared belief in alien beings and UFO sightings and their effect on popular and expressive culture.  Opening up a new frontier for anthropological study, the contributors to E.T. Culture take these communities seriously.  They demonstrate that an E.T. orientation toward various forms of visitation-including alien beings, alien technologies, and uncanny visions-engages primary concepts underpinning anthropological research: host and visitor, home and away, subjectivity and objectivity.  Taking the point of view of those who commit to sci-fi as sci-fact, contributors to this volume show how discussions and representations of otherworldly beings express concerns about racial and ethnic differences, the anxieties and fascination associated with modern technologies, and alienation from the inner workings of government.  According to Palumbo: "It's out there."

Lisa DeVries's interview with young adult fiction writer Elisa Carbone appears in this issue of The Common Reader.  Carbone is the author of eight works of fiction.  Her latest, and most controversial, is Last Dance on Holladay Street, (Knopf, 2005) a story about a 13 year-old girl in a brothel in Denver during the latter half of 19th century.  The novel is based on historical accounts researched by Carbone.  DeVries's interview reveals how and why the author transforms this material into a powerful narrative for today's young adults growing up in the middle of a media-driven sexualized culture.  Carbone read from her work at the 3d Annual Eastern North Carolina Literary Homecoming.  Her book Storm Warriors (2001) tells a tale about the life-saving station at Pea Island on the Outer Banks.

Jerry Leath Mills is the author of nine articles in the recently published Encyclopedia of North Carolina, edited by William S. Powell (UNC Press, 2006): "Catalpa Tree"; "Gimghoul Castle"; "'It's a Damn Long Time Between Drinks'"; "Junebugs"; "Mules"; "Plott Hound"; "Poole Bills"; "Snipe Hunting"; and "Southern Part of Heaven."  Mills also contributed research for "Breads"; "Inns and Taverns"; and "Wildlife."  Mills writes: "'It's a Damn Long Time between Drinks' is the famous statement allegedly made by North Carolina governor John Motley Morehead during a tense visit from South Carolina governor James H. Hammond in the 1840s.  While in the midst of a long and heated argument, Morehead supposedly uttered the phrase, which had the effect of lessening the hostilities and restoring good will between the two men.  Another possible origin of the quotation dates to 1838, when North Carolina governor Edward B. Dudley purportedly said it while he and South Carolina governor Pierce Mason Butler were taking refreshments at the Nancy Jones House on a trip between Raleigh and Chapel Hill.  North Carolina author Thomas Wolfe's Of Time and the River (1935) contains an allusion to the phrase in a scene in which the protagonist sits in an English pub: 'Eugene's glass was almost empty and he looked at it, and wondered if he ought to have another.  He thought they made them very small, and kept thinking of the governors of North and South Carolina.'  The quotation has been used at least since 1891 as a catch-phrase for any long and tedious process.  It acquired new meaning and renewed popularity after 1933 when, despite the repeal of national Prohibition, selling liquor by the drink remained illegal in both North Carolina and South Carolina.  Railway passengers traveling from Washington, D.C., to Atlanta found themselves faced with 'a long time between drinks' because of the train's closed bar."

Bryan Oesterreich's article about the Marine's Toys for Tots program, "Convoys of Toys," appears in the current December issue of Our State Magazine.  Oesterreich writes: "The word 'Marines' evokes many images, most relating to men and women training for or engaging in military actions around the world in defense of our country.  That's because that's what they do, most of the time.  When the Christmas season approaches, however, many of those same Marines show that even the strongest have compassion for the weakest -- the children who, were it not for the Toys for Tots program, would probably face a very bleak Christmas morning."  This is Oesterreich's 20th published article in Our State.