The Second Trial

By Rosemarie Boll
Second Story Press

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a scourge that affects families in every country and at every social class. Between twenty-five and fifty percent of women worldwide will be a victim of IPV at some point in her life, and forty to seventy percent of female murder victims are killed by an intimate partner. These statistics are shocking, but what is too often left out of the discussion about IPV is the way violence can affect so many lives. When those in pop culture or the media explore themes relating to IPV, the conversation is limited to finding safety for the survivor, usually a woman, and to utilizing the traditional legal system to prosecute and punish the offender, usually a man. In The Second Trial, Rosemarie Boll moves beyond the dichotomy of perpetrator vs. victim and focuses on the too often invisible children who are harmed by IPV. Through the experiences of an adolescent boy, the book tells the story of a Canadian family coming to grips with extreme violence.

Boll introduces us to Danny, a thirteen-year-old boy who witnesses a family court hearing after his father seriously and continually abused his mother. The book tracks the boy through the court proceedings and then through life in a protection program designed to prevent his father from causing further serious harm to his mother. Viewing complicated legal issues around IPV through the eyes of a child highlights the disconnect between the formality of the legal system and the complex, sometimes contradictory emotions involved in family violence. Outsiders are used to seeing an evil offender and an innocent victim. But what does a child do when this “evil offender” is also a father? The Second Trial addresses these complicated questions of family and safety within an abusive household. Boll captures how a child can love and idolize a parent, even an abusive one.

By delving into tricky questions that surround IPV, Boll raises questions about how clunky traditional legal systems deal with complex issues in family law. She shines a light on non-court based innovations to keep families safe and introduces readers to New Identities for Victims of Abuse (NIVA), which was started by the Alberta government in 1997 to provide additional protection to victims of family violence. IPV is a serious and complicated problem that demands creative solutions. The confines of the courtroom should not be the limits of our solutions to IPV.

The Second Trial provides readers a glimpse into a child’s relationship with family violence, revealing an often forgotten voice in narratives about the subject. By contrasting traditional court-based solutions with the NIVA program, Boll makes us question the bounds of the traditional legal system. She leads readers to demand alternative avenues to justice and creative routes to safety for victims.

Review by Andrea Gittleman

Voces Zine (Summer 2010, Issue 3)

Edited by Noemi Martinez
The Voices Against Violence Project

Unapologetic. Raw. Honest.

The third issue of Voces Zine is a collection of poetry by artists from different communities—indigenous, people of color, trans, and queer—sharing their experiences as survivors of domestic and sexual violence. Originally inspired by a small community of Latino immigrants, this issue represents a first-time inclusion of contributors from outside of its original roots.

The eclectic air of the compilation reflects this shift. During an interview I asked editor Noemi Martinez about the strengths and weaknesses of such a model; she discussed how the stories could be competing or compatible, but that each needed to be told. I appreciated her insight and find this invites a greater audience, while also revealing the individual ways we experience violence against women. Some stories might resonate with one reader more than others, but each exposes the important variance of dynamics in surviving violence: blaming, loving, mistrusting, self-hating, empowering, forgiving, healing, hiding, ignoring, being vulnerable, being strong, being uncertain, being alone, being supported.

At times I felt I could sympathize with each word (“unwrap your bandages/let them wounds breathe/let them scab and itch/and fall/away”), with the uncertainty (“am i better?”), and with the paradox of anger and barren strength (“i aint no fucking weak, limp, helpless, shaking, hiding, trembling, dying, lonely, battered girl. i’m a woman with a black eye.”). Other writings left me unattached or distant, to which I cite Martinez’s foreword, “There is no guarantee how one will react to a particular writing when you are a survivor…as a reader, you might find these writings triggering, not helpful, judgemental [sic], totally off, fucked up, questionable, right on, brutally honest, truthful inspiring.” The point: take from Voces Zine what you can relate to, learn from what you might not, and leave the rest behind.

Voces Zine was created to support survivors and to provide a teaching tool for discussion and understanding of what violence against women means. While the variety of themes provide this type of catalyst, at times the compilation seemed to be more of a therapeutic outlet for each contributor. To this end, I do not fault the project, but commend it for its ability to provide a space in which “victim, survivor, thriver” can share, question, and grow.

I admire each of the contributors for finding the strength to speak up and write out and urge any person questioning, challenged by, or curious about violence against women to take a look through Voces Zine. In the interview, Martinez explained, “I’m not an editor. I’m not professional.” Although I believe she has proven her worth of both titles with this endeavour, the humility of her statement is yet another reflection of the DIY compassion and grassroots foundation of this project. Voces Zine is more than words on paper; it’s a resource of hope, inspiration, and healing.

Review by Ani Colekessian

Beauty

By Raphael Selbourne
Tindal Street Press

Beauty is the outstanding first novel of British author Raphael Selbourne, winner of the prestigious 2009 Costa First Novel Award (formerly known as the Whitbread Literary Awards). The novel’s plot is seemingly predictable–an illiterate girl runs away from an abusive home where she had been forced to marry a much older mullah (religious man) at the age of fourteen. However, Selbourne’s pen transforms the story into an insightful glimpse into British-style multiculturalism and immigration, from the point of view of a young woman. Beauty Begum’s tragic tale is one of a young immigrant woman doubly alienated by her family and her environment.

Beauty's timely publication in 2009 is worthy of note, given the paranoia and terror surrounding the tragic London bombings in 2005 and the overt racial profiling that has been ongoing in the Western world. Writer and filmmaker Hanif Kureishi (himself a Whitbread prizewinner) had previously focused in on the immigrant experience and depicted the struggles of Muslim immigrant families in Britain in his screenplays for My Beautiful Laundrette and My Son the Fanatic, for example. Selbourne’s novel can be seen as a valuable continuation of these themes. Although Beauty never directly addresses the reasons and context for the racism it exposes, it presents us with diverse xenophobic scenarios that are all equally deserving of consideration. It also brings to light the very complex circumstances of women immigrants, domestic abuse, and the everyday struggle of women who are caught between lived tradition and modernity. The author, previously a student of Islamic Studies, is clearly knowledgeable about the topic, a fact that counteracts any reservations we might have about the author’s being just another patriarchal gaze on the “subordinate.”

Selbourne’s secondary characters are rich in detail and complexity. From Mark, the gruff bloke who takes Beauty into his dog-infested home, to Peter, the newly single, perverted neighbor who fantasizes about seducing her, all the characters are cleverly constructed. However, Selbourne’s tour de force lies in his depiction of the feminine psyche. Beauty is very much a convincing female character, of the depth and quality that I had previously only encountered in Roddy Doyle’s Paula Spencer from The Woman Who Walked into Doors. The writer’s sensitivity is key to developing a plausible protagonist.

Raphael Selbourne establishes himself in the proud tradition of English-language writers who manage to paint realistic and tender portraits of specific social groups. Having lived in West Midlands teaching English, he captures the much-ridiculed West Midlands accent in his writing in the same way Roddy Doyle captured the Irish brogue in his novels. Selbourne’s Bangladesh-born Beauty speaks a drawl that is perfectly representative of the West Midlands (UK) setting of the novel. Furthermore, the author scatters Bengali terms in the novel, such as Beauty’s interjections, or explanations for her reactions, thoughts, or actions. Admittedly, Beauty is occasionally an exercise in reading; one must decipher, literally, the spoken language that the author has committed to the page. However, do not let this dissuade you from reading this engaging and thoughtful novel.

Review by Sophie M. Lavoie

Kanyadaan - Ethnic Cultural Theatre: Seattle, WA (5/14/2010)

Directed by Agastya Kohli

It is with much anticipation that I attended the opening night show of Kanyadaan, a play written by Vijay Tendulkar and directed by Pratidhwani’s Agastya Kohli. The reasons for my enthusiasm were multifold; for one, I’ve been a fan of Agastya’s (and Pratidhwani’s) work for a few years now, and second, I had personally worked with all members of Kanyadaan’s talented cast in last year’s incisive political satire, Ek Tha Gadha, Urf Aladad Khan. But most of all, from what I knew of the play (and the playwright), it promised a complex plot of important societal concerns that the actors, no doubt, would find challenging to portray, and the audience, perhaps, would find equally challenging to process.

Given the challenging complexity of the characters, the performances by the cast were considerably accomplished. Jayant Bhopatkar, playing Nath, fills the stage with his booming, bombastic monologues that reek of a nauseating brand of “democratic” patriarchy. Nanda Tewari, as Nath’s wife Seva, plays beautifully, his complicit complement in maintaining the status quo, carrying that curious blend of feminist independence and practical subservience that is so characteristic of many of us empowered (Indian) women. But the actors who held my eye the most were Aditi Chaubal, playing Jyoti, and Ankur Gupta, playing Arun.

It couldn’t have been easy to step into the shoes of an abused woman, trapped between her idealistic upbringing and her misplaced muse, or those of an oppressed dalit flitting between mouthfuls of crass expletives and self-flagellating, indulgent remorse. I found my heartstrings empathetically connected with Jyoti throughout the play, beyond reason – beyond the need to understand, judge, or admonish her. And, quite paradoxically, I found Arun’s condition just as poignant; he too was an anchor for my heartfelt attention, once again, beyond my need to understand, judge, or admonish him. Both Aditi and Ankur came out on top, bringing forth with surprising ability the complexity and contradictions of these two central characters, each of whom manifests the societal conditions and conditioning that Tendulkar wants us to consider.

Bhushan Mehendale, playing the support role of Jyoti’s brother Jai Prakash, embodies to great effect the emasculation of his father’s domineering presence and the confusion and repressed frustration of an under-expressed youth. Even C.P. Ramakrishnan and Ravi Sathyam, appearing briefly as insolent sidekicks of Arun, demonstrate with their body language alone that no role is a small one. The performances left no doubt in my mind that Kohli selected a great cast and nurtured the best out of them.

In terms of storyline flow, on occasion the rapid-fire pace of the deliveries disabled me from stopping to ponder, to read more between the lines, to connect more fully to the complex characters, especially with Jyoti’s and Arun’s. I missed the whitespace – the larger canvas that might have better held and cradled the complexities and contradictions portrayed – and for this reason alone, some of the turns in the plot may have come across as somewhat simplistic and not-so-believable. Yet, a tight cadence was necessary to keep the intensity and tension of the storyline; so, achieving a fine balance was undoubtedly no mean task.

My heartfelt kudos go to director Agastya Kohli and the entire cast and crew of Kanyadaan, for taking on this challenging subject and play, and for orchestrating yet another thoughtful production for the Seattle Indian diaspora.

Review by Shahana Dattagupta

Cross-posted from Pratidhwani

Daughters of Empire: A Memoir of a Year in Britain and Beyond

By Jane Satterfield
Demeter Press

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.

Review by Rick Taylor