The Last Living Slut: Born in Iran, Bred Backstage

By Roxana Shirazi
It Books

The Last Living Slut: Born in Iran, Bred Backstage, written by Iran native Roxana Shirazi, was a complete and utter waste of my time. The book was championed by writers Neil Strauss and Anthony Bozza, who met up with Shirazi one faithful day and immediately became enthralled by her tails of debauchery with bad up and coming rock ‘n’ roll bands, as well as some oldies, but not so goodies like Guns N’ Roses. Appetite for Destruction never did anything for me musically or otherwise, but apparently the mere appearance of Axl Rose was enough to give Shirazi “gushing orgasms” as a teenage girl and her sexual fantasies about him set her on her path to groupiedom.

I’m not surprised that two men would be impressed by a book in which an otherwise intelligent woman makes a fool of herself by revealing that she’s let musicians piss on her and has had sex while so wasted that she threw up on one of her many partners for the night. According to these boys, “This was a woman who was not a victim, but who made rock bands her victim—and she got off on pushing them to extremes that made them uncomfortable.” Did these guys read the book? From what I could tell, it didn’t take much coercing to convince the men to degrade her, and a person who’s completely at ease with their lifestyle isn’t prone to nervous breakdowns, depressive episodes, or the need to constantly be wasted, as was detailed by Shirazi.

It’s apparent that this book is meant to shock, but I found nothing shocking about it. Shirazi, who calls herself a feminist, defends her use of the word slut before her story begins. I don’t care about her use of slut; it’s not offensive to me in any way. What is offensive, however, is attempting to pass this book off as a heroic piece of writing by a fun and carefree young woman who happens to have a penchant for wild nights and rock stars. If anything, this book just verifies that being a groupie is a lifestyle often chosen by women with low self-esteem.

The first portion of the book details the author’s childhood in Iran where she was a “child basked in gunfire, Islamic law, and sexuality.” Raised mostly by her mother and grandmother, Shirazi was abandoned by her opium addict father, molested and raped by neighbors, and beaten by her step father. It seems to me that these are the kinds of things that shape a young woman.

Having suffered through similar circumstances, I can attest to the fact that burying the feelings that result from these occurrences only sets you up for disaster once your sexuality is blooming and your childhood has left you with the impression that men are supposed to hurt, yell, hit, and take anything they want from you—even when you say no. It seems absurd to me that Shirazi doesn’t make the connection in the book that her feelings as a child, a belief that the abuse she suffered at the hands of men was her own fault, was the most likely reason she grew up and allowed herself to be further taken advantage of, almost as if she felt like she deserved it and that it was her duty to be the thing that men used to get off.

What’s wrapped up to look like a fun package, a carefree romp in the hay, is actually a very depressing book that often reads like a bad romance novel. (“I don’t understand how Stuart found the energy and ability to fuck me so masterfully all night, nor how his testicles were able to produce such a huge amount of sperm.”) Shirazi is disparaging of other women, often only describing them in terms of their weight, makeup, clothing choices, and ability to be fucked by second rate rock stars. You get the impression that she’s the type of person who thinks calling another woman fat or ugly is the biggest insult that can be hurled.

If anything was shocking about The Last Living Slut, it was the author’s implication that the rockers she is sleeping with are fulfilling her “hunger for a free-spirited life, for breaking the rules, for laughing, for knowing the meaning of it.” If fucking teenage boys in bad bands and has-been rock stars in worse bands is the meaning of life—and the new face of feminism—I better bow out now.

Review by Tina Vasquez

Sons of Perdition

Directed by Tyler Measom and Jennilyn Merten
Left Turn Films



Exiled boys from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) have been making news and showing up on the pop culture radar for a while. From John Krakauer’s exposé Under the Banner of Heaven and HBO polygamist drama Big Love to the conviction of former FLDS sect leader Warren Jeffs for accomplice rape last year, extremist Mormon sects are becoming increasingly well known outside of the regions they dominate and beyond the realm of religious scholars and the excommunicated.

Sons of Perdition—named for a verse in the New Testament referring to traitor Judas Iscariot, as well as the LDS Church belief that anyone who leaves the church will be unable to receive the glory of God in the afterlife and suffer eternal punishment—follows, with unprecedented access, former FLDS youth from Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona as they navigate the larger world post-expulsion. In many cases, young people are desperate to leave the compounds—colloquially “the Crick”—where they grew up with multiple mothers and dozens of siblings. But knowing what you don’t want doesn’t mean you’ll be prepared for life beyond indoctrination.

The film profiles several religious refugees from the Crick in St. George, Utah, about thirty minutes from the compound, where many exiles live in group houses and tiny apartments as they try to navigate the bizarre world beyond their sheltered, faith-infused lives. In these extraordinary circumstances, it is possible to see just how great a distance thirty miles can be. St. George, where most of the youth set up camp, is where Warren Jeffs’ trial took place. For the exiles and allies living there, while they are often still connected to home, trying to help siblings and mothers escape their abusive lives, it is also a world totally removed from everything they have ever known.

Most of the youth have never attended proper school, only taught math and religion on the compound. At seventeen, Joe has never seen a comic book, can barely read, and so genuinely confused about world history, he mixes up the names of Bill Clinton and Adolph Hitler. Joe’s sister doesn’t know the name or location of the nation’s capitol. Bruce, who is fifteen, is genuinely amazed to discover that Catholics believe in Jesus. All of them believe that by leaving the Crick, they will go to hell when they die.

Young women, a commodity in polygamous sects, seemingly fare a bit better as they’re less likely to be exiled. But, that doesn’t mean their struggles are any less difficult in other ways. Many of the girls have been married off as early as thirteen and have children to bring along—or in the case of Joe’s twenty-four-year-old sister Sabrina, her four children were left behind. Trying to escape with too many young ones in tow simply isn’t feasible. At one point, after trying to help their mother run away several times, Sam calls his own father’s actions—continually impregnating his wives, forcing them to stay with him and their children on the compound—“modern day slavery.”

If the boys have coming-of-age rituals to emphasize their freedom—drinking, drug use, trying to get into public school to meet hot girls—the girls have their own rites of passage; namely, having their long hair cut and styled at the mall and casting off their floor-length skirts in favor of pants. A sympathetic couple that takes in many of the ex-FLDS youth frowns on delinquent behavior, ultimately forcing the young people to find their own way. This is the only part of the film that feels truly cruel on the other side of emancipation; it’s tough enough for Sam, Bruce, Joe, Sabrina, and their friends to cope with turning their backs on all they’ve ever known. To be doubly turned away from their second chance at a family and home life seems strangely intolerant and shameful.

For people unfamiliar with extremist sects and fervent religious believers—anyone, for example, who found Jesus Camp to be shocking rather than a bit obvious—Sons of Perdition will amaze and startle you. Whether or not you’re knowledgeable about the ways the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints enslave women and pit boys against men before casting them out forever, this educational film will break your heart.

Review by Brittany Shoot

The Carrie Diaries

By Candace Bushnell
Balzer and Bray

Sex and the City the television series ended six years ago. One might find this hard to believe, considering the characters and the lavish lifestyles they live have been far from gone in the mainstream media. The latest installment in the SATC enterprise is The Carrie Diaries, author Candace Bushnell’s young-adult novel that introduces audiences to Carrie Bradshaw as they’ve never seen her before—seventeen, virginal, and unsure of how to fulfill her dream becoming a writer. The young Bradshaw struggles through adolescence the same way her adult self struggled through her thirties, and with just as much, if not more, wit and insight. It’s easy to see how Carrie became Carrie as Bushnell chronicles a very real, and entertaining, teenage experience using the skills we’ve come to know her for: realistic dialogue, relatable, yet flawed, friendships; and capturing the excitement and emotion the first moments of love.

As a feminist scholar and critic, and an advocate for girl-friendly media, I was plagued by very familiar annoyances in the reading. Although adult Carrie admits in SATC (season four, episode seventeen) that her father left when she was a toddler, Bushnell posits high-school Carrie as the eldest of three girls being raised by their father since their mother died a few years earlier. Although a single dad raising three young women is certainly an alternative to the status-quo, it is not more or less feminist than a mother working full time and raising three daughters. And in the case of the latter, it provides something very important missing in both fiction and film—positive female role models.

The debate over Bushnell’s characters and their choices has been raging since the debut of the original series. In The Carrie Diaries, the author offers her own feminist commentary that is neither subtle, nor convincing. In a chapter dedicated to Carrie’s discovery of feminism, the twelve-year-old visits her local library to see her mother's favorite (fictional) feminist Mary Gordon Clark speak. The young Bradshaw is chagrined by the woman’s gruff and judgmental manner, leaving her to ponder “How can you be a feminist when you treat other women like dirt?” An excellent question, though I’d be interested in asking Bushnell “Why all feminists must be represented as angry, elite meanies?”

Unlike her adult counterpart, whose friendships offered support, honesty and resilience in the face of obstacles, the high school Carrie is surrounded by a group of friends that are competitive, highly emotional, or just plain bitchy. Her most passionate moments include falling for a narcissistic but gorgeous guy who eventually cheats on her with her best friend, developing her voice as a writer with the support of the Brown-attending George, and eventually being published in the school paper, with the help and support of the paper’s editor—her friend’s boyfriend.

As lover of pop-culture and an advocate for media literacy among the youth, especially girls, I was encouraged to find the positive elements of a story that will surely resonate with a large audience. Although Carrie’s mother is absent in reality, she is ever present in the lives of her daughters, all of which are struggling to maintain her legacy while evolving into who they will be as individuals. The biting yet quirky humor that endeared me to Carrie on SATC punctuates the tensest moments in the novel as Carrie offers teen-appropriate insights like, “Funny always makes the bad things go away.”

Unfortunately, comparing the young Carrie to the character she became on the series leaves me no less than disappointed. The Carrie created here comes out an evolved and matured being, moving forward into the next phase of her life, something that was remiss of her character when the SATC series ended, and further exacerbated in the following two films. In fact, I’d favor a film version of The Carrie Diaries over both SATC films.

Review by Alicia Sowisdral

Leading Ladies

Directed by Erika Randall Beahm and Daniel Beahm



It may seem quite an impossibility, but the film Leading Ladies is, simply put, a quietly revolutionary dance musical. While most dance musicals (think Dirty Dancing, Save the Last Dance) center on the boy-meets-girl heterosexual love match, Leading Ladies is a beautifully wrought girl-meets-girl story. It is simultaneously a dance musical, coming-of-age story, and coming-out narrative. The power of the film comes from its ability to maintain the generic conventions of the story while completely rejecting the hetero-normativity that is typically the narrative thrust of the genre. What’s perhaps even more amazing is that Leading Ladies succeeds at thwarting convention within a conventional structure while simultaneously being a whole lot of damn fun. Lesser films would sink under such weight.

Helmed by first-time directors Erika Randall Beahm and Daniel Beahm, this joyous film tells the story of the Campari women. The matriarch of the family is ballroom-dancing stage mom Sheri, played by Latin and Ballroom Champion Melanie LaPatin. Sheri has two daughters: like-minded drama queen and dancing champion Tasi (Shannon Lea Smith), and Toni (Laurel Vail), Tasi’s practice partner and the wallflower of the family. The film centers on Toni’s relationships, particularly with the emotionally volatile Tasi, and an unexpected romantic attachment to Mona (Nicole Dionne), a bubbly and outgoing woman Toni meets at a dance club. While LaPatin’s acting is a bit stiff, Smith’s neurotic and self-obsessed Tasi is played to high-pitched perfection. Vail might be the real star of this film, however, as she says more with her eyes than many actors can express with a word. She artfully plays the Ugly Duckling, the quiet witness to familial squabbles and the glue that keeps the Camparis together.

Leading Ladies has an ebb-and-flow, alternating between slow and quietly stirring scenes and vibrant, fast-paced dance numbers (most notably a hysterical and boisterous number set in a grocery store). The heart of this film beats loudly and quickly, and it leaves the viewer invigorated and deeply moved. To learn more about her hopes for the film, its generative process, and the ideological concerns that lead to its creation, I recently spoke with co-director Erika Randall Beahm.

Beahm co-wrote the film with Jennifer Bechtel, a friend and LGBT youth advocate in Champaign, Illinois, and Bechtel was struggling to find mainstream films that spoke to the young gay community. As Bechtel and Beahm perceived it, most gay and lesbian cinema tends towards violence or explicitness, while mainstream cinema features gay characters as “the sidekick.” Beahm and Bechtel thus sought to create a “family-centered gay and lesbian film for the mainstream market.” Their hope is that Leading Ladies provides gay youth with a positive portrayal of gay romantic love and thus “open a dialogue within themselves” and perhaps between gay youth and their families.

The film eschews aggressive and explicit representations of gay love for a romantic and “joyful falling in love which... straight kids get to experience in movies all the time.” Indeed, Leading Ladies treats its same-sex couple as any movie musicals’ heterosexual pairing: they meet, they dance, they fall in love. The romance is beautifully articulated through an artful juxtaposition of two dance sequences. Toni and Mona’s meeting is shot like a typical dance movie sequence—bright lights, loud music, and overhead shots looking down on the dancers. This film could be Dirty Dancing, if it weren’t for the same-sex couples dancing on stage and in the audience. Indeed, this is the goal of the film: to illustrate that dance (and by extension, romance and love) is the same for same-sex couples as it is for heterosexual partners. Toni leads Mona through a raucous, enthusiastic dance, and as convention dictates, the two find love while dancing. In a beautiful inversion of this sequence, we next find Toni in Mona’s lush apartment, where the more romantically experienced Mona takes the lead in the dance of romance. The lovers’ embrace is gorgeously shot in sensual blush tones and shadow.

For choreographer and dancer Beahm and youth musical programmer Bechtel, dance served as an obvious choice of backdrop for the love story. Beahm choreographed the film’s dances with Melanie LaPatin and Benji Schwimmer, the former So You Think You Can Dance! winner who also plays Toni’s best friend in the film. For Beahm, dance has an inherently transformative power: “There’s this kind of kinesthesia with dance that gets people to literally be moved on a physical level, and I believe also on an emotional and intellectual level.” The love scene between Mona and Toni, for example, is highly choreographed to match the non-diegetic music; Beahm suggests that this emphasis on “energy shifts… and the musicality” of the scene helps the spectator “lose sight of this being a gendered duet, and it just becomes two people moving together, falling in love.”

By emphasizing the movement and musicality of the scene, then, Beahm hopes to ease the fear of spectators who are uncomfortable with same-sex coupling and perhaps open a space for internal dialogue within the spectator: “For people who might have a hard time seeing two women... make out, it becomes this kind of transference of two bodies going through these really emotional and tender but also choreographed spaces, and so gender becomes less important.” By shifting the spectator’s focus from gender distinction to the movement of the body the film illustrates how little gender matters and how love—like dance—is a universal language. Thus the film utilizes dance to open up a space for shifting “people out of the fear they may feel if they’re watching from an outside perspective.”

Though the idea of dance as a catalyst to ideological and personal transformation may seem unusual, Beahm is quick to point out that dance has often added a “queer element” to the movie musical. In West Side Story, for example, the spectator sees groups of men “snapping and skipping” and yet the dance isn’t “sexualized, it’s charged and it’s activated.” Dancing is particularly subversive in moments of unison dancing, she suggests, when members of both sexes dance the same movements, suggesting a unity of the sexes and the democratization of the body. Leading Ladies takes this democratization one step further, rejecting the hetero-normative ballroom dance structure of male lead and female follow and replacing it with same-sex couplings. In doing so, Beahm simultaneously feeds off of the democratizing nature of dance while rejecting the rules of a dance form that reinforces gendered performance.

It is the inherent queerness in dance that Beahm finds so appealing and in tune with her views on feminism. For her, dance and feminism are “compatible” because they are both “hard to pin down” terms; their “slipperiness” as terms allows them to create spaces for dialogue and questioning. She likes her feminism to work “from the inside out,” enjoying the notion of becoming part of a system, and breaking it down from within. This is why her personal mantra is the cheeky suggestion to “wear pearls to the country club and then talk dirty.” Ultimately, Leading Ladies represents a filmic expression of this mantra—by placing non-conventional characters within a conventional generic structure, the film wears its pearls but then lets out a glorious, enthusiastic expletive as it sits down to dinner. Swearing has never been so much fun.

Review by Joanna Chlebus

Blair - Die Young

Autumn Tone Records

Blair Gimma bounces about between art pop and insightful complexity with her first full-length venture, Die Young, juxtaposing the indelible angst of indie folk rock (with help from her daydreamy vocals) with stark lyrical imagery. Die Young was produced by Keith Ferguson, and uses all New Orleans-based musicians as a sort of tribute to where Blair spent her adolescence. Although the deep-rooted sounds of this genre are not entirely reflected in Die Young, the personal nature of the record touches on its sentimentality, as if most of the songs were acoustically derived from adversity and recorded in the solitude of Blair's bathroom.

“Rampage” sets the partial tone for the record, filling the landscape with echoed reverb and a little Pavement-inspired noise rock delight. Listening to electric keyboard synths in the opening verse of “Hearts,” one can almost picture the rolling credits of a favorite 80s soundtrack in all of its soft new wave splendor. “Hello Halo” features Blair's sprightly vocals, cushioned with classic indie distortion and a pulsing, syncopated beat that’s as pleasing as it is fitting, all while Blair recites, “Got a radio in my head…and it tells me what to say"; not to mention Blair’s amusing ode to girly glory, as she continues by deadpanning, “Kittens, rainbows!” “Paris, France” is moody and ethereal, blending electro-pop and the warm glow of ambient-pop, lush and hypnotic. “Candy in the Kitchen” works with heavy beats and moves in the same direction, albeit with a bit of a departure from the rest of the record. Gleefully, Blair sings, “I was dancing to Whitney Houston,” as you adjust your ears earnestly just to hear what she’ll say next.

Die Young is an extension of light summery pop melodies with harsh complex concepts that cut through its airy pop conventionality. Blair’s mix of vulnerability and savvy musical chops work in tandem, even though some of the songs could be on different records. Her personal pilgrimage, lasting over a span of five years, is still in its beginning stages, a cunning premonition to her eventual creative evolution in the years to come.

Review by Cat Veit

Elegies for the Brokenhearted

By Christie Hodgen
W.W. Norton

Elegies for the Brokenhearted is a book about nobodies. The narrator, Mary Murphy, is a silent observer to the destructive forces around her that ultimately shape the outcome of her life. As invisible as her ubiquitous name, Mary is a shy—and at times optionally mute—child and young adult who finds very little to care for. We first meet Mary as a young girl trying desperately to gain the (positive) attention of her mother and uncle. As the reader learns more of these relationships, often one-sided with a young, vulnerable, Mary left aching for more, we understand why her emotions calcify at such a young age.

As silent as she may be to the other people in her life, as a narrator she is bitingly, viscerally descriptive, and engaging, and I found myself completely immersed in her world; always fighting for her despite her many shortcomings. The prose in this novel is engrossing and her world became very real to me, despite the overwhelmingly bleak, disappointing theme.

If the majority of the book was engrossing, the end left much to be desired. Mary, who had never found inspiration in anything—music, reading, working, even eating and talking—suddenly became a wonderful teacher of underprivileged youth and an effortless mother. The most destructive and formative relationships in her life, with her mother and sister, are terminated without closure, and she seems to heal from them effortlessly right in time for the last pages of the book. The reader had already come to accept Mary despite some loose ends; it would have been nice to see a more realistic, albeit less pretty, ending to the story.

This is not the cheeriest book you will read this summer, but the protagonist is a nobody that everybody will root for.

Review by Colleen Hodgetts

Everything Matters!

By Ron Currie, Jr.
Viking

Someone should count how many coming-of-age novels have ever been written that focus on white, male characters. To me, it seems like every time I browse around in a bookstore and skim through the back covers of books in the “New & Hot Fiction” section, the onslaught of these story set-ups just doesn’t end. I realize that some topics never get boring, like love, betrayal, or war. But in a seemingly endless sea of new and existing stories about the teenage and early adult years of white men, it must be incredibly hard to create a story that is exciting and different.

This is where Everything Matters! comes in. Or so I thought. Based on descriptions and reviews elsewhere, I decided to override my own personal annoyance with characters like Holden Caulfield, Pip, or Adrian Healey. Hailed as a small miracle and a delightful read by reviewers at NPR or the New York Times, Everything Matters! is the story of Junior Thibodeau who is born with the knowledge that thirty-six years into his life, an asteroid will destroy the earth and all human life. Written in a quirky, rather unpredictable sequence of countdowns and changing narrative perspectives, the book follows Junior’s life from early moments in his mother’s uterus to the final moment. Junior hears a voice that tells him exactly what will happen, not just in terms of the earth’s demise, but also throughout his life. That would be unusual enough, but Junior is also portrayed as a genius who seems to be able to accomplish anything, including discovering the cure for cancer in only two weeks, if he sets his mind to it. Yet, despite these super-human abilities and an all-encompassing knowledge of the future, Junior must grapple with the fact that no matter what he manages to achieve, the world will still be destroyed.

This is what makes, or should make, Everything Matters! different than other coming-of-age stories. The plot allows for unique opportunities to explore existential questions, to play with the irony of creating a character that is capable of ending suffering from diseases, poverty or global hunger in a situation where none of that really matters. Or does it? And this is where the book falls short. Of 302 pages, only the last thirty or so actually dive into the possibilities that are set up by the story. It is here that Currie tackles, and somewhat heavy-handedly, the “why bother making an effort in life if you know it’s all going to end soon anyway?” questions. The rest of the novel very much gets lost in the sea of other coming-of-age novels. We hear too much about how Junior screws up with the love of his life, how as a result, he spends years getting drunk in cheap, dirty bars and how he still manages to be the hero for his family (and briefly also for all mankind). It’s all too familiar and too much.

Technically, the book is very unique. The narration switches back and forth between the omniscient, all-knowing narrator (the voice that Junior hears) and the various characters in the novel. The book starts with a countdown, but then abandons the countdown for large parts of the book, only to pick it up again toward the end. For someone interested in playing with structure and narration, it might be well worth the read just to see what Currie manages to come up with. However, I often felt that Currie was a bit too much into playing with technique at the expense of the story itself. There were numerous times in the book where I thought that often very bizarre sub-plots were inserted only to incorporate another writer-technicality, with little or no purpose for the content of the story. Again, it was all a little much.

All in all, I can’t say that Everything Matters! did away with my annoyance with yet another supposedly witty but deep story about some white dude in his teens and early adulthood. There is a lot of potential in the set-up to make this a different and exciting read, if Currie lost some of the showing-off of technique and the all too common features of the development of his protagonist. A few stronger female characters would be nice, too. As it stands, Everything Matters! over-promised and under-delivered for me, but I would love to see someone pick up on where the last thirty pages of the novel left off.

Review by Annette Przygoda

Holy Rollers

Directed by Kevin Asch
First Independent Pictures



Holy Rollers is a story of sex, drugs, and Orthodox Judaism. In the late 1990s, a group of drug dealers used young Orthodox kids from Brooklyn as mules to carry ecstasy back from Amsterdam to New York City. On the surface, this fictionalized account of these real events seems so simple: the sinful preying on the innocent. The viewer is drawn in by the intrigue and deceit, yet is left thinking about religion and culture.

We are never told exactly which Orthodox community in Brooklyn Holy Rollers’ main character (and real life person) Sam Gold lives in, but I think that merely speaks to the fact that it could have been any of them. (Post-viewing research proves it to have been Williamsburg.) Sam is a prototypical, ideal Orthodox boy who is studying to be a rabbi, comes from a good family, and works in his father’s shop. Sam's only problem is that he dreams of something beyond his immediate surroundings, and sees money as the means to get him there. His material desire leads him to blindly follow his neighbor into the "easy money" job of bringing "medicine for rich people" back to the U.S. from Europe.

Playing with the inconsistencies of reality is what changes a good story into a great movie. Who would ever believe it was a Jew who instituted and ran such a scheme? Who used a shared faith to exploit young people? And who would think that so many lies could create a positive space from which to question one’s beliefs? I found myself sitting on the edge of my seat, praying that Sam and his compatriots wouldn’t get caught while simultaneously questioning prayer.

Watching Sam’s crisis of conscience made me see so much more than a bizarre news clip in an insular faction of American society. His is a life almost too close to my own, and, really, Sam’s story could be anyone’s coming of age: moving away from the world of your youth, finding who you truly are, and deciding if you want to stay in the place you’re from or choose another fate. Sometimes when we choose to leave, there is no space in our new predicament for who we used to be.

Review by Nicole Levitz

MILK - HERE Arts Center: New York, NY (5/1/2010)

Directed by Jessica Bauman

Emily DeVoti’s provocative two-act play, MILK, opens in a spare farmhouse kitchen. It’s 1984. Ronald Reagan has just been elected US president and local newscasters seem to have nothing good to report. Meg (played by Jordan Baker), a former mathematician who loves precision and order, and her husband Ben (Jon Krupp), a former investigative reporter, are sitting at the table and talking, but it’s the kind of tense conversation that can quickly turn from controlled anger to fierce argument.

Things are bad, very bad. A drought has made dairy production virtually impossible, and land that’s been in Meg’s family for centuries is now on the cusp of foreclosure. On top of this, their college-aged daughter—who is never seen but is referenced at key moments in the play—wants to be an actress and their fourteen-year-old son Matt (Noah Robbins) wants material things his parents cannot possibly afford: name-brand sneakers, CDs, a bedside color TV, and stylish clothes, among them. Worse, there’s a city slicker on the prowl, and he’s made no bones about wanting to “help” Meg and Ben ease their financial woes. Ben thinks it’s good idea, "a gift from God"; Meg doesn’t.

Ben wins.

By the time businessman James (Peter Bradbury) and his teenaged daughter, Veronica (Anna Kull), arrive on the scene—in a private plane, no less—things have deteriorated even further. But James couldn't care less about the family’s personal difficulties. Instead, he’s turning his managerial acumen to improving the farm’s productivity. Although he knows nothing about cows, he hatches a plan that, on paper, will foster unprecedented growth and save the day: importing “wild, hairy, horned” bulls to impregnate the many heifers dotting the pastoral landscape.

As you have probably guessed, things don’t pan out as James—or Ben or a reluctant Meg—expect. While the second act of the play is far weaker than the first, the excellent cast, including Caroline Baeumler as Auroch, a talking bovine the Program Notes describe as “quite possibly the last living wild cow,” briefly explore a number of evocative themes including monetary pressures; urban versus rural lifestyles; marital fidelity; self-sacrifice; coming of age; and the festering ache that often accompanies keeping silent about things that matter.

In fact, by the time Veronica tearfully confides her father’s secrets to Matt, the pathos is so intense that James instantly morphs into someone less repugnant. In the end, while we may revile Matt politically, DeVoti renders him a multidimensional personality who is deserving of compassion.

There are no easy answers in MILK. Indeed, as the world changes, some customs and practices inevitably become obsolete and are replaced by newer rituals and activities. The key is figuring out which pieces of cultural and personal history to retain and which to let go.

At one point, Meg looks into a bucket of unpasteurized milk and declares that “the pure stuff, it corrupts so easily.” Maybe so. MILK asks its viewers to think about what’s negotiable and what isn’t. Regardless of what is ultimately decided, one thing is certain: after watching this well-executed play, urban audiences will think about cows in a whole new way.

Review by Eleanor J. Bader

**MILK will be performed at the HERE Arts Center through May 22nd.

Photo of Jordan Baker and Carolyn Baeumler by Jim Baldassare

Mathilda Savitch

By Victor Lodato
Picador

Despite years of being told not to, I immediately judged Victor Lodato’s novel Mathilda Savitch by the cover. I opened it expecting to speed through a mature version of Harriet the Spy with a twist of Tim Burton’s eccentricity. The title suggested a fantastic world not unlike Coraline; however, the fantasy of Mathilda Savitch is of the saddest shade.

Young Mathilda Savitch is a teenager who introduces herself in the first line of the book by saying, “I want to be awful.” Disoriented by the sudden death of her older sister Helene, Mathilda descends into an internal world of obsessive compulsive habits, nightmares, and delusion. Her home reflects her dark imagination, as her mother has succumbed to depression and alcoholism while her father weakly tries to maintain the family’s previous levity.

Mathilda Savitch is bitterly funny at times, reminiscent of The Catcher in the Rye or The Bell Jar. While it’s supposed to be a coming-of-age story—addressing menstruation, sexual experimentation, as well as basic rebellion—it feels more like a moment fixed in time.

While there are wonderful moments in the book, it isn’t flawless. A parallel theme of terrorism felt superficial and gratuitous. I also wasn’t completely convinced by Mathilda’s voice, especially when it came to puberty and sexuality. As a woman, I did not sense authenticity in these moments as I did when she was frustrated with her parents or missing her sister. Her thoughts, which compose the majority of the book, often sound more like staged monologues.

In fact, Lodato is a playwright and a poet, and this is his debut novel. Bits of the text read like poetry—“Window eyes, a window nose, and a door for a mouth”—while other parts sound like a play. Overall, however, Lodato has captured a painful stream of consciousness. I could imagine myself as a sometimes unhappy teenager wanting to find a dark place, alone, to obsess over Mathilda Savitch like a secret friend. This is a book worth reading, and although a fast read, it is not best suited for the beach.

Review by Claire Burrows

Off and Running

Directed by Nicole Opper
First Run Features



Considering the number of children in need of adoption—and the number of children who are actually adopted each year—it's surprising there aren't more adoption stories being told. Aside from “The Locator,” we've had especially limited access to stories about adopted children reaching out to their birth parents. The delicate, vulnerable position of someone sending a letter out into the world, waiting and hoping to hear back about where they come from, is still a bit of a mystery, and more than worthwhile. In fact, I knew little about it until my own adopted mother finally reached out to her birth parents at age fifty-six.

Not only is that seminal search a matter of discovering identity for the adoptee; it is, potentially, a matter of deep-seated tension between the child and her adoptive parents. My mother actually waited until both of my grandparents had passed before seeking her own answers, to avoid the risk of hurting them.

Nicole Opper's Off and Running provides a candid, thoughtful portrait of such a situation in all its complexities. The documentary follows Avery Klein-Cloud, a charismatic star high school athlete from Brooklyn, who attempts to continue living the life she and her adoptive parents carved out for her while waiting on correspondence from her birth mother. The fact that Avery is transracially adopted—the African American daughter to two White Jewish mothers—makes her quest for identity that much more significant.

At the beginning of the film, Avery frankly admits her persistent discomfort in Black social spheres growing up, and later, when a counselor asks, “Do you feel Black?,” Avery says she doesn't know what that means. Her brother Rafi, also adopted but of mixed race, provides an interesting contrast; not only does he seem to have little interest in contacting his birth parents, but he seems entirely unconcerned with his origins. At the very least, he doesn't seem as dependent on where he came from for a sense of self.

Still, Avery's bravery in her search for answers is admirable, and considering how obviously torn she is about her particular situation, she is incredibly forthcoming and self-aware. We get an unexpected amount of access to her private thoughts and feelings about what she's going through, often things that she doesn't even share with her mothers. But as the tension in the Klein-Cloud household escalates, Opper seems to pull back and even gloss over certain pivotal incidents, like a falling out between Avery and her parents that results in her moving out for a period. Opper barely addresses an abortion Avery decides to get when an unwanted pregnancy threatens to impede her track career. In fact, this part of the story is so glossed over that I wasn't entirely sure that it happened.

In the end, Avery's coming of age—and to terms with the fact that she may never meet her birth mother—feels undeserved though still inspiring. Perhaps the fact that Opper has a personal relationship with the family (she was one of Avery's teachers in middle school) can account for her trepidation in handling such sensitive issues. But her reluctance does take away from the moral lesson of the film: that adopted children need to stand by those who've cared for them and showed them support every step of the way, which, in this case, is Avery's unconventional but extraordinary family.

Review by Caitlin Graham

** Sometimes we accidentally duplicate a review. What can we say? Perfection is an illusion. Click here for another Feminist Review writer's perspective on the film.

Waking Up in the Land of Glitter: A Crafty Chica Novel

By Kathy Cano-Murillo
Grand Central Publishing

Waking Up in the Land of Glitter is Kathy Cano-Murillo's first foray into the world of novel writing. The author, known to her crafting disciples as "Crafty Chica," already has a well-established fan base because of her popular crafting books, web series, nationally syndicated newspaper column, instructional craft cruise to Mexico, and product line.

A few pages into the book, I could have sworn it was written by the same author as Houston, We Have a Problema. I quickly detected the same seemingly recycled character types: the young fiery Latina with no sense of direction, and her suave Latino love interest, always so cunning and elusive. Admittedly, I’ve grown sick of these caricatures, but I’m happy to report that Waking Up in the Land of Glitter scores much higher marks than its doppelganger.

Murillo’s first novel tells the story of Estrella (Star) Esteban, the wacky, spoiled daughter of two of Phoenix’s most prominent proponents of the local art scene. Star's parents own La Pachanga, a restaurant/community center/art space that also happens to be where Star works, doing what can only be described as a half-assed public relations job.

Crafty Chloe, the villain for the first two-thirds of the book, first comes into Star’s life when she interviews her after someone defaces a popular mural at La Pachanga, which happened to be created by local artist and Star’s sort-of-boyfriend, Theo Duarte. What Chloe doesn’t know is that Star did the defacing herself after one too many tequila shots.

What ensues is not original, groundbreaking, or thought provoking—it’s simply cute. After Theo and Star's parents find out she’s the one that ruined the mural, Theo breaks up with her (though they were never really together; "it’s complicated"), and her parents fire her, making her sign a contract saying that if she doesn’t get her life together she’ll have to move out of their home and stop working at their restaurant.

It is during this time we get into the cheesy coming-of-age tale, in which Star bands together with her best friend Ofie, an obsessive crafter with no crafting talent, Chloe, and a young gay teenager named Benecio to create centerpieces for what’s called the Crafting Olympics. It is also around this time that Star becomes an artist after talking about it for years, despite never picking up so much as a pen.

Despite clichés, bad dialogue, and not-so-intriguing characters, I was pretty hooked on this book and read it in just a few days. I suppose I’m a sucker for stories revolving around charmed lives—you know the type: it always works out for them in the end. And for Star, it all works out: She has an art show at her parent’s restaurant and sells every piece within hours, Theo proposes in a ridiculously elaborate way on her birthday, and she has enough money to buy a property on the same lot as La Pachanga so she can open her own crafting studio.

As I get older, I realize that not every book I spend time reading has to be an earth shattering, groundbreaking, eye-opening event. What you get with Waking Up in the Land of Glitter is a cute though trite little tale that will leave you wishing real life worked out as seamlessly as it does in books.

Review by Tina Vasquez