Flame, Glass and Ink are Poems, essays, and reading notes by Stefania Joori Suh

Tag: book review

  • Paul Gauguin: With Sixpences Beneath a Visiting Moon

    The Writings of a Savage by Paul Gauguin

    With sixpences beneath a visiting moon, Gauguin could produce wonder. He was an artist in an endless pursuit of the rising sun at the dawn of a day with a flaming glory in dazzling magnificence. He was an intellectual with a wealth of knowledge drawn from a wide range of reading and classical Jesuit education. Gauguin was a man of irony, with contrasting colors reflected in the soul’s spectrum, from the passionate red to the sanguine blue, hopeful green, and melancholic purple, which is why he left Vincent Van Gogh alone in Arles, in never-ending loneliness. He craved recognition in a grand salon, yet he longed for independence on an island beneath an ancient sun. So, naturally, I wanted to know about Gauguin from his own writings, not from another in the form of a biography. Hence, The Writings of a Savage by Paul Gauguin.

    The book is an attractive compendium of mostly letters to his select few friends and, occasionally, to his wife, as well as essays and articles on the arts and religion, demonstrating Gauguin’s erudition and introspection. While reading the book, I could not help but think that if he had been a professional journalist or an art critic, his artistic talent would have basked in the glorious dawn sun rather than a struggling painter always on the verge of starvation. But most of all, what I wanted to know was if Gauguin had cut off Gogh’s ear, as I heard the rumor. Before reading this book, I had already assumed Gauguin was a man of temper because his image was incompatible with the Dutch painter’s delicate, sophisticated, and sensitive appearance and temperament. But while my prejudice was not entirely faulty, Gauguin proved himself innocent as he talked about it before his impending death away from civilization. Besides, my reading of Gauguin’s writings convinced me that he was not culpable for the injury, even if some like to assemble circumstantial rumors to make the French pariah artist appear jealous and violent toward the suffering Dutch genius. Gauguin might have been passionate, but his passion is directed toward his artistic creation of the worlds he sees in his mind, while the snobbishness of critics and bureaucrats curates the works of painters who know nothing about the arts.

    Imagination, innovation, and independence are the jewels of Gauguin’s prime colors that create his artistic Elysium. Gauguin was liberal in social stance, especially against clericalism, but sovereign in his artistic philosophy that how to draw doesn’t mean an exact copy of the figure because that’s not the purpose of art for art’s sake. As the title suggests, Gauguin was a noble savage who, as a disciple of Rousseau, returned to a primordial state of humanity to escape the over-intellectualized inertia of civilization, which depreciated and ignored his art. I still can’t say the book converted me to the cult of his paintings, which differ from those of Renoir, Monet, and Pissarro. But the book is a medium of looking through the labyrinth Gauguin has built, leading to his secret garden, wondrously vibrant and dazzlingly radiant.

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  • The Housemaid by Freida McFadden – Book Review


    Being a housemaid is no easy job. Apart from daily chores, one has to ensure that one is not on the wrong side of one’s employer and family for job security. Who says it’s a lowly job for little women with no or little education when it requires guts and wits to endure all of these and those that will jeopardize her sense of existence? It would be best if you did not make your maid angry because once she is exposed to the unkindness of her employer, her ire becomes Rage, which will turn her into something of a she-hulk.

    Here comes Mille (Wilhelmina) Calloway in the house with a secret past, trying to pretend to be someone she isn’t. Never will she be the one she wants to be because normal is not normal for her. Security is insecurity, and love is betrayal, or is it ever such? That doesn’t mean she’s Devil incarnate, but a being between an angel and a human, something of a Valkyrie, trumpeting one’s death, bringing the soul to the Underworld. In this book, you will find it hard to dislike her because she will not harm you if you do not betray and hurt her. The plot is intriguing in how you see what she is and why she is the way she is. That is not to justify any wrongdoings, but the motive is free from guilt, like Robin Hood stealing treasure from the arrogant rich or, shall I say, Incredible Hulk helping the good against the wicked? You will want to know more about her and the characters who are not dull from the beginning to the end. What a twist of fate!

    A few books are written about protagonists whose livelihoods are not as glamorous or glossy as many featuring women or men with high incomes and fanciful lifestyles because being common is a trifle and, therefore, not worth writing about. But that’s a lack of imagination and creative resourcefulness, which inhibits creating a world beyond reality in the likeness of truth. In that regard, this book is a fresh breath out of stuffy air. It is a thrilling admixture of Harrison Ford’s The Fugitive, Bill Bixby’s The Incredible Hulk, and Clint Eastwood’s High Plains Drifter wrapt up in a maid’s hide.

  • ‘Shakespeare on Toast: Getting a Taste for the Bard’ by Ben Crystal -book review

    Shakespeare on Toast: Getting a Taste for the Bard by Ben Crystal

    My rating: 5 of 5 stars

    During my undergraduate years as an English major at Rutgers, Shakespeare wasn’t my favorite figure of English literature. He seemed overly hyped and scholarly to tax the enjoyment of the simple pleasure of reading. The impression of the Bard has mellowed, but he’s in the upper caste in the constellation of writers. Crystal wrote the book with me and other kindred spirits in mind.


    Shakespeare wasn’t a stuffy academic writer whose ambition was to imprint indelible footprints in the path of humankind. Instead, he was a playwright, a modern-day screenwriter who was more interested in attracting audiences to his plays as much as possible. His characters are timeless and boundless, transpiring in every human face from all races and cultures because they are universal. The plays are dramatic portrayals of what it is to be human. King Lear, played by a Korean veteran actor, begets the same level of emotions as his English peer has demonstrated because it is the heart that spurs the mind to speak.


    Crystal is a knowledgeable writer who wears his knowledge on the subject from the studies lightly with the general public in mind. His endeavor to bring the figure of the literary giant is magnanimously noble and altruistic. Perhaps Crystal might have been the one who was disaffected with those elitist writers and pedantic academics claiming Shakespeare as one of their own, only to be appreciated by the literati. In sum, if you are interested in reading Shakespeare for the first time or discovering who he was, this book is a commendable read and a good primer for further reading about his plays and more.


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  • Prompt 32

    If you could meet a historical figure, who would it be and why?

    I would like to meet Jane Austen, George Eliot, Mary Seacole, and Francis Barber, whose backgrounds and personal aspects interest me not as celebrities but as persons from my knowledge of their extraordinary lives birthing from the ordinary milieu.

    1. Jane Austen – Today, Austen is one of the most revered writers of world literature worldwide. But her novels were not regarded as a lofty tome of literature in terms of academic value in her days. Austen was not of blue stockings, but a woman attending the household cares that feminists call drudgery. She took care of her elderly father, and writing was a means of her creative outlet to express herself. Also, she was weak at spelling, just as Leo Tolstoy was. (What a relief that perfect grammarians are not necessarily great authors!) She was also unmarried, so she and I would have many things to discuss as a single woman taking care of her family with a love of writing.

    2. George Eliot – a great intellectual writer, Eliot used to churn butter out of milking the cows on her family farm. But her family denied it because it would mar her image of an intellectual as if doing chores were considered unfit for a woman of her literary status. She was a strong-minded, independent-willed woman with the power of words to compensate for her lack of physical beauty.

    3. Mary Seacole – I want to ask her how she upheld her confidence and determination to care for the wounded soldiers during the Crimean War after Florence Nightingale rejected her application to volunteer for her Nurse Corps. Her love of humanity and keen observation of societal norms and behaviors have impressed me, and I want to ask her for a word of advice.

    4. Francis Barber – Born into slavery in Jamaica, Barber was a loyal servant of English essayist and author of A Dictionary of the English Language, who took him under his protection against racial injustice and mistreatment. Johnson even bequeathed him a small fortune after his death, so Barber set up his small business and started a family with an English woman. His descendants still live in Lichfield, England. I want to meet him and ask him about what Johnson was really like – as it is the best way to know the character of one’s boss – and how his life became after the death of his master in the time when the blacks on the British Isles were conspicuously existent in small numbers. Was he treated like his counterpart in the U.S.?

    It would be best never to meet your heroes or idols in real life because you will be disappointed with their actual characters. But my list of people will not be a disappointment because they were not from the highest estate of the ether and seem approachable and relatable. Or so I should think.

  • ‘The 272: The Families Who Were Enslaved and Sold to Build the American Catholic Church’ by Rachel L. Swarns – Book Essay


    My rating: 5 of 5 stars

    I have always thought of the Catholic Church in the U.S. as a league of immigrant churches founded by the faithful of the old world diasporas uprooted in the New World. The American Catholic Church is, in a way, an outpost of the Roman Catholic Church in Europe, with its offsprings sprouting and flourishing in their ethnic enclaves, thus resulting in less spiritually cohesive, culturally solidifying characteristics in the form of different ethnic Catholic communities within the Church in the U.S. Perhaps that might be one of the reasons that there are so few black Catholics, excluding the immigrant blacks from the overseas because the Church ignored their existence as human beings except for their labor as a lucrative resource to expand their organizational dominance.


    Swarns is also mad and sad about the cruel truth about the Jesuits, whose motto was to educate the souls to train as God’s soldiers were the leaders of the slave trading in 19th century America in efforts to create America’s finest Jesuit high-education establishment called the Georgetown University. The number 272 signifies the number of blacks traded as slaves to fund the university’s administration in zealous ambition to build the Jesuit Empire in the New World. While Pope George XVI condemned slavery in his apostolic Church in 1839, blindsided by the expansionist vision, the American-born and bred Jesuits continued to ship out the blacks in their care to Louisiana by disintegrating the black families and communities to form their cultural identities and heritage.


    Catholicism is a family religion because it is usually inherited through generations. Mothers teach their daughters to say the rosary prayer and the First Communion is a family celebration. But without the secure bond of family in a stable environment, Catholicism is complex to thrive and faces discontinuation of legacy with no parents to teach it to their children. Consequently, the disintegration of black families is the sine qua non of the decline of black Catholics in the U.S. to this date. Even if the American Jesuits, including the present Georgetown administration, have expressed their regret and condolence to the 272 black people they sold for profits, the American Catholic Church should continuously endeavor to reconcile with the racialism within the Church by making all races of people welcome when they come to the Church by reaching out to the concerns of each that are universal to all of us.



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  • Letters of Note: Cats by Shaun Usher

    Letters of Note: Cats is an adoringly compiled individual narrative about their cats in an epistolary form by famous people, ranging from Nikola Testa, the Romanian prodigy of the electrical invention, to the unforgettable actress of the 20th century Elizabeth Taylor, and so on whose affection for their feline babies is universally communicable across time and space.

    Of all those words from the hearts, Elizabeth Taylor’s letter to her dear cat, who went missing after being moved to a new Californian home from their Welsh home, profoundly touches my heart. Those loves, those memories, those longings all flow from artless words written in tears and project how much she misses her flurry child without florid elaboration. Her cat is not just a “pet” but a “companion” who has seen her in the saddest moment under the darkest sky without make-up. Reading her letter, I felt like I knew the actress personally, as she shared her insecurity without such a dear friend who used to stay by her side. How would I live without my two cats by my side? I would have written a similar letter to Toro and Camille.

    The creator of this lovely anthology of letters, Shaun Usher, never seems to cease his creativity, zeal, and humanity after his first publication of Letters of Note: Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience in 2013, resulting in a decade-long successful Letters series. I have seen musicians exhausted with their creative flairs for making new albums, either by adhering to their prior hit album music style or morphing into a different avant-garde-styled musical experiment, but not Shaun Usher, whose fountain of creativity is welled from faith in humaneness universal in all humankind. It is not to lionize or canonize Usher for the Letters series, nor to idolize him mindlessly in the heat of instant adulation as a gullible reader, whom Edgar Allen Poe might have frowned upon, but as a reader of the unique third eye that can see a writer’s true colors. So, if you love cats with hearts and like to read and write letters – okay, I will also include emails for MZ generation readers – reading Letters of Cats will be a pleasure.