01 March 2009
Francine Prose: Defending Words and Writers
This article appears in the March 2009 issue of eJournal USA, Nonviolent Paths to Social Change (PDF, 783 KB).
You might expect most writers to be concerned about issues of freedom of expression. But noted American author Francine Prose has taken her commitment to writers and writing to another level. Since 2007, she has served as president of the PEN American Center. This is the U.S. arm of International PEN, founded in 1921, which claims the distinction of being the oldest literary and human rights organization in the world.
Prose joins a distinguished list of distinguished writers who have served with the PEN American Center over the years, among them playwrights Arthur Miller and Eugene O’Neill, essayists Susan Sontag and James Baldwin, novelists Thomas Mann and John Steinbeck, and poets Allen Ginsberg and Robert Frost.
Prose, born in 1947, is widely respected as a writer of fiction, literary essays, and commentary on public issues. She is an editor and teacher as well. Her highly praised novels reflect an eclectic range of subjects, from academia (Blue Angel), intolerance and grace (A Changed Man), and, most recently, a young girl’s coming of age (Goldengrove). Her most recent nonfiction book, reflecting two of her own passions, is Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them.
The PEN American Center (whose acronym derives from “poets, editors, novelists”) is the largest of PEN International’s 144 chapters in 99 countries and has more than 3,300 professional members. In its charter, PEN declares that it “stands for the principle of unhampered transmission of thought within each nation and among all nations ... and opposes any form of suppression of freedom of expression ... and arbitrary censorship.”
PEN American Center has criticized the U.S. government over issues of privacy and judicial oversight. PEN, for example, joined with organizations representing librarians, booksellers, and authors to call for changes to the post-9/11 Patriot Act that would better protect the privacy of Americans. PEN has also been highly critical of the law giving the U.S. government rights to expanded electronic surveillance, calling it “an unnecessary abandonment of constitutional protections prohibiting ‘general warrants and unreasonable searches.’ ”
Under Prose’s leadership, the PEN American Center has continued its vigorous campaign to defend and protect writers around the world as well. Prose was especially critical of China for its “suffocating restrictions” on press coverage of unrest in Tibet in 2008 and its failure to live up to its promises of free and open press coverage during the Beijing Olympics.
Every November 15, International PEN marks the Day of the Imprisoned Writer “to honor the courage of all writers who stand up against repression and defend freedom of expression.” In 2008 PEN highlighted five such writers:
• Eynulla Fatullayev, Azerbaijan, serving a prison term for political commentary and an investigation into the murder of a fellow journalist.
• Tsering Woeser, China, writer and poet who “has suffered repeated and sustained harassment for her writings on Tibet.”
• Mohammad Sadiq Kabudvand, Iran, journalist and Kurdish rights activist now in prison.
• Melissa Rocia Patiño Hinostroza, Peru, student and poet on trial for alleged terrorist ties despite a lack of evidence.
• The writers, cast, and crew of The Crocodile of Zambezi, Zimbabwe, a play that has been banned and its playwrights and members threatened and beaten.
“The work PEN does to advance literature and promote a world community of writers is perennially important,” Prose has said. “But our commitment to free expression — to guaranteeing the human rights and saving the lives of writers throughout the world, protecting the freedom of journalists here and abroad, fighting government incursions on the privacy of readers, and working in prisons and schools — has never before seemed so important, and so profoundly necessary.”
The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. government.
