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Tuesday, January 06, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-JournalLas Vegas to become city of asylum for dissident writers
Correction on 01/07/04 -- A headline in Tuesday's Review-Journal on a story regarding the International Network of Cities of Asylum was outdated. Las Vegas became a city of asylum in 2000, as the story states. Now the city will be home to the North American regional office of the dissident writers' group.
Mayor Oscar Goodman expected to make announcement todayBy LISA KIM BACH
REVIEW-JOURNAL
The Historic Fifth Street School in downtown Las Vegas will be the new North American hub for the International Network of Cities of Asylum, an organization for dissident writers.
Photo by Craig L. Moran.
Las Vegas is about to become the first North American gateway for dissident writers who seek a safe harbor from repressive governments.The International Network of Cities of Asylum, based in Paris and formerly known as the International Parliament of Writers, is opening a regional office in the historic Fifth Street School at 400 Las Vegas Blvd. South.
Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman is expected to announce the city's role in supporting the organization today during his State of the City address. A lease has not yet been finalized, but the office is expected to open by March 1.
Nigerian Noble laureate Wole Soyinka, immediate past president of the international body, said Monday the primary mission of the regional office will be to expand the cities of asylum network in the United States, Canada, Mexico and Central America so that refuge can be provided to endangered writers as quickly as possible. It's the same mission that, for the past decade, has driven the international writers' group, which previously focused its efforts in Western Europe.
At this time, Soyinka said the network is trying to place about 20 writers who are seeking to escape persecution. The organization also has regional offices in Italy and France.
"The demand always exceeds our resources," said Soyinka, who holds the Elias Ghanem Chair of Creative Writing at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. "We have writers on our waiting list from North Africa, Central Africa, Chechnya, the former Soviet Union, Iran. There is one from Afghanistan."
They all have one thing in common.
"They are trying to survive," said Soyinka, a playwright, poet and novelist who himself was a political prisoner from 1967 to 1969, a time of civil war in Nigeria.
Las Vegas became the first U.S. City of Asylum in 2000. The larger role it now will play in the international group is a natural expansion of that, said Sarah Ralston, who is executive director of the nascent North American Cities of Asylum Network. The city is definitely a draw, Ralston said, which works in the group's favor when trying to attract support and involvement from the literary community.
"This is the best place in the world to do this," Ralston said. "Everyone with a 140 IQ on down wants to see Las Vegas."
The authors sheltered in Las Vegas so far include poet Syl Cheney-Coker, who fled Sierra Leone in 1997 after a military coup, and Er Tai Gao, a Chinese writer and painter who spent 20 years in labor camps for what authorities dubbed "seditious conduct." Cheney-Coker returned to his country in 2003. Er Tai Gao, 67, now resides in Las Vegas and is working on the third volume of his memoir "To Seek My Homeland." Gao fled China in 1992 after the communist government prohibited him from leaving or writing again.
Money for the local asylum program comes from donations made through the Institute of Modern Letters at UNLV. The current president of the international group is American novelist Russell Banks, author of "The Sweet Hereafter" and "Affliction."
Salman Rushdie, who lived under a death threat from Islamic extremists after publication of "The Satanic Verses," was sheltered and also became one of the presidents of the former International Parliament.
Glenn Schaeffer, the institute's founder and Mandalay Resort Group president, is a major benefactor of the asylum program. Soyinka said that Schaeffer's activism is a large part of reason the network's North American hub is coming to Las Vegas. Until it's recognized as a not-for-profit group by the federal government, the North American region office will operate as an extension of the Institute for Modern Letters.
Schaeffer is excited about the heightened profile Las Vegas is gaining in literary circles. Becoming a haven for writers doesn't cast the city against type at all, he said.
After all, it takes a lot of nerve to tell the truth in the face of tyranny as writers of conscience do, Schaeffer said Monday. And Las Vegas is a city for people who have nerve.
"Pop culture and high culture need not conflict," Schaeffer said. "Literature in America has a tradition of being a voice of protest and change. It's an all-American quality."
The authors who are members of the former International Parliament of Writers also have a history of taking sides. Some of their most controversial statements have been made about the ongoing crisis in the Middle East and the issue of a Palestinian homeland.
Portuguese Nobel laureate José Saramago, part of a writers' contingent that visited the West Bank in 2002, caused a public outcry when he said what was happening in Ramallah was "a crime that may be compared to Auschwitz."
It was a statement from which the International Parliament distanced itself. In response, Parliament Director Christian Salmon said he deplored "the suffering brought about by foolish analogies."
Soyinka, who took part in the 2002 trip to the West Bank, said strife caused by that incident was not the reason the group decided to change its name the following year.
Candy Schneider, chairwoman of the Nevada Arts Council, is thrilled with the opportunities that will come with Las Vegas's role as a hub city for an international fellowship of writers. It will open doors, not just for the dissident writers who come through Las Vegas, but for the people here who can interact with them.
"Something like this really helps people to understand that the whole world is not here in the U.S.," Schneider said. "There are ways of life that we don't know and haven't experienced."