Academic Satire - Japanese By Spring

The book I have read for my academic satire is Japanese By Spring by Ishmael Reed. The story focuses on Benjamin "Chappie" Puttbutt, a junior professor at Jack London College during the early 1990s. He wants tenure so bad that he is willing to conform to the school's ideological climate (which is for sexism and against affirmative action) and take racial slurs and actions from a student whose father supports the school financially. Understandably, he is upset when he finds out he is denied tenure, even thought he doesn't realized that he's not well liked among some of his co-workers.

While studying to learn Japanese (hence the title), his tutor Dr. Yamato becomes president of Jack London and appoints Chappie as academic dean. Chappie takes the opportunity of his appointment to settle old scores and gets revenge on those who have wronged him.

For the last two years, I have worked in academia at the MUSC Library. When I was a library technical assistant, I worked nights so I didn't have much interaction with the teachers. I did interact with the students a lot and enjoyed helping them with their needs. Now that I work on outreach for the library, I mostly work with the public, which some faculty mixed in.

The part of academia that Reed mostly focused on was with tenure and interaction mostly among the faculty. I personally thought that most of the people in the book, especially Chappie, were jerks and were willing to do anything to keep their jobs. Some of the students were jerks and racist. I don't know if there is a lot of gossip and back-talking around academia, but there was a lot in this book. But this really didn't surprise me because that happens or may happen at any job. Some of the professors cared more about tenure and satisfying the alumni than teaching the students. Some of them might not have loved teaching and may need to reconnect with themselves, as emphasized in The Courage to Teach.

I could actually relate to the book because of the time period and what was going on. The book focused on the Supreme Court nomination of Clarence Thomas (and Anita Hill), the earthquake that hit San Francisco in 1989 and the 1992 L.A. Riots. There was a lot of social change at the time in regards to racism, affirmative action and sexism. Who would have thought almost 2o years later we would have an African-American president and a female Speaker of the House? I think that going through that period made America stronger and gave more opportunities for minorities and women.

This is my first academic satire and I hope I get another opportunity to read another one. I would recommend Japanese by Spring to my classmates and hope they enjoyed it as much as I did.