In Chapter 7, the men go hunting for wild turkeys, which Ruth later cooks in a scrumptious feast.  In honor of the turkey feast day coming up this month (Thanksgiving), this post spotlights some of the resources on wild turkeys we have here at Alden.

A sampling of our books about wild turkeys:

• Clancy, Gary.  Wild Turkey.   Minnetonka, MN: Cowles Creative Publishing, 1996.  (link to this book in ALICE)
• Williams, Lovett E., Jr.  Wild Turkey Country.  Minoqua, WI: Willow Creek Press, 1991. (link to this book in ALICE)
• Lewis, James C.  The World of the Wild Turkey.  Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1973.  (link to this book in ALICE)
• Platt, Carolyn V.  Creatures of Change: An Album of Ohio Animals.  Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1998. (link to this book in ALICE)

And here are some articles.  (Some of these include recipes!)

• Grivetti, Louis E., Jan L. Corlett, and Cassius T. Lockett.   ”Food in American History, Part 2: Turkey.” Nutrition Today 36.2 (2001): 88. (link to article at journal website)
• Miles, Jonathan. “Roast Wild Turkey.” Field & Stream Dec. 2008: 47.(link to article in Academic Search Complete)
• Mariani, John. “Turkey goes wild.” Sports Afield Nov. 1998: 40. (link to article in Academic Search Complete)
• LeBrun, Fred. “Game fare.” New York State Conservationist 53.2 (1998): 10. (link to this article in Academic Search Complete)
• Michael, Romano. “The Chef.” New York Times 29 Oct. 1997: 5. (link to this article at New York Times website)

Cion poster

Three events having to do with Cion are coming up in the next few weeks.  First up, on  Wednesday, October 21st, will be a screening of two short films having to do with racism:  Illusions and Blue Eyed, Brown Eyed.  These films will be shown back-to-back in Alden Library room 319 (the Friends Room) at 7 pm.

Next, on Friday, October 23rd at 1 pm, English 151 instructors Paul Shovlin and Wendy VanDellon will be discussing how they used Cion in their classes, as part of Alden’s Brown Bag Lunch Series.  This event will also be held in room 319.

We’re saving the best for last, as Zakes Mda will be reading from Cion on Tuesday, October 27th at 7 pm in Baker Center Theater.

For more information on any of these events, see the full posting on the Ohio University Libraries Newsblog.

The winner of the iPod in the Cion essay contest was Tommy Goetz, whose essay appears below.  He is pictured here with librarian Sherri Saines accepting his award.  Congratulations to Tommy, and to all the incoming students who entered this contest, thank you for sharing your insights with us!

Here is the last of our featured Cion essays, by Tommy Goetz.
 

Niall Quigley is a man who found himself looking at the same situation from a different vantage points. As a young man he sold women into bondage and was then later on illegally sold into slavery against his will. Although he was only another man’s property for a part of his life, he was a slave to slavery for the entirety of it.

From his earliest days in America, Niall encountered both racial and socioeconomic prejudice. Despite being white, he was Irish which in those days was almost the same or worse than being African. So even while he was considered a “free” man, Niall was suffering the bondage that comes with the prejudice of classification of some humans being better than other, that some humans can own others, the prejudice is part of the territory, part of the era.

I am still a slave to this prejudice. Socioeconomic prejudice enslaves majority of the modern world as affluent upper class looks down upon the bourquei middle class and proletariat lower class. Racial lines no longer define our society, as free trade and capitalism have made money play the role of measurement in society’s eyes. Money can buy the respect and power that race used to automatically award. A wealthy minority person can buy their way into affluence, where in past eras a glass ceiling would have limited them.

I encountered this socioeconomic prejudice first hand. As a high school student I attended a private upper class all boys school in the eastern suburbs of Cleveland. I was awarded financial aid because I was an athlete, but from the beginning I was nothing more than a hired hand to some people. Now not all the school was this way but Majority of the affluent WASP kind of students looked down upon me for coming from a middle of the road family. It is this judgment that enslaves not just me but majority of today’s society. Whether it is the prejudice of fearful minorities whose emotional walls block their judgment and don’t allow them to give outsiders a chance to prove their trustworthiness, or the condescending view of upper class peoples who view these minorities a subpar or second class, socioeconomic prejudice enslaves all, whether they harbor these feelings or not, they are victim to others and their judgmental ways.

The thing that sets me free is education. The gift of knowledge, that lets me see the errors in this kind of thoughts. Education sets me free from this judgment, to understand empathy and put ourselves in others shoes. Education shows us the mistakes from our pasts, the hatred it bred and why things are the way that they are today. Education is the answer, and I have been granted this gift of understanding.

So the forces of injustice in my life don’t come in the form of people but more the forces of prejudice that use people as hosts to work their webs of hate. These prejudices have worked throughout my past but thankfully the gift of education is setting me free.

Here is another exemplary effort from the Cion essays submitted over the summer.

Silence

by Sarah Sarich

 Families stand solemnly in a gravevard; their only movement comes from the tears inching down their faces as they listen to a prayer being silently spoken. Unlike his fellow mourners, Toloki is one to put on a show. He is not afraid to cause a commotion while mourning the death of a person he may or may not even know in the slightest of ways. He listens to the prayers being spoken, and he is inspired by the words in such a way that frees his mind and body to the ways of sorrow. He enters a new realm where he is free to move and cry as he pleases, and it is all choreographed to the songs and prayers of the deceased.

His wails of sorrow and despair pierce through the wind as his fellow mourners continue to faintly grieve. He cries out the name of the deceased, and he fantasizes about the life the deceased must have had. As he dances about, he throws his arms to the sky, and he creates an exciting, honorable death in his head. These thoughts keep him centered as he throws himself to the ground and right on top of the grave itself. His cries continue to build, and he rolls around on the mound trying to build up to his grand finish. The service ends, and he collapses from his exhaustion. He is satisfied with the mourning he has produced, and he knows the deceased has been properly mourned. The deceased can now be free to leave the minds of the families surrounding him, so he collects his money and searches for his next show.

Much unlike Toloki. she sits silently on a wooden pew in the church. The eulogy is spoken by a relative of the deceased, and cries echo off of the raised ceiling and back into the crowd of mourners. Most of the mourners cover their faces with a handkerchief attempting to wipe their tears of sorrow away before the salty drops of water reach their chins. but she is only capable of sitting motionless with an emotionless visage. She stares at the casket, and she knows she must be brave. A tear forms in her eye, but she fights it until it evaporates into thin air. The preacher says another prayer, but she does not listen to a word that he says. Instead, her mind races towards a happier time, and a small smile appears on her blank face.

She thinks about all of the good times and all of the bad times, and eventually she stops thinking about the deceased all together. She reminisces on the past weekends with her friends and being in the arms of the cute boy from homeroom. Her thoughts are interrupted as the service comes to a close, and she is forced back into harsh reality. She walks out of the church and steps into the long, black limo that will take her and her family to the gravesite. About twenty cars line up behind the limo, and the funeral parade turns out onto the streets of the small town.

The air is cool and crisp at the gravesite, but she can feel the heat starting to build up inside of her as she sheds her coat. Another prayer is said in a solemn and lifeless tone as the casket is lowered into the grave. More tears are shed by those around her, and she can hear wails of agony a few rows back, but she is silent and brave. She stays strong until the end, and she keeps replaying the cheerful memories in her head. As she makes her way home, she tries not to giggle as she is reminded of an event from the past weekend, but as she holds back her laughter, another tear is forming. All of the emotions are starting to attack her in full force. She steps out of the car, and she runs to her room in tears. She is finally ready to mourn in a more open manor.

Here is another outstanding entry from the Cion summer essays, by Mark J. Pierce.

After reading Cion, by Zakes Mda, I felt like I had a greater understanding of the culture and tradition surrounding Ohio University and the Athens area. Touted as fiction, I feel that the situations that the characters encounter in the book are similar to situations students at Ohio University encounter. The author seems to have had a purpose of writing in a way that the students of Athens can relate. The Halloween festival, the names of the roads, rivers, and towns all illustrate a picture for the readers. This is an informative book with an informative and sincere form of writing. Mda chose a perfect technique that allowed his writing to come off the page as more than just a novel the students were suppose to read before arrival. The story is told in way that seems like the author is telling it to every individual reader directly. It has that kind of feel like when a mother or father reads a bedtime story to their child.

I recently visited Ohio University one week before I was scheduled to move into my dorm because I was working with the Grid Iron Glory program. I had read the book prior to this visit. On my way down I noticed signs and landmarks that had been mentioned in the book. The Hocking River, the Uptown of Athens, etc. Once I remembered the familiar names, I remembered the traditions and cultures that are connected with the names. This book is the reason for that. I am a freshman at Ohio University. I have not yet experienced the customs and traditions the returning students have experienced. But I got a visual illustration in my mind of what those situations and experiences may be like due to this book. As I walked to the radio television building, I could see in my imagination all the characters in costumes the way they were described in the story. I am eager to experience this in a first person format, but it is good for freshman students to have an idea of what to expect.

I agree that this book is a fiction story, created in the mind of Zakes Mda. The characters and actions of the characters are also created in his imagination. The interesting thing is inside all the creative techniques he uses, he incorporates a theme of real and authentic places and situations in his writing.

This summer, new Ohio University students were given the opportunity to enter an essay contest on Cion.  Over the next few days we’ll be featuring some of the responses we liked the best.  (Congratulate these students if you know them!)

Mourning

by Keri Christerson

In the novel Cion by Zakes Mda, the dead as well as the past are considered very important and even revered. Memories of the dead tell an important story, and the people of Kilvert as well as the protagonist seem to understand this very well.  As the story progresses it is noticed that people in Kilvert, especially the Quigleys, take pride in their dead and make it a point to know their stories. But they mourn in a very different way than the protagonist. Growing up in a society where mourning is mainly internal, does how a person mourns change how meaningful the mourning is?  It is part of human nature to mourn someone’s death, and most of the time just mourning internally is not enough. We sometimes need a shoulder to cry on, and sometimes we may feel like wailing and moaning, declaring our temporary despair to the world. Because society frowns upon this we cannot.

The main character of the novel is a professional mourner by the name of Toloki. He has a very different way of mourning compared to our society. He is very expressive with his “style” of mourning, using dances, wails and moans drawn from his experiences to show his sadness. Being a professional, he only mourns the people he doesn’t know, even stating later in the book that he cannot properly mourn his past love, Noria, because “a doctor can’t heal himself”. Although he doesn’t know these people, however, he seems to draw the emotions from others and display them in a way that they all are too afraid to show. This makes him a very important part of many peoples’ lives.

In America’s society we are basically taught not to mourn in a way that people can see. We are used to the optimistic expressions such as ‘chin up’ or ‘things get better in time’. We are allowed to inwardly mourn for a short time, but then are supposed to move on or find therapy. I consider this very unhealthy.

I believe we should mourn however we please. If we must, we should be able to dance and moan while mourning. We should be able to cry openly without fear of being looked at in weird ways. Properly mourning is not sucking it up and forgetting about it, it is praising the dead for the wonderful lives they lived and showing their impact on our lives in whatever way we please. Not only should everyone have someone like Toloki in their lives, they should learn to be their own professional mourner.

Throughout Cion,  the character Orpah is on a quest to find a ghost orchid.  Here are some articles that will help you learn more about ghost orchids and where they actually can be found.  (Hint: it’s nowhere near Athens County.)

• Ebersole, Renee.  “A Blooming Ghost.”  Audobon.  Nov./Dec. 2007: 22. (link to this article at the magazine website)
• McClintock, Jack.  “Fakahatchee Ghosts.”  Smithsonian.  Aug. 2003: 24-7. (link to this article in Academic Search Complete)

A new school year means a whole batch of new students starting to read Cion.  Just like last year, this blog will attempt to keep you informed of Cion-related events happening across campus and bring you occasional ideas on interesting topics in the novel that you could research.  In the meantime, there’s a whole year’s worth of information here for you to look through!  So welcome, and we hope you have fun exploring this novel with us.

This video includes quotations from Cion along with drawings by the Ohio University students and musical accompaniment. Just under 8 minutes in length, this video was a student project from the 2008-2009 academic year. Used by permission. Credits are at the end.