title: Jacques Rougeau

text: The Mountie's greatest achievement as a singles wrestler came when he won the WWF Intercontinental Heavyweight Championship in an upset over Bret Hart on January 17, 1992. In the storyline, Hart was suffering from the flu (Hart was actually going through contract negotiations). The Mountie lost the title just two days later to Rowdy Roddy Piper at the 1992 Royal Rumble, in what was one of the shortest Intercontinental Heavyweight Championship reigns. The Mountie received a rematch at the February 8 "Saturday Night's Main Event XXX", but when he attempted to use his shock stick, it had no effect as Piper was wearing a rubber vest under his T-shirt. Piper removed his shirt after the match to reveal the vest, which was labeled "Shock Proof". Piper won the match after using the shock stick on The Mountie.


title: Jacques Rougeau

text: For the next several months, The Mountie primarily appeared in the undercard. He was on the losing end of an eight-man tag team match at WrestleMania VIII and a six-man tag team match at SummerSlam. He feuded with Sgt. Slaughter after shocking him with an extra large cattle prod on an episode of "Superstars", though the subsequent matches all took place on house shows that summer, with no conclusion on television. After losing to then WWF World Heavyweight Champion Bret Hart in seventy-five seconds on October 26, 1992, Rougeau left the WWF.


title: Jacques Rougeau

text: Jacques returned to the WWF in July 1993. Shortly thereafter, Rougeau began tagging with Pierre Ouellet as The Quebecers. The team, who feuded with Steiner Brothers, Men on a Mission, The Headshrinkers, and Marty Jannetty and The 1–2–3 Kid, were three-time WWF Tag Team Champions. The Quebecers characters were an extension of the earlier Mountie-theme, albeit with a more casual costume and an emphasis on bullying behavior. The pair (who were managed by Johnny Polo) emphasized their detachment from the earlier Mountie controversy by using a doctored version of Jacques's second Mountie theme song, titled "We're Not The Mounties", with the lyrics modified to insult the RCMP - for example, "because the Mountie always gets his man" became "unlike the Mounties, we always get our man". Jacques participated in the main event of the 1993 Survivor Series as a member of the "Foreign Fanatics" team. At the Royal Rumble, The Quebecers defeated Bret Hart and Owen Hart by referee stoppage to retain the WWF Tag Team Championship. At WrestleMania X, The Quebecers faced Men on a Mission for the WWF Tag Team Championship and retained after getting counted out. They lost the title to Men on a Mission in an unplanned title change at a house show on March 29, 1994, in London, England. Mabel stunned Pierre who couldn't kick out as he was supposed to. The wrong was righted as they won the belts back on March 31 at another house show. They lost the championship to The Headshrinkers on the April 26 episode of "Raw" and split up soon after.


title: Jacques Rougeau

text: The Quebecers broke up at a house show in the Montreal Forum on June 25, 1994. After a loss to The Headshrinkers, Pierre and Polo turned on Rougeau. After a few minutes of Jacques being attacked in front of his hometown crowd, Raymond Rougeau (who by this point was an announcer for the WWF's French-language broadcasts) ran to the ring to save his brother. This angle led to Jacques Rougeau's first retirement match, which, over the next few months, was heavily promoted on WWF TV shows broadcast in the Montreal area and in the local media. The match, held on October 21, 1994, drew a sell-out crowd of 16,843 to the Montreal Forum, and resulted in a victory for Jacques, when he pinned Pierre following a seated tombstone piledriver. Jacques, who was accompanied by Raymond, used Queen's song "We Are the Champions" as his theme music for the night.


title: Jacques Rougeau

text: On September 9, 1996, Rougeau came out of retirement reuniting with Ouellet as they debuted as The Amazing French Canadians in World Championship Wrestling in a losing effort against The Nasty Boys. In 1997, Jacques became one of few wrestlers to cleanly defeat then-WCW Heavyweight Champion Hollywood Hogan, claiming a singles victory at the Molson Centre in Montreal. On the "Right After Wrestling" program on Sirius Satellite Radio Channel 98, Jacques told hosts Arda Ocal and Jimmy Korderas that Hogan put him over because of his respect for the Rougeau family name and for keeping a clean wrestling image. On Colt Cabana's "Art of Wrestling" podcast, Rougeau's former student, Kevin Owens stated that there is a rumor that Hogan lay down for Rougeau for an additional $10,000 payment. Rougeau said that he paid and organized the show, so it was a Jacques Rougeau show, not a WCW show.


title: Jacques Rougeau

text: Rougeau teamed up with his brother, Ray (who at the time was a commentator, announcer and host for the French-produced WWF programming) alongside Ouellet in a dark match for WWF Shotgun Saturday Night in 1997. They defeated the team of Edge, Shawn Stasiak, and Tom Brandi.


title: Jacques Rougeau

text: In 1998, Rougeau returned to the WWF for a final run teaming once again with Pierre Ouellet in an updated version of The Quebecers. This incarnation of the team still used the ring attire from their WCW run as the Amazing French Canadians. The team were also one of the 14 tag teams eliminated in the tag team battle royal at WrestleMania XIV, leading to a win for the Legion of Doom. They failed to achieve the same success they enjoyed during their prior run, with their only notable feud being with The Godwinns, where the Godwinns went over. Rougeau and Ouellet briefly reunited in WCW in 2000 in Lance Storm's Team Canada.


title: Jacques Rougeau

text: After retiring, Rougeau attempted to join the Montreal Police Department, but was unable to do so as he had not graduated from high school. He is now a public speaker, touring schools to speak on drugs, smoking, and bullying. He opened the Rougeau Wrestling School in Montreal in 1998.


title: Jacques Rougeau

text: In 2018, Rougeau announced that he would retire for a third time, and that he had closed his wrestling school. On August 18, 2018, shortly after his retirement announcement, Rougeau mirrored his father's retirement matching by teaming with his sons for the first and only time. As Rougeau's sons, all of whom have wrestled, have expressed no desire to return to wrestling, Jacques' retirement effectively ended the Rougeau family wrestling dynasty after more than six decades.


title: Jacques Rougeau

text: Rougeau is divorced from Nathalie Thibodeau, whom he married in 1978. He and Thibodeau had three sons: Cedric, Emile, and Jean-Jacques. Former NHL ice hockey defenceman Denis Gauthier is Rougeau's nephew.


title: The French Lieutenant's Woman

text: The French Lieutenant's Woman is a 1969 postmodern historical fiction novel by John Fowles. The plot explores the fraught relationship of gentleman and amateur naturalist Charles Smithson and Sarah Woodruff, the former governess and independent woman with whom he falls in love. The novel builds on Fowles' authority in Victorian literature, both following and critiquing many of the conventions of period novels.


title: The French Lieutenant's Woman

text: The book was the author's third, after "The Collector" (1963) and "The Magus" (1965). "American Libraries" magazine counted the novel among the "Notable Books of 1969". Subsequent to its initial popularity, publishers produced numerous editions and translated the novel into many languages; soon after the initial publication, the novel was also treated extensively by scholars. The novel remains popular, figuring in both public and academic conversations. In 2005 "Time" chose the book as one of the 100 best English-language novels since the magazine began publication in 1923.


title: The French Lieutenant's Woman

text: Part of the novel's reputation concerns its postmodern literary qualities, with expressions of metafiction, historiography, , Marxist criticism, and feminism. Stylistically and thematically, the novel has been described as historiographic metafiction. The contrast between the independent Sarah Woodruff and the more stereotypical male characters often earns the novel attention for its treatment of gender issues.


title: The French Lieutenant's Woman

text: The novel was adapted into a film of the same name in 1981, with script by the playwright Harold Pinter, directed by Karel Reisz, starring Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons. The film received considerable critical acclaim, including several BAFTA and Golden Globe awards.


title: The French Lieutenant's Woman

text: Before Fowles published "The French Lieutenant's Woman" in 1969, he had already established his literary reputation with his novels "The Collector" (1963) and "The Magus" (1965). While writing "The French Lieutenant's Woman", he was working on the screenplay for the film adaptation of "The Magus" (1968). Moreover, "The Collector" (1965) had already been adapted in a film which had gained Fowles further popular attention.


title: The French Lieutenant's Woman

text: Fowles described his main inspiration for "The French Lieutenant's Woman" to be a persistent image of a "Victorian Woman", who later developed into the novel's titular character Sarah Woodruff. In a 1969 essay entitled "Notes on an Unfinished Novel", Fowles reflects on his writing process. He said he had an image during the autumn of 1966 of: "A woman [who] stands at the end of a deserted quay and stares out to sea." He determined that she belonged to a "Victorian Age" and had "mysterious" and "vaguely romantic" qualities. He made a note at the time about the function of the novel:


title: The French Lieutenant's Woman

text: Throughout the essay, Fowles describes multiple influences and issues important to the novel's development, including his debt to other authors such as Thomas Hardy. In the essay, he describes surprise that the female character Sarah had taken the primary role in the novel. Later, Fowles described other influences shaping the characters development, noting that the characters and story of "The French Lieutenant's Woman" were loosely derived from the Claire de Duras novel "Ourika" (1823), which features a tragic affair between an African woman and French military man. Fowles later published a 1977 translation of "Ourika" into English.


title: The French Lieutenant's Woman

text: Set in the mid-nineteenth century, the narrator identifies the novel's protagonist as Sarah Woodruff, the "Woman" of the title, also known as "Tragedy" and as "The French Lieutenant's Whore". She lives in the coastal town of Lyme Regis as a disgraced woman, supposedly abandoned by a French ship's officer named Varguennes who had returned to France and married. Employed as a servant in the household of the very pious Mrs. Poulteney, she spends some of her limited free time on The Cobb, a stone jetty where she stares out to sea.


title: The French Lieutenant's Woman

text: One day, Charles Smithson, an orphaned gentleman, and Ernestina Freeman, his fiancée and a daughter of a wealthy tradesman, see Sarah walking along the cliffside. Ernestina tells Charles something of Sarah's story, and he becomes curious about her. Though continuing to court Ernestina, Charles has several more encounters with Sarah, meeting her clandestinely three times. During these meetings, Sarah tells Charles of her history, and asks for his emotional and social support. During the same period, he learns of the possible loss of his place as heir to his elderly uncle, who has become engaged to a woman young enough to bear a child. Meanwhile, Charles's servant Sam falls in love with Mary, the maid of Ernestina's aunt.


title: The French Lieutenant's Woman

text: In fact, Charles has fallen in love with Sarah and advises her to leave Lyme for Exeter. Returning from a journey to warn Ernestina's father about his uncertain inheritance, Charles stops in Exeter as if to visit Sarah. From there, the narrator, who intervenes throughout the novel and later becomes a character in it, offers three different ways in which the novel could end:


title: The French Lieutenant's Woman

text: Before the second and third endings, the narrator appears as a character sharing a railway compartment with Charles. He tosses a coin to determine the order in which he will portray the other two possible endings, emphasising their equal plausibility. They are as follows:


title: The French Lieutenant's Woman

text: Like many other postmodern novels, Fowles uses multiple different stylistic and structural techniques to highlight his thematic interests in "The French Lieutenant's Woman". When discussing these stylistic concerns, many literary critics comment on the importance of the narrator and the narration, the intertextual references to other literary works, and the multiple endings.


title: The French Lieutenant's Woman

text: Throughout the novel, the omniscient narrative voice, alongside a series of footnotes, reflect with an objective tone on a number of plot devices: the author's difficulty controlling the characters; the conventions that are expected of a "Victorian novel"; and, analyses of differences in 19th-century customs and class. The narrator often returns to topics of interest to literature and scholarship from the period, like the theories of Charles Darwin and Charles Lyell, the radical politics of Karl Marx, and the works of Matthew Arnold, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and Thomas Hardy.


title: The French Lieutenant's Woman

text: Through a metafictional and metahistorical voice, the contemporary, postmodern narrator questions the role of the author and the historian in thinking about the past. In her article discussing the use of paratext, or the contextualizing text printed in the book such as the footnotes and epigraphs, Deborah Bowen argues that the novel's paratext forces the reader, like in other postmodern works, to rethink the importance of such peripheral material that in other contexts will get overlooked in light of preference for the main text. Instead of nicely complementing the main plot and adding meaning, these paratextual elements can distract from the effectiveness of the novel and challenging the authority of the narrative voice.


title: The French Lieutenant's Woman

text: Beyond the narrator intervening and emphasizing particular interpretations of the text, the book's metafictional approach often relies on intertextual references to provide further commentary. In the epigraphs for each chapter, the book gestures towards a number of important 19th-century texts and ideas. Partially, references to other texts act in "ironic play", parodied by how the novel emulates other Victorian conventions throughout the text. Linda Hutcheon describes the works of William Thackery, George Eliot, Charles Dickens, Froude, and Thomas Hardy as direct inspirations for this parody.


title: The French Lieutenant's Woman

text: In his discussion of science and religion in the novel, John Glendening notes that both character commentary on Darwin's publications along with the epigraphs mentioning those works as direct contributors to the novel's emphasis on science superseding religion. Similarly, by quoting Marx with the first epigraph, along with multiple subsequent epigraphs, the novel directs thematic attention towards the socio-economics issues within the novel. Deborah Bowen describes literary critics struggling to find readings of the epigraphs that explore the themes of the novel, and argues that the poor relationship between the epigraphs and the text "disperses the authority of the narrative voice, thus destroying his power to speak as a moralist." For Bowen, the epigraphs support the satire of Victorian fiction conventions in the novel.


title: The French Lieutenant's Woman

text: Often critics will comment on the novel's multiple endings. Each offers a possible ending for Charles's pursuit of Sarah: the first ends with Charles married to Ernestina, the second with a successful reestablishment of a relationship with Sarah, and the third with Charles cast back into the world without a partner. Michelle Phillips Buchberger discusses these endings as a demonstration of "Fowles's rejection of a narrow mimesis" of reality; rather Fowles presents this multiplicity of endings to highlight the role of the author in plot choices.


title: The French Lieutenant's Woman

text: It is not enough to suggest that the novel with its multiple endings is a mere experiment with the narrative form. "There is something more in it," as Mandal puts it, "an impasse that resists any straight forward resolution to the story." After all, the form of a narrative is determined by its content. It is Sarah Woodruff "the content of whose character produces multiple and contradictory possibilities" for the narrative.


title: The French Lieutenant's Woman

text: Though a bestseller, the novel has also received significant scrutiny by literary critics. Especially during the 1960s and 70s, a novel with great popularity and significant academic scrutiny is unusual; in literary study, the canon and its academic defenders often focused on "high literary" works that didn't have large popular followings. In her study of postmodernism, Linda Hutcheon described "The French Lieutenant's Woman"'s binary of popular and academic interest as a paradox similar to the postmodern thematic binaries produced within the novel's content. Because of its prominence since publication, the novel has received a variety of different academic re-examinations in light of numerous critical and thematic approaches. Some of the most popular concerns for the novel are its discussion of gender, especially questioning claims by Fowles that it is a feminist novel, its engagement with metafictional and metahistorical concepts, and its treatment of science and religion.


title: The French Lieutenant's Woman

text: The novel creates a number of binaries between men and women. Michelle Phillips Buchberger argues that "The French Lieutenant's Woman," along with Fowles two earlier novels "The Collector" (1963) and "The Magus" (1965), portrays a fundamental binary between the male and female characters: the female characters act as an elite set of "creators" or "educated, visionary, and predominantly female" characters who provide the facilitation for evolution "in existential terms" of the male "'collectors', whose traits are present in all of Fowles's flawed male protagonists." Though acknowledging such binaries in the role of the characters, critic Alice Ferrebe does not treat these binaries as necessary thematic elements. Rather, the binaries demonstrate what she calls a gendered "scopic politics", or a politics created by a gaze (not dissimilar from the "male gaze" noticed in cinema studies), that constructs an artificial gender binary within Fowle's early novels (as opposed to a multiplicity of socially constructed genders). For Ferrebe, this binary creates a tension, especially with Sarah, who becomes a violently fetishised and objectified "other", differentiated from the male characters like Charles.


title: The French Lieutenant's Woman

text: A number of critics have treated the work as a feminist novel, while other have debated whether it offers a sufficiently transformative perspective on women. The novel's narrator demonstrates and proclaims a feminist approach to women: Sarah is presented as a more liberated and independently willed woman as compared to the other model female characters, such as Ernestina and her aunt. In a 1985 interview by Jan Relf, Fowles declared himself a "feminist".


title: The French Lieutenant's Woman

text: Magali Cornier Michael criticises this reading of the text, saying that the novel's overwhelming reliance on male perspectives on women and feminism prevents the novel from meeting feminist objectives. Similarly, Michelle Phillips Buchberger argues that "The French Lieutenant's Woman," along with Fowles' two earlier novels "The Collector" (1963) and "The Magus" (1965), proclaimed a "pseudo-feminism" while advocating some feminist ideas; but, she says, they are permeated by a "fetishism [of women that] perpetuates the idea of woman as 'other'". Alice Ferrebe also notes that, despite Fowles' attempts to critique masculine values, his novels remain male fantasies demonstrative of the "compromises and contradictions" created by the gendered situation in which he was writing. Other literary critics, such as William Palmer, Peter Conradi, Bruce Woodcock and Pamela Cooper, have also critiqued Fowles' claims to a feminist perspective and representation.


title: The French Lieutenant's Woman

text: Fowles's presentation of Sarah, one of the most enigmatic female characters in literary history, is also psychoanalytically informed. Fowles himself was interested in the psychology of men and women. The enigma of femininity, myth of masculinity, and impossibility of man-woman relationship are some of the crucial themes. Through Sarah's deliberate spreading of lies about herself and her relationship with Charles, Fowles brilliantly brings about the various aspects of femininity that has the potential to authenticate, threaten, and expose the vanity of the male subjects.


title: The French Lieutenant's Woman

text: In her important study of postmodernity and its poetics in literature, Linda Hucheon describes this novel as definitive of a genre she calls "historiographic metafiction". She defines this postmodern genre as "well-known and popular novels which are both intensely self-reflexive yet paradoxically also lay claim to historical events and personages." Typically postmodern, this genre of fiction blends the creation of imagined narratives with critique on the various modes in which we create knowledge, such as history and literature. Important to her discussion of the genre's post-modern style, "The French Lieutenant's Woman"'s self-reflexive narration bridges different discourses that usually remain separated, such as academic history, literary criticism, philosophy and literature.


title: The French Lieutenant's Woman

text: The text's representations of the past introduce anachronistic perspectives on the time and the characters. For example, in her queer studies-based article, "Historical Romance, Gender and Heterosexuality", Lisa Fletcher argues that "The French Lieutenant's Woman", by relying on a "good love story" as the central means of representing the past, projects a contemporary hetero-normative sexuality on the history of Victorian England. For Fletcher, Fowles' paradoxical treatment of Sarah as both a Victorian character and as a desirable "modern woman," through feminist gestures and sexual tension between Charles and Sarah, confines the historical set characters and their experience to stereotypical heterosexual romance. Fletcher believes that overall the text creates a stereotypical and limited perspective on the past, essentially "heterosexualising the passage of (and relationship to) history".


title: The French Lieutenant's Woman

text: Emphasis on a conflicted relationship between science and religion frequently occurs in both historical studies of Victorian history and Neo-Victorian novels. In his chapter on "The French Lieutenant's Woman" in his book, "Evolution and the Uncrucified Jesus", John Glendening argues that Fowles' novel is one of the first neo-Victorian novels to handle the dynamic created between science and religion in Victorian identity. Glendening notes that more generally "Christian ideas and conventions become appropriated in the service of a secularist and extensional version of truth."


title: The French Lieutenant's Woman

text: Glendening says that Fowles uses commentary on Darwinism "to comment on characters and their experience and to forward a view of natural and human reality opposed to Christian doctrine, and, within limits amenable to existentialist philosophy. " In general, Glendening sees ideas of science and religion as central to the personal and social identities that develop within the novel, but creating symbolically conflictual binaries. He suggests that Fowles manoeuvres these conflictual forces to favour an existential self-revelation exhibited through the main character of Smithson, leading to a conclusion that "the freedom implicit in accepting alienation should be exercised in overcoming it."


title: The French Lieutenant's Woman

text: The novel received mixed critical attention at its initial publication. Critics focused both praise and critique on its style, plot and approach to metafiction and metahistory. The following samples those responses:


title: The French Lieutenant's Woman

text: "The New York Times" November 1969 review by Christopher Lehmann-Haupt warned readers to "be certain there's only one log on the fire. If, unhappily, you lack the fireplace by which this book should be read, set an alarm clock." Lehmann-Haupt found the book to begin as "irresistibly novelistic that he has disguised it as a Victorian romance," yet the metafictional construction by the end positively "explodes all the assumptions of our Victorian sensibilities." "Time" magazine's November 1969 review described the novel as "resourceful and penetrating talent at work on that archaic form." In March 1970, the magazine "American Libraries" named the novel as one of the "Notable Books of 1969," calling it "A successful blending of two worlds as the author writes in modern terminology of the Victorian era."


title: The French Lieutenant's Woman

text: Not all of the reviews were positive; for example, Roger Sale in "The Hudson Review" largely criticized the novel, saying, "At times it seems that the commentary is not so bad and the novel awful, but at others Fowles makes the novel almost work and the comments are embarrassingly vulgar." Ultimately, the reviewer concluded that the novel was "stumbling and gauche and much much too long, but curiously attractive too."


title: The French Lieutenant's Woman

text: The novel has been reprinted in numerous editions and translated into many languages: Taiwanese, Danish, Dutch, Arabic, Finnish, Hungarian, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Chinese, German, Russian, Polish, and Spanish. The novel was originally published in 1969 by Little Brown and Company in both Boston and Toronto. The novel has also been published in a number of English editions from different publishers, represented in the following list (with publication date in parenthesis):


title: The French Lieutenant's Woman

text: The general popularity of "The French Lieutenant's Woman" has inspired several responses to the novel, most notably other authors' work and adaptation into film and theatre.


title: The French Lieutenant's Woman

text: The most prominent response to the novel is A.S. Byatt's 1990 Booker Prize-winning novel, "Possession". She describes her novel as deliberately responding to the model of postmodern metafiction that critics highlight in "The French Lieutenant's Woman". Byatt described her motivation for responding in her essays in "On Histories and Stories", saying:


title: The French Lieutenant's Woman

text: The novel was adapted as a 1981 film, written by playwright Harold Pinter and directed by Karel Reisz. The production staff included composer Carl Davis and the cinematographer Freddie Francis. The film starred Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons with Hilton McRae, Jean Faulds, Peter Vaughan, Colin Jeavons, Liz Smith, Patience Collier, Richard Griffiths, David Warner, Alun Armstrong, Penelope Wilton and Leo McKern. The film was nominated for five Academy Awards: Streep was nominated for Academy Award for Best Actress and the film was nominated for Academy Award for Best Writing, but both lost to "On Golden Pond". Streep won a BAFTA and a Golden Globe for best actress. The film's music and sound both won BAFTAs, despite not winning the Oscar. Pinter was nominated for a Golden Globe for best script and the work as a whole in the category Best Motion Picture – Drama.


title: The French Lieutenant's Woman

text: Also in 2006, BBC Radio 4 produced an adaptation of two one-hour episodes, starring John Hurt as the narrator.


title: My Neck, My Back (Lick It)

text: "My Neck, My Back (Lick It)" is a song by American rapper Khia, released in April 2002 as the lead single from her debut studio album, "Thug Misses". Owing to its sexually explicit lyrics, an edited version of the song was released to mainstream radio. The song reached number 42 on the US "Billboard" Hot 100. It also reached number four in the United Kingdom two years later and number 12 in Australia.


title: My Neck, My Back (Lick It)

text: The lyrics contain detailed, explicit descriptions of both cunnilingus and anilingus, so a heavily edited version was used for radio broadcasting and the official music video. Khia later stated in a 2002 interview for "MTV News" concerning the song's big success: "I guess the world is just nasty and freaky like that […] It's not even my favorite song, and I was kind of surprised that's the song that everybody jumped on. … That song is just nothing compared to my other music. It's like, 'That's what the world is about today,' so hey, it works for me."


title: My Neck, My Back (Lick It)

text: In 2018, NPR ranked the song as #184 for their The 200 Greatest Songs By 21st Century Women list, saying: ""My Neck, My Back" is the most enduring erotic pleasure procedural of this era, and rightfully so. Underscoring the dirty in Dirty South, Khia raps simple demands as to where she wants to be licked (short version: "all over"), with explicit suggestions towards technique that span two dedicated verses. It's a delightfully nasty club classic where a woman's pleasure is presented as a debt owed her."


title: My Neck, My Back (Lick It)

text: "My Neck, My Back (Lick It)" is a dirty rap song, and India Mae Alby of Keakie.com described it as a "low beat Club song". The song is noted for its chorus, in which Khia raps "My neck, my back, lick my pussy and my crack". The song was written by Khia herself and Edward Meriwether. During a studio session, Khia recorded "My Neck, My Back" at Grooveland Studios in Clearwater, Florida.


title: My Neck, My Back (Lick It)

text: The music video was directed by Diane Martel, and was released during the spring of 2002. In the United Kingdom, a different video was used, which did not feature Khia, instead depicting a group of bikini-clad models washing a Hummer H2 in a seductive manner while lip-syncing the words to the song.


title: My Neck, My Back (Lick It)

text: The music video begins with Khia dancing in a half-bikini dress at a party in front of various people full of arcade games. It later shows scenes of Khia at a pool receiving a massage by a dreadheaded man. Khia is also seen dancing at a barbecue. There are also scenes showing Khia in a house wearing a polka-dot shirt and heels surrounded by men. Khia can also be seen sitting on a bed in the same look she had on in the beginning of the video right next to many other various people.


title: My Neck, My Back (Lick It)

text: The official remix of the song, the "Roc-A-Fella Remix", features rapper Memphis Bleek. The remix was released as a clean version.


title: My Neck, My Back (Lick It)

text: Saweetie did a freestyle of the song titled "Icy Grl". The song was released on her SoundCloud in the summer of 2017 and later released a music video for it in October of the same year. The visual, which went viral on the Internet, would go on to accrue 104 million views on YouTube as of August 2020.


title: My Neck, My Back (Lick It)

text: In 2015, American pop singer Miley Cyrus performed a cover of the song at the Adult Swim's New York City upfront party. The performance later caught the attention of Khia herself, who praised the singer-songwriter for performing the song.


title: My Neck, My Back (Lick It)

text: The song is featured prominently and sampled in the Girl Talk song "Non-Stop Party Now" off the album "Unstoppable".


title: My Neck, My Back (Lick It)

text: Richard Cheese and Lounge Against the Machine did a lounge/swing styled cover of the song on their 2010 album "OK Bartender".


title: Gino Hernandez

text: Charles Eugene Wolfe Jr. (August 8, 1957 – February 2, 1986) was an American professional wrestler, better known by his ring name, Gino Hernandez. He is perhaps best known for his appearances with the Dallas, Texas-based promotion World Class Championship Wrestling between 1976 until his death in 1986. Hernandez's death was initially ruled a homicide case, but police later concluded that he had died of a drug overdose.


title: Gino Hernandez

text: As a rookie, babyface wrestler in Ed Farhat's Big Time Wrestling promotion in Detroit, "Gino Hernandez" was a very young, fresh-faced performer who got over with female fans due to his long black hair, and good looks. He won Big Time's top title (its version of the NWA United States Heavyweight Championship) by defeating "Bulldog" Don Kent. During this time, Wolfe also wrestled at least one match for WWE forerunner the World Wide Wrestling Federation (WWWF). Gino lost the (Detroit) U.S. Title to his real-life boss: The Sheik (Big Time Wrestling owner and booker Eddie Farhat's 'Psycho-Arab' heel persona).


title: Gino Hernandez

text: Wolfe's Gino character—nicknamed "The Handsome Halfbreed"—started wrestling in 1975 in the San Antonio, Texas wrestling territory, Southwest Championship Wrestling (SCW), after being trained by Jose Lothario. He was initially in a tag-team with Lothario, then turned into a singles act via a "protege vs. mentor" storyline. The storyline feud with Lothario culminated in a "hair vs. hair match", which Hernandez lost—having his head shaved in the ring, as a result.


title: Gino Hernandez

text: In the late-1970s and early-1980s, Gino worked for Dallas-based territory, World Class Championship Wrestling (WCCW) (called NWA Big Time Wrestling, at the time). The highlight was a storyline feud with David Von Erich over the NWA Texas Heavyweight Championship, which Gino won and lost back to David. Gino returned to SCW, forming a hugely popular tag-team ("The Dynamic Duo") with the territory owner's son, Tully Blanchard. Hernandez and Blanchard's tag-team act became so successful that they were the top (based on box office drawing power) heels in the state of Texas—regardless of territory.


title: Gino Hernandez

text: In 1982, Gino instigated a storyline feud with Chavo Guerrero by hitting him over the head with a beer bottle, and later insulting the Guerrero family name. This short-lived feud played out across multiple Texas territories.


title: Gino Hernandez

text: Gino returned to WCCW in 1984, at different times individually or collectively feuding with the Von Erichs: Mike, Kevin and Kerry Von Erich. That summer, Gino was paired with Nickla Roberts, who was billed "Andrea the Lady Giant" (a'la Andre the Giant). The duo worked a series of mixed tag team matches against Sunshine and Mike Von Erich. Even Sunshine's aunt, Stella Mae French, was involved. Gino was put in a tag team with WCCW newcomer Jake "The Snake" Roberts in August 1984. Gino also formed a tag-team with Chris Adams; WCCW called them "The Dynamic Duo", as SCW had Gino and Tully. This WCCW version proved the more famous, as Adams and Hernandez drew high revenues and television ratings for World Class in their feud with the Von Erichs. The duo invented the famed "gold scissors" gimmick: snipping hair from the heads of their incapacitated opponents right after defeating them (a humiliation tactic meant to increase fans' anger toward the heels, increasing the heels' TV/live show drawing power). This gimmick was later used in the WWF by Brutus Beefcake.


title: Gino Hernandez

text: Adams and Hernandez lost a "hair" match to Kevin and Kerry Von Erich at a Cotton Bowl show on October 6, 1985. After the match, Hernandez attempted to escape, but was tackled by Chris Von Erich, who was at ringside, and eventually had his hair shaved bald. His hair quickly grew back in two months, while Adams' hair took longer. With the Von Erichs storyline completed but the momentum from it still red-hot with fans, Gino was next booked to turn on Adams in December 1985. WCCW management intended this new feud to become its top storyline throughout 1986. On January 26, 1986, during a grudge match in Fort Worth, Hernandez threw "freebird hair cream" (a "hair-removal product" previously established in WCCW storyline continuity in 1983 by Freebird Buddy Roberts) into Adams' face, rendering Adams blind (in reality, Adams was returning to his native England to spend time with his new wife Toni, and his family; however, WCCW told Adams he had to continue to "sell" the blindness whenever out in public). Hernandez was scheduled to perform on a house show the following Thursday, and on a non-televised show at Dallas' Sportatorium the following Friday. After Gino no-showed both events, WCCW management's phone calls to him went unanswered.


title: Gino Hernandez

text: His mother was Patrice Aguirre and his father was Charles Eugene Wolfe Sr., with the latter's identity being unknown to the point that wrestling fans speculated that Wolfe's father was actually Houston Wrestling promoter Paul Boesch, due to how close they were. Wolfe adopted the Gino Hernandez name after his stepfather, Luis Hernandez, who trained with him when Gino was a child.


title: Gino Hernandez

text: Wolfe was married twice, both times to Janice Marie Bancroft. They were first married on April 10, 1976 in Harris County, Texas, before divorcing soon after on January 27, 1977. During their first marriage, they had a daughter, Lisha. The pair remarried on April 12, 1978 before divorcing again on July 19, 1979. According to former WCCW colleague Jake Roberts, Hernandez was involved with the gay community in Houston.


title: Gino Hernandez

text: On February 4, 1986, concerned with Wolfe's well-being, two WCCW officials (David Manning and Rick Hazzard) and several local police officers broke into his Highland Park, Texas condo, discovering Wolfe's decomposing corpse. He had been dead for approximately three to four days. Initially, Wolfe's death was ruled a homicide case; but following autopsy reports, his death was ruled the result of a cocaine overdose.


title: Gino Hernandez

text: Wolfe's drug abuse (e.g., alcohol and cocaine, among others) was no secret to many World Class mainstays, including onscreen manager/one-time booker Gary Hart, who claimed to have repeatedly encouraged Wolfe to "get clean". The syndicated World Class TV episode scheduled to air the weekend of February 15, 1986 originally included a Gino Hernandez match taped on January 24 at the Dallas Sportatorium. This match never aired; instead, show announcer Bill Mercer gave an on-camera announcement of Gino's death, and a different match aired in its place. Both Mercer and Marc Lowrance treated Hernandez's death as well as Chris Adams' blinding angle as equally significant during a time when World Class was about to go forward with their feud beginning at Texas Stadium. Adams returned the following May, and won the World Class Heavyweight Championship two months later. The funeral service and its expenses were handled by a reputed local drug dealer/trafficker called John Royal, with whom Hernandez had become friends. Family members were uncomfortable with Royal and his associates overseeing the funeral proceedings; many had never heard of or met them prior to Wolfe's death.


title: Gino Hernandez

text: Although police dropped the homicide investigation into Hernandez's death, some still believe he was murdered in a drug-related incident. According to David Manning, Hernandez had five times the amount of cocaine in his system that would have resulted in a fatality, and he and Kevin Von Erich stated that Hernandez also had cocaine in his stomach. Manning also suspected foul play due to the fact that Hernandez's dead bolt on his door was not locked, as he made it a habit in the past to lock the dead bolt at all times. In the weeks before his death, Hernandez had expressed to Manning and others the belief that his life was under threat.


title: Gino Hernandez

text: Former rival Michael Hayes said in a 2016 interview: "I have a real, "real" hard time believing that Gino Hernandez OD'd... he was most definitely hanging with the wrong crowd, and either ran his mouth too much, or knew too much, or all of the above." Asked about Hernandez's death, Jake Roberts said: "Gino was attached to some heavy people... he was running in some pretty big circles, man, that maybe he didn't belong [in]." Hernandez's mother Patrice Aguirre and ex-wife Janice Marie Bancroft expressed the belief that he was probably murdered; Aguirre reported that criminal Jon Royal had told her of debts owed to him by Hernandez. She later received a recorded message from a gangland source who was close to Hernandez, claiming that her son was not murdered.


title: Gino Hernandez

text: Both Aguirre and Bancroft have explored the possibility that Hernandez faked his death, given that he had once talked about doing so, and because the autopsy report was replete with errors about his ethnicity and physicality. The family never saw his body, which was concealed by Hernandez's manager Walter Ayman due to its decomposed state, and honored in a closed-casket service. Wrestler Brutus Beefcake has rejected the murder theory, saying that Hernandez "had a serious drug problem" and was an "intense, crazy partier". Jeanie Clarke spoke about Hernandez's mental state in the weeks leading up to his death in her autobiography, describing an incident where he virtually held her hostage (including brandishing a gun) as he fell into a deeply paranoid episode following a night partying and binging on cocaine. Hernandez was embarrassed and apologetic afterwards, and Clarke expressed concern for the intensity of his drug use. A documentary on Viceland TV, part of the "Dark Side of the Ring" series, called "The Mysterious Death of Gorgeous Gino", aired on May 8, 2019.


title: James Jebbia

text: James Jebbia (born July 22, 1963) is an American-British businessman, fashion designer and former child actor. He is known for being the founder of the skateboarding shop and clothing brand Supreme.


title: James Jebbia

text: James Jebbia was born on July 22, 1963, in the United States. His American father was formerly in the United States Air Force, and his English mother is a former teacher. His parents divorced when he was around 10 years old.


title: James Jebbia

text: At one years old, Jebbia's parents relocated from the U.S. to Crawley, West Sussex in the United Kingdom. In 1983, Jebbia moved back to the United States when he was 19 years old, settling in Staten Island, New York City.


title: James Jebbia

text: In the late 1970s Jebbia worked as a child actor including appearing in the first series of "Grange Hill" as Tommy Watson.


title: James Jebbia

text: In 1983, Jebbia's first job in New York was at Parachute, a minimalist skate shop and clothing store located in SoHo, Manhattan.


title: James Jebbia

text: In 1989, he managed the streetwear store, Union NYC, which carried a mix of mostly English clothing brands. Its first store opened in 1989 on Spring Street in Manhattan, and later closed in 2009. From 1991 to 1994, he partnered with Shawn Stussy, the founder of the clothing brand, Stüssy.


title: James Jebbia

text: In 1994, Jebbia founded the clothing brand and skateboarding shop Supreme, and opened its first store on Lafayette Street in Manhattan. Among his earliest designs was a cut-and-sew pair of tiger-stripe cargo pants. As of 2021, Supreme has 14 locations worldwide, one each in New York City, Brooklyn, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, London, Paris, Milan, and six in Japan (Harajuku, Shibuya, Daikanyama, Nagoya, Osaka, and Fukuoka).


title: James Jebbia

text: In 2017, Supreme collaborated with Louis Vuitton, with their debut collection unveiled during Paris Fashion Week.


title: James Jebbia

text: Jebbia has collaborated with high-profile artists, such as Damien Hirst, Takashi Murakami and Richard Prince.


title: James Jebbia

text: Jebbia is married to Bianca Jebbia and has two children. He resides in Lower Manhattan's West Village in New York City.


title: Maci Bookout

text: Maci Bookout McKinney (born Maci DeShane Bookout, August 10, 1991) is an American reality television personality, author, and public speaker. Born and raised in Chattanooga, Tennessee, she received public attention after being cast in the reality television series "16 and Pregnant" in 2009, which documented the pregnancies and first months of motherhood for several young women. Later that year she was cast in the spin-off series "Teen Mom", and appeared in each of its four seasons until its conclusion in 2012. In March 2015, Bookout, along with Catelynn Baltierra, Amber Portwood, and Farrah Abraham, returned to MTV for the fifth season of the show, renamed "Teen Mom OG".


title: Maci Bookout

text: In September 2016 she released her first book, "Bulletproof," and she released her second book, "I Wasn't Born Bulletproof: Lessons I've Learned (So You Don't Have To)," in June 2017.


title: Maci Bookout

text: In 2018, Bookout appeared on "Naked and Afraid", attempting to survive 14 days in the wilderness, but she quit the show on day 2.


title: Maci Bookout

text: Bookout was born to parents Gene and Sharon Bookout; she also has an older brother named Matt. After graduating from Ooltewah High School in 2009, she attended Chattanooga State Community College and graduated with an Associate of Arts degree in Spring 2015.


title: Maci Bookout

text: Bookout became pregnant with her first child with then-boyfriend Ryan Edwards, and gave birth to their son Bentley Cadence on October 27, 2008. The two got engaged in 2009 but subsequently ended their relationship in 2010. After the breakup with Edwards, Bookout began dating childhood friend Kyle King. The pair briefly lived together but ended their relationship in 2012 amid rumors of King's infidelity.


title: Maci Bookout

text: Bookout began dating Taylor McKinney, a motocross racer from Texas, in 2012. The pair announced Bookout was pregnant with their first child together in January 2015, and they welcomed a daughter Jayde Carter on May 29, 2015. McKinney proposed to Bookout on January 19, 2016 in Venice Beach, California while filming an episode of "Teen Mom OG", shortly before the pair announced Bookout was pregnant with their second child together. She gave birth to son Maverick Reed on May 31, 2016.


title: Maci Bookout

text: Bookout has experienced troubles with ex, Ryan Edwards since the birth of their son. It was revealed in March 2018 that Bookout and husband Taylor filed an order of protection against Edwards following claims Edwards left voicemail messages threatening to take their son and making threats towards Bookout and McKinney. The order of protection was subsequently dismissed and a mutual restraining order was put in place in May 2018.


title: Three Steps Above Heaven

text: Three Steps Above The Sky ("") is a 2010 Spanish film based on the novel of the same name by Federico Moccia.


title: Multipotentiality

text: Multipotentiality is an educational and psychological term referring to the ability and preference of a person, particularly one of strong intellectual or artistic curiosity, to excel in two or more different fields.


title: Multipotentiality

text: It can also refer to an individual whose interests span multiple fields or areas, rather than being strong in just one. Such traits are called multipotentialities, while "multipotentialites" has been suggested as a name for those with this trait.


title: Multipotentiality

text: In 1972, R.H. Frederickson et al. defined a multipotentialed person as someone who, “when provided with appropriate environments, can select and develop a number of competencies to a high level.”


title: Multipotentiality

text: In 1999, "multipotentiality" appears in Laurie Diane Shute's doctoral dissertation which was titled "An investigation of multipotentiality among university honors students."


title: Multipotentiality

text: On October 22, 2008, Douglas Hannay began a blog that lasted some eight years. His first blog referred to multipotentializing as excelling in multiple fields of energy. The blog was then copied in its entirety to Facebook on September 22, 2016, after viewing Emilie Wapnick’s TED talk on being a multipotentialite during October 2015.


title: Multipotentiality

text: In 2010, multipotentiality appeared again in Tamara Fisher's article in "Education Week". She defines it thus:


title: Multipotentiality

text: During 2015, Emilie Wapnick coined the term "multipotentialite", perhaps to establish a shared identity for the community. She defines it this way:


title: Multipotentiality

text: While the term "multipotentialite" is often used interchangeably with polymath or Renaissance Person, the terms are not identical. One need not be an expert in any particular field to be a multipotentialite.


title: Multipotentiality

text: Indeed, Isis Jade makes a clear distinction between multipotentiality and polymaths. Multipotentiality refers simply to one's potential in multiple fields owing to his/her diverse interests and attempts. Polymaths, on the other hand, are distinguished by their mastery and expertise in several fields. In this sense, multipotentialites can be viewed as potential polymaths.


title: Multipotentiality

text: Other terms used to refer to multipotentialites are "scanners", "slashers", "generalist", "multipassionate", "RP2", and "multipods", among others.


title: Multipotentiality

text: With the advent of the industrial age, cultural norms have shifted in favor of specialization. Indeed, in the modern day, the more narrow the specialization, the higher the pay and respect accorded, for example: PhD graduates, and specialized lawyers, doctors, and engineers. The aphorism Jack of all trades, master of none emphasizes this. Older emphasis towards generalism and multiple potentials such as Renaissance humanism and the Renaissance man were replaced.


title: Multipotentiality

text: However, the convergence economy, Internet age, connectivity, the rise of the Creative Class, and other modern developments are bringing about a return of a more positive opinion for generalists and multipotentialites.


title: Multipotentiality

text: Organizations such as startups that require adaptability and holding multiple roles can employ several multipotentialites and have one specialist as a resource.


title: Multipotentiality

text: Stretch Magazine discusses the role of multipotentialites in organizations and how they will believe they will be more in demand in the future.


title: Multipotentiality

text: Historical context, current conventional wisdom, comparative advantage, USP, among others contribute to the wide acceptance of specialization.


title: Multipotentiality

text: Proponents of specialization above cite excellence and its perceived higher rewards compared to mediocrity in everything. Proponents of multiple capabilities below emphasize the importance of adaptability.


title: Multipotentiality

text: In "Master of Many Trades", Robert Twigger goes so far as to coin the word "monopath": "It means a person with a narrow mind, a one-track brain, a bore, a super-specialist, an expert with no other interests — in other words, the role-model of choice in the Western world."


title: Multipotentiality

text: In an article on the decline of polymathy, Felipe Fernández-Armesto wrote, "Universities bear some responsibility for its extinction. Classical Greece, Renaissance Italy and Victorian England all revered and rewarded generalists, for whom today universities have little or no space or patience. Enclosed departments in discrete spaces, with their own journals and jargons, are a legacy of lamentable, out-of-date ways of organising knowledge and work."


title: Multipotentiality

text: Boredom is also a frequent occurrence in multipotentialites who have already "mastered" or learned everything they desire to know about a particular topic before moving on.


title: Multipotentiality

text: They will also encounter opposition from career counselors, parents and friends who wish for them to choose conventional specialized career paths.


title: Multipotentiality

text: In a world that overvalues specialization, the term and its increasing popularity (especially among the blogging community) have contributed to the revival of awareness on the importance of generalists. The concept was even mentioned in a Jamaican newspaper as the subject of a competition's training session.


title: Multipotentiality

text: In the current economy, Creativity and the rise of the Creative Class are linked to divergent thinking and innovative solutions to current problems. Because new ideas can be found in the intersection of multiple fields, they would benefit from the advantages of multipotentialites.


title: Kurt Lewin

text: Kurt Lewin ( ; 9 September 1890 – 12 February 1947) was a German-American psychologist, known as one of the modern pioneers of social, organizational, and applied psychology in the United States. During his professional career Lewin applied himself to three general topics: applied research, action research, and group communication.


title: Kurt Lewin

text: Lewin is often recognized as the "founder of social psychology" and was one of the first to study group dynamics and organizational development. A "Review of General Psychology" survey, published in 2002, ranked Lewin as the 18th-most cited psychologist of the 20th century.


title: Kurt Lewin

text: Lewin was born in 1890 into a Jewish family in Mogilno, County of Mogilno, Province of Posen, Prussia (modern Poland). It was a small village of about 5,000 people, about 150 of whom were Jewish. Lewin received an orthodox Jewish education at home. He was one of four children born into a middle-class family. His father owned a small general store, and the family lived in an apartment above the store. His father, Leopold, owned a farm jointly with his brother Max; however, the farm was legally owned by a Christian because Jews were not permitted to own farms at the time.


title: Kurt Lewin

text: The family moved to Berlin in 1905, so Lewin and his brothers could receive a better education. From 1905 to 1908, Lewin studied at the Kaiserin Augusta Gymnasium, where he received a classical humanistic education. In 1909, he entered the University of Freiburg to study medicine, but transferred to the University of Munich to study biology. He became involved with the socialist movement and women's rights around this time. In April 1910, he transferred to the Royal Friedrich-Wilhelms University of Berlin, where he was still a medical student. By the Easter semester of 1911, his interests had shifted toward philosophy. By the summer of 1911, the majority of his courses were in psychology. While at the University of Berlin, Lewin took 14 courses with Carl Stumpf (1848–1936).


title: Kurt Lewin

text: He served in the German army when World War I began. Due to a war wound, he returned to the University of Berlin to complete his PhD. Lewin wrote a dissertation proposal asking Stumpf to be his supervisor, and Stumpf assented. Even though Lewin worked under Stumpf to complete his dissertation, their relationship did not involve much communication. Lewin studied associations, will, and intention for his dissertation, but he did not discuss it with Stumpf until his final doctoral examination.


title: Kurt Lewin

text: In 1917, Lewin married Maria Landsberg. In 1919, the couple had a daughter Esther Agnes, and in 1922, their son Fritz Reuven was born. They divorced around 1927, and Maria immigrated to Palestine with the children. In 1929, Lewin married Gertrud Weiss. Their daughter Miriam was born in 1931, and their son Daniel was born in 1933.


title: Kurt Lewin

text: Lewin had originally been involved with schools of behavioral psychology before changing directions in research and undertaking work with psychologists of the Gestalt school of psychology, including Max Wertheimer and Wolfgang Kohler. He also joined the Psychological Institute of the University of Berlin where he lectured and gave seminars on both philosophy and psychology. He served as a professor at the University of Berlin from 1926 to 1932, during which time he conducted experiments about tension states, needs, motivation, and learning. In 1933, Lewin had tried to negotiate a teaching position as the chair of psychology as well as the creation of a research institute at the Hebrew University. Lewin often associated with the early Frankfurt School, originated by an influential group of largely Jewish Marxists at the Institute for Social Research in Germany. But when Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933 the Institute members had to disband, moving to England and then to America. In that year, he met with Eric Trist, of the London Tavistock Clinic. Trist was impressed with his theories and went on to use them in his studies on soldiers during the Second World War.


title: Kurt Lewin

text: Lewin immigrated to the United States in August 1933 and became a naturalized citizen in 1940. A few years after relocating to America, Lewin began asking people to pronounce his name as "Lou-in" rather than "Le-veen" because the mispronunciation of his name by Americans had led to many missed phone calls. However, shortly before his death, he began requesting students and colleagues to use the correct pronunciation ("Le-veen") because that is the one he preferred. Earlier, he had spent six months as a visiting professor at Stanford in 1930, but on his immigration to the United States, Lewin worked at Cornell University and for the Iowa Child Welfare Research Station at the University of Iowa. Later, he became director of the Center for Group Dynamics at MIT.


title: Kurt Lewin

text: Following World War II, Lewin was involved in the psychological rehabilitation of former occupants of displaced persons camps with Dr. Jacob Fine at Harvard Medical School. When Trist and A T M Wilson wrote to Lewin proposing a journal in partnership with their newly founded Tavistock Institute and his group at MIT, Lewin agreed. The Tavistock journal, "Human Relations", was founded with two early papers by Lewin entitled "Frontiers in Group Dynamics". Lewin taught for a time at Duke University.


title: Kurt Lewin

text: Lewin died in Newtonville, Massachusetts, of heart failure in 1947. He was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His wife died in 1987.


title: Kurt Lewin

text: Lewin coined the notion of genidentity, which has gained some importance in various theories of space-time and related fields. For instance, he introduced the concept of hodological space or the simplest route achieved through the resolution of different field of forces, oppositions, and tensions according to their goals.


title: Kurt Lewin

text: Lewin also proposed Herbert Blumer's interactionist perspective of 1937 as an alternative to the nature versus nurture debate. Lewin suggested that neither nature (inborn tendencies) nor nurture (how experiences in life shape individuals) alone can account for individuals' behavior and personalities, but rather that both nature and nurture interact to shape each person. This idea was presented in the form of Lewin's equation for behavior, "B" = "ƒ"("P", "E"), which means that behavior (B) is a function (f) of personal characteristics (P), and environmental characteristics (E).


title: Kurt Lewin

text: First and foremost, Kurt Lewin was an applied researcher and practical theorist. Most scholars of the time reveled in the fear that devoting oneself to applied research would distract the discipline from basic research on scholarly problems – thus creating this false binary regarding for whom knowledge is created, whether it was for the perpetuation of the discipline or for application. Despite this debate within the social sciences at the time, Lewin argued that "applied research could be conducted with rigor and that one could test theoretical propositions in applied research." The root of this particular binary seemed to stem from the epistemological norms present within the hard sciences – where the distinction was much more pronounced; Kurt Lewin argued that this was contrary to the nature of the social sciences. Furthermore, with the help of scholars like Paul Lazarsfeld, there was a method through which money could be acquired for research in a sustainable manner. Lewin has encouraged researchers to develop theories that can be used to address important social problems.


title: Kurt Lewin

text: To demonstrate his dedication to applied research and to further prove that there was value in testing his theoretical propositions, Lewin became a "master at transposing an everyday problem into a psychological experiment". Lewin, in his beginnings, took a seemingly banal moment between himself and a waiter and turned it into the beginnings of his field research. In this particular incident, Lewin reasoned that the "intention to carry out a specific task builds a psychological tension, which is released when the intended task is completed" in tandem with when Sigmund Freud theorized that "wishes persist until they are satisfied." This happenstance observation started the demonstration of the "existence of psychic tensions", fundamental to Lewin's field theory.


title: Kurt Lewin

text: While applied research helped develop Lewin into a practical theorist, what further defined him as an academic and a forerunner was his "action research" – a term he invented himself. Lewin was increasingly interested in the concepts of Jewish migration and identity. He was confused by the concept of how while an individual distanced themselves from performing the Jewish identity in terms of religious expression and performance, they were still considered Jewish in the eyes of Nazis. This concept of denying one's identity and the promotion of self-loathing as a form of coping with a dominant group's oppression represented the crisis of Lewin's own migration to the United States. Lewin, as his student and colleague Ron Lippitt described, "had a deep sensitivity to social problems and a commitment to use his resources as a social scientist to do something about them. Thus in the early 1940s he drew a triangle to represent the interdependence of research, training, and action in producing social change." This diagramming of an academic's interests and actions within this triangulation yields an interesting part of accessing Lewin and his contributions. Rather than noting social justice as the beginning or the end, it was ingrained in every single academic action that Lewin took. It was this particular world view and paradigm that furthered his research and determined precisely how he was going to utilize the findings from his field research. Furthermore, it all reflected upon Lewin the man and his way of coping with the events of his time period. This devotion to action research was possibly a way of resolving a dissonance of his own passage to America and how he left his own back in present-day Poland.


title: Kurt Lewin

text: Prominent psychologists mentored by Lewin included Leon Festinger (1919–1989), who became known for his cognitive dissonance theory (1956), environmental psychologist Roger Barker, Bluma Zeigarnik, and Morton Deutsch, the founder of modern conflict resolution theory and practice.


title: Kurt Lewin

text: Force-field analysis provides a framework for looking at the factors ("forces") that influence a situation, originally social situations. It looks at forces that are either driving movement toward a goal (helping forces) or blocking movement toward a goal (hindering forces). Key to this approach was Lewin's interest in gestaltism, understanding the totality and assessing a situation as a whole and not focusing only on individual aspects. Further, the totality for an individual (their life space) derives from their perception of their reality, not an objective viewpoint. The approach, developed by Kurt Lewin, is a significant contribution to the fields of social science, psychology, social psychology, organizational development, process management, and change management. His theory was expanded by John R. P. French who related it to organizational and industrial settings.


title: Kurt Lewin

text: Lewin, then a professor at MIT, first coined the term "action research" in about 1944, and it appears in his 1946 paper "Action Research and Minority Problems". In that paper, he described action research as "a comparative research on the conditions and effects of various forms of social action and research leading to social action" that uses "a spiral of steps, each of which is composed of a circle of planning, action, and fact-finding about the result of the action" (this is sometimes referred to as the "Lewinian spiral").


title: Kurt Lewin

text: Lewin often characterized organizational management styles and cultures in terms of leadership climates defined by (1) authoritarian, (2) democratic and (3) laissez-faire work environments. He is often confused with McGregor with his work environments, but McGregor adapted them directly to leadership-theory. Authoritarian environments are characterized where the leader determines policy with techniques and steps for work tasks dictated by the leader in the division of labor. The leader is not necessarily hostile but is aloof from participation in work and commonly offers personal praise and criticism for the work done. Democratic climates are characterized where policy is determined through collective processes with decisions assisted by the leader. Before accomplishing tasks, perspectives are gained from group discussion and technical advice from a leader. Members are given choices and collectively decide the division of labor. Praise and criticism in such an environment are objective, fact minded and given by a group member without necessarily having participated extensively in the actual work. Laissez-faire environments give freedom to the group for policy determination without any participation from the leader. The leader remains uninvolved in work decisions unless asked, does not participate in the division of labor, and very infrequently gives praise.


title: Kurt Lewin

text: An early model of change developed by Lewin described change as a three-stage process. The first stage he called "unfreezing". It involved overcoming inertia and dismantling the existing "mind set". It must be part of surviving. Defense mechanisms have to be bypassed. In the second stage the change occurs. This is typically a period of confusion and transition. We are aware that the old ways are being challenged but we do not have a clear picture as to what we are replacing them with yet. The third and final stage he called "freezing". The new mindset is crystallizing and one's comfort level is returning to previous levels. This is often misquoted as "refreezing" (see Lewin,1947). Lewin's three-step process is regarded as a foundational model for making change in organizations. There is now evidence, however, that Lewin never developed such a model and that it took form after his death in 1947.


title: Kurt Lewin

text: While working at MIT in 1946, Lewin received a phone call from the director of the Connecticut State Inter Racial Commission requesting help to find an effective way to combat religious and racial prejudices. He set up a workshop to conduct a "change" experiment, which laid the foundations for what is now known as sensitivity training. In 1947, this led to the establishment of the National Training Laboratories, at Bethel, Maine. Carl Rogers believed that sensitivity training is "perhaps the most significant social invention of this century."


title: Kurt Lewin

text: Lewin's equation, "B" = "ƒ"("P", "E"), is a psychological equation of behavior developed by Kurt Lewin. It states that behavior is a function of the person in their environment.


title: Kurt Lewin

text: The equation is the psychologist's most well known formula in social psychology, of which Lewin was a modern pioneer. When first presented in Lewin's book "Principles of Topological Psychology", published in 1936, it contradicted most popular theories in that it gave importance to a person's momentary situation in understanding his or her behavior, rather than relying entirely on the past.


title: Kurt Lewin

text: In a 1947 article, Lewin coined the term "group dynamics". He described this notion as the way that groups and individuals act and react to changing circumstances. This field emerged as a concept dedicated to the advancement of knowledge regarding the nature of groups, their laws, establishment, development, and interactions with other groups, individuals and institutions. During the early years of research on group processes, many psychologists rejected the reality of group phenomena. Critics shared the opinion that groups did not exist as scientifically valid entities. It had been said by skeptics that the actions of groups were nothing more than those of its members considered separately. Lewin applied his interactionism formula, "B" = "ƒ"("P", "E"), to explain group phenomena, where a member's personal characteristics ("P") interact with the environmental factors of the group, ("E") its members, and the situation to elicit behaviour ("B"). Given his background in Gestalt psychology, Lewin justified group existence using the dictum "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts". He theorized that when a group is established it becomes a unified system with supervening qualities that cannot be understood by evaluating members individually. This notion – that a group is composed of more than the sum of its individual members – quickly gained support from sociologists and psychologists who understood the significance of this emerging field. Many pioneers noted that the majority of group phenomena could be explained according to Lewin's equation and insight and opposing views were hushed. The study of group dynamics remains relevant in today's society where a vast number of professions (e.g., business and industry, clinical/counseling psychology, sports and recreation) rely on its mechanisms to thrive.


title: Kurt Lewin

text: The most notable of Lewin's contributions was his development of group communication and group dynamics as major facets of the communication discipline. Lewin and his associated researchers shifted from the pre-existing trend of individualist psychology and then expanded their work to incorporate a macro lens where they focused on the "social psychology of small group communication" (Rogers 1994). Lewin is associated with "founding research and training in group dynamics and for establishing the participative management style in organizations". He carved out this niche for himself from his various experiments. In his Berlin research, Lewin utilized "group discussions to advance his theory in research." In doing so, there was certainly the complication of not knowing exactly whom to attribute epiphanies to as an idea collectively came into fruition. In addition to group discussions, he became increasingly interested in group membership. He was curious as to how perspectives of an individual in relation to the group were solidified or weakened. He tried to come up with the way identity was constructed from standpoint and perspectives. These were the beginnings of what ended up developing into "groupthink". Lewin started to become quite interested in how ideas were created and then perpetuated by the mentality of a group. Not included in this chapter is how important this became in looking at group dynamics across disciplines – including studying John F Kennedy and the way he tried to interact with his advisors in order to prevent groupthink from occurring.


title: Jabidah massacre

text: The Jabidah massacre on March 18, 1968 was the purported assassinations or executions of Moro army recruits who allegedly mutinied upon learning the true nature of their mission. It is acknowledged as a major flashpoint that ignited the Moro insurgency in the Philippines.


title: Jabidah massacre

text: Author Cesar Adib Majul notes that the administration of Ferdinand Marcos had suppressed press coverage of the affair which led to a lack of documentation about the incident and varying accounts of the number of trainees killed, from 11 to 68. This eventually sparked calls for Moro independence and is acknowledged by the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) as a key moment in Bangsamoro history.


title: Jabidah massacre

text: The north-eastern part of Sabah had been under the rule of the Sulu Sultanate since it was given to them by the Sultanate of Brunei in 1658 for the Sulu Sultanate's help in settling a civil war in Brunei before being leased or ceded (The agreements were written in Malay using Jawi script. The 1878 agreement used the term "padjak" meaning "cede or rent", while the 1903 additional cession agreement used the term "menyerahkan" meaning "surrendered".) to the British in 1878. During the process of decolonization by the British after World War II from 1946, Sabah was integrated as part of the Malaysian Federation in 1963 under the Malaysia Agreement. The Philippine government however protested this, claiming the eastern part of Sabah had never been sold to foreign interests, and that it had only been "leased" by the Sulu Sultanate, and therefore remained the property of the Sultan, and by extension, the property of Republic of the Philippines. Diplomatic efforts to Malaysia and the United Nations during the administration of President Diosdado Macapagal proved futile.


title: Jabidah massacre

text: In 1962, President Diosdado Macapagal renewed the Philippines' claim over Sabah although the territory has been incorporated into Malaysia. Operation Merdeka is a follow-up to this claim. The plan was for trained commandos to infiltrate Sabah and destabilize the state by sabotage which would then legitimize the Philippines' military intervention in the territory and claiming the state which many Filipinos felt was rightfully theirs.


title: Jabidah massacre

text: In 1967, President Ferdinand Marcos secretly authorized Major Eduardo "Abdul Latif" Martelino, a Muslim convert, to take charge of the operations of a secret commando unit code-named "Jabidah" and embark on an operation called "Project Merdeka" ("merdeka" means "freedom" in Malay) to destabilize and take over Sabah. The alleged mastermind, however, included leading generals in the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), Defense Undersecretary Manuel Syquio, and Marcos himself.


title: Jabidah massacre

text: The first phase of the operation saw Martelino, with an advance party of some 17 agents entering Sabah three times to conduct reconnaissance and psychological warfare. It was during the second phase of the operation that the massacre took place. After 180 young Tausugs from Sulu received basic training, they were transported to a remote section of Corregidor Island at the mouth of Manila Bay where they were further trained in guerrilla operations and jungle warfare. Once on the island, the code name was changed to 'Jabidah'. The real purpose of the formation of Jabidah was never publicized therefore leading to wide speculations and controversies regarding this top secret military plan.


title: Jabidah massacre

text: The Oplan Merdeka and the Jabidah Massacre first came to public attention on March 18, 1968, when two fishermen rescued a Muslim man named Jibin Arula from the waters just off Caballo Island in Manila Bay. They discovered that he had suffered gunshot wounds, and he later recounted that he was the lone survivor of an attempt by members of the armed forces to kill a group of Muslim army recruits.


title: Jabidah massacre

text: There are various interpretations of the events of that morning. While some interpretations claim that the massacre never took place, the gist of the Jabidah massacre narrative is that for one reason or the other, the trainees refused to continue their training and demanded to be returned home. One batch of recruits were disarmed, with some of the trainees returned home and some others transferred to a regular military camp in Luzon. But another batch of recruits were killed by army troops, with only one survivor, Jibin Arula, managing to escape.


title: Jabidah massacre

text: One of the aspects where interpretations the massacre differ is in the motivation of the recruits for ending their training.


title: Jabidah massacre

text: One version states that they mutinied because they were angered by the delay in receiving their allowance, the poor living conditions on Corregidor, and the experience of having to live on miserable rations for three months.


title: Jabidah massacre

text: Another school of thought posits that the project, code-named "Jabidah" involved the recruitment of Muslims trainees who were supposed to be trained to infiltrate and cause chaos in Sabah to strengthen Philippines' territorial claim. These trainees were informed beforehand that they were joining the AFP to fight "communists", but subsequently learned the true nature of their mission during the latter part of their training. Within this camp, some scholars argue that the massacre was due to the mutiny of the Muslim trainees who declined orders to infiltrate Sabah because they felt that the sabotage against Sabah was unjustified and that they also felt kinship with fellow Muslims in Sabah. Other scholars argue that the trainees were killed upon learning the truth of their recruitment to ensure that the information was not leaked.


title: Jabidah massacre

text: The official narrative denied that the reason for training the recruits were for infiltration in Sabah and that the massacre, as stated in the Manila Bulletin, occurred because the trainees could not endure hardship during the training. With the lack of substantial evidence, it proved difficult to convict the officers involved in the massacre and thus they were acquitted, which further angered the Muslims.


title: Jabidah massacre

text: Some time after Jibin Arula was found in Cavite, he was brought to Governor Delfin N. Montano and told the governor his story. Eventually, Arula's story resulted in calls for probes in both the Philippine Senate and House of Representatives.


title: Jabidah massacre

text: Opposition Senator Benigno Aquino Jr. uncovered Jabidah to the public as a plan by Marcos to ensure his grip on power. Fellow opposition members followed suit and criticized the Marcos Administration's role in the incident as indicative of the regime's poor overall administration and neglect of the country's Muslim diaspora. Widespread press coverage of Aquino's denouncements caught the ruling government off-guard.


title: Jabidah massacre

text: Nevertheless, Senator Aquino did not consider the incident a massacre. In his privilege speech entitled "Jabidah! Special Forces of Evil?" delivered at the Legislative Building on March 28, 1968, Aquino submitted the following conclusion:This morning, the "Manila Times," in its banner headline, quoted me as saying that I believed there was no mass massacre on Corregidor island.


title: Jabidah massacre

text: And I submit it was not a hasty conclusion, but one borne out by careful deductions. What brought me to this conclusion:


title: Jabidah massacre

text: 1. Massacre means, to my mind, the wanton killing of men—maybe premeditated, but definitely committed according to a previous plan. I submit that there was no plan to kill the Muslim recruits.


title: Jabidah massacre

text: 2. What would have been the motive for the "massacre"? Some quarters have advanced the theory that the trainees were liquidated in order to silence them. But then, 24 boys have already shown up in Jolo safe and healthy. To release 24 men who can spill the beans and liquidate the remaining 24 "to seal" their lips would defy logic.


title: Jabidah massacre

text: 3. Jibin Arula has been telling the truth all along. However, his fears, which in his place may be considered valid, may not be supported by the recent turn of events. Twenty-four recruits have turned up.


title: Jabidah massacre

text: After the Senate revelations implicated President Marcos as ultimately responsible for the massacre, Lanao del Sur Congressman Haroun al-Rashid Lucman called for Congress to begin proceedings to impeach the President. When his proposal did not receive enough congressional support, he decided not to run again for his post in succeeding elections, becoming convinced that Muslims should rule themselves in Muslim Mindanao.


title: Jabidah massacre

text: In July 1971, then Prime Minister of Libya, Muammar Gaddhafi, wrote to President Marcos to express his concern. As the Philippines relied on Arab oil, the government tried to defend itself against any accusation and denied any religious repression taking place in Mindanao. The acting foreign Minister added that the problems stemmed from land and political issues which it was ready to solve internally. Then Prime Minister of Malaysia, Tunku Abdul Rahman, also condemned the Philippine government and requested for congressional trial against the officers involved in the massacre. Diplomatic ties between the Philippines and Malaysia were severed as this event also further indicated to Malaysia that the Philippine government still had strong determination in its territorial claim to Sabah. In general, this affair had increased the international community's awareness of the Moro issue in the Philippines.


title: Jabidah massacre

text: In spite of disputes about the facts of the massacre, historians agree that the Jabidah Massacre was one of the most important flashpoints that ignited the Moro insurgency during Marcos' regime.


title: Jabidah massacre

text: Despite undergoing numerous trials and hearings, the officers related to the massacre were never convicted which served as a clear indication to the Muslim community that the Christian government had little regard for them. This created a furor within the Muslim community in the Philippines, especially among the educated youth. Muslim students saw the need through this incident to unite in protests and organized demonstrations and rallies in Manila with financial backing from Muslim politicians and university intellectuals. One such demonstration was situated near the Malacañang Palace, where the President and his family resided. The students held a week-long protest vigil over an empty coffin marked 'Jabidah' in front of the palace.


title: Jabidah massacre

text: The massacre significantly brought the Muslim intellectuals, who, prior to the incident had no discernible interest in politics, into the political scene to demand for safeguards against politicians who were using them. Apart from the intellectuals, Muslims in Philippines in general saw that all opportunities for integration and accommodation with the Christians were lost and further marginalized.


title: Jabidah massacre

text: In May 1968, former Cotabato governor Datu Udtog Matalam announced the formation of the Muslim Independence Movement (MIM) which was regarded by observers as the spontaneous backlash of the Jabidah Massacre. The strong feelings and unity of the Muslim intellectuals were seen as the immediate reaction to the establishment of the MIM which carried far-reaching impacts such as the formation of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and continued armed struggle in the Southern Philippines.


title: Jabidah massacre

text: When Rashid Lucman's call for the House of Representatives didn't get enough congressional support, he became convinced that Muslims should rule themselves in Muslim Mindanao – a conviction which led him to eventually establish the Bangsamoro Liberation Organization (BMLO) after the end of his term in 1969.


title: Jabidah massacre

text: On September 23, 1972, Ferdinand Marcos announced that he had placed the entirety of the Philippines, including Muslim Mindanao, under Martial law. While Matalam's MIM was already defunct, one of its former members, Nur Misuari, established the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) a month after the declaration of Martial Law, on October 21, 1972. Lucman's BMLO eventually expressed support for the MNLF.


title: Jabidah massacre

text: Proclamation 1081 dissolved the various political groups that had been previously established in the Moro provinces, and with the MIM having already been dissolved, Marcos' declaration of martial law effectively assured the MNLF, which was more radical than its predecessors, would come to dominate the Moro separatist movement.


title: Jabidah massacre

text: Scholars have opined that the media attention given Arula may have, to some extent, distorted his accounts. The actual events remain unclear as documents were allegedly destroyed by Major Martelino. Arula died in a traffic accident in Trece Martires, Cavite, sometime in August or September 2010.


title: Jabidah massacre

text: In contrast to his father, Senator Benigno Aquino Jr., President Benigno Aquino III acknowledged the incident as a massacre on March 18, 2013, when he led commemorations on its 45th anniversary. This notably marked the first time that a ruling President had acknowledged the massacre as having taken place. Aquino also directed the National Historical Commission of the Philippines to designate the Mindanao Garden of Peace on Corregidor as a historical landmark. Ground was broken to construct the landmark during a ceremony marking the 45th anniversary of the massacre. During a ceremony marking the 47th anniversary of the massacre, a symbolic peace marker: 'Mindanao Garden of Peace: Corregidor Island' was turned over to the families of the survivors of the massacre.


title: Jabidah massacre

text: A 1990 film based on the event starred Anthony Alonzo, sharing the same name. However, details are fictionalized for the sake of artistic license.


title: Say You Will (album)

text: Say You Will is the seventeenth and, to date, last studio album by British-American rock band Fleetwood Mac, released on 15 April 2003. It followed 1995's "Time" and was their first album since 1970 without vocalist/keyboardist Christine McVie as a full member following her departure in 1998, though she participated in some songs as a guest musician; it would be her last time being involved with the band in a studio capacity before her death in 2022. Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks shared primary keyboard duties throughout the album.


title: Say You Will (album)

text: This would also be the band's last full album with Buckingham before his dismissal from the group in 2018, although he would participate in their 2013 extended play.


title: Say You Will (album)

text: "Say You Will" was the first studio Fleetwood Mac album to peak in the top three in the US since 1982's "Mirage". The album debuted at No. 3 with sales of 218,000, spent two months within the top 40, and was certified Gold by the RIAA in July 2003 for 500,000 copies shipped in the US.


title: Say You Will (album)

text: A limited edition version of the album was issued at the same time, featuring two live tracks ("Peacekeeper" and "Say You Will"), two additional studio tracks (Nicks' "Not Make Believe" and Buckingham's cover of Bob Dylan's "Love Minus Zero/No Limit"), an expanded booklet and poster.


title: Say You Will (album)

text: Soon after the release of "Time", Billy Burnette and Bekka Bramlett departed to form the country duo Bekka & Billy. Rather than continuing, Fleetwood Mac chose to disband. By 1997, the "Rumours" lineup agreed to perform again for an MTV Unplugged special. Following the successful reunion album, "The Dance", which included a live performance of "Bleed to Love Her", Christine McVie left the group, citing her fear of flying as the primary reason for her departure.


title: Say You Will (album)

text: In the early 2000s, Buckingham was finishing up a solo album but got a call from Warner Bros to work on a Fleetwood Mac record instead. Buckingham agreed and set aside a large portion of his songs for "Say You Will", with Mick Fleetwood and John McVie on drums and bass, respectively. To round out the album, Nicks brought in some new material, along with leftovers from previous albums. One of those songs, "Smile at You", dates back to the "Tusk" sessions in 1979 but was never recorded by the full band until "Say You Will".


title: Say You Will (album)

text: Music videos were shot for "Peacekeeper" and "Say You Will", both of these videos were stage performances of both songs. Neither of these videos are commercially available.


title: Gwendolyn Brooks

text: Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks (June 7, 1917 – December 3, 2000) was an American poet, author, and teacher. Her work often dealt with the personal celebrations and struggles of ordinary people in her community. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry on May 1, 1950, for "Annie Allen", making her the first African American to receive a Pulitzer Prize.


title: Gwendolyn Brooks

text: Throughout her prolific writing career, Brooks received many more honors. A lifelong resident of Chicago, she was appointed Poet Laureate of Illinois in 1968, a position she held until her death 32 years later. She was also named the U.S. Poet Laureate for the 1985–86 term. In 1976, she became the first African American woman inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.


title: Gwendolyn Brooks

text: Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks was born on June 7, 1917, in Topeka, Kansas and raised on the South Side of Chicago. She was the first child of David Anderson Brooks and Keziah (Wims) Brooks. Her father, a janitor for a music company, had hoped to pursue a career as a doctor but sacrificed that aspiration to get married and raise a family. Her mother was a school teacher as well as a concert pianist trained in classical music. Brooks' mother had taught at the Topeka school that later became involved in the prolific "Brown v. Board of Education" racial desegregation case. Family lore held that Brooks' paternal grandfather had escaped slavery to join the Union forces during the American Civil War.


title: Gwendolyn Brooks

text: When Brooks was six weeks old, her family moved to Chicago during the Great Migration, and from then on, Chicago remained her home. She would closely identify with Chicago for the rest of her life. In a 1994 interview, she remarked:


title: Gwendolyn Brooks

text: Living in the city, I wrote differently than I would have if I had been raised in Topeka, KS ... I am an organic Chicagoan. Living there has given me a multiplicity of characters to aspire for. I hope to live there the rest of my days. That's my headquarters.


title: Gwendolyn Brooks

text: She started her formal education at Forestville Elementary School on Chicago's South Side. Brooks then attended a prestigious integrated high school in the city with a predominantly white student body, Hyde Park High School; transferred to the all-black Wendell Phillips High School; and finished her schooling at integrated Englewood High School.


title: Gwendolyn Brooks

text: According to biographer Kenny Jackson Williams, due to the social dynamics of the various schools, in conjunction with the era in which she attended them, Brooks faced much racial injustice. Over time, this experience helped her understand the prejudice and bias in established systems and dominant institutions, not only in her own surroundings but in every relevant American mindset.


title: Gwendolyn Brooks

text: Brooks began writing at an early age and her mother encouraged her, saying, "You are going to be the lady Paul Laurence Dunbar." During her teenage years, she began filling books with <nowiki>"careful rhymes" and "</nowiki>lofty meditations," as well as submitting poems to various publications. Her first poem was published in "American Childhood" when she was 13. By the time she had graduated from high school in 1935, she was already a regular contributor to "The Chicago Defender".


title: Gwendolyn Brooks

text: After her early educational experiences, Brooks did not pursue a four-year college degree because she knew she wanted to be a writer and considered it unnecessary. "I am not a scholar," she later said. "I'm just a writer who loves to write and will always write." She graduated in 1936 from a two-year program at Wilson Junior College, now known as Kennedy-King College, and worked as a typist to support herself while she pursued her career.


title: Gwendolyn Brooks

text: Brooks published her first poem, "Eventide", in a children's magazine, "American Childhood", when she was 13 years old. By the age of 16, she had already written and published approximately 75 poems. At 17, she started submitting her work to "Lights and Shadows," the poetry column of the "Chicago Defender", an African-American newspaper. Her poems, many published while she attended Wilson Junior College, ranged in style from traditional ballads and sonnets to poems using blues rhythms in free verse. In her early years, she received commendations on her poetic work and encouragement from James Weldon Johnson, Richard Wright and Langston Hughes. James Weldon Johnson sent her the first critique of her poems when she was only sixteen years old.


title: Gwendolyn Brooks

text: Her characters were often drawn from the inner city life that Brooks knew well. She said, "I lived in a small second-floor apartment at the corner, and I could look first on one side and then the other. There was my material."


title: Gwendolyn Brooks

text: By 1941, Brooks was taking part in poetry workshops. A particularly influential one was organized by Inez Cunningham Stark, an affluent white woman with a strong literary background. Stark offered writing workshops at the new South Side Community Art Center, which Brooks attended. It was here she gained momentum in finding her voice and a deeper knowledge of the techniques of her predecessors. Renowned poet Langston Hughes stopped by the workshop and heard her read "The Ballad of Pearl May Lee". In 1944, she achieved a goal she had been pursuing through continued unsolicited submissions since she was 14 years old: two of her poems were published in "Poetry" magazine's November issue. In the autobiographical information she provided to the magazine, she described her occupation as a "housewife".


title: Gwendolyn Brooks

text: Brooks' published her first book of poetry, "A Street in Bronzeville" (1945), with Harper & Brothers, after a strong show of support to the publisher from author Richard Wright. It consists of a series of poems related to an African American girl’s growing up in Chicago. Wright said to the editors who solicited his opinion on Brooks' work:


title: Gwendolyn Brooks

text: There is no self-pity here, not a striving for effects. She takes hold of reality as it is and renders it faithfully. ... She easily catches the pathos of petty destinies; the whimper of the wounded; the tiny accidents that plague the lives of the desperately poor, and the problem of color prejudice among Negroes.


title: Gwendolyn Brooks

text: The book earned instant critical acclaim for its authentic and textured portraits of life in Bronzeville. Brooks later said it was a glowing review by Paul Engle in the "Chicago Tribune" that "initiated My Reputation". Engle stated that Brooks' poems were no more "Negro poetry" than Robert Frost's work was "white poetry". Brooks received her first Guggenheim Fellowship in 1946 and was included as one of the "Ten Young Women of the Year" in "Mademoiselle" magazine.


title: Gwendolyn Brooks

text: Brooks' second book of poetry, "Annie Allen" (1949), focused on the life and experiences of a young Black girl growing into womanhood in the Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago. The book was awarded the 1950 Pulitzer Prize for poetry, and was also awarded "Poetry" magazine's Eunice Tietjens Prize.


title: Gwendolyn Brooks

text: In 1953, Brooks published her first and only narrative book, a novella titled "Maud Martha," which is a series of 34 vignettes about the experience of black women entering adulthood, consistent with the themes of her previous works. "Maud Martha" follows the life of a black woman named Maud Martha Brown as she moves about life from childhood to adulthood. It tells the story of "a woman with doubts about herself and where and how she fits into the world. Maud's concern is not so much that she is inferior but that she is perceived as being ugly," states author Harry B. Shaw in his book "Gwendolyn Brooks." Maud suffers prejudice and discrimination not only from white individuals but also from black individuals who have lighter skin tones than hers, something that is a direct reference to Brooks' personal experience. Eventually, Maud stands up for herself by turning her back on a patronizing and racist store clerk. "The book is ... about the triumph of the lowly," Shaw comments. In contrast, literary scholar Mary Helen Washington emphasizes Brooks's critique of racism and sexism, calling "Maud Martha" "a novel about bitterness, rage, self-hatred, and the silence that results from suppressed anger".


title: Gwendolyn Brooks

text: In 1967, the year of Langston Hughes's death, Brooks attended the Second Black Writers' Conference at Nashville's Fisk University. Here, according to one version of events, she met activists and artists such as Imamu Amiri Baraka, Don L. Lee and others who exposed her to new black cultural nationalism. Recent studies argue that she had been involved in leftist politics in Chicago for many years and, under the pressures of McCarthyism, adopted a black nationalist posture as a means of distancing herself from her prior political connections. Brooks's experience at the conference inspired many of her subsequent literary activities. She taught creative writing to some of Chicago's Blackstone Rangers, otherwise a violent criminal gang. In 1968, she published one of her most famous works, "In the Mecca", a long poem about a mother's search for her lost child in a Chicago apartment building. The poem was nominated for the National Book Award for poetry.


title: Gwendolyn Brooks

text: Her autobiographical "Report From Part One", including reminiscences, interviews, photographs and vignettes, came out in 1972, and "Report From Part Two" was published in 1995, when she was almost 80. Her other works include "Primer for Blacks" (1980), "Young Poet’s Primer" (1980), "To Disembark" (1981), "The Near-Johannesburg Boy, and Other Poems" (1986), "Blacks" (1987), "Winnie" (1988), and "Children Coming Home" (1991).