Anna Deavere Smith; the award-winning playwright and actor; has spent a lifetime listeningmdash;really listeningmdash;to the people around her. As a child in the segregated Baltimore of the early 1960s; Smith absorbed the words of her parents; teachers; neighborsmdash;even train conductorsmdash;and realized that there was something more being communicated than the actual words:The conductors voice had a mild kind of grandeur that was a cousin to the vocal tones I had heard at funeralsmdash;"Ashes-to-ashes"mdash;and at christenings and weddings. These are words that have been said many times; but the person who speaks them understands that each time it must be said as if it matters; because it does matter. We never know what lies ahead; and we never know what just happened; and all words must house respect of those two unknowns.In Talk to Me; Smith looks back at a singular career as a seeker and interpreter of language in America; revealing the methodology behind her extraordinary search for the truth and nuances of verbal communication. For thirty years; the defining thesis of Smiths work has been that how we speak is just as important in communicating truth and identity as what we say. Everything from individual vocal tone to grammar; Smith demonstrates; can be as identifiable and revealing as a fingerprint. Her journey has taken her from the rarefied bastions of academia to riot-torn streets; she has conducted hundreds of interviews with subjects ranging from women prisoners to presidents of the United States. In 1995; her ongoing investigation led her to Washington; D.C. After all; what better place to wage an inquiry into the power of language and the language of power than in the city where "message" is a manufactured product? What happens when we as citizens acceptmdash;which we seem to be doing more and moremdash;our chosen leaders failure to tell the truth? And how can we know that we are hearing what Washington really has to say when everything we receive is filtered through the media? Armed with a blazing intellect and a tape recorder; Smith tackled these questions head-on; conducting more than four hundred interviews with people both inside and outside the power structure of Washington. She recorded these sessions in her trademark verbatim transcripts; which include every tic and verbal utterance of her subjects. More than thirty of these remarkable documents appear in this book; including interviews with Bill Clinton; Anita Hill; Studs Terkel; George Bush; Mike McCurry; and Helen Thomas. After five years of searing investigation into the world of the politicians; spin doctors; and power brokers who are steering the course of our country from inside the beltway; Smith has come away with a revelatory assessmentmdash;by turns devastating and hopefulmdash;of the lexicon of power and politics in America. Talk to Me is a landmark contribution from a woman whose pioneering insights into language speak volumes.
#1036020 in eBooks 2001-01-18 2001-01-18File Name: B000FC1KMK
Review
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful. A must for ballet teachers and studentsBy Gary EchternachtEvery ballet teacher and student should read this book. At $95 for the hardcover book; its overpriced. I bought the kindle version for a quarter of that and it worked just fine. The purpose of the book is to bring the basic principles one finds in Lewiss book The Illustrated Dance Technique of Jose Limon to the ballet class. Those principles are good because they are more descriptive of what a student should sense and feel while working in class than are the French terms that make up the ballet vocabulary. At least thats the case for those of us who dont speak French. Paskevska introduces each principle and discusses how each applies to different movements in ballet class. Particulary helpful is her presentation of an actual class where each movement is broken down in terms of the various principles. Although the writing is overly academic and contains some of the silly notions about human physiology that one often hears in the ballet world; these are relatively minor. Ive read the book three times and find myself increasingly thinking of the principles in my own ballet and modern classes. I urge other students to buy the book and do the same.