Elevate Difference

Reviews by Andrea Dulanto

Andrea Dulanto

Andrea Dulanto is a Latina lesbian writer from Miami. She graduated with an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Florida International University, and a B.A. in Literature & Women's Studies from Antioch College. Publications include PopMatters, Sinister Wisdom, Court Green, Tigertail: A South Florida Poetry Annual, and The Pedestal Magazine.

Hunting My Dress

Attention wiccans and hippies—Jesca Hoop’s Hunting My Dress (with Bonus EP) is your new theme music. Ethereal and bluesy, this nine-track album and folksy five song EP are a call to light incense, join a drum circle and bake your own bread. Hunting My Dress is Hoop’s second full-length album.

Buddhism Through American Women’s Eyes

Buddhism Through American Women’s Eyes, a collection of thirteen essays edited by Karma Lekshe Tsomo, offers an introspective exploration of Buddhist philosophy and practices. First published in 1995 and re-issued in 2010, these works are written by women who attended a California retreat in August 1989.

Florida Supercon (6/18 – 6/20/2010)

Since I live in Miami, a city of fashionable sameness, it can be difficult to find alternatives to the mainstream culture. So I was convention curious. Yet all I knew about anime was what I’d seen on Adult Swim or the Syfy channel: doe-eyed, borderline pornographic girls in their miniskirts and ponytails. I can never get past the not-so-subtle little girl fetish.

The Drifter

The wanderlust, the whisky, the love-done-me-wrong– Mexican-Canadian musician Lindi Ortega sings it all out on The Drifter EP, and even if you're not a fan of indie country folksiness, her voice calls to you. The singer's voice lulls and disarms with a sweetness that could be borderline saccharine. Nonetheless, she is saved by her expansive ability to belt out a tune.

Meridians

Meridians is a very “new age” title for an album. You may hear the word “meridians” all the time without knowing what it means, and when you look it up, you still don’t. You know it’s about circles and zeniths and acupuncture references to the body’s pathways to energy—but can you use it in a sentence? When I worked at a record store (yes, a record store) in the '90s, we had an entire new age section.

Ani DiFranco (03/18/2009)

At the Ani DiFranco concert in Pompano Beach, FL, a woman next to me hadn’t heard Red Letter Year. But she wouldn’t have missed the show: “If it’s Ani, then I’m there.” I confess. I’m the same. I don’t have the new album. But it’s Ani. So I was there. Allie Evans, who works on Ani’s tours, talked about the audience response: “The economy may not be strong...

Elizabeth Willis

In Anne Sexton’s introductory note for her book of poems, Live or Die, she “apologizes for the fact that [these poems] read like a fever chart for a bad case of melancholy.

Indestructible

When you think of Miami, you don’t often think of punk. I grew up in South Florida, I’ve come back here (for now). Miami is anti-punk – superficial, isolationist, materialistic. It’s possible to be punk in this city – to create and exist outside of the mainstream. Yet I’m always curious to see how others form their own identities, their own cultures, in a place that doesn’t do much to support them. This is what made me read Cristy C.

Anxious Pleasures: A Novel After Kafka

This novel re-imagines The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka’s story of Gregor Samsa who wakes up one morning as a bug. Samsa’s point of view is crucial to The Metamorphosis, but Lance Olsen focuses on those who witness the inexplicable, unsettling transformation: his sister, his parents, the chief clerk, the servant girl, the cook, the charwoman, and three lodgers. Anxious Pleasures expands the story to these peripheral characters and ones who never even met the new Samsa: a cashier who he casually dated, his sister’s suitor, and the neighbor downstairs.
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