REVIEWS
Three meets in Europe — one coming to Toronto

Writers, artists for peace

weeks later, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Lit-
eraturé. ‘‘He quoted Maxim Gorki,’’ Livesay told
me, “‘to the effect that writers have not the right t0 |
teach one another but only the right to learn from |
one another — to find out not what divides us but
what unites us.’ :

International Pen Club members, she said,”
spoke of ‘‘men who believe they can win a nucleal
war’’ and warned that “‘never before has mankind ?
been threatened by total annihilation. Even Hitlet_

‘would be found to be a minor criminal compared t0 |
those who start a ‘limited’ nuclear war.”’

Films

ee
Brazil’s Xica
brilliant effort

XICA. Written by Carlos Diegues and Felicio dos Santos;
directed by Diegues; cinematography, Jose Medieros;
music, Roberto Menescal and Jorge Ben. Starring Zeze Mot-
ta. A Brazilian film with English subtitles.

The co-author and director of this striking film will be remem-
bered for “‘Bye Bye Brazil,’’ recently shown here to critical and
popular acclaim. ‘‘Xica”’ (pronounced Sheika), was made six
years earlier, and perhaps it is because of the reception given the
later work that the chance was taken to present ‘‘Xica.”’ It should
prove a good gamble, although its ethics as well as its ethical
advocacies will not be received with enthusiasm by Moral
Majority-ites.

In the second half of the 18th century when Brazil was still a
colony of Portugal, those who labored in the fields and in the gold
and diamond mines were African slaves; in the homes of the
white colonialist gentry they were household domestics, some of
whom were young females who provided sexual diversion for
their masters.

Xica was such a young woman who had the fascinating com-
bination of an extraordinary talent for gratifying her master (and
his attractive, rebellious son) as well as an active determination to
be free of slavery and an equal of her masters.

When a handsome, middleaged official is sent by Portugal’s
king to become head of the diamond mining industry he becomes
Xica’s goal for freedom and soon she is not only his mistress (he
buys her) but his master (she is given her freedom and thereafter
runs him).

Her own people are overwhelmed and overjoyed by the effect
upon their masters and mistresses, and Xica is hated by the white
women in the community. Plots are hatched to cut her growing

. power, and finally when an envoy of the king arrives determined
to bring the official to his terms, she puts on an unforgettable
dinner, African style, for this ultra-elite affected nobleman,
climaxing in an African dance with a dozen beautiful Black
women. It doesn’t win him over; although drunk and seduced,
when he comes to his senses he is outraged.

She is defeated, and the vengeance of those whites who so
envied her rise to power now have a free weapon to punish her.
She faces them defiantly. Will she finally disappear so they can
sleep soundly — and smugly — again?

“

“=

During summer and autumn this year three
international conferences of writers met to discuss
their responsibilities in preventing war.

I saw Dorothy Livesay, the noted Canadian
-poet, author of a score of books, on her way home
to B.C. from one of these gatherings, the Fourth
International Writers’ Meeting held in Sofia. (She
had attended the first, in 1977.) Other Canadians
with her in Bulgaria on Sept. 29-30 and Oct. 1 were
Miriam Waddington, the poet and university
teacher who also. took part in the other con-
ferences, at Cologne and Kiel; Prof. Hedi
Bouraoui, master of Stong College at York Uni-
versity; and Greg Gatenby, organizer of the popu-
lar Toronto Harborfront public readings by writers
and also of the International Festival of Authors.
The four Canadians were among 130 writers from
56 countries. The keynote was: Peace, the Hope of
the Planet.

“Over and over again,’’ Livesay told me, that
silence is a real crime against humanity.’’ These
themes, she recalled, were carried into the second
day of discussions which concentrated on:

1 — Unity of the world-wide writers’ movement
for peace, a historical experience gained through
suffering, and a guarantee for success.

At the end of the sessions, said Livesay, who will -
be University of Toronto writer-in-residence in the |
new year, the new vice-president, the English
novelist James Aldridge, ‘tread a statement calling |
for support to Soviet President Brezhnev’s prop”
osal that all countries emulate his pledge not to be”

the first to use nuclear weapons. Aldridge also”

stressed the great importance of individuals meet |
ing each other as friends to consider their common”
problems and common ways of arousing. tg
world’s peoples for peace.

Livesay was especially impressed by one
speaker. ‘*As I look back, probably the most mov”
ing of the speeches was from a Japanese delegate.
His research had revealed that ten or more Ameri
cans had died in the Hiroshima bombing but thal |
their names had never been made public. He told
also of two tragic ‘ghosts’ at Hiroshima, both closé”
to death’s door, who had lost their facial charactet-
istics, who quarreled, accused each other, struck
blows at each other — and were locked in combat
until they both fell dead.”’

A large international gathering for peace, in Col
ogne, sponsored by the German Writers’ Union, »
and a smaller literary conference for peace, in Kiel,
were both attended by Canadian writers. a

And closer to home, on sunday, Nov. 21 from 10.
a.m. to 5 p.m. at Innis College of the University of
Toronto at 2 Sussex Ave., writers, artists, theatre
workers, film, radio and TV people, musicians and
dancers will meet at the first Toronto and region
conference of the Arts for Peace movement” :
gpnebes earlier this year.

2 — Literature for hope? Or literature for de-
spair?

3 — The translation of literature, a link between ~
national cultures and the cause of universal peace.

There was also a round-table for publishers and
writers.

Participants on that second day, she said, were
Adrian Mitchell from Britain, Jacques Cauchon
from France, Ivan Malinowski from Denmark and
many others from East and West Germany, Japan,
Mongolia, Holland, Hungary, Turkey, Spain,
Vietnam, as well as Kenya, Tunisia and Algeria.
South and Central America were well represented
by writers from Brazil, Nicaragua, Peru, Chile,
Costa Rica, Mexico and Cuba. Sessions were also
held at a writers’ residence at Varna on the Black
Sea.

A prominent literary figure present was the Col-
ombian novelist, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, author
of One Hundred Years of Solitude who, a few

— Lester Cole

— Oscar Ryat

The mounting nuclear toll “ifi?__Books |

America’s Experience with Atomic
Radiation. By Harvey Wasserman and
Norman Solomon with Robert Alvarez
and Eleanor Walters. Delta Books, 384
pp. $12.95.

Just since Killing Our Own was. pub-
lished, the following is a partial list of
nuclear power events which have taken
place in the U.S.: On July 22, it was
reported that there was indeed a core
| meltdown at Three Mile Island; the same
| day the Lawrence Livermore Labora-
tory agreed to post warning signs in En-
glish and Spanish at its explosives testing
site 15 miles southeast of Livermore be-
cause of worry that beryllium and de-
pleted uranium may have migrated to
underground water supplies in the area;
| on Aug. 4, officials announced that the
three reactors at Brown’s Ferry, the
largest nuclear power plant in the U.S.,
failed leakage tests.

The same day experts with the Atlanta
Center for Disease Control announced
that a rare and dreadful blood disease
linked to radiation exposure had been
found in seven South Carolina towns
circling the Savannah River nuclear plant
which produces all the weapons-grade
plutonium in the U.S.

That is just to indicate the unceasing

KILL OUR OWN — The Disaster of

nature of the problem so thoroughly
explored and exposed in Killing Our
Own. There is just no way to keep up
with the disasters, the warnings, the
accumulation of horror.

Indeed, the worldwide nuclear
disarmament campaign in the 1980s may
‘*hold the key to all of human history,”
the authors conclude.

They also conclude that ‘‘there is no
peaceful atom,’’ and the powerful evi-
dence they present should be studied by
all students of this question (and we are
all students of this question).

They believe that ‘‘ultimately the
‘peaceful atom’ may be remembered less
for its ability to generate electricity than
for its function as a radioactive warning
beacon,”’ that if present health indicators
are correct, it may take far less radiation
to do terrible and irreversible damage to
human and animal health than was ever
imagined.

A thread running through the book is
the campaign of lies and distortions, the
coverups, the withholding of dangerous
evidence by the government and private
industry. Back in 1958, for example,
when the U.S. exploded 77 nuclear
weapons in the Pacific Ocean and in
Nevada, there was an “emergency”
radioactive situation in Los Angeles, but

the word put out was ‘‘harmless.”’

After all, said Lauriston S. Taylor, di-
rector of the Atomic Radiation Physics
Division of the U.S. Bureau of Stan-
dards: ‘‘If you ever let these (actual)
numbers get to the public, you have bag
it-?4

Such has been the history. Suchis still
the history. It’s all in the book — both
wartime and peacetime applications of
nuclear power. Some of it is well known
by now. Some received little publicity. It
was only comparatively recently that the
full-scale horror of the use of American
soldiers as experimental animals came
out; it has come out as these men sicken
and die; there were hundreds of thou-
sands of them.

There is also a section on use and mis-

use of medical x-rays and job dangers for -
nuclear workers. Read about the practice:

of ‘‘body banking.’’ Read about the dan-
gers of mammography, the risks for
radiation-induced breast cancer being
higher than for all other radiation-
induced cancers.

In his introduction to Killing Our Own,
Dr. Benjamin Spock appeals for citizens
to demand “‘our government stop stalling
and get on with the negotiation of a true
disarmament with the Soviet Union.”’

Whether or not the reader believes, as

Spock does, that energy needs can be
solved by other than nuclear means, his
advice that people read the evidence of
‘past and future damage”’ is also good
advice.

— Vivian Raineri

Dr. Benjamin Spock, (I), during a visit in

1977 to an international children’s festi-: -

val in the Soviet Union.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—NOVEMBER 5, 1982—Page 10