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

All Over the Map

By Laura Fraser
Harmony Books

Author Laura Fraser has just celebrated her fortieth birthday and is attending a college reunion. While observing the range of accomplishments that have been accumulated over the years by her former classmates—and mentally comparing herself with them—a friend shares with Laura the idea of a the Manhattan trifecta: you can, over the course of your life, have the perfect relationship, the perfect job, and the perfect apartment. Just not all at once. Laura realizes that she has a great apartment and a great job, but there is no great man in her life and she wants to change that.

All Over the Map is a like a less self-indulgent Eat, Pray, Love. Laura Fraser is a freelance writer who travels frequently for her work. In her previous book, An Italian Affair, she wrote about the breakup of her marriage and finding solace in an Italian romance—a cleansing, hedonistic break. In All Over the Map, Laura is in her forties and trying to find balance in her life. The book chronicles several years while she tries her hand at settling down, all while traveling frequently on assignment.

For Laura, the idea of what constitutes "settling down" changes gradually over the duration of the book. Initially, she thinks that she wants a husband and children, but after a series of half-hearted romances, and as her fertility wanes, she realizes that she'd rather find a place to settle herself as an individual, while remaining close to a circle of friends. You can feel her mood lightening as she shifts from an intense focus on finding a man and starting a family, to being a happy woman with a house in Mexico in a town full of artists and divorcees.

Laura Fraser is a frequent contributor to glossy women's magazines, and knows how to craft a gripping sentence. While All Over the Map could be considered a beach read, there are darker and more complex moments in the book. Among the most engrossing chapters are when Laura describes her travel to Italy and Samoa to interview sex workers for articles. These chapters begin as typical travel pieces, singing the beauty of these locations, and end up darker and more menacing. The men and women involved in the sex trade that Laura speaks to are full of anger, fear, and desire, and dealing with women's new roles as breadwinners around the globe while living in largely paternalistic societies. These chapters have really meaty implications about the shifting role of women around the world, and come at a point in Laura's life where she's struggling to become a wife and mother. It's an interesting contrast and comparison, though one Laura doesn't choose to explore.

Ultimately, the book shifts back to Laura's story and the happiness she's able to find for herself. It's a quick read with interesting implications about female vulnerability and independence around the globe. Buy it if you'd like a light, feminist read with some intellectual heft.

Review by Catherine Nicotera

Bina Das: A Memoir

Translated by Dhira Dhar
Zubaan

“History is always in the making, and our struggle for a truly free country will not be over easily,” says Bina Das towards the conclusion of her memoir, brilliantly translated by Dhira Dhar, who was close to this firebrand revolutionary of Bengal. In its pages, Bina Das: A Memoir holds history in flashback. The glorious and gradual unfolding of an Indian nationalist who is counted amongst the heroes of the history of the country’s struggle for independence (like Pritilata Waddedar, Surya Sen, Shivaram Hari Rajguru, and innumerable others) in the few pages of her memoir is nothing short of poignant.

The curtain rises on the eve of August 15, 1947, the day of India’s independence. A nation standing at the crossroads of destiny may have caused countless minds like Das’s to be filled with a sense of despair and doubt, coupled with the misery of Partition, yet she asserts that this freedom was finally the real one and “flashed like lightning through our thrilled souls.” She reminisces her life at the backdrop of this day when she expected her country to march ahead in full glory. And thereafter, the entire story of her life unfurls before the reader in dramatic flashbacks, moments of captured memory framed in the ensuing pages.

Das narrates her family background, her life as a student, and the wondrous transition phase of her life when she graduated from a non-violent freedom fighter into that of an armed revolutionary. She talks of her participation in the last lap of the freedom movement, her subsequent nine-year imprisonment, her release on the eve of independence, and her return to politics from a long prison life. Each of these events has been described in poetic subtlety.

Like children of her generation, her education began at home under the careful guidance of her parents. Often Das’s father, the erudite Brahmo scholar Beni Madhab Das, who played a pivotal role in shaping the thoughts of the young Subhas Chandra Bose, would sit with Bina and her siblings and read plays like Bhishma, Shahjahan and others by D.L. Roy. This, Das claims, was her first introduction to the heroic and tragic in drama, bound to have left indelible imprints in her mind.

Das belonged to a family and a generation that was making the platform for the freedom movement. Her mother, Sarala Devi, was exceptionally enthusiastic about all kinds of social work. Sister Kalyani (Kalyani Bhattacharjee) was also a leading social activist and revolutionary. Das acknowledges that the most precious thing she received from her father was the wealth of freedom he gave her. Understandably this was instrumental in building the consciousness necessary for the struggle for freedom in her later years.

A ceaseless, tireless worker, Das concludes that her only prayer shall be to remain active in the cause of suffering humanity and not lose herself in the “idle morass of inactivity.” This perhaps aptly sums up towering figures like Das and those of her bygone generation.

Memoirs are almost always untranslatable, and Dhar has done a grand job of translating this one with impeccable skill. It is a must read, especially for those who wish to recapitulate the lives and times of revolutionaries like Bina Das.

Review by Jhuma Sen