incest

Daniel & Ana

admin — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 16:00:00 +0000

Daniel & Ana is an opinion piece, the film equivalent of an op-ed. While it is a forgone assumption that a film will represent the opinion of its authors and that every film necessarily adopts a particular point-of-view on its subjects, Daniel & Ana endorses a position.

Daniel & Ana assumes an expository stance, occupying the characters lives in an effort to discuss an issue bigger than they are. This film discusses underground pornography; the analysis is not on the macro level of an industry or the societal impact of the industry on Mexico, but rather on the micro level, this is a case study of this particular pair of siblings.

The course of the film follows the older sister Ana, as she prepares for her wedding, and trails the younger brother Daniel as he exists, for the most part, in his sister’s wake. For most of the film, their relationship is relatively normal. When the siblings begin behaving oddly, their parents suspect nothing, seeing the strains in the siblings’ relationship as a result of the wedding, and nothing more. Ana and Daniel are nothing if not predictable.

While Ana is the central character, the film revolving most directly around the events in her life (despite the parallel surveillance of Daniel), she is not fully formed as a character. Ana is object more than she is subject. Not only is Ana objectified as a sightly woman throughout: not only by the comments of Daniel’s friend saying that she is doable and of the cameraman for the porno saying she is hot; not only by her rape which is a sort of ultimate objectification; but, by the movie itself, by the shallow presentation of her character. In this film Ana is only ever acted upon. As dutiful sister, daughter, and girlfriend, she only causes concern when she temporarily cancels the wedding. The wedding sets the tone of the piece, it determines what is normal, what roles each character is to play, and what behaviors are acceptable. Ana reinstates the wedding in a search for refuge; the wedding is a return to normalcy and an escape from everything else. Everything will end with the wedding.

Written by: Elisheva Zakheim, August 27th 2010

Jesus Boy

admin — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 16:01:00 +0000

By Preston L. Allen

Akashic Books

Star-crossed intergenerational love between a Christian matriarch and a young church pianist sounds like an unlikely fictional masterpiece, but in Jesus Boy, Preston L. Allen’s empathic, intricate storytelling skillfully unfolds this improbable tale of religious conviction, sexual desire, and social pressure to conform.

While striving to maintain a virtuous private life—and wholly failing to do so—Elwyn Parker struggles with his public image as a young preacher. At the tender age of sixteen, his childhood crush becomes pregnant by another boy, confusing his chaste heart. At the same time, his aged mentor dies, leaving a grieving widow with whom Elwyn takes up, despite their twenty-two year age difference and to the great surprise of them both. Suddenly, sexual vices overwhelm a story of deeply religious believers, who struggle to make sense of the contradictions between spiritual dogma and physical and emotional desires. Most of the story’s characters live hypocritically at best; yet, their humanity is striking and a clear reminder of what it means to live with wholly unrealistic expectations of oneself and one another.

Between the evangelical language and the geography, the novel had additional resonance for me personally. Set in South Florida towns like Lakeland and Plant City, I could easily imagine not only the Church of Our Blessed Redeemer Who Walked Upon the Waters congregations and their church buildings but also the two-lane highways that connect some of the small cities mentioned. My maternal grandparents, retired ministers, have lived in that area for the last decade and attend two church services every Sunday: one in their trailer park, where grandpa leads the worship service, and one at a Church of God in Lakeland.

The book takes many turns, and sometimes I would be reading for several pages about a newly introduced character before all the pieces fell into place. Allen layers themes of familial obligation and incest with religious judgment and piety, all the while undoing any assumption you might make about essential underlying elements of a functional intimate relationship blossoming in the shadow of slavery and racialized poverty. Feminist in the sense that the author exposes the humanity of each character equally, Jesus Boy will encourage the most progressive thinker to reevaluate their moral judgments about love, parenting, pregnancy, and May-December romances.

Akashic Books consistently publishes quality fiction, and Jesus Boy is just one more must have title in their catalog. If you only read five novels this year, this should be one of them.

Written by: Brittany Shoot, April 27th 2010

My Father’s Love: Portrait of the Poet as a Young Girl

admin — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 17:01:00 +0000

By Sharon Doubiago

Wild Ocean Press

I find memoirs difficult to criticize, especially when the content is personal and intimate. The first volume of author and poet Sharon Doubiago’s memoir, My Father's Love, feels like an open wound, the scar tissue scraped off to allow for belated healing. My Father's Love is a detailed account of Doubiago’s childhood, tragically defined by sexual molestation by her father, and willful ignorance by her mother.

This is an engaging book, thanks to Doubiago’s poetic and honest language, fastidious fact checking, and pages of photographs to give a visual to the people in her early life. She traces her family tree back to its American roots, finding common threads that run throughout her family genealogy and her own life. This is not a short book, running over 400 pages, and yet Doubiago makes it all a coherent account. I turned each page, not to find out what happens next, but to get to know the young Sharon from the photographs.

Engaging with this story became confusing for me. Why do I read this book? Is it for myself, or for Doubiago? It’s not for entertainment or education, and there’s a bit of guilt involved in what sometimes feels like an invasion of privacy. Memoirs as a genre walk a fine line between voyeurism and empathy, exhibitionism and honesty.

Memoirs can be notoriously bad, exemplifying “navel-gazing” and self-promotion. However, a good memoir can be sublime. My personal favorites are Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior, Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar (admittedly a fictionalized memoir), and Allison Bechdel’s Fun Home. These are books that restore my faith in the memoir, so often challenged by poorly written, self-congratulatory schlock (I don’t need to name a recent “rogue” publication). My Father's Love, a heart wrenching read with a grim ending, evokes disconcerting emotions and questions, and demonstrates what a memoir is capable of.

Doubiago brings up weighty issues such as patriarchy, class discrimination, and false memory, as well as the pervasive problem of familial sexual abuse. The issue of false memory plagued me while reading her account, as she describes the resistance to her claims from her family, and even in her own mind. I too wanted her memories to be false, for her young handsome father to have never betrayed his daughter, despite the truth. One of Doubiago’s greatest accomplishments with this book is showing how complex memories can be, as she exposes her own process of remembering.

After finishing My Father's Love, I started thinking about the role of memoirs. Why is it important as women to tell our stories? And why, as women, is it important that we read each others' stories? Perhaps it is a cycle, and through telling and listening, reading and writing, a memoir becomes complete.

Written by: Claire Burrows, December 30th 2009

Support Zine

admin — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 12:57:00 +0000

Edited by Cindy Crabb

Microcosm Publishing

“How do you define consent? Have you ever talked about consent with your partner(s) or friends? Do you know people, or have you ever been with people who define consent differently than you do?”

Thus begins one of the best zines I have ever read on the subject of healing from sexual abuse. This zine is specifically geared towards friends, lovers and allies of survivors, and is written in an accessible, loving, realistic way, including writing and comics by a dozen or so contributors who are healing from or supporting others with abuse histories (many have experienced both). Their words are painful, but also comforting for those of us who have struggled in this realm – the message is not tragic, it is one of hope and community and, well, support.

Topics include: consent, boundaries, triggers, dissociation, power dynamics, survivor guilt, recovering from trauma, flashbacks, staying present, confronting rapists, denial, panic attacks, and more. Being in the middle of these experiences can feel out of control and indefinable, making it impossible to communicate with a partner, especially if they are taking it personally. So having these words to consult and share could really make a difference. The advice is straight-forward and specific, while still relying on your intuitive and empathic powers, which makes the healing journey feel more like an adventure and less like torture, no matter how painful it is.

“It’s okay for us to have to work hard at what other people take for granted. The goal is not to return to some arbitrary centerpoint of normalcy from which we were robbed as children. We are not deviants. The goal is to heal, to be on a continuum of healing,” writes Chris Somerville in his essay, “Safe Sex for Survivors.”

While we’re all aware that most sexual abuse happens to girls at the hands of men, this zine also includes a lot of writing from the perspective of male survivors, and several stories of men being pressured into sex by women, which I’ve rarely heard talked about. Also, this zine manages to avoid demonizing abusers while holding everyone accountable for recognizing power dynamics and honoring other people’s boundaries. In one piece, the editor writes about the fucked up act of initiating sex with a sleeping person, and admits to having done this herself:

“Do they think about our abuse histories? Or the fact that we can’t say “no” when we’re asleep? Do they understand our complex defense systems and how vulnerable and terrified we might feel waking up to this assault? … The truth is, I used to crawl in people’s beds too. I thought of course all guys wanted it. I never considered the fact that I might be capable of assault. But of course, I am. A lot of us are.”

Whether or not you think you need it, whether or not you’re a survivor, or dating a survivor, or even having sex, you would probably benefit from reading this zine. And the people you choose to be intimate with will probably thank you for making their safety a priority.

Written by: Nomy Lamm, January 17th 2007