Elevate Difference

Reviews tagged drugs

Making a Killing: Femicide, Free Trade, and La Frontera

Making a Killing is a collection of essays exploring the history and social/political/economic context of the murders of women in Juarez, Mexico from 1993 to the present day. Essays analyze the economic context of free trade that has contributed to a culture that devalues women workers and sees female bodies as expendable in the making of cheap products for American women. Essays examine activists’ and artists’ efforts to gain attention for the plight of women in Juarez, analyze the culture of law enforcement in Juarez, and vividly portray the efforts of mothers and relatives to get justice for their missing and murdered daughters.

Running Dark

Running Dark is the second book in Jamie Freveletti’s action-mystery-thriller series featuring chemist and long-distance runner Emma Caldridge. The first book, Running from the Devil, establishes the character of Caldridge as a strong scientist with a flair for quick thinking and physical endurance in the worst of situations.

The Blessing Next to the Wound: A Story of Art, Activism, and Transformation

As a survivor of government sanctioned torture in Colombia, Hector Aristizabal was left with unsettled anger and fear. His wariness towards both his country and his future there worsens when one of his brothers is murdered by paramilitary soldiers. Aristizabal is eventually able to cast aside his bitterness, and find ways to aid others in their struggles by holding workshops for prisoners and victims of violence in the United States.

Winter’s Bone

In my review of 2009’s Oscar-nominated film Precious I stated that it was incredibly difficult to objectively review the film because the realism that is presented is so detached from my own circumstances.

Happiness Runs

I sat through this eighty-eight minute monstrosity two and half times. And the question that I’m still asking myself is, “What the fuck?” Set sometimes during the eighties, Happiness Runs is the semi-autobiographical story of its tyro director. Happiness Runs centers on Victor (Mark L.

Holy Rollers

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.

Marijuana is Safer: So Why Are We Driving People to Drink?

Cutting to the chase: The three authors of Marijuana is Safer—all active politically in pro-marijuana organizations—argue in favour of a regulated system for the distribution and sale of marijuana in America to allow its responsible use by adults. The evidence they accumulate to support their position is based on health, logic, science, and money. A couple of chapters sum up the history of how, after U.S.

Pleasure Consuming Medicine: The Queer Politics of Drugs

Pleasure Consuming Medicine is the deliciously (and ambiguously) titled new work by the Senior Lecturer in Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney, Kane Race. His difficult but rewarding text joins a number of new works about the pleasures (not just punishments) of drug use.

Blood Sistas: The Chronicals of Black Uptown Girlz Growing Up in the Hood

As a White girl growing up in rural Wisconsin, I had no idea what city life was like. Post-college, I traveled, hoping to broaden my horizons and learn a bit about urban living. After that, I thought I had some pretty good ideas about what growing up in the city was like: living in an apartment, going to the laundromat, shopping at the small supermarket down the street, and hearing traffic and sirens twenty-four hours a day. After reading this book, I can tell you I know absolutely nothing about the intricacies of inner-city life.

Gangs in Garden City: How Immigration, Segregation, and Youth Violence Are Changing America

As sprawl becomes less environmentally acceptable, foreclosures soar, and media trumpet the end of the suburban dream, the suburbs or at least some of them, have emerged as a problem, rather than as a solution. Although the house prices in the true islands of affluence have fallen, crime, drugs, and gangs are emerging in suburban neighborhoods abandoned to working-class and immigrant people.

The Delivery Man

The Delivery Man is the story of Chase, a twenty-something guy living in Las Vegas. The book switches between Chase’s present day life and flashbacks from his tragic Las Vegas childhood.

Freeing Tammy: Women, Drugs, and Incarceration

Meet Tammara Johnson, an ex-19 year heroin addict, ex-prisoner and now a job development trainer for an in-patient drug treatment program. Freeing Tammy is the final book of a trilogy that discusses women, poverty and violence.

These Girls

Documentarian Tahani Rached is allowed intimate access into the lives of a tight-knit group of teenage girls living on the streets of Cairo, Egypt. This motley band of girls includes Tata, the ringleader; Danya, the self-proclaimed “fireball"; Abeer; Ze’reda; Maryam and Big Sister Hind, who offers advice and a shoulder to lean on. Although these teens are “voluntarily” homeless, viewers soon learn that they have chosen what they consider to be the lesser of two evils: the streets versus their abusive homes. The film opens with Tata riding a horse down a street crowded with cars.

The Higher Power of Lucky

Censorship advocates have a lot to dislike in Susan Patron’s Newbery Medal children’s book The Higher Power of Lucky. Aside from the “scrotum” controversy (the word appears on the first page and prompted a flurry of “how dare she put this is a children’s book!”), there are Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, a mother in jail for dealing marijuana, a delinquent father and surplus U.S.

Mommy's Angel

Most savvy feminists can argue their way through complex social problems such as sexual violence, poverty and drug use. Most savvy feminists, though, could not articulate those issues though a fast-paced, sharply written story like Mommy’s Angel.

Life Support

HIV isn't the death sentence that it used to be, but that doesn't mean it isn't affecting people's lives in enormous ways. Life Support is a new film starring Queen Latifah, inspired by a true story, that tackles the complexities of living with the virus, particularly as low-income, women of color. This film couldn't come at a better time, as infection rates continue to grow among young, African American girls.

B.I.K.E.

In case you thought B.I.K.E. was just a movie about bikes… well, it is, but you might be surprised at the ground it covers. From filmmakers Anthony Howard (Tony) and Jacob Septimus, B.I.K.E. delves into the lives of the members of the Black Label Bike Club in New York City. Access to the Black Label New York subculture is mediated by Tony and his desperate attempts to gain entrance to the elite ranks of Black Label. Both filmmaker and main character, Tony becomes the epicenter of the film.
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