The Midwest Quarterly; Vol. 34 No. 2

Authors

• Peter Scheckner
• Eugene Kraft
• Michael Jeffrey
• Irvin D. Solomon
• Thomas Whigham
• Ronald Larson
• Steve Broidy
• Carl Buchanan
• Charles Bukowski
• Trent Busch
• Duane K. Caylor
• Patricia Fargnoli
• Judy Goldman
• Sidney L. Hall Jr.
• Patricia Hooper
• Bob Kaven
• Victor Pearn
• Joe Salerno
• Rebecca Thompson
• Robert Tremmel
• Richard W. Slatta
• Thomas R. Walther
• Midwest Quarterly Editors

Contents

ARTICLES 

E .T. and the Beijing Spring Movement: American Culture, Chinese Values 

Marathon Man: Ending at the Beginning 

Fish and Funny Money, or Isn't That in South America Somewhere? 

Latin American Women in Literature and Reality: Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude 

A Day at the Plaza 

Democratic Inevitability and Its Consequences: A Sketch of Alexis de Tocqueville's Sociology 

POEMS  

February  

How a Sunset Works 

depression kid 

The Box  

Backwater  

Weed in Drought 

Getting My Children to Rub My Feet 

The Cold 

The Fox 

Spring Snow 

The Rye Field 

Winter Rain Poem 

Fifteenth Child  

Waking Up In New Jersey 

Afternoon of a Yawn 

Prajna Paramita  

REVIEWS 

Donald Worster; Under Western Skies: Nature and History in the American West 

Albro Martin; Railroads Triumphant: The Growth, Rejection, and Rebirth of a Vital American Force 

Abstract

During the 1989 democracy demonstrations in China, Americans struggled to understand, and in so doing challenged their own stereotypes about the people of China. PETER SCHECKNER, who with his wife was then teaching American culture in Beijing at a tourist college, had hoped to challenge his Chinese students' stereotypes about American society and found his expectations repeatedly called into question. Author of books on D. H. Lawrence and Chartist poetry, Scheckner is Associate Professor of English at Ramapo College of New Jersey.

The great truths often present themselves to us repeatedly and in unlikely circumstances, as EUGENE KRAFT demonstrates in his essay on Ghandi, success, Kansas small towns, and Washington, D.C. Born in Kansas, lecturer in universities in eight countries, and now teacher at the University of Guam, Kraft is the author of numerous articles, primarily in the areas of creative writing and black studies.

Helping others help themselves is a noble ambition, but first, as MICHAEL JEFFREY suggests in this reflection on his Peace Corps experience in Sierra Leone, they must want to be helped and must understand the help that is offered. Jeffrey is currently Jacob K. Javits Fellow and International Fellow at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs where he is studying International Political Economy. He has published essays in several publications.

Taking Gracia Marquez's acclaimed novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude, as representative of the realist school of writing in Latin America, IRVIN D. SOLOMON examines the author's traditionalist attitude toward a woman's role in society and suggests the ways in which a feminist viewpoint may alter Latin American literature. Author of many articles and a monograph, Feminism and Black Activism in Contemporary America, on feminist and African-American studies, Solomon currently teaches history and Third World Studies at Edison Community College in Florida.

STEVE BROIDY is a professor of educational philosophy, with a special interest in speech-act theory, at Southwest Missouri State University in Springfield.

CARL BUCHANAN, Indianapolis, Indiana, recently published an essay and some poems about Jack-the-Ripper in Kansas Quarterly.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI' s latest book is The Last Night of the Earth Poems (Black Sparrow Press, 1992).

TRENT BUSCH has published poetry in Poetry, Hudson Review, Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, and numerous other journals. He currently teaches English at Valdosta State College in Georgia.

DUANE K. CAYLOR is a family physician in Pardeeville, Wisconsin. His poems have been published in Kansas Quarterly, Blue Unicorn, Plains Poetry Journal, and other magazines.

PATRICIA FARGNOLI, Windsor, Connecticut, is a clinical social worker whose poems have appeared in Zone 3, Wisconsin Review, Yankee, and other journals.

JUDY GOLDMAN, Charlotte, North Carolina, has published poetry in Southern Review, Shenandoah, Prairie Schooner, Yankee, and other journals. Her collection of poems, Holding Back Winter, won a North Carolina Poetry Council Award.

SIDNEY L. HALL, JR., has farmed, taught Latin, run a printing business, and edited a newspaper. He has published poems in Mudfish, and lives in Brookline, New Hampshire.

PATRICIA HOOPER, Bloomfield Township, Michigan, has published a children's book and has had poems in Poetry, American Poetry Review, The American Scholar, and other journals. Her poetry collection, Other Lives, won the Farber First Book Award in 1984 from the Poetry Society of America.

BOB KAVEN has published poetry in The American Poetry Review, The Georgia Review, The Nation, The New Yorker, Prairie Schooner, and other journals. He lives in Somerville, Massachusetts.

VICTOR PEARN has published poems in Pikestaff, Colorado North Review, and other journals. His chapbook, Blame It on the Lightning Bolt (MAF Press), was published in 1989. He is assistant poetry editor of Red Dirt, and lives in Boulder, Colorado.

JOE SALERNO, who has been "waking up in New Jersey" for many years, has thought about moving to more exotic places, like Kansas, but is not sure he could stand the shock. Besides, he enjoys the tragic grandure of New Jersey's highway system and loves to picnic with his family at the Walt Whitman and Joyce Kilmer rest stops on the NJ Turnpike.

REBECCA THOMPSON, Washington, D. C., has published poems in both the U. S. and abroad. She teaches poetry at the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington and at George Mason University.

ROBERT TREMMEL teaches writing at Iowa State University. He has recently published his first book, Driving the Milford Blacktop (BkMk).

The focus for and mirror of life in Paraguay remains the Plaza Uruguaya, and, as THOMAS WHIGHAM shows, the people there have seen--and endured--many changes, some with stoicism, some with resignation, and some with an unbending dignity not entirely justified by their present circumstances. Having published scholarly articles on Latin American topics, a recent Spanish-language monograph (La yerba mate del Paraquay) on the history of mate tea from the late colonial period until the 1870s, and a 1991 book on economic history, The Politics of River Trade: Tradition and Development in the Upper Plata, 1780-1870, Whigham is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Georgia.

Americans abroad encounter attitudes apparently foreign to their own. Foreigners, such as Crèvecoeur or Alexis de Tocqueville, the latter the subject of RONALD LARSON's essay here, have also tried to puzzle out what made Americans different from themselves. In Larson's reading, the democratic and individualist impluses so firmly rooted in the United States have led irresistably to powerful, centralized institutions and might ultimately result in a humane, hedonistic global state not unlike Aldous Huxley's Brave New World! Professor of Social Science at Wytheville Community College in Virginia, Larson has for many years studied the advent and nature of totalitarianism, an interest which has resulted in several previous articles, including one on totalitarianism and anti-Semitism published in these pages.

RICHARD W. SLATTA, Professor of History at North Carolina State University, is the author of Cowboys of the Americas, Gauchos and the Vanishing Frontier, and Bandidos: The Varieties of Latin American Banditry.

THOMAS R. WALTHER, Professor of History and chair of the P.S. U. department, specializes in economic and western history, with primary emphasis on Kansas and Native Americans.

ANNOUNCING THE ANNUAL VICTOR J. EMMETT, JR., MEMORIAL PRIZE AND LECTURE

The editors of The Midwest Quarterly invite submission of articles on any aspect of Victorian and Modern British literature to be considered for the annual Victor J. Emmett, Jr., Memorial Prize. The winning article will be published in The Midwest Quarterly, and the author will receive an honorarium and will be invited to Pittsburg State University to deliver the annual Victor J. Emmett, Jr., Memorial Lecture. The late Victor J. Emmett, Jr., was for many years Professor of English at Pittsburg State University and this journal's Editor-in-Chief.

Permissions to Use

In accordance with database agreements, the full text of the issue is not available for download. Pittsburg State Digital Commons has only provided the front matter for author and publication information.

Recommended Citation

Scheckner, Peter; Kraft, Eugene; Jeffrey, Michael; Solomon, Irvin D.; Whigham, Thomas; Larson, Ronald; Broidy, Steve; Buchanan, Carl; Bukowski, Charles; Busch, Trent; Caylor, Duane K.; Fargnoli, Patricia; Goldman, Judy; Hall, Sidney L. Jr.; Hooper, Patricia; Kaven, Bob; Pearn, Victor; Salerno, Joe; Thompson, Rebecca; Tremmel, Robert; Slatta, Richard W.; Walther, Thomas R.; and Midwest Quarterly Editors (1993) "The Midwest Quarterly; Vol. 34 No. 2," The Midwest Quarterly: A Journal of Contemporary Thought: Vol. 34: Iss. 2, Article 1.
Available at: https://digitalcommons.pittstate.edu/mwq/vol34/iss2/1