The fact that Deirdre Madden's tale takes place all in one day, as a calm reflection of the narrator’s relationships, does not take away from the fantastic insights to human nature that the author reveals. It may be Molly Fox’s birthday, but the real gift is for the playwright who hangs out in Molly’s house in Dublin while the eponymous character is away.
Molly Fox’s Birthday is told from the point of the view of the playwright, who revisits the memories of how she met Molly and their careers. She later expresses her feelings for another character, Andrew. The playwright is very good at pinpointing the motivations behind the actions of people she associates with; however, she comes to discover that maybe she doesn’t really know Molly at all. Madden puts into words what is universal to the human psyche.
One of the more interesting aspects of Molly Fox’s Birthday is how the playwright's brother, a Northern Ireland raised priest, maneuvers his way through cosmopolitan Dublin and London, maintaining a rather secretive relationship with Molly. He appears to be much more self-accepting and tolerant than our storyteller, who lies to others when she feels insecure.
Denial opens up to truth as the book winds down, not that it ever moves at a fast pace. It is, instead, rather tranquil. The narrator mentions and revisits one small memory from her relationship with one of the male characters, which she has lied to Molly about. It only takes a knock at the door to bring emotions from twenty years ago back into the front of her focus. Time can’t erase what she still feels, and tries to bury under silent hemming and hawing.
The ho-hum nature of describing what a wonderful actress Molly is, and how beautiful her belongings are could be replaced with more detail about the two women's undergrad years at Trinity, since this is the time that forms the foundation of all of the relationships in the book. Another aspect that should have been further explored was the behind-the-scenes details of life behind the stage (the actors, writers, directors), a life about which we only get hints.
One of the struggles that is universal to the human experience is the choice of whether to conform to family and community expectations or step into the role of the black sheep. Madden explores this through the narrator, who has trouble returning to the embrace of the family. She also makes a point of inserting the tensions between Molly and her mother. These examples, like the other memories, further the view that the past directs our present. Molly Fox’s Birthday is a nice, short, quiet trip.
Edited by Anthony B. Pinn and Benjamin Valentin Duke University Press
The topic of cross-cultural communication has fascinated me for a number of years, partly because of my own experiences in Latin America, and partly from observing the interaction between the Latino/a and African American communities. Watching these two groups interact has taught me a great deal about differences in the ways of communication, how what may be "appropriate" in one culture may not be in the other, and the need for discussion to avoid potential misunderstandings.
Therefore, it was with great interest that I read Creating Ourselves, a study on cross-cultural communication and collaboration between religious scholars of the two largest minority groups in the United States. The timing of the publication of this book is of great importance, as both groups have, to a certain extent, been viewed as "foreign elements" that might threaten the national identity of Americans, especially in the current economic climate. Scholars from both communities engage in a dialogue, an exchange of opinions, perspectives, and hopes, as their history and identity is linked through the cultural production via representations in popular culture.
I found the structure of the work innovative and very much needed in scholarly circles. The book consists of seven sections with two essays in each of them, one from each group. Every article is followed by a response written by a corresponding essayist from the opposite group, each contributor using their own personal experiences to further engage readers.
Teresa Delgado analyses the novel América’s Dream by Esmeralda Santiago, which delves into the life of América González, a single mother who takes a job as a maid in a hotel in New York after suffering abuse by her daughter's father in Puerto Rico. Although América finds freedom in New York, she remains isolated and silent, as she has not broken the dependency of oppression. Cheryl Kirk-Duggan, in response, reflects on the "womanist theory" that calls for revolution in the ways of seeing, living, and being. The term "womanist," coined by Alice Walker, refers to women who are in charge, who champion freedom and who transform the oppressive forms affected by race, gender, and class domination. Kirk-Duggan uses hip-hop artist Lauryn Hill as an example of just one of these extraordinary women.
In "Television and Religion," Jonathan Walton analyses the dramatised faith in megachurch movements; the colossal buildings that house sanctuaries, gyms, daycare, bookstores, and more are especially attractive to African American communities, with their charismatic pastors who even hold worship through an electronic church. Another form of melodrama is found in the Latin telenovelas (soap operas) that have become extremely popular for millions around the world; Kassandra, a Venezuelan soap opera attracts people as far away as Serbia, while The Rich Also Cry is popular even in Moscow.
Overall, I enjoyed reading Creating Ourselves as the subject of creativity in all different forms, styles, colours, and shadows is part of our daily life.
As a woman with young siblings, I have a vested interest in all materials that help me to have a positive influence on the adults they will grow up to become. I was very excited to see this new title by Wendy Rosenoff, an environmentalist who works with children through the Girl and Boy Scouts. Grow Your Own Tree Hugger contains, as noted, 101 activities that you can work through with your kids to help them better understand the planet and how to take care of it.
I often find it challenging (though necessary) to discuss lofty concepts with kids, and Rosenoff’s book helps because the activities serve as examples or analogies to larger, more complicated issues. For example, it might be difficult to get a child to understand the impact of pesticides and chemicals on our food, especially when these foods look the same as organic ones. Rosenoff suggests that you take two pieces of fruit—one organic and the other non-organic—and put them in the refrigerator. After several days, the organic fruit will be green and withered while the chemically enhanced one will still look new. This is a great, visual way to illustrate how pesticides prevent the natural decomposition process for kids.
Some activities do not actually involve activism, but offer a fun game as a way to encourage open conversation. Rosenoff suggests you make and fly a kite with your child and then use the opportunity to talk about wind power. She also encourages parents to take their kids out to experience nature, something the modern child often lacks exposure to.
In this day and age of the internet, video game devices, and television, some kids don’t spend much time outdoors at all. Rosenoff believes you should take them to examine tree stumps and determine the tree’s age, or get outside and plant something. She even includes recipes that parents and kids can make together with organic ingredients.
In working through Grow Your Own Tree Hugger, you not only inform your kids about the environment and the ways in which they can have an impact, but you get to spend time with them doing hands-on activities that are actually a lot of fun. You will probably both benefit from the time you spend growing your own tree hugger.
By E.E. Cummings Edited by George James Firmage W.W. Norton
Love, sex, and springtime are fundamental themes in E.E. Cummings’ lifetime body of work, and in Erotic Poems, editor George James Firmage brings together pieces by Cummings’ that are especially sexual, exalting of fertility, and written in a voice that is at once fresh and wise, evocative of the dumb yet utterly precise instinct to procreate.
These poems, and the line drawings (also by Cummings), were selected from the poet’s original manuscripts and are diverse in their eroticism, tone, and form. Representing a spectrum of sexual desire, thought, and impulse, the poems range from humorous to romantic, graphic to tender. Some are raw, even violent, while others are philosophical, and still others are playful but intelligent. My favorites led me to laugh, delighted by both the humor and the poetic genius in the verse, or else moved me to a deep sentimental ache at the beauty and tragedy of love and the existential anguish in its inevitable loss.
A particularly evocative poem entitled "ix." has a dark shadowy edge evoking the violence of both desire and of life itself, as well as a melancholy awareness of eventual extinguishment of life. It begins:
nearer:breath of my breath:take not thy tingling limbs from me:make my pain their crazy meal
Then climaxes with:
flower of madness on gritted lips and on sprawled eyes squirming with light insane chisel the killing flame that dizzily grips.
And finally concludes:
thirstily. Dead stars stink. dawn. inane, the poetic carcass of a girl.
This is not your run-of-the-mill erotica! From the sound of the words themselves to the use of unconventional syntax and spacing, the poems in this collection wind up to a climax after following a cadence that varies in texture, from rocky to sinuous.
Perhaps my favorite poem, because it hit me so squarely in the heart, is "vii." After the lovers have made love and:
all the houses terribly tighten upon your coming: and they are glad as you fill the streets of my city with children.
Resting now, the lovers embrace, and it is Cummings' description of the melding of their bodies and hearts that, for me, so poignantly captures the sense of oneness between them:
you are a keen mountain and an eager island whose lively slopes are based always in the me which is shrugging,which is under you and around you and forever: i am the hugging sea.
The line drawings are themselves poetic, expressive, and emotional. Their style is reminiscent of Egon Schiele, Chagall, Picasso, and the deco illustrative style of the 1920s. (Interestingly, Cummings worked as a portrait artist for Vanity Fair magazine from 1924 to 1927.) The drawings are a great complement to the poems, as each holds large and complex movement, lovers' limbs and torsos twisting and twining around one another, floating in passion.
The book itself has been beautifully and simply executed; when I took Erotic Poems out of its mailing envelope, I had the sense of receiving a valentine. Its white cover is sparely punctuated by rose and black text and a shadowy crease evocative of the furrow at the center of an open book, or the entry point in clean white sheets ready to be mussed. The fashion in which the poems are headed—with non-sequential Roman and Arabic numerals—didn’t make much sense to me, but that wasn’t really a problem. There were poems that seemed to continue into one another and a few that could work as a triptych. While this may not necessarily be intentional on the part of the poet or the editor, it is indicative of the streaming and deeply subliminal nature of Cummings’ poetry and this collection in particular, which reveals the interior erotic landscape of both body and mind.
Many of us love our friends just as much as our family members. We often believe we would go to great lengths to protect them, as does Helen, the narrator of The Spare Room. Garner's novel is the story of a fifteen-year-old friendship between two women in their sixties, a period that is perhaps the busiest in a woman’s life with competing familial, social, and in many cases, professional demands.
Nicola, an artsy bohemian who turned her back on mainstream culture in the 1970s, goes to stay with Helen in her spare room in Melbourne so that she can undergo alternative Vitamin C treatments for her stage-four cancer. Selfless Helen, who initially does whatever is necessary to accommodate her friend, quickly butts heads with Nicola’s coping method of choice: denial. As Helen puts her life on hold caring for Nicola for a mere "fortnight," which turns into three weeks, she quickly becomes overcome with fatigue. Her exhaustion stems not only from the constant care she feels her friend needs, but also from having to hold her tongue in the face of money-grubbing charlatans and her much-loved friend’s magical thinking regarding her disease.
It may be difficult to imagine this as light reading. However, Garner is a master of concision, and it is difficult to find even a single superfluous sentence in her 175 pages. In addition to shedding light on the limits of friendship, she also celebrates key aspects of friendship between women: the validation of thoughts and feelings, the understanding, and the laughter. In fact, it is Garner’s use of rich, dark humour that knocks the stuffing out of death and illness in this book and keeps the narrative rolling.
Although many young women will feel this scenario is still a long way off, Nicola’s harsh look back on what she made of her life will cause some to realize just how insidious and powerful mainstream culture is. Our strong and seemingly invincible bohemian mothers and aunts who chose their counterculture lives in the 1970s have not always been immune to the pervasiveness of the status quo and how it still manages to creep in and colour their basic personal views. The Spare Room gives us all a much needed reminder of the work that we as women still have ahead of us, not only in striving for equality in material terms, but also in acknowledging and validating our own personal struggles with mainstream culture as we head down the road less traveled.
In short, The Spare Room should be read not only for the quality of the writing but also for the situation that everyone will be pushed one day to consider. This is a perfect book for an intergenerational book club.
Sex Appeal flows in an intuitive series of ideas and expresses thoughts that may be obvious, but seem to be seldom practiced. The six logical principles regarding sex for our era outlined in Paul Abramson’s book are not only interesting, but vital to a peaceful coexistence.
If you tried to make a personal guideline for sex using the golden rule, you might get a summation of Abramson’s leading principals: do no harm, celebrate sex, be careful, know yourself, speak up and speak out, and throw no stones. Doing no harm, according to the author, reaches beyond avoiding sexual violence and demands honesty between sexual partners. Abramson encourages readers to be honest with their partners about their history and their expectations. What better way to avoid the spread of STIs and the cliche (but true) image of teenage girls everywhere crying into their pillows, “But he said he loved me.” Every chapter in the book refers back to this idea and seems to spin on an axis around it.
To disarm readers who may assume Abramson is an advocate of having no sex, the author has included an entire chapter encouraging readers to celebrate the act. He argues, though, that the catch to celebrating sex may mean abstaining. For some, that could mean waiting until a certain age, or for others, avoiding it within a certain relationship. The author argues that to really enjoy the amazing experience of intercourse, one has to be mature enough to handle it, which, of course, brings us back to “do no harm,” but also leads into the next idea.
Be careful. When it comes to sex, you don’t even need your mom to tell you this one. Until people are practicing “do no harm” like it’s their job, orgasming comes second to playing safe. So in addition to not hurting others, we don’t hurt ourselves, and the best way to do that is to know ourselves.
“Speak Up and Speak Out” as well as “Throw No Stones” both pull out of the genitals and move into the brain. There’s a lot to understand about sex, Abramson points out, that goes beyond how to do it. These two chapters discuss fairness, protecting oneself and others, ways to avoid or deal with sexual abuse, and harnessing judgment and stigmas around sex—especially as they’re expressed in the US.
While it’s unlikely to happen, the book should probably be part of the curriculum of every high school sex ed class. Occasionally, explanations seem to drag on and some analogies comparing sex to soccer go just a little too far, but the points are valid, clear, and important. Much of what Abramson discusses in this short book may seem blatant to a sexually active adult, but to a young person, the insights (or at least the lessons attached to them) could be huge.
Edited by Judith E. Barlow State University of New York Press
For someone whose theater knowledge is limited to a high school rendition of Cheaper by the Dozen, the compilation of plays that comprises Women Writers of the Provincetown Players were both easy and enjoyable to read. Prefaced with a twenty-three -page introduction outlining the history and significance of the group of women included in Women Writers of the Provincetown Players, the book quickly but adequately fills in the reader. Many of the plays are between ten and twenty pages, and range in subject from feminism to love, or simply intellectual entertainment. The opening line of the introduction prepares the reader for the impact these playwrights had, as “during the opening years of the twentieth century, women’s designated place in the theater was in the audience.”
To counter this irritating—to say the least—situation, a number of women writers joined the Provincetown Players, a group of radical visionaries, but hardly outcasts. These educated middle class citizens summered in Provincetown and joined together to “oppose the status quo of their conservative hometowns and [dedicate] themselves to supporting artistic innovation, questioning the capitalist system, reevaluating relations between women and men, and challenging traditional sexual mores.”
From the first play in the collection these goals are evident, yet apropos to the time. Winter’s Night by Neith Boyce opens the book on a strong feminist note by posing the radical notion that the lead character, Rachel, “is less a victim of the two brothers than of the assumption that marriage is the ideal situation for all women.” While by today’s standards the main plot of the story may appear to be an uncomfortable love triangle between a woman, her recently deceased husband, and his living brother, the real aim of the piece is to broach a touchy idea: that marriage may be more of a trap for women than the assumed salvation.
In addition to the opening chapter informing the reader to the significance of the works in Women Writers of the Provincetown Players, each play is accompanied by a short (roughly three pages) introduction giving background on the author and where the included work fits in the Provincetown Players' repertoire.
Many of the woman who contributed to this book with their theatrical works were better known for other uncommon feats for their time. Susan Glaspell, for example, was publishing long before she began her secondary education at Drake University; others, such as Rita Wellman, had been publishing since childhood. Edna St. Vincent Millay was a known poet before joining the group, and Djuna Barnes is described, impressively, as a “novelist, playwright, journalist, theater reviewer, and poet.” The book is a pleasant read, seeing the progress of women in both art and society.
By Catherine Adams and Elizabeth H. Pleck Oxford University Press
That the past is never past is nowhere more apparent than in recent debates over efforts to celebrate “Confederate History Month.” Happily, critics responded to the omission of slavery and the suffering it wrought from the latest official commemorations, still and perhaps forevermore marinated in the intoxicating rhetorical liquor of the “Lost Cause.” And so the sobering scholarship of archival scholars such as Catherine Adams and Elizabeth Pleck, drawing on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century legal records, family papers, genealogical studies, and often on the recorded words of enslaved people themselves is an urgently needed remedy.
Love of Freedom is grounded in two observations: that slavery was certainly not exclusively southern—that New England, too, had a terrible legacy of enslaving African people, although the circumstances of slavery in this region were distinctive in many respects. The second starting point is that while the people kidnapped and enslaved in New England were disproportionately male, African women’s experience of slavery and of the complicated legacies of African and colonial American patriarchy were similarly distinctive and should be studied independently.
Foremost, Love of Freedom is a thick description of the legal and social status of slavery in the northeastern American colonies and, as such, will serve as an important resource for anyone doing research in the field. The authors point out that the first kidnapped African people were taken to Boston only six years after its founding. Only five years later, in 1641, the Massachussetts Bay colony had the dubious distinction of becoming the first British colony to codify slavery legally. By 1700, the authors estimate a black population of one thousand, half living in Massachusetts. Fortunately for historians, the legal status of enslaved people, particularly women, seems to have been a source of continual legal challenge. The result is that we have a surprisingly rich record of direct testimony from enslaved women.
Directly from the voices of women such as Hagar Blackmore we get an account of being kidnapped away from her family in Angola, transported to Barbardos, and sold to a wealthy merchant in Cambridge. From this woman we learn of the vulnerability of enslaved women to rape, and we get some sense of what it meant to be a survivor. The authors point out that the principle of coverture, a convention of English common law in which women’s legal identities were subsumed under those of their husbands, further guaranteed the absence of any sort of reasonable legal protection for enslaved women—or even for free married black women.
As a part of laying to rest the myth of slavery in the north as a benign institution, the book illustrates one manifestation of the idea of coverture. A wife’s killing her husband was, because of established notions of hierarchy, worse than ordinary murder and was, in fact, given a special designation: “petit treason,” for which burning to death was the punishment. Killing a husband—or a master, in the case of enslaved people, was almost—if not quite—on the scale of regicide and was punished accordingly. The book lays out the grim details of human suffering: the archaeological evidence showing widespread malnutrition among black children in the region; the spinal deformations evident among women forced to do laundry, ironing, and household heavy lifting; the forced breeding.
Among the most important archival sources is the record of “freedom suits,” women “seeking possession of their liberty” through manumission or some sort of legal process. Through the testimony extant in these cases, the reader gets a powerful sense of exactly what freedom meant to these women—and what slavery meant. As the authors conclude from these records, “Being stolen from kin and homeland was the central wrong African men and women cited time and again.” And to rectify this crime entailed the re-possession of the self by its rightful owner.
These Japanese Bikini Jeans cross jeans with a thong – an attached bikini bottom secures the low-slung jeans to the hips. If you'd like to set a new fashion trend in your neighborhood - or get expelled/fired/ogled as the case may be, you can order the "bijini", to coin a phrase, at the Sanna's Brazil Fashionwebsite. They're surprisingly inexpensive at just $88 plus shipping, and are made in Brazil.
World's Most Expensive Jeans ($27,000)
This Spin Jeans comprises only 8 instances worldwide at a suggested retail price of ¥2,625,000 JPY (approximately $27,000 USD). Truly original but hardly wearable, the jeans seen here should be considered much more a re-appropriated piece of art than fashion. A multi-colored splatter pattern covers every square inch of a pair of iconic Levi's denim.
Putting on one of the most successful art shows of all-time last year, and the highest grossing contemporary living artists of all-time, artist Damien Hirst has brought forth a certain style to his definition of art. Bold and brash, he teams up with Levi's on the release of a new denim style.
Chuck Norris Action Jeans
Those are Chuck Norris Action Jeans, and just in case your mind can't process it because you are too busy freaking out, they are pants specifically designed to be worn while you are kicking people in the face. And they retail for less than twenty dollars. And that is just one of many, many mind-shattering images that lie within the pages of the September, 1988 issue of Inside Karatemagazine. It's 76 pages long, roughly two-thirds of which feature Chuck Norris, and the pages that don't are pretty much all forms for mail-ordering nunchucks.
Peripheral Jeans
Wearable geeky gadgets have been taken to new levels with the appearance of the Peripheral Jean Pants, a wacky wearable keyboard fashion that is certainly scandalous in its design. The weird and wacky wearable gadget is built into a pair of fashionable designer jeans; it boasts a built-in keyboard, mouse, and computer speakers that play audio at knee height. The keyboard is wireless, and while it may just look like a graphic design on the pants, will work with any laptop or desktop computer. Take a look at the picture, and you will have no doubts about why this is the most scandalous geeky gadget designed to date.
If you're impressed by this strange fashion item, unfortunately, you won't be able to get your hands on your own keyboard pants just yet. The fashionable gadget, named The Beauty and the Geek jeans, were created by product design student Erik De Nijs from Holland for a school project which required him to combine two brand items to create a new product. In part, he designed the Peripheral Pants to allow computer users more freedom of movement, but the main objective was to create a functional fashion meets technology item that would be seen as weird and wacky, and not necessarily a practical design.
World's Oldest Levi's Jeans
Lynn Downey works as a historian for Levi Strauss & Co. in San Francisco and is responsible for Levi's extensive archives of clothing, photographs, posters and artifacts. The jewel in this amazing archive is the world's oldest pair of Levi's- a pair "XX," one-pocket jeans, which date back to 1879 and are valued at $125,000. Unfortunately the archive is not open to members of the public, however there is a permanent display of choice pieces from the collection in the lobby of the Levi's Heaquarters in San Francisco.
Chain Jeans
Hand-made by Swarovskijeans, the designer claims these jeans are spectacular. She removed the original color from the denim with a color remover for starters. They have been dyed 2 times, once with Indigo and then again with Navy dye. She then separated the jeans and hung hardware chain from metal hangers. Each hanger is screwed into the denim and secured 28 hangers to each leg. Total of 56 hangers on jeans. The chain is hardware metal and is a little heavy, but the jeans are still very wearable.
Chandelier Jeans
These jeans were new before they were ‘embellished'. Each leg has 408 glass chandelier prisms, total of 816. Each prism has a 10mm split ring attaching to one another. All put on one by one. Underneath the feathers are 24 metal triangle hangers screwed on to denim, this is how the chandelier chain is attached to the jeans.
Spray-On Jeans
These jeans by Krylon simply invite the question, “Did you spray those jeans on?”
Well, actually the colors were inspired by the paint preferred by graffiti artists everywhere, named Krylon. Genetic Denim has launched the Graffiti Collection, for which I would pay good money to see someone buy and try to put on or take these off! While Krylon is the cheap version of spray paint, these jeans will set you back $185 to $220 at Barney's.
Corset Jeans
These jeans have been stripped and then given new life… This pair is cinched at the small of the back for a more feminine curve hugging fit!
Paint-Splattered Jeans
For those who wanted to get that rugged house painter kind of look but don't want to be bothered with actually painting anything, here are the perfect jeans for you. Behold the Painted Selvedge Jean by J.Crew! The jeans cost $285. That's right. Take one $60-$80 pair of jeans, add $1 worth of white paint, and charge $285 for it.
The Pajama Jeans
Hate having to change out of your SpongeBob pajamas when all you want to do is eat at the hotel's breakfast buffet before heading back to your bunk? Consider the problem solved with the Pajama Jeans, a versatile pair of pants that can double as your bedroom wear. It looks like denim and feels like pajamas - how much more perfect can clothing get? The current designs are strictly for women, though, which won't make it nearly as useful if they made it for guys. Imagine: men wearing the exact same thing straight out of bed on their way to the construction site, saving plenty of time on otherwise mundane tasks like taking a bath and getting a fresh batch of underwear. PajamaGram Company is selling the Pajama Jeans for $40 a pop, which sounds like a good deal, considering you can wear them for days on end without needing to change. Not that we're encouraging you not to wash your clothes or anything - but, hey, water is a precious natural resource...mmmkay?
Boot Sock Jeans
These look kinda funny when there are no body parts in them, but they don't look all that bad when modeled on a young "girl who tucks". Boot Sock Jeans are jeans with socks sewn on the ends. The idea came to Cindy Slater, a veteran in the fashion industry. Cindy is one of those girls who tuck their jeans into their boots. She didn't like the look of her pant legs having to fold up into her boots, not to forget the folds taking up so much room in her boots that she couldn't zip'em up. So finally the idea hit her to just cut off the jeans at the right length, and sew socks to the ends.
You may have already heard about Nakigao (Crying Girl), a DVD released in Japan last month. It features eleven young Japanese actresses crying over real-life dramas they’ve had. And… that’s about it. The DVD is being marketed toward Japanese men, either for sexual or ego enjoyment purposes.
Given the wide rage of fetishes out there, especially when it comes to viewing women as victims or vulnerable, I’m not really surprised this DVD exists. But I’m really bothered by the lack of criticism it’s receiving from bloggers and news outlets, where it’s gotten any coverage at all. It’s been highlighted (in English-language blogs) as just one more “WTF, Japan” idiosyncrasy that also provides a fleeting glimpse into a gender status quo most Westerners take for granted.
Steve Levenstein over at Inventor Spot posted a somewhat cynical take of the DVD, but nonetheless concluded, “it seems that men in Japan need to have their 'conquering instinct' stoked up, and the way to do this is by watching beautiful women cry. Yep, in a nutshell: men feel stronger after experiencing the weakness of women. But hey—Japan is a different culture and Crying Girl just underlines that fact.” Levenstein notes, smartly or perhaps cheekily, that if a self-help tool for empowering men, which utilizes women as props to do so, were marketed in the U.S., “you’ll earn yourself a swift kick in the, er, nutshells.” Yet it’s okay to condone that dynamic in Japan? Maybe he didn’t feel empowered to take a feminist critique?
Posts didn’t ask questions about the deeper why of this DVD's existence, or whether they were doing something helpful or harmful by advertising it. Instead of being “culturally sensitive” (or culturally insensitive in a tongue in cheek way, which is what I think most of the blogs that posted about the DVD sought to be), such coverage is participating in the perpetuation of Western stereotypes about Japanese women as meek and submissive.
Most irksome to me is the surprising coverage this stupid DVD got into the May issue of Marie Claire. It was featured in the “Bulletin” section, which usually highlights items that are new, relevant, progressive, and pro-woman. Notes Marie Claire, “the film pitches itself as a self-help tool to empower men and stir up their ‘macho instincts’ by showing the ‘vulnerability’ of women.” Alongside informative and helpful bits about DC’s wack anti-prostitution initiative—which could get you arrested for carrying more than three condoms—and the fiftieth anniversary of the birth control pill (happy birthday, old friend!) was a toothless review-slash-apology for Crying Girls.
I think the author wanted to highlight it more as an oddity than anything else, but by not offering any kind of critique of the DVD, it came off as condoning, or presuming normative gender roles in Japan: “the sixty-three-minute sobfest promises that men won’t be able to resist the ‘pure tears and running noses’ and ‘sad sexy voices’ of the women reliving their misery. Whatever turns you on, right?”
It’s convenient to Otherize a taboo to make yourself feel more normal, but meanwhile child pornography and other disturbing fetishes are alive and well in the U.S. and all over the world. Marie Claire interviews a Japanese psychologist who confirms: “Japanese women are getting more powerful by the day, and men are experiencing a deep malaise of inadequacy.’ Anyone need a tissue?” And that’s where the article ends. Instead of making the newsy bit about how women in Japan are “getting more powerful by the day,” the story is the misogynistic prop that men need to make themselves feel better.
This is the exact same misreading of a potentially feminist storyline that I wrote about in January. The New York Times spun potentially good news—women are earning more—into an androcentric tale of female victimhood: men are marrying women for their money. Why does androcentrism seem to be more newsworthy than feminism? Is feminism a trope or something nowadays?
I don’t want to make a mountain out of a mole hill, but I wish that either this DVD wasn’t mentioned at all, or that, if it was, it was critiqued in a more thoughtful way. Instead of wasting ink describing how eleven women are crying to make businessmen feel macho, let’s use our 'ink' to talk about the under-sung work of Japanese feminists, and important regional groups like the Asia-Japan Women’s Resource Center.
If you’re thinking of ordering this ridiculous DVD, instead buy Broken Silence: Voices of Japanese Feminism. Then you’ll really learn something about the Japanese woman, as she speaks for herself.
The poet and essayist Jane Satterfield writes a hauntingly discontinuous prose-poem about a sort of exile. To those of us with dual citizenship—or, perhaps, to those for whom home is two places, neither tidily reconcilable with the other—Daughters of Empire speaks poignantly to the longing for connection between past and present, mother and daughter, literary inspiration, and career frustration.
The author here teases us with the possibility of a conventional narrative of exile: what will happen when a woman who spent most of her formative years in the United States becomes pregnant and has a child while being cast aside by a prospective employer and emotionally abandoned by a narcissistic and controlling husband? Will she find in this land of her birth and ancestry an escape from the soul-deadening labor of fixed-term teaching in American institutions, and instead find joy in teaching Larkin and Plath and Heaney and Hughes to students who understand and appreciate the value of being taught by a working poet? Will she find in the geography of her own imagination the spiritual bond to the Brontë sisters that she seeks?
Our relationship to place is similarly discontinuous, and home, whatever that means, is an ongoing negotiation. Satterfield’s narrator is unstuck in time, just as she is unstuck geographically, so we get poetically rich spots of memory: “I stand on Charlotte Brontë’s front steps, thinking I’m going to be sick,” she tells us on the first page—either a vertiginous reaction to this confrontation with her nineteenth-century literary forbearer, or perhaps a bit of first-trimester nausea. And then suddenly it’s several years earlier, and she’s a different sort of exile, not quite fitting in to this group of students or that literary community brought together in American college towns. And then she’s a punk, a Johnny Rotten, but with much more ambivalent feelings towards Queen and country.
And then she’s in Corby, a “piss hole in the dead heart of England” where she was born, traveling with her mother through a reconstruction of her own ancestry and her mother’s shared dual sense of place. But then, heartbreakingly, she’s starving emotionally and perhaps physically as a mother estranged from her husband, whose Fulbright Exchange, in the mid-1990s, was in part responsible for this year in England which serves as a potent but unstable center of this narrative.
Because of the evocative power of her memory and the clarity of her language, she draws the reader willingly into this vortex. And yet, she resists closure. Does she find career fulfillment? Can she bridge the imaginative/historical gaps and construct a satisfactory home? Can she free herself from this dreadful relationship? The memoir asks instead that we participate in her desires, in her lyrical remembrance, in her evocative moments that shuttle back and forth through time, woven together by her search for identity, for her discovery of home.
Star-crossed intergenerational love between a Christian matriarch and a young church pianist sounds like an unlikely fictional masterpiece, but in Jesus Boy, Preston L. Allen’s empathic, intricate storytelling skillfully unfolds this improbable tale of religious conviction, sexual desire, and social pressure to conform.
While striving to maintain a virtuous private life—and wholly failing to do so—Elwyn Parker struggles with his public image as a young preacher. At the tender age of sixteen, his childhood crush becomes pregnant by another boy, confusing his chaste heart. At the same time, his aged mentor dies, leaving a grieving widow with whom Elwyn takes up, despite their twenty-two year age difference and to the great surprise of them both. Suddenly, sexual vices overwhelm a story of deeply religious believers, who struggle to make sense of the contradictions between spiritual dogma and physical and emotional desires. Most of the story’s characters live hypocritically at best; yet, their humanity is striking and a clear reminder of what it means to live with wholly unrealistic expectations of oneself and one another.
Between the evangelical language and the geography, the novel had additional resonance for me personally. Set in South Florida towns like Lakeland and Plant City, I could easily imagine not only the Church of Our Blessed Redeemer Who Walked Upon the Waters congregations and their church buildings but also the two-lane highways that connect some of the small cities mentioned. My maternal grandparents, retired ministers, have lived in that area for the last decade and attend two church services every Sunday: one in their trailer park, where grandpa leads the worship service, and one at a Church of God in Lakeland.
The book takes many turns, and sometimes I would be reading for several pages about a newly introduced character before all the pieces fell into place. Allen layers themes of familial obligation and incest with religious judgment and piety, all the while undoing any assumption you might make about essential underlying elements of a functional intimate relationship blossoming in the shadow of slavery and racialized poverty. Feminist in the sense that the author exposes the humanity of each character equally, Jesus Boy will encourage the most progressive thinker to reevaluate their moral judgments about love, parenting, pregnancy, and May-December romances.
Akashic Books consistently publishes quality fiction, and Jesus Boy is just one more must have title in their catalog. If you only read five novels this year, this should be one of them.
In April 6, 2007, a rain of spiders falls from the sky in Salta Province, Argentina. Christian Oneto Gaona and his friends decided to take a trip to Salta Province during their Easter vacation. They started to hike into the San Bernardo Mountain and two hours later, they found the ground around them was blanketed with spiders of many colors, each about four inches across. They found more and more spiders along their way up the mountain. They looked up, and saw numerous spiders falling from the sky. Christian became probably the first person in the world who caught this weird rain on camera.
A cow that fell from the sky in Japan
In 1997 a Japanese fishing trawler was rescued in the Sea of Japan. They claimed that a cow fell out of the sky, struck the boat, causing it to sink. The crew members were immediately put in jail. About 2 weeks later the Russian Air Force informed the Japanese authorities that the crew of one of its cargo planes had stolen a cow thinking they would have beef for some time. Of course the cow was not fond of its close surroundings and began to thrash about. To save the aircraft and themselves, at about 30,000 feet, the crew shoved the animal out of the cargo hold as they were flying over the sea of Japan.
A rain of blood in Colombia
In 2008 a red rain that was certified by a local bacteriologist to be blood fell on a small community of La Sierra, Chocó. A sample was collected and taken to the nearest town, Bagadó, where it was analyzed. The priest of the hamlet says it's a sign from God that people will have to change their sinful ways.
A star jelly rain in Scotland
In 2009, a jelly rain fell in Scotland. Scientists commissioned by National Geographic carried out tests on, but they have so far failed to find any DNA in it. Theories for the origins of “star jelly” abound, one of the most plausible theories is that star jelly is regurgitated frog or toad ovaries, vomited by buzzards or herons as it is indigestible, others refer to the remnants of a meteor shower or even a fungus.
A rain of worms falls from the sky in the USA
Jennings Police Department employee, Eleanor Beal was just crossing the street to go to work when something dropped from the sky. The sky wasn't falling. She says it was worms, large tangled clumps of them. Where they came from is a mystery, but some believe that a water spout spotted less than five miles away at that same time near Lacassine Bayou could have something to do with it.
A multi-coloured snow that fell over Siberia
In the Omsk region, about 1,400 miles east of Moscow, smelly orange, yellow and green snow fell in 2007.
A rain of fish in a desert town in Australia
Lajamanu sits on the edge of the Tanami Desert, hundreds of kilometers from Lake Argyle and Lake Elliott and even further from the coast. But it's not the first time the remote community has been bombarded by fins from above. In 2004, locals reported fish falling from the sky, and in this opportunity the freak phenomena happened not once, but twice in February 2010. “Hundreds and hundreds of small white fish had fallen alive from the sky everywhere”, a witness said.
A rain of money in Germany
In 2007 a German motorist saw money flying through the air in her rear view mirror. She pulled over and tried to collect all the notes, unsuccessfully. When police went with her to the scene they could not find any more cash. The money's origin is unknown.
A starlings' rain in England
In the Somerset village of Coxley near Wells, over a hundred starlings dropped dead from the skies over Julie Knight's garden on March 2010.
A fresh meat rain in USA
In March 9, 1876, a shower of meat fell near the house of Allen Crouch, who lived near Olympian Springs, covering a strip of ground about one hundred yards in length and fifty wide. The sky was perfectly clear at the time, and she said it fell like large snowflakes, the pieces as a general thing not being much larger. Two gentlemen, who tasted the meat, express the opinion that it was a either mutton or venison.
The Baptist minister who crawled 1,600 miles to the White House
In 1978, a 39 year old Baptist minister Hans Mullikin arrived at the White House after crawling 1,600 miles from Marshall, Texas. His legs were wrapped in furs and sheathed in thin galvanized steel; one of his wheels on his armrests was smaller than the other to compensate for road-grade. On the 22nd of November, 1978 he ended his two and a half year crawl only to hear from an aide that President Carter was too busy to see him. “I just wanted to show America that we need to get on our knees and repent,” Mullikin told reporters. “This is something I had in my heart and wanted to do for my country.”
The Australian man who circumnavigated the globe with an amphibious vehicle
Ben Carlin, an Australian, took the challenge to circumnavigate the world in a modified amphibious jeep. He set out with his wife Elinore as first mate in 1950. His wife eventually came to her senses and left the expedition somewhere in India at about 3/4 of the journey but Ben continued with other mates finally completing the voyage in 1958. The trip began and ended in Montreal, Canada. It took 8 years, covering 62,000 km on land and 17,000 km on sea.
The man who completed 4,115 km pushing a wheelbarrow to raise money for cancer research
David Baird completed his Herculean 112-day journey pushing a wheelbarrow across Australia (that's 4,115 km or 2,557 miles on foot). He did this to raise money for breast and prostate cancer research. The fit looking 65-year-old said he was feeling ‘amazingly good', considering he had traveled a massive 4,115km on foot. He ran the equivalent of one hundred full marathons in just 112 days. Taking in about 70 towns along the way, Mr Baird said he pushed the wheelbarrow for between 10 and 12 hours a day. While he never had any doubts he wouldn't complete his journey, he admitted each day “was hard”. During the charity run well-wishers threw more than £9,145 ($20,000) into the barrow.
The man who literally ran around the entire globe
British runner Robert Garside, also known as The Runningman, is credited by Guinness World Records as the first person to run around the world. Garside began his record-setting run after several aborted attempts leaving Cape Town, South Africa, and London, England. Garside set off from New Delhi, India, on October 20, 1997, completing his run at the same point on 13 June, 2003. Garside's run has been questioned by other runners and by the press. Due to the inherent difficulties certifying such accounts, Guinness World Records spent several years evaluating evidence before declaring it authentic.
During his run, he updated his online website, wwww.runningman.org, with a portable computer, describing an arduous journey complicated by human and natural hurdles that included physical attacks and imprisonment as well as grueling climate extremes. He also met with considerable assistance, as he was offered lodgings around the globe in such diverse settings as five-star hotels and private homes to prison cells and police stations. In addition to corporate sponsorship of £50,000, he indicated he received £120,000 in donations from individuals. Along the way, Garside also found love, meeting girlfriend Endrina Perez in Venezuela.
It took him 2,062 days to cover 30,000 miles (48,000 km) across 29 countries and 6 continents. He used 50 pairs of trainers.
The student who did a 3,000 mile walk from Beijing to Germany and made a short film
Christoph Rehage's birthday present to himself in November 2007 was to go for a long walk. The plan was to walk from Beijing, China — where Rehage was a student — to his home in Bad Nenndorf, Germany. An amazing proposition, when you consider the vastness of China.
Along the way, he photographed himself. We've all seen those "picture a day" time-lapse videos. But the five-minute version of Rehage's epic walkabout, eventually covering over 4,000 kilometers, is in a league of its own. We see a young, clean shaven man being changed by his adventure. There's obvious physical hardship: snow and the blazing sands of the Gobi desert, long, empty highways, and the pain of endless plodding. His hair and beard grow wild. People come and go; places spin behind him. Rehage finds love — and maybe heartbreak, too.
After a year, Rehage decided to stop walking and return to school.
The 16-year-old girl who is about to finish a round-the-world voyage by herself
16-year-old Jessica Watson is getting closer and closer to the end of her 7-month circumnavigation, a voyage that will make her - for a little while anyway - the youngest ever non-stop unassisted circumnavigator. Born and bred on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland, Jessica is due to arrive into Sydney around the 9th May to a hero's welcome and a fortune in the rights to her story. The Rupert Murdoch Empire has already purchased the rights to her and her family for an undisclosed sum.
The gutsy teenager is still in waters below the Great Australian Bight, approaching the border between West Australia and South Australia, but has dug deeper southwards, aiming for her rounding of the southern tip of Tasmania. Jessica, who was just 12 when she told her parents she wanted to sail solo round the world, left Sydney on October 18, 2009.
The man who walked 13,000 km backwards from California, US to Turkey
Plennie L. Wingo (January 24, 1895 – October 2, 1993) walked backwards from Santa Monica, California, to Istanbul, Turkey (about 13,000 km/8,000 miles) from April 15, 1931 to October 24, 1932 at the age of 36. He documented his voyage in the book Around the world backwards.
To do so, he wore periscopic eyeglasses, fastened over his ears like regular spectacles, which enabled him to see where he was walking. He walked an average of about 20 miles per day.
The man who walked 1,830 miles on stilts
In 1891 Sylvain Dornon, the stilt walker of Landes, stilt walked from Paris to Moscow via Vilno (1,830 miles) in either 50 stages (36.6 miles a day) or 58 days (31.55 miles a day). He started his journey on the 12th of March 1891. Although this long journey upon stilts constituted a genuine curiosity, not only to the Russians, to whom this sort of locomotion was unknown, but also to many Frenchmen, walking on stilts, was, in fact, common before the 1870s in certain parts of France.
The man who traveled for 12 years from Africa to Greenland to find a place snake free
Tété-Michel Kpomassie was born in 1941, in Togo. When he was a young man, he was in the jungle when he was surprised by a python, and fell to the ground. His father believed that his resulting illness could only be cured by consulting the priestess of the python cult, deep in the forest, and so he was taken, through one long night, into the heart of the snake-infested cult. The cure worked, but the priestess required a payment. Kpomassie must become initiated into the snake cult and live for the next seven years in the jungle, among the snakes.
It was at this time, recovering from his illness and waiting to be taken back to the jungle, that Kpomassie found a children's book about Greenland. Not only did this strange country have no snakes, but it had no trees in which they might hide. He fell immediately in love with the country and ran away from home, with the sole idea of somehow reaching Greenland.
For the next twelve years he traveled, refusing to stay in one place more than six months, and worked his way through the countries of West Africa, into Europe, and finally, in the mid-1960s, found a boat to Greenland. All the while, he taught himself languages through correspondence courses and made an endless number of friends through his skills as a story-teller and natural charm. The story of his adventures in Greenland can be found in his book, published in France in 1977, An African in Greenland.
The man who went on a cross country walk over the US to lose weight
Steve Vaught undertook an incredible challenge beginning in 2005 - to walk across the US. He began the 3,000-mile trek from his Oceanside, Calif. home to Manhattan on April 10, 2005, when he weighed 410 pounds and was suffering severe depression after accidentally killing two pedestrians while driving 15 years ago.
Quite apart from attracting his fair share of media attention, he managed to shed over 100 lb in the process. But Vaught's journey was not without controversy. Questions were raised by both the media and fans as to whether Vaught caught rides and did not in fact walk every mile. Vaught was also still morbidly obese upon completion of his journey. In his defense he claims "You can't cheat. There is no possible way to cheat. It was my journey (…) I didn't care about where I was at and where I was going. I don't care if it was 2,800 or 1,500 miles. . . . It's about where your head is."
Getting Real is a collection of essays that are charges against the worldwide phenomena of the pornification of childhood through advertising, marketing, and pop culture. This was a great book to read, particularly as the authors are Australian and I sometimes wonder how much of our collective reaction to porn and adult images going mainstream is a reflection of our country's Puritanical leanings. For the contributors to Getting Real, the problem is embedded not just in faux-feminism but also a twisting of feminism by marketers and others to make women believe that if they are "in charge" of their sexuality, then there isn't anything wrong with stripping, making out with other women to turn men on, and so forth.
About half way through the book I came across a few statements that made me think, "Wait a minute...This isn't a feminist book!" There's just a tinge of anti-sex sentiment in some essays. So I did some investigating and found that editor Melinda Tankard Reist is part of a women's think tank. Upon further digging, I came to the conclusion that the Women's Forum Australia seems to be what one might get if the National Organization for Women and the Independent Women's Forum had a lefty baby. (If anyone has more information about them, I'd love for you to leave it in the comments.)
While some essays wade into slut-shaming and defaming strippers and sex workers, on the whole Getting Real is a pretty good book. One eye-opening essay on street billboards makes the point that even though it is illegal for people to have porn in the workplace, we have to walk through porn-infested streets on a daily basis. Another essay brought up how many of us are using Flickr and YouTube to share our children's lives, which teaches them to perform publicly. There is also a discussion about the medicalization of girls' bodies. From HPV vaccines to plastic surgery, it's all there to ponder.
The best part of Getting Real was learning a new term: corporate pedophilia. "Sexualizing products being sold specifically for children, and children themselves being presented in images or directed to act in advertisements in ways modeled on adult sexual behavior." This goes far beyond the dress-up of our youth to performance on a daily basis. "The task for today's teenagers is to win back their freedom from the adults who run the advertising agencies and girls magazines and the 'sex-positive' media academics who insist that 'bad girls' are powerful girls."
The essays are well cited, but avoid a lot of academic jargon, making Getting Real a quick read. The book is feminist, but with a dash of moderate conservatism thrown in. The topic brings together some typically opposing forces, and that's always good for the discussion.
A 3d paintings that looked a lot more than just painting. Kert has made and look more realistic. Looks like the devil really is out of the earth, this is a story that is described through the famous 3d painting below:
So, I sometimes forget that reading erotica and looking at BDSM queer porn in the library of an Ivy League university is not necessarily standard practice. Lucky for me, I go to Brown, where I’m concentrating in Gender and Sexuality studies, and have somehow managed to legitimize studying sex manuals with postmodern theory in order to (supposedly, so they say) get a degree next year. Along with my academic studies and personal intrigues, I am also active with various events and groups on campus explicitly related to sexuality, so am known on campus for… well, let’s just say, when I pulled out Tristan Taormino’sSometimes She Lets Me: Best Butch/Femme Erotica in the middle of the bustling Science Library lobby during the mad rush of studying for midterms, I got simply passing (mostly jealous) chuckles from friends venturing down into the depths of the stacks with unread textbooks in their arms.
This exciting collection of twenty-three stories is edited by author, director, and educator Tristan Taormino, and is a part of the Best Lesbian Erotica series, which has won three Lambda Awards. Cleis Press, who published the book, focuses on queer sexualities, putting out various sex guides, gender/queer theory texts, and works of fiction.
As the publisher notes, Sometimes She Lets Me: Best Butch/Femme Erotica is about “dispelling myths, realizing fantasies, and delivering outstanding writing with distinct contributor voices.” In the introduction, Taormino expresses the desire to “queer gender throughout the spectrum,” viewing gender as multilayered, constantly changing, and problematizing the reductionist and prescriptive discourses around butch/femme identities:
Butch/femme is bulging jeans, smeared lipstick, stiletto heels, and sharp haircuts. It’s about being read and being seen. Sometimes it’s about passing or not passing. It’s about individual identity and a collective sense of community. It’s personal, political. It’s performance and it’s not. It’s the visceral space between the flesh and the imagination.
The stories focus on the separation and convergence of the personal and the political, the body and fantasy, and address some examples of what really goes on in bed between self-identified butches and femmes. As a new reader of butch/femme lesbian erotica, I was surprised about the diversity of relationships, identities and desires, and found that while some of it was a real turn-on for me, others not so much. But that is okay. In the end, the appeal of the collection is about the confidence and attitude that exudes from the authors as they own their own identity expressions, desires, and pursuits of pleasure.
Kill Your Darlings has a lot to live up to. In its inaugural issue its editor, Affirm Press’ Rebecca Starford, says the journal’s mission is to "reinvigorate and re-energise" Australia’s literary scene. She quotes editor Rob Spillman as saying that most journals are "good for you, but they taste awful." Kill Your Darlings intends to redress this—to shake up the medium and "publish literature that bites back." A big, bold statement.
First let me say that I love the title of this attractive new journal. It is an apt reference to the advice that writers are so often given. The bit you love the most is the bit that has to go. Editing your own work is a ruthless business, and cutting your ‘baby’ up can feel like murder. So, Kill Your Darlings is a perfect choice of title that is edgy and attention grabbing, and therefore sure to help with marketing. Moreover, the cover design is striking, the layout clean and readable, and the standard of editing (so often lacking these days) is high. In short, it’s a pleasure to curl up on the couch with.
The journal opens with Gideon Haigh’s biting (yes, they’ve succeeded there) assessment of the current state of reviewing. I suspect some may view this essay as deliberately provocative, but he makes some valid points about what he describes as the generally "lacklustre" fare on offer characterised by "its sheer dullness and inexpertise." He attributes much of the problem to timid reviewers who fear future retribution when their own work comes up for review, but also to newspapers and magazines who pay poorly (if at all) for reviews and begrudge the space they occupy. The critique has already sparked debate, which can only be a good thing.
On finishing reading this essay I, of course, turned straight to the review section at the back to see how Kill Your Darlings' measured up. There are two brief reviews, which surely for their length alone would paradoxically be lambasted under Haigh’s criteria (he quotes George Orwell’s opinion that 1000 words should be the "bare minimum" for any worthwhile review). Nevertheless, snappy reviews do serve a purpose and it’s good to see them included here alongside two much longer reviews. Starford’s consideration of Mary Gaitskill’s Don’t Cry certainly falls within Orwell’s ballpark, and makes a serious attempt to examine this latest offering within the broader context of her body of work. And there’s a lengthy review of The Wire, which Anthony Morris claims is "the best television drama series ever made." (I’m not convinced.)
But back to the ‘commentary’ section. I found Tracy Crisp’s reflective story about the elusive nature of inspiration and the difficulty in trying to write and mother simultaneously compelling. How to be the kind of writer she wants to be and the kind of mother is a conundrum to which I can relate. Then there’s Clementine Ford’s wryly amusing article on internet dating, and Paul Mitchell’s moving and funny account of guiltily bonding with his tweenage daughter over shopping despite his anti-consumerist principles.
It’s great to see an article by former Canberran Justin Heazlewood (aka The Bedroom Philosopher) featured. His commentary on the death of the album and his dad-like resistance to it makes for entertaining reading. The desire for musos to hold their own album in their hands (and not just on their iPod) is surely one to which many authors can relate (the desire for a beautiful object not just a file on an eReader). Ultimately, though, resistance will surely prove futile.
The only disappointment was Georgia Gowing’s commentary on the derby phenomenon. As a regular roller derby-goer I wanted more. For me, it didn’t entirely capture the electric energy and drama of a derby match and, other than a few interesting soundbites from the girls themselves, it failed to offer any fresh insights. Perhaps delving into links to punk culture and third wave feminism might have afforded it greater depth.
The fiction section includes seven short stories of which Patrick Cullen’s is the standout. "Carver’s Unkempt Lawn" imagines a meeting between four famous American writers in the home of Tess Gallagher and Raymond Carver, who is dying. The subtle elegance of this beautifully crafted story had me captivated. I also admired "Clinching" by Emmett Stinson, which throws us into the futile struggle of an emotionally disconnected couple—characters who leap boldly and vividly from the page. And then there’s Chris Womersley’s "Theories of Relativity," which opens with an arresting first line and just gets better from there. It is an unsettling tale of a dysfunctional family seen through the eyes of its youngest child who doesn’t discover the shocking inner world of his family until his twenty-first year. Womersley reveals the story in layers, masterfully leading us towards the final brutal punch. I haven’t read his first novel, The Low Road, which won the 2008 Ned Kelly Award for Best First Fiction, but I’ll certainly be seeking it out now.
I must confess that I was initially skeptical about whether Kill Your Darlings could live up to its own hype. Well, dear Reader, I was wrong to have doubted. Issue one is a damn fine read. I look forward to seeing what the next one brings.
As I became immersed in The Girls from Ames, I started to view it as a collective memoir of eleven women who have been friends since they were young girls in Ames, Iowa. While I expected to find the book a worthwhile read, I was pleasantly surprised to find how much I could relate to in this book. I found the story of these women both touching and humorous as I read it, prompting a reflection on my own female friendships over the years. The older I get, the less I take my friendships for granted, and I felt somewhat envious that these women, who were all born in the early 1960s, had maintained such a strong bond of friendship throughout marriage (sometimes more than one), children, cross-country moves, joy, heartache, and tragedy.
What takes this book beyond the memoir genre is that Zaslow has approached the topic of female friendship with the zeal of a journalist and sociologist, and the heart of a father of three daughters. In addition to telling the story of the way the friendships evolved over decades, he provides added context in the form of research that has been done on the struggles women face at different stages in their life (i.e., teen and college years, young mothers, mothers of teenagers, divorce, midlife changes, and stages of grief) and how female friendship can be an antidote to the trials and tribulations we all encounter as we progress through life. Some of the women reflect on their own "mean girl" tendencies as teenagers now that they see their teenage daughters dealing with mean girls and other complexities young girls face in today’s world.
At the end of chapter one, Jenny, whose father was an insurance executive who pored over actuarial tables and statistics on a daily basis, recalls how he warned her as she was about to leave for the University of South Carolina not to be surprised if her friendships didn’t survive the passage of time: “My guess is in fifteen years, one of you will be estranged from the group. Two of you will be divorced. One of you will still be single, one of you may be dead. You have to expect that. Because that’s how life works.” Zaslow writes that Jenny and her father still remember that conversation “where they were sitting, how her dad’s words hung in the air in the darkness, and how she sat there thinking he had to be wrong.”
I understand why The Girls from Ames has become a national bestseller and inspired women to form reading groups to discuss the book with their friends. Female friendship has the potential to be powerful, healing, and transformative. Zaslow has captured that sentiment in this book.
By Deirdre Madden
