The Michigan Daily - Monday, February 13, 1989 - Page 9 Books Continued from Page 8 Nonetheless, Acker refuses to tassign the U.S. 100 percent of the blame for Honduras' problems. Hondurans themselves, she argues, must accept part of the blame for their current troubles. Acker traces Honduras' tragedy back to the long centuries of Spanish rule, during which Honduras served as a colonial satellite not only for the metropolitan power, but for its Central American counterpart in Guatemala City, Madrid's administrative capital for the entire isthmus. Consequently, Acker argues, Honduras was less prepared for independence than any other Spanish colony. It had little sense of itself as a nation and no sense of self-government. After independence, people and forces with common interests fought instead of working together, paving the way for U.S. interventionists who were all too happy to divide and conquer. Similar forces have undermined the potential power of Honduras' popular movements, themselves the focus of four highly informative chapters. Whether she is describing the history of labor unions or peasant cooperatives, student struggles or oppositional parties, Acker's tales have a common plot line: Honduran political movements demonstrate signs of incredible power and promise, only to fall victim to the same centrifugal forces that have plagued the country since the Conquest. Acker's account of the labor movement provides a good example. A highly promising banana strike in 1954 spread to other sectors, virtually grinding the economy to a halt. But within weeks, the U.S. had managed to play on regional and ideological differences to sabotaged the strike and destroy the major unions involved. Honduras quickly went from being a potential model of labor activism in Central America to a test-case for the soon-to-be- formed AIFLD, which would subsequently sabotage unions - and governments - in countries such as Guyana and Chile. As her many similar stories make clear, Acker's account of the banana strike is a microcosm of this banana republic's history as a whole. While the U.S. did not create Honduras' problems, it has certainly exacerbated them, transforming potentially reversible liabilities into inescapable catastrophes. And Hon- duras offers little hope that conditions will improve. One can only hope, in the words of Honduran politician Efrain Diaz Arrivillaga, that the increasingly obvious consequences of a U.S. presence will "do us all a favour by bringing Hondurans together."-Mike Fischer however. The play leaves a final impression of an exciting visual and aural mon- tage without a sense of wholeness. While the play does confront the cultural myths about women. and Europeans perpetuated by this genre of film, it only brushes the surface of those myths. That is too bad, be- cause the cast gives a fine perfor- mance, and the production is techni- cally brilliant. A sharper focus and a relaxing of "avant-garde" conventions would make for a telling final effect. As it stands now, however, the play tries to take on too much, leaving the audience with scattered impres- The Last American in Paris, an avant-garde play at the Trueblood Theatre, features a roving camera onstage which emphasizes the pro- duction's cinematic influences. sions. p.m., Saturdays at S and 9 p.m., and THE LAST AMERICAN IN PARIS Sundays at 2 p.m. Tickets are $12.50 runs until Feb. 26 at the Trueblood general admission, $5 with student Theater, Thursdays and Fridays at 8 I.D. In the New World: Growing up with America from the Sixties to the Eighties By Lawrence Wright Vintage Books Paperback/$8.95 "Not another baby boom book," you moan. This one is different. My editors are always after me to "add quotes!" to my reviews. It's often quite difficult to find sentences that really bring home what the vari- ous authors are trying to say, if they have anything to say at all. But with Lawrence Wright's second novel, In the New World, I had the opposite problem; so much of what he has to say is worth remembering. Wright's book "is neither a formal history nor a straightforward memoir, but a half-breed offspring of both genres." It is history seen through the eyes of a man raised in the new world of Dallas, Texas during the era of John Kennedy and Martin Luther King. "Dallas?" you repeat with scorn. "Not a place I would want to live. Too religious, too conservative, too many cheap people despite all of their new money." Wright recognizes this attitude and works with it. He talks; politics, Vietnam, about his family, national figures, civil rights, the sexual revolution. He begins with his youth and the consequences of John Kennedy. Although the man who shot him was a Marxist and an atheist, "the Anti-Dallas, the summa- tion of all we hated and feared," the world believed Dallas "had willed [Kennedy] dead." It was an accusa- tion Dallas had to live with for a lot of years. He describes crazy Southerners who had a big effect on his outlook. Will Campbell, for instance, a Baptist preacher who was "the only white man to join Martin Luther King in forming the Southern Christian Leadership Conference." He was more commonly known as "the preacher who ministered to the Ku Klux Klan." His motto was "We are all bastards but God loves us anyway." This man helped Wright understand that he "would have to accept (himself) as a white Southern man" even though he was "never more ashamed of (himself) in that respect" (because of the damage he saw his white culture inflicting on minori- ties everywhere). Wright is a very truthful and concerned narrator. He writes that "all of us carry history about inside us, that centuries of conflict and struggle, prejudices, successes and failures, are hammered into us in the form of traits, which are as irrefutable as genes." He explains history through his own growth process. Wright describes his childhood world as so small that he "had no experience with any person of another race in Dallas, except (his family's) weekly maid. (He) was an unconscious racist." As an adult, he saw "the damage caused to minorities by white culture" and he was ashamed. After the war, looking for a job, Wright felt "queer to be the victim of discrimination, while at the same time approving of it." Later, when his boss fired him, saying "I just don't think you can get along with Black people," it was "an accusation (he) would never forgive, but also never stop wondering about, and worrying that it was true." Although the book is in part a personal history in which the author tries to come to terms with who he is, it is also a history of the world from the '60s to the '80s. He repeats everything we've always been told about the various Presidents, Vietnam... but he adds his own perspective. Sometimes he's funny, other times he's more thoughtful. He secretly liked for Khrushchev and Castro, who reminded him of "two of the Three Stooges, Curley and Moe; they were obviously having a great time." He sees Ronald Reagan as the President on horseback that Ted Dealey, publisher of the Dallas Morning News, had told President Kennedy was needed to lead the country in 1961. Reagan was also the President who broke the "evil spell" that had existed in Dallas since the death of Kennedy. The two men were so similar: "Like Kennedy, Reagan's personality - his strength and wit and charm - overwhelmed his politics. Like Kennedy, he was more illusion than retlity, more myth than man." And like Kennedy, this president was shot by a Dallasite. But this President lived and Dallas was not blamed for the attempt. From the assassination of John Kennedy to the as- sassination attempt on Ronald Reagan, this Texan travels full circle in coming to terms with himself as a white Southern man in an age when this background was not favorable. 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