Apr 22, 2008 8:00 AM

Campus authors offer adventures for the mind

UCLA's campus once again played host to thousands of readers of all ages who come for one weekend each year to hear from their favorite blockbuster authors and from panelists who explore all facets of writing as well as issues of the day. Billed as the nation's premier public literary festival and the largest event of its kind on the West Coast, the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books in association with UCLA took place April 26-27.

This is also the time of the year when we at UCLA Today salute our own faculty and staff authors with new works published in 2007 and 2008. Here are just a few who have enlightened and entertained us:

"The Mindful Brain: Reflection and Attunement in the Cultivation of Well-Being" (W.W. Norton & Co., 2007) by Daniel J. Siegel

The burgeoning field of mindfulness, which can start sounding like a lot of "be here now" mumbo-jumbo, gets a healthy dose of scientific support in this book by Siegel, psychiatrist and co-director of UCLA's Mindful Awareness Research Center. His research interests focus on interpersonal neurobiology — how our relationships help shape our lives and our brains. As such, he takes mindfulness beyond navel-gazing into the realms of healthy child development, satisfying relationships and cohesive community. "We are in desperate need of a new way of being — in ourselves, in our schools, and in our society," he writes. "Our modern culture has evolved in recent times to create a troubled world with individuals suffering from alienation, schools failing to inspire and to connect with students, in short, society without a moral compass."

Mindfulness, he says, has to do with "waking up from a life on automatic," becoming attuned to what's going on around us, whom we're with and who, deep down, we each are — a far cry from the multitasking, Blackberry-driven existence too many of us lead. "If our attention is on something other than what we are doing for most of our lives we can come to feel empty and numb," Siegel writes. Worst-case scenario: We mindlessly react to situations, others mindlessly react to us, and before we know it, we're at war with each other.

The book combines personal reflection coupled with descriptions of research studies and details on brain circuitry — a bit challenging, but ultimately, a mind-expanding read.

— JUDY LIN

"Enlightenment in the Colony: The Jewish Question and the Crisis of Post-colonial Culture" (Princeton University Press, 2007) by Aamir R. Mufti

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On Dec. 6, 1992, hordes of Hindu fanatics demolished a mosque in central India as paramilitary troops stood "helplessly" by. The state-backed sacrilege ignited Hindu-Muslim riots of such ferocity that people were reminded of 1947, when India was partitioned along religious lines amid an orgy of violence that claimed 2 million lives.

For India's Muslims, "Dec. 6" is the South Asian equivalent of 9/11 — a reminder of their chronic insecurity and identity crisis. It is also the starting point for Aamir R. Mufti's bold, brilliant and capacious narrative about the predicament of Muslims as a persecuted minority — and its cultural and normative links with the perennial "Jewish question."

The Jews are the first so-called minorities of the modern era, according to Mufti. They were uprooted from their cultural moorings in post-Enlightenment European nation-states such as France, Britain and Germany. Much of the political language associated with minorities elsewhere — concepts such as "minority rights," "separatism" and their willingness or reluctance to embrace "secularism" — were first personified in the Jewish experience.

Through a series of skillful readings, Mufti examines the emergence of "Jewishness as minority" in Europe — and how the idea of minorities made its way into British colonies, particularly India in the mid-19th century. An associate professor of comparative literature, he delves into German, English and Urdu literature to explore India's partition against this broader historical canvas.

This book has been hailed as both a dazzling and profound comparative account of Jewish and Muslim minority-ness. Anyone who wants to truly understand how those twin issues continue to fuel conflicts in the Middle East and South Asia ought to read it. — AJAY SINGH

"Beyond Bullsh*t" (Stanford University Press, 2008) by Samuel A. Culbert

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Few workplace challenges are as vexing as figuring out the difference between good business communications and the kind of verbal fog that slows production, hampers creativity and creates misunderstanding among teammates. But Culbert, an Anderson School of Management professor, separates straight talk from nonsense in his latest book, "Beyond Bullsh*t."

"Beyond Bullsh*t" reveals the dynamics of office baloney and why it has become the corporate etiquette of choice. It also explains how telling it straight contributes to personal well-being and business success. Readers will find this book personal — which is unusual for a "business book"; they will think that many of the stories are about them. They will be engaged and delighted as the text demystifies the obstacles to getting beyond bullsh*t and guides them in developing straight-talk relationships at work.

Culbert has been educating students and consulting with corporations on effective business practices for decades. Among his other books are "Don't Kill The Bosses!" (2001) and "Mind-Set Management: The Heart of Leadership" (1994). He received the American Association of Publishers Best Management Book of the Year award for his 1980 book, "The Invisible War: Pursuing Self-Interests At Work." And he was a recipient of the Harvard Business Review McKinsey Award.

— JACK FEUER

"Beg No Pardon" (Perugia Press, 2007) by Lynne Thompson

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Thompson's first book of poetry partly owes its existence to her decision 13 years ago to stop practicing law and take a job as director of employee and labor relations with Campus Human Resources. "I came here specifically saying to myself, 'Any extra hours I had, I wanted to devote to writing.' That's when I started seriously committing myself to it," she recalled.

Poetry became her second life, claiming her early morning and evening hours. Weekends, too, were reserved for more writing, workshops, readings. In between, she studied with USC Professor/ poet David St. John and others. With poems lushly drawn from her life and her perspectives as a woman of color, an adoptee who met her natural mother for the first time when Thompson was 20, she has assembled a gem-packed book that reverberates with the rich sounds and rhythms she has been hearing all her life with her poet's soul.

In "How I Learned Where We Come From," you can almost hear the calypso of the Caribbean in Thompson's homage to her adoptive parents. "When I wrote that poem, I found my voice, my style, my rhythm," she said. Her poetry, she recognized, is "inspired by all the music I've ever heard, as well as the way words sound as they bump up against each other."

Winner of the 2008 Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award, Thompson will be doing a 15-minute reading at the book festival's poetry stage at 3:30 p.m. April 26.

— CYNTHIA LEE

"Calligraphy of the Witch: A Novel" (St. Martin's Press, 2007) by Alicia Gaspar de Alba

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At first glance, there would seem to be little connection between the real-life heroine Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz — a 17th-century Mexican nun and poet considered by many to be the first feminist of the Americas — and the 17th-century witchcraft trials of Salem, Mass. But in her third novel, Gaspar de Alba, chair and professor in the César E. Chávez Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies, skillfully weaves her two passions into a fascinating historical drama.

The story centers on Concepción Benavídez, a young mestiza who serves as an assistant to Sor Juana in a Mexico City convent. Concepción's life takes many tragic twists and turns, including being captured by pirates, taken to Boston and sold as a slave to a local merchant. Renamed Thankful Seagraves, Concepción discovers she is pregnant by the pirate captain and eventually gives birth to a daughter, Hanna. When the hysteria of the Salem witchcraft trials sweeps over the colony, however, Hanna soon renounces her own mother and declares her a witch.

"'Calligraphy of the Witch' brings the historical animosities between the English and the Spanish, the Protestants and the Catholics, to the forefront and helps explain the deep vein of anti-Mexican sentiment that pervades the United States," Gaspar de Alba said. "But the novel also works as an allegory for the persecution of immigrants for being of a different color, religion and language by people who themselves immigrated to the land they now occupy and claim as their own."

— WENDY SODERBURG

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