interviews

Literary Readings: Salman Rushdie (11/22/2010)

mandy — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 14:00:00 +0000

New York, New York

Everywhere you go in India, you see bootlegged copies of Salman Rushdie's groundbreaking Midnight's Children being sold by hawkers along the footpaths to tourists who've come to see if the romanticized country is as mythical a place as the then-copywriter delightfully described in his make-me-or-break-me novel. The fantastical worlds created in Rushdie's mind closely resemble our reality, but their magical element—at times more prevalent than others—has the ability to transport the uninitiated from a place of sensory overload to one of simple beauty. And it was with great pleasure that I attended the literary reading with Rushdie, and subsequent jocular verbal sparring with fellow Mumbaite, and Maximum City author, Suketu Mehta at the 92nd Street Y.

After Mehta's endearing introduction of Rushdie, in which he comically described being rebuffed at the authors' first encounter, the senior writer took the stage to read excerpts from his recently published young adult adventure novel, Luka and the Fire of Life. I had read the book a few days prior to the event while stuck on the 2 train from Prospect Heights to West Harlem. Crushed on all sides in the crowded train, Luka's quest allowed me some reprieve from claustrophobia during the snail's pace journey. And I much preferred experiencing Rushdie's linguistic acrobatics and smarty pants humor in the comfortable seats at the Y.

The audience seemed pleasantly amused at the children's story, crafted at the request of Rushdie's own adolescent son. They tittered at all appropriate parts and chuckled at Rushdie's added commentary between excerpts. Luka and the Fire of Life is clearly a rumination on mortality and fatherhood, a point Rushdie freely admitted. As an aging father of a teenage son, the desire to leave a personal legacy influenced the timing of this book, which Rushdie said was vetted by his son before he turned it over to the publisher.

After the reading, Mehta returned to the stage to facilitate a conversation that ran the gamut of nonlinear literature, so-called cultureless Americans, the inevitability of the novel's survival, and Rushdie's addiction to Angry Birds. Rushdie's natural charisma outshone his interviewer, but he was gracious enough to dim the light from time to time. The evening came to a close with a more serious consideration of present day tyrannical regimes and Rushdie's having the "misfortune of acquiring an interesting life."

He told Mehta, "[Writers] look aghast at the world as it is...When times are bad, it's great for writers [because] the worse it is, the better it is [for us]." To which Mehta fondly responded, in an effort at comical flattery, "Then let's hope it gets worse."

Written by: Mandy Van Deven, February 5th 2011

Growing Roots: The New Generation of Sustainable Farmers, Cooks, and Food Activists

barbara — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Katherine Leiner

Sunrise Lane Productions

Seared Scallop Salad with Honey Vinaigrette and Moqui (Spicy) Mac (n’Cheese), yum. This was simply the one of the selections of delicious recipes in Growing Roots that I attempted with the assistance of my boyfriend/sous-chef. But Growing Roots is much more than a cookbook. Chronicling one woman’s cross-country road trip and profiling folks on the ground at every level, from composting queens to herbalists to family farmers to social entrepreneurs-restaurateurs, Growing Roots is a unique window into the breadth of labor and love that is going into the ever-growing movement of food sustainability.

Each interview flows into the next by region, not issue area, but it works because you get the sense you are tagging along on this road trip with Leiner and her dog, Luna. Leiner gives a little exposition on how she met the people she interviews and where she spoke with them along the way in her travels; interestingly though, she predominantly uses their own words. Interviews focus on the daily lives and progress of their work on sustainability. Most of the profiles are complemented by each individual’s favorite recipes; most include ideas for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert, and all of them look incredible. The two I made on Sunday, mentioned above, were scrumptious and strangely complemented one another, even though they came from different folks.

From the scope of the interviews, Katherine Leiner appears to have a real insider’s connections throughout the industry. She notes lots of personal relationships, and though she tries to sound down-to-earth her Manhattan foodie fabulousness bubbles up again and again. It appears that she sees the book as a platform to highlight the little people of the sustainability world. Perhaps she sees it as doing her part, or perhaps she has compiled this as a pet project simply because she can.

Ironically, everyone highlighted in the book describes sacrifices they’ve made in order to do this work. Day jobs that they love and feel are so important leave them with limited means or other losses. Juxtaposed with Leiner, it seems at times she is almost using them. But to be fair, I come from very much the same school of privileged environmentalism that Leiner does, and the opportunity to credit these hard work activists is incredible—very few people could pull it off.

More than anything, the consistent pattern of each interview would seem to get old quite fast, but it doesn’t at all. Each person’s story is compelling and inspiring and makes you want to read more and more. It even began to create grand delusions in my own city girl mind about the beauties of farming and that even I could be capable of it. Now, that’s a hell of a book.

Written by: Nicole Levitz, November 25th 2010

Literary Readings: Jonathan Franzen and Lorrie Moore (11/13/2010)

mandy — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 08:00:00 +0000

92nd Street Y

New York, New York

In the deeply downtrodden, recession smashed state that the publishing industry is in, and in a culture in which few people seem to have the attention span to read an entire novel (much less one nearly 600 pages long), it seemed unlikely that America would ever crown yet another Great American Novelist. However, Jonathan Franzen has been given such a title by many media outlets, some of which showed a photo of President Obama carrying Franzen's latest work, Freedom. Franzen’s readings across the country have lead to lines around the block, giving life to a dying industry. But all of the fawning and attention directed at Franzen has lead some writers, like Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Weiner, to wonder if writing by men is automatically taken more seriously than writing by women, who are often written off as "chick lit" or left to play second fiddle.

This question seemed to be in the air at the opening of the 92nd Street Y’s talk with Lorrie Moore and Jonathan Franzen. Despite being a well known and prolific writer, Moore was the first to read, and functioned much like the opening act at a concert, warming up the crowd for the headliner. She even made a joke out of the situation, choosing to begin by reciting the lines: “Opening acts,/opening acts/I’m not a girl complaining,/I’m just facing facts.” Moore then launched into singing part of the song “We Shall Overcome,” poking fun at her underdog status.

While the majority of the attendees seemed to be there for Franzen, Moore managed to solicit more laughs in the end with her warm, laid back nature as she read from her novel A Gate at the Stairs. Franzen’s reading of his recent, critically lauded Freedom was, by comparison, a bit hurried and self-conscious. He did not stop to pause over the language and coy jokes the way Moore did as she languidly hovered over the lines in her story that drew the most laughter. This caused her work to come across as more humorous than Frazen’s, though they both implanted plenty of wry observation into their respective works.

Both authors chose to read passages that depicted women naively giving all of themselves to men who do not love them quite as much as they assume, with Moore’s being from the woman’s point of view and Franzen from the man’s. The similarity of their two plots made it seem as though they were reading two sides of the same story.

Following the reading, a moderator took questions from the audience. One audience member questioned whether there was a connection between being from the Midwest and writing humorously. Moore responded that perhaps it is the result of the terrible weather in the Midwest, and that they have to find ways to amuse themselves. Franzed added that “those who can leave the Midwest must have mastered one coping skill, such as flight,” and Moore noted that perhaps humor is another of those coping skills.

During the course of the evening, Moore’s warmth and Franzen’s self-consciousness showed that, unlike stars of other artistic mediums, those of the literary realm are much more grounded, even when endless lines of fans wait in rapt anticipation for them to autograph their newly purchased books.

Written by: Adrienne Urbanski, November 25th 2010

Nirvana of Pussy: A Conversation with Tucker Max

brittany — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Interview with Tucker Max

All I wanted to know was if Tucker Max was for real. Ladies and gentlemen, let me tell you, he is. Explaining that if he has learned anything over the past five years, it is that people are fucking stupid, clearly the infamous Tucker Max was extraordinarily candid when we talked about his new book Assholes Finish First. His candor was particularly astounding, as he knew I was a writer for Elevate Difference, a site with a mission to advance political and social justice, while Max is embodiment of all things politically incorrect. He is particularly known throughout the feminist community for his drunken antics with women, which I personally believe have been consistently misconstrued, and this was my chance to find out if I was right.

Perhaps it was the simple fact that I was dared to read Max’s first book I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell that so quickly brought me into his fold, or the fact that reading it made me feel like a subversive sex-positive feminist. More than anything, it was my curiosity about the man behind the controversial books that made this book reviewer seek out the infamous sex writer.

Speaking on the phone, before I even got through my introduction, Max jumped in to explain that his work is not a commentary on male sexuality, but simply writing about his real life. He is a man with some seemingly outrageous stories to tell and us aspiring sexologists should make no further assumptions. Fair enough.

Max believes that we are a society still “too prudish and buttoned-up” to teach sex education properly. He quickly conceded that the next generation of sex ed will largely center on porn and work like his own, and even Tucker Max finds this “shameful.” The fact that anyone is learning about sex from his books and not from school or their parents is truly shocking. Thankfully (or not), virgins across America are turning to Tucker Max for their intellectual and physical sexual education. The fact that thirty-year-olds with no sexual experience and barely-eighteen-year-olds all reach out to him as a sexual celebrity and a familiar person to take their virginity—literally—is surprising, even to Tucker.

Assholes Finish First is Max’s follow-up to the best-selling I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, and it takes so-called “fratire” to a new level. Dividing the book into his pre- and post-fame lives—a decision that emerged as he was writing and friends (the familiar Nils and Bunny to fans) noted a clearly different tenor between these stories—gives a new richness to his work. Because these are tales from only one man, the juxtaposition honestly showcases how fame can change one’s life, especially when compared with examples of other celebrity works.

The book’s bonus section contains stories from the women Max has slept with, written from their own perspectives. He knew this would appeal to his female audience—about half his readership. It also gives a different level of credence to his body of work, because as readers we finally get to hear someone else’s side of his stories—something I wondered a lot about and am sure others have as well. Oddly enough, the accounts from both sides line up more often than not.

What is most striking to me in his post-fame stories is Max’s cognizance about the state of his own life. Most people don’t spend their days writing about themselves; they don’t have that kind of time for self-reflection. Max takes this opportunity and really looks at himself as an outsider. He is in the midst of the common transition from playboy to family man but often documents it as an outside observer. Perhaps most interesting, it is not his own words that encapsulate his feelings about the state of his life but those of his friend (which he does include in the book).

We talked about this quite a bit on the phone. Fame has brought him to this so-called “nirvana of pussy.” The ladies come to him, and they come in droves. What he emphasized was how his life is in transition, from living out his teenage dreams of endless sexual conquests to his adult aspirations for a relationship. He stated outright that, “I don’t know how to live a committed, monogamous relationship, but I want to. Living the life every nineteen-year-old guy wants,” he told me he is now “moving out of it...not fully in either phase.”

More striking was the confession that this “nirvana of pussy” was the “complete opposite” of what he expected. Max’s lesson is an obvious but universal one, even in a book about gratuitous sex: Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it. He qualified this, saying that it would be “totally disingenuous” to whine about it now. This is what he wanted. The fact that the lived reality was not the same as the dream is a fact of life that needs to be swallowed hard.

After I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell sold over 1.5 million copies, he had unique creative freedom with editors and publishers on the second book, Assholes Finish First. This was why he felt he could include abortion so explicitly, even using the phrase “baby killer.” Though he did not appreciate my take that his story about unintended pregnancy is a PSA for condom use, he did agree he was more actively spelling out advice in his vignette than he usually does. “[I’m] so tired of idiots taking the wrong thing out of what I write,” he said. Lots of sex does not mean lots of unsafe sex. It just means lots of sex.

A big secret: He can quote Betty Freidan. Under her definition, Max is a self-declared feminist. So why the incessant anger from the feminist community? He believes he is often labeled a misogynist because he doesn’t worship all things female. He also thinks “extremeophiles,” those who see all porn as rape, had a large role in much of this labeling. Max estimates that twenty-five percent of his readership is comprised of self-identified feminists, with women as half of his overall readership.

To him, the reality is that that he “makes fun of people,” at-large. Not women, not men, just people that he thinks suck. “Sometimes a woman can be a bitch or a guy can be a shithead, [and they] need [to be called out],” he told me. According to Max, calling someone a slut has nothing to do with his or her sexual experience. It is the power of the label itself. When he’s using such a label, he doesn’t know the reality of that individual’s life. He’s doing it just to get a rise out of someone, because he can.

His most vehement reaction to my series of questions on feminism was around what I see as a common thread in his books, the Madonna-whore dichotomy. Max sees the entire dichotomy as “bullshit” and says it just doesn’t apply to his work.

As our conversation wound down, we talked about his wide readership. Ranging from sixteen-year-olds, who view him as a demigod, to fifty-year-olds reliving their glory days, what makes Tucker Max so appealing? In his eyes, he is simply “objectively funny [and] painfully, authentically raw,” something we don’t see much in media, if at all. He “exists outside the machine.” It shows.

The book launch I attended was at a West Village dive bar, up the stairs in the back, and totally public. Max has no sanctioned book reviews on the jacket of a follow-up to a New York Times bestseller. His Cinderella tale of success—of having his manuscript rejected by every publisher, to building an audience through his blog, and gaining the leverage to write the exact book he wanted—was one of the first, though in the blog-to-book world, has become commonplace. Central to his wide readership, he claims, is his balance between self-indulgence and corporate appeal. He is attempting to create the best art that he can while resonating with his wide audience. Yes, Assholes Finish First is art.

Written by: Nicole Levitz, November 16th 2010

We Are an Image from the Future: The Greek Revolt of December 2008

admin — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 22:00:00 +0000

Edited by A.G. Schwarz, Tasos Sagris, Void Network

AK Press

Consider what it might feel like if July 4th in the United States were celebrated not with fireworks and barbecue but with demonstrations and occupations to achieve a further social revolution. That's what November 17th is in Greece since a student revolt on that date in 1973 triggered the end of the dictatorship. In fact, because of the role of the students in achieving this, a law was passed by the socialist government in 1981 to establish academic asylum. Although the law has since been weakened, police are restricted from entering university campuses.

I learned these facts from reading We Are an Image from the Future: The Greek Revolt of December 2008, a collage of interviews, oral history, chronologies, personal essays, manifestos, and political essays, edited by A.G. Schwarz, Tasos Sagris, and Void Network. The format is similar to that used in the INCITE! collective's The Revolution Will Not Be Funded, which tells its story in a range of contradictory voices. In both books, the format results in repetition and a difficult-to-track sequence of events, but allows DIY interpretation and wide range of views, some of them way, way beyond the political discourse permitted in the United States, even in so-called progressive media.

Here is as good a point as any to complain about how the physical book under review—a wide ten inches on a six-inch spine—was difficult to read in bed. Perhaps this is in keeping with the direct action message of We Are an Image from the Future: get up and out and do something.

For those undeterred by these difficulties, there are rewards. The editors argue that their book is not a history, but is as close to a true account as can be achieved for the unexpected and multifaceted events sparked by the police murder of fifteen-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos on December 6, 2008 in the Exarchia section of Athens—a neighborhood known for countercultural and anarchist activity. A witness entertaining a guest in his apartment above the square (who calls the Athenian equivalent of 9/11), activists who admit to being frightened by the violence of the ensuing riots, radicals who experience the realization that a revolutionary moment can occur in unpredictable ways that don't match a theoretical scheme, and a veteran of the overthrow of the dictatorship who chastises contemporary revolutionaries for smashing shops all have their say.

We're definitely not in Kansas anymore—or even in New York. Greece, which experienced occupation during World War II but actually liberated itself and endured a civil war in living memory, has some far-from-tame political confrontations. In the United States, we are more likely to criticize Washington and Jefferson as hypocritical slaveholders than recapitulate their revolution with a little political rumble of our own.

We Are an Image from the Future provides an honest and unforeclosed discussion of political violence. There is room for differentiation among property destruction, self-defense, expropriation, and deliberate attacks on the authority of the state, without distinctions being lost in the mire of the ever-expanding catch-all of "domestic terrorism." After all, Washington and his comrades were insurrectionists to the British.

Written by: Frances Chapman, August 8th 2010

Maria's Story: Twenty Years Later

admin — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 00:53:00 +0000

Interview with Monona Wali, Pamela Cohen

Earlier this month, I saw a twentieth anniversary screening of Maria's Story: A Documentary Portrait Of Love And Survival In El Salvador's Civil War at The Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts in San Francisco. Before attending, I had an abbreviated understanding El Salvadorian politics, and the subject of the documentary, Maria Serrano. Filmed in 1989 by two young American women, Maria's Story reveals the daily struggles and heartbreaking memories that lay in the wake of the political unrest that ravaged her town in El Salvador. The film chronicled a two-month journey for all involved. Ultimately, the film unfolds into a narrative about Maria’s role as a leader of a Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) guerrilla camp, which was about being a mother, wife, and a community member. I recently spoke with the directors of the film, longtime friends Pamela Cohen and Monona Wali.

Were there moments during the filming of Maria's Story in which you felt that there were advantages to your position as women directors?

Pamela Cohen: I don’t know if a male director would have been drawn to Maria in the same way we were. We chose to put a female face on this war; we wanted to address the Che Guevara guerrilla image, because that’s not who was on the front lines.

Monona Wali: Because we are women, we were sensitive and committed to the human side of the story. There were times when we were drawn to the bigger side of the war, but beyond knowing the statistics, the instinct to stay close to Maria and stay close to her came from being women and cementing the relationship with her, which was affectionate, playful, and serious. I don’t know that a man would have been able to get that close.

Emeteria and Maria, two members of the community, discussed losing their daughters in the war. Hearing the details of how young women were victims in violent attacks in El Salvadorian towns effected me greatly. What were those moments like for you as directors?

Monona: With Emeteria, we had gone first to be with her in ’88 and lived in a repopulated community named Guarjila that we were going to use as a base camp. We had equipment, and it turned out that there was a huge military offensive, and we were stuck in a village. Emeteria was taking care of us; she was our mother during that time. It was the day of remembering the dead. She had come to San Jose Las Flores to be a part of that and knew us. We asked her, “How do you feel about this day?”

For Maria, it started in the bathing scene, and it came up spontaneously. We just wanted to get a scene. Every time Jose showed up, we turned the camera on because we didn’t know when they were going to be together again.

Pamela: But then we asked about it, and we knew we had to sit down with her to talk about it—that was separate. She was out of the country when Ceci was killed in ’87. That may be why she wouldn’t let go of Mijita (her youngest daughter) and made her a personal radio operator for the rest of the war.

How did your awareness about some of the issues raised in the film affect your work?

Pamela: It was six or eight months before we started editing. We thought, “After what we’ve been through… how can people not care?” We just felt like everyone had to know and were determined to finish it.

Cross-posted at Gender Across Borders

Written by: Maria Guzman, July 29th 2010

Reading Is My Window: Books and the Art of Reading in Women’s Prisons

admin — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Megan Sweeney

University of North Carolina Press

“Sometimes, I think they forget the women.” One seemingly simple statement at the start of this book—spoken by the chief librarian for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction—serves to explain the importance of a text like Reading Is My Window. What began for Megan Sweeney as a dissertation on prisoners’ relationships with true crime books evolved into a years-long study of analyzing the reading patterns of the occupants of several women’s prisons across the country.

In addition to conducting 245 individual interviews with female prisoners, Sweeney also facilitated fifty-one book group discussions. The interviews and interactions with the prisoners make up at least half of the book, so by the second chapter, you’ll find yourself engaging with the prisoners and their individual stories of mental, physical, and sexual abuse, along with drug use. The stories that emerge from these interviews and discussions offer a fascinating insight into how the women manage to regain a kind of humanity through reading while residing in an institution determined to dehumanize them. Solo, Monique, and Denise are among the many who will stay with you long after the last page, and rather than pitying them, Sweeney’s nuanced descriptions of each prisoner’s personality helps you understand that they are actively making their world better through reading, even if their world will never interact with the one outside the prison walls.

Sweeney structures her study through the investigation of three specific genres: urban fiction, narratives of victimization, and self-help books. She also examines the aspect of community building through prison book clubs, and the material comfort that comes from the mere act of holding a book—something that we in the free world take for granted. While those topics make Reading Is My Window an interesting and provocative read, the excerpted interviews are what take the book out of being purely academic and ground it in the personal.

Far too often, it is easy to do just what the chief librarian from Ohio said: forget the women. Prisoners are already a population of people that we often turn away from, so when the modifier of “woman” (and often “African American”) is added to that, remembering them as people who have worth becomes even less of a priority. By telling these women’s stories and taking them out of the institution, Sweeney takes the first step in driving home the point that if we forget these women, we may as well forget ourselves.

Reading Is My Window serves as a call to action. Sweeney spares no detail in describing the shoddy state of penal library systems, pointing out that many prison administrations see books as rewards for good behavior rather than necessary tools for prisoner rehabilitation. It’s safe to say that, after reading this book, you’ll want to consult the list of organizations that provide books to prisoners Sweeney includes at the end of the book to see how you can help advance the worthy cause of prison literacy.

Written by: Alyssa Vincent, April 24th 2010

Voice of an Angel: Talking to Jill Andrews

admin — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 16:01:00 +0000

Interview with Jill Andrews

When I first spoke to singer Jill Andrews, I was quite shocked when she first answered the phone. Her voice was low, slow, and groggy, which wasn’t what I was expecting. You see, Andrews quite literally has the voice of an angel.

As it turned out, I was waking her up from a peaceful nap with her infant son, Nico. Nico was born around the time that Andrews’ critically acclaimed, Tennessee-based band, The Everybodyfields, broke up. She and her band were part of a growing wave of young musicians emerging from the south who are meshing the music of their region (country, bluegrass, and blues) with the music they grew up listening to (punk and indie rock) to create an interesting sound of their own. The Everybodyfields garnered a lot of attention early in their five-year career because of Andrews beautiful harmonizing with bandmate Sam Quinn and their constant touring with the increasingly popular Avett Brothers.

After the split, Andrews got to work creating music of her own, and recently released her first self-titled EP. No one can sing like Jill Andrews; no one can convey heartbreak and loneliness and aching pain like she can in just a single line. The EP is six songs of simple, pure, and heartfelt music, and though Andrews has a lot on her plate (a recent tour and her first child), she decided to release another six-track album recorded live at Eddie's Attic in Decatur, Georgia to benefit the International Rescue Committee and help the earthquake survivors in Haiti.

Who were your musical influences growing up?

My first tape was Diana Ross, and I wore that tape out when I was a kid. I have to say, though, that my first huge musical influence was Bette Midler. When I got to high school, I was really into folk music and started listening to things that weren’t on the radio, like The Jayhawks and Wilco. I was also really into Joni Mitchell.

A lot of what I started listening to in high school was influenced by my surroundings and where I came from. Living in the mountains of Tennessee influences the music we listened to, and the mountains were the perfect backdrop it. The music I like most now is the type of music I write and play. I like really emotional music. When I listen to songs, I want to feel something. I want to dirty dance or cry my eyes out.

When did you realize you wanted to be a musician?

I can remember always wanting to be famous, but my parents tell a different story. We always went to this donut shop together, and when I was a really little kid, my dad asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I said a donut waitress. In high school I was in youth choir, school choir, and church choir, and all of my instructors were really supportive and made sure that I knew my voice was going to be heard.

When did you meet Sam Quinn?

Around the same time I started playing guitar, I went to summer camp. Sam was a camp counselor, and he asked me to sing a song, so I put on a cheesy karaoke tape and sang to it. I’m sure he thought I was crazy. After the first week of camp, I realized I really needed a guitar because everyone who had a guitar sucked. I knew if I practiced I could be good at it. I’m sure I made a fool of myself at first, but I began writing songs immediately after getting my guitar.

What do you hope people take from your music?

I’ve always been into helping people. I was a psychology major in college, and I worked with kids who had behavioral issues, but I quit to pursue music full-time. For a long time I struggled with the decision because being a singer seemed too egocentric. Every night the spotlight was shining on me. I got all dressed up and it was kind of like, “Hey, look at me!” I’ve since made peace with it, though. Music helps the emotional state of the world. People need music, and I need to keep making music for the sake of my own well being, so it all works out in the end.

Written by: Tina Vasquez, March 22nd 2010

A Day in LA: A Conversation with Kevin McCollister

admin — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 17:01:00 +0000

Interview with Kevin McCollister

Kevin McCollister is a serious and shy man who spends his days working in a Los Angeles office and his nights walking around the city’s less stylish neighborhoods snapping photographs of churches, taco stands, mariachis, the homeless, and LA landmarks like the Fourth Street Bridge, Union Station, and Olvera Street. His photographs feature the LA that its natives know to be true, but fail to see after so many years of dodging street characters and fighting traffic on freeways just to get to their next location.

McCollister began his career as a poet, and in 2005, shortly after moving to Los Angeles, he decided to start a photography blog as a way of showing his friends the sights of his new surroundings. The mission was simple: explore the “easily misunderstood city” by foot, camera in hand, shooting the images that are counterintuitive to what people usually associate with the City of Angels. (Don’t believe that old Missing Persons song: people do walk in LA, and they’re not just photographers either.)

Nearly a year ago, McCollister’s beautiful, gritty images caught the attention of If Pub's founder Brooks Roddan, whose publishing company specializes in limited edition art and poetry books. After Roddan saw McCollister’s photographs, they decided to publish a collection of fifty-five photographs that would become East of West LA.

Tell me about your background. Where have you lived?

I grew up outside of Cleveland, Ohio. I think that's what gave me a taste for grime over glitz. Then for several years I was based in the French Quarter of New Orleans, and that was pretty wild. I was working and living on boats that went up and down the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers—pretty much a total retreat from modern life. I saw lots of small, mid-American towns and, of course, the rivers themselves were fascinating. After that I lived in a place that was the exact opposite of New Orleans: Cambridge, MA right in Harvard Square. I felt at home there, more than in LA actually, but the weather was horrible.

How did you transition from being a poet to a photographer?

I went to school at Ohio University and Harvard Extension, but I'm not a graduate of anywhere, and I never studied photography in school. Whatever it was that sparked my interest wasn’t conscious, but it certainly was natural. I began to see that you can convey a lot of emotion within a photograph, and that photography doesn't come with all the alienating artsy-ness of poetry. Plus, it got me out of the house. Walking can be very meditative, at least for me.

Who are your influences?

It all begins with Walt Whitman; He's very city-centric and acknowledges the whole spectrum of being alive. He and William Carlos Williams deal in very concrete images, and there's very little that's grandiose about either of them. Whitman can get carried away with himself, but it’s clear the claims he makes for himself are true for everyone. Frank O'Hara and James Schuyler are two other poets that have been a big influence.

If you settled in any other city, do you think you would have felt compelled to photograph it the way you’re photographing Los Angeles?

I honestly don't know. I'd certainly try. The idea of living in a smaller, less mixed-up city than LA gives me the creeps. Here, there's certainly a place for whatever mood you're in. I can go to Abbot Kinney where I'm just another blip or to Breed Street in Boyle Heights where, until the crackdown, they had all the outdoor food stalls. I don't speak Spanish at all, so it’s pleasantly disorienting.

What do you find yourself drawn to photographing?

Well photography is a compulsion; I admit to that. Every so often, I go to Inglesia Nuestra Senora Reina de Los Angeles, the Catholic mission next to Olvera Street. It attracts some extremely devout people. Outside the church there are street people who have absolutely nothing. It seems the church has a pretty tolerant policy about them. I also check in on some vendors and street people as I make the rounds. Some I see often, some seem to disappear.

**Who are your favorite photographers? **

I really respect Mexican photographers, specifically Manuel Alvarez Bravo and Tina Modotti. They're very elemental, uncluttered, and direct. I also like Helen Levitt and Lisette Model. Generally speaking, I'm much more in the Wegee world than the Ansel Adams one. My favorite photograph is "Main Street, Saratoga Springs" by Walker Evans.

What inspires you?

Knowing that someday all of this, especially me, won't be here anymore and that for all the jokes about being a city of wanna-be TV stars and models, there are a ton of people in this town who are doing great things.

Written by: Tina Vasquez, March 6th 2010

Ariel Gore on Women, Happiness, and Self-Determination

admin — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 08:59:00 +0000

Interview with Ariel Gore

Ariel Gore’s new book Bluebird: Women and the New Psychology of Happiness asks the question, “Can women be smart, empowered, and happy?” Here, Ariel Gore offers her ideas on happiness and advice for women seeking change in their lives.

In order to write this book, you kept a journal where you tracked the things in your life that made you happy, and you asked a lot of other women to do the same. How did these women respond to the request?

At first people were excited about it. Then a lot of them found some resistance to it. Women have a lot of resistance to focusing on their own happiness. We’ve been taught to make other people happy, after all. Most of the women started dealing with feelings of happiness being selfish, and wondering if the journal was hokey. But they had made a commitment to the project and soldiered on. Without fail, they broke through some of those resistances and found that the simple act of meditating on their own happiness allowed it to bloom a little bit. Allowing ourselves to say, “Hey, am I happy?” is powerful and emancipating, even if the process is a bit hokey.

What changes came from keeping the journal?

Some of the women who took part in the original project changed careers. Some increased the amount of time they were spending on whatever activities made them lose track of time: developing pictures in the dark room or surfing or having more sex. One woman made a huge change in her family structure. Other women didn’t make any outward life-changes, but those thirty days exploring happiness and seeing whether we can trace patterns from the scraps of our moods is a practice that’s designed to change us, even if those changes are subtle.

The pursuit of happiness is put forth as the ultimate purpose in life; however, there is also a belief that happy people are, well, sort of dumb. Why does this contradiction exists?

In American culture there has been a massive campaign to sell us all on cheerfulness. It has been an important part of capitalism and has been part of the oppression of women. Women have been endlessly told by others what we need in order to be happy. Maybe they say we need a husband or children or a fantastic career or a spotless kitchen or multiple orgasms. In any case, we are being told what is good for us. Of course we rebel against false cheerfulness and being told what to do when it's wrapped in the nonsense of it being “for our own good.” False happiness and denial-based cheeriness does feel dumb. We have the right to be grumpy! But that’s only fun for a while.

You mention some problems with the concept “you create your own reality,” but ultimately, suggest that is exactly what women must do to achieve happiness. How do you reconcile the contradiction?

Well, we don’t create reality. Women and poor people don’t create reality right now, but we have the freedom in every circumstance to decide how we’re going to react to our reality. As our personal power grows, we learn to influence reality so that we—and everyone—can be free, and happy.

Psychologist Martin Seligman is considered the father of contemporary positive psychology. He made a name for himself back in the late 1960s with a series of experiments on dogs that resulted in the theory of learned helplessness. These dogs were stuck in “shock boxes” and Seligman and his colleagues figured out that if the dogs were shocked at random, and given no control over their torture, they usually didn’t make a run for freedom when given the opportunity. Later, Seligman got to thinking about those rare dogs who, despite abuse and lack of control, kept resisting. There was a rare dog who was so resilient, so totally determined, that she couldn’t be broken. Positive psychology set out to find out, essentially, what that dog had.

If happiness is, in part, a choice based on freedom, what would you tell women who are enmeshed in situations they are powerless to change that cause them great unhappiness?

I think our choices are always limited to some extent. Canadian positive psychologist Dr. Paul T.P. Wong defines happiness as the ability to rejoice in the midst of suffering. Alice Walker has pointed out that resistance is the secret of joy. We make choices first to survive, to protect children and elders, and then to resist false power gained from fear and obedience. No matter what or how long it takes, we get them to open the shock box—or we get it open ourselves—and then we jump.

It is widely**** believed that something that makes you happy or fulfilled will make others happy as well. Why do we fall into this trap?

Because it has been relentlessly marketed to us! If you look at the history of advertising, you find this shift in the early part of the twentieth century—from warning ads that say you will have bad breath if you don’t use this mouthwash to the “product satisfaction ad” where advertisers try to convince us that their product will make us happy by making us more beautiful, more relaxed, richer, or whatever. Tolstoy famously said, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” But when I looked at women and happiness, I found the opposite to be true. While depression was fairly standardized, the things that made women happy in their lives were actually quite varied and unique.

As you studied happiness, you realized you wanted another baby and you wanted to make more money, so you made it happen. Did it make you happier?

Stepping out of the role of the martyr-mom by saying, "I want to do all of this, but I need reasonable funding," and then upping my rates for much of the work I do made me happy. Money by itself doesn’t affect my mood one way or the other, but the constant anxiety of not being able to pay the rent was really doing a number on me. I was raised by a Catholic priest who had taken a vow of poverty and in a counterculture community that taught me money was somehow bad, so it took a lot for me to be able to say, "All right, maybe this is the next level of empowerment. Maybe I need to be able to keep a roof over my head and have health insurance for my kids, and the thing is, I can do that without hurting my community."

What one thing do you suggest women do in order to find contentment?

Recording moments of happiness every day can be really powerful, even if—maybe especially if—really hard things are happening in your life. Keeping a happiness journal is about moving through the resistances, savoring moments of happiness even in the most difficult times, and prioritizing your own happiness. It’s not like our refusal to be happy makes us more loving and compassionate; it just makes us mean. Existential depression might seem cool and smart—like we’ve figured out what’s really going on—but in the long term, I don’t think it serves us.

Now that you aren’t experimenting with ways to bring yourself happiness, has your life returned to the status quo?

I have learned how to recognize when something is causing me anxiety, and I can switch gears pretty fast. I recently lost my maternal grandmother and my mother was diagnosed with stage-four cancer. In the span of one season, I went from feeling secure as a granddaughter and a daughter to facing the possibility of being the eldest generation in my family. I’ve had to take a deep breath and come to terms with not being a kid anymore. I cannot afford to waste the finite amount of time I have on this earth listening to anybody’s bullshit, and I can't afford to lock myself in the basement in existential depression.

Written by: Jessica Powers, January 19th 2010

Resistance Through Writing: An Interview with Victoria Law

admin — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 08:56:00 +0000

Interview with Victoria Law

Feminist Review recently interviewed writer and activist Victoria Law on her book Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women. Here Law shares her thoughts on making her book an activist tool, the culture’s blind spot about the prison industry, social justice movements’ responsibility to incarcerated women’s issues, and how motherhood radically altered her own work and informed her upcoming anthology, Don’t Leave Your Friends Behind.

Who did you write Resistance Behind Bars for?

I originally wrote the book, or the college paper that was the start of it, with no audience in mind. I had spent a semester researching post-Attica prisoner organizing and resistance in college. At the end of the semester, I looked back at what I had and realized that every instance, except for one, was about male prisoners. So the first paper was written to explore what women were doing and why their actions weren’t as well-documented, or remembered, as their male counterparts.

When I first had the idea to turn my paper into a book, I had a few audiences in mind: people who were already interested in prison and prisoner issues; those interested in women’s issues; people who aren’t particularly interested in prisons or prisoners’ issues, but are interested in tales of resistance, and incarcerated women themselves. In corresponding with over a dozen women incarcerated around the country, I also wanted to make sure that the book was accessible to them. None of the women I’d reached out to had any idea of organizing being done in other prisons or of the previous organizing, resistance, and riots that had happened in women’s prisons in the 1970s and 1980s. I kept in mind that I wanted my book—and the information in it—to be accessible to someone with an eighth-grade education. The book doesn’t work as a potential organizing tool if those most affected by these issues aren’t able to read and comprehend it.

What’s the response to Resistance Behind Bars been like—and how has it affected you personally and your work as an activist?

I think that because Resistance Behind Bars is a book specifically about incarcerated women—and even more specifically about their acts of resistance—it’s attracted attention and interest from people who normally think of prison issues as male issues and are excited and intrigued by incarcerated women’s resistance. Such an enthusiastic response means that I’ve been kept busy planning and doing events, not only the typical bookstore readings, but also workshops at various social justice conferences and at schools.

My daughter, who was a newborn when I first started researching incarcerated women’s resistance, is now eight years old and knows a lot about prisons, prison and gender, and abolition, probably more than most other eight-year-olds (except, perhaps, for any children whose parents are Critical Resistance organizers). She’s asked me very pointed questions about both realities inside prisons and ideas about abolition, which means that I had to clearly articulate my arguments, thoughts, and ideas.

What was the writing process like for this book?

When I first started researching, I did two things: I set aside all preconceived notions of what prisoner organizing might look like and started reading specifically about women in prison. I found a lot of material covered issues like motherhood and pregnancy. Issues of parenting—and, of course, pregnancy—do not come up in documentation about male prisoner organizing, and so people who are looking at instances of prisoner resistance aren’t going to necessarily look at how they organize around and challenge the realities of parents in prison. Battering and past abuse is another issue that comes up in a lot of the studies around incarcerated women, but again, that’s not an issue that we see impacting men going to prison and thus isn’t looked at as a “prison issue.”

I also scoured the news—and alternative media, mostly prison-related zines—for mentions of actions by incarcerated women. Once I found that someone had done something—filed a lawsuit, complained to the press, launched a hunger strike, etc.—I used the websites of either that state prison system or the Federal Bureau of Prisons to find the woman’s contact information and sent her a letter explaining who I was and what I was researching. I asked if she would be willing to share her stories and experiences with me.

Not wanting to take without giving back, I offered what I could: I offered to look up lawsuits for them and send them copies of court decisions; I offered to look up other resources for them; I offered to send them books via the Books Through Bars program that I helped start here in NYC; I sent stamps so that they could not only respond to me, but also write letters to other groups or people; in some cases, I offered to call their children if they were unable to get through themselves.

What were some of the most surprising realities about women in prison that you discovered in researching your book?

I remember receiving a letter from the Clear Creek County Jail in Colorado about the re-institution of the chain gang for the women held there. That wasn’t the huge surprise; the surprise was that the woman who wrote me was actually happy to be on the chain gang! She had recently given her newborn son up for adoption, and so I can’t help but wonder if keeping occupied, even if it’s on a chain gang, helps her process losing him. She’s not the only one: women at Clear Creek want to be on the chain gang. It’s tiring, backbreaking work in the hot sun, but it’s also the first chance they’ve been given to get out of their cells, be outdoors, and accrue “good time,” or time off their sentences. Keep in mind that the jail’s male inmates have had the chain gang for a while. They also have other chances to earn “good time.”

What are the most common misconceptions and assumptions circulating right now about women in prison that keep people from understanding what’s really going on inside prisons for women?

In May, I was invited to speak at a New York City high school about women and prison. Having done so many of these talks to people who are interested in prison issues and have some framework about the issue, I forget what the majority of people think or don’t know. I came in ready to talk about historical contexts and what is going on now and started with the question: “What do you think about when you think about prison? Who goes to prison and why?”

One girl raised her hand and said, “Criminals. People who do bad things.”

“Drug dealers.”

“Men.”

I realized that most of the students had no framework about incarceration other than what they had been fed by the mass media, so I had to mentally throw out my outline and start from scratch. I talked about poverty and racial profiling, the history of the prison as a means of social control, how Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon equated the civil rights movements and liberation movements with street crime and started their war(s) on crime to lock up poor people of color before they could mobilize to demand their rights. None of the students had ever heard of the Rockefeller Drug Laws or mandatory minimum sentencing. I hadn’t either when I was their age, and I grew up in New York City too!

I also talked about some of the conditions inside—the lack of health care treatment, the fact that staff members often encouraged prisoner-on-prisoner violence, because it’s easier for them if the prisoners aren’t uniting and fighting for basic human rights, lack of educational programs inside the prison. At the end of the hour, when we talked about what they, as high school students, could do about this issue, one boy raised his hand and suggested that we should lobby for medical treatment for people inside prison. “If I broke my leg in prison—or anywhere—I would want people to help me get it treated.”

Later one of the coordinators of that high school’s community day told me, “Students in your session were really struck by the experiences you shared with them, and there has been a lot of conversation in among students about issues concerning prison.” Some of the students were talking about forming a student club to do work around some of these issues, like the Rockefeller Drug Laws.

You write in the book that calls for reform have failed to adequately address the factors leading to women’s incarceration. How so?

Prisons fail to address the societal conditions that lead to incarceration, such as poverty and the increasing feminization of poverty, misogyny, violence, racism, and the issues that accompany women to prison. How does locking someone in a cage address any of these factors?

You have to remember that people have gone to prison face numerous obstacles in successfully reintegrating into the community when they are released from prison. Oftentimes, they are not only released with the same lack of resources and opportunities than they had before being arrested and incarcerated, but now have a criminal record which prevents them from getting certain jobs, qualifying for certain housing, or social safety nets. The 1996 welfare “reform” banned people with drug felonies for life. Similar legislation banned them from receiving governmental financial aid for college, etc.

We also need to keep in mind that prison issues affect all sorts of issues on the outside, shifting money and resources away from other public entities, such as education, housing, health care, drug treatment, and other societal supports that are needed.

Did motherhood change your own activism?

Before motherhood, I was super-involved in all sorts of political projects and organizing. New motherhood definitely made me sit still! Once my daughter was born, I realized that I had to pick a few issues and focus on them. I also couldn’t risk arrest or bringing my daughter to something where the police might attack the crowd.

I started researching resistance and organizing among incarcerated women shortly after my daughter was born. Being stuck inside during the winter with a newborn gave me a lot of time to read, respond to letters, contemplate ideas and issues—this, by the way, is something I did a lot while nursing—and work on draft after draft of this paper. I don’t know if I would have had this same opportunity if I had tried to do this as a childfree person rushing off from one political [event] to another at various hours of the day and night, or if my daughter had been older, more mobile, and needing more direct attention.

I want to stress that what’s made my continued involvement and even writing my book possible is the huge amount of support I get from my friends and the people with whom I organize. I realize that not all mothers get this type of support, although they should, and that I’m extremely fortunate to have such a wonderful support system.

What are you working on now?

My next book, Don’t Leave Your Friends Behind, will be an anthology co-edited with China Martens, a mother, writer, and publisher of the longest running subculture parenting zine, T_he Future Generation_. Originally, China and I wanted to share our experiences as radical mothers and advocate for community support of all families. We were meeting parents and their allies and hearing their stories and experiences. A few years ago, we realized that we wanted to extend the reach of our message of community support and decided to compile a handbook specifically geared towards allies, or potential allies, of radical parents.

With Don’t Leave Your Friends Behind, we’re addressing the need to support—and build support systems for—families in our own social justice movements. In so many of our so-called radical movements, we’re not providing support for people who decide to have children so that they can continue participating in political work. There’s an individualistic attitude that says, “Well, I didn’t choose to have kids. You did, so you deal with them.”

Even when there’s not an overt resistance to having children in our movements, we need to look at how ways that we organize and socialize exclude parents and caretakers. We lose valuable organizers—and organizing experience—when we don’t take these factors into consideration.

Unlike Resistance Behind Bars, this book will be an anthology of both caregivers and their allies of ways that their movements support children and their caretakers in your collectives, organizations, or communities. We are especially seeking experiences that take into account factors such as race, class, gender, single parenthood, and/or mental health issues, since these issues often aren’t talked about when we talk about building communities and support systems here on the outside. We’re still reaching out, meeting people and collecting submissions, so if anyone out there has stories and experiences to share, they should definitely get in touch!

Written by: Ellen Papazian, November 9th 2009

Questioning the Veil: Open Letters to Muslim Women

admin — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 08:53:00 +0000

By Marnia Lazreg

Princeton University Press

We are not [wo] men for whom it is a question of either-or. For us, the problem is not to make a utopian and sterile attempt to repeat the past, but go beyond it. _ — Aime Cesaire, _Discourse on Colonialism

These are the words that begin the autobiographical journey Questioning the Veil, where Marnia Lazreg, an Algerian-American professor of sociology at the City University of New York, touches on one of the most sensitive strings of Islam, the hijab.

Is veiling mandatory for all Muslim women or is it a cultural, political, or a social practice? Lazreg presents her research in the form of a collection of letters, where each letter analyzes interviews with several Muslim women combined with Lazreg’s personal experiences growing up in a Muslim family. From modesty and sexual harassment to cultural identity, Lazreg distills the very many explanations used in adorning the veil to deconstruct its religious substantiation.

Lazreg further analyzes modesty and its association with the veiling practice. She poses questions: if modesty is a prime explanation given for wearing the veil, would a woman who does not wear a veil, but dresses conservatively be considered immodest? Similarly, what if a woman wears the veil, but is immodest in her mannerisms. As more and more prepubescent girls are being made to wear the veil based on the notion of modesty, Lazreg points out some of the mind-boggling questions that had disturbed her back in the days when she was coerced to adorn the veil upon reaching puberty.

As a child, Lazreg often questioned the partial adoption of the veil amongst the global Muslim women. As she grew older and sexual harassment was revealed to be another factor leading to the hijab, she often questioned the men who continued to harass women wrapped up in hijabs.

From the ‘reveiling’ trend in the West to the imposition of veiling laws in Islamic countries, Lazreg reveals how coercion more often than choice or faith ultimately results in veiling. Yet, using the veil to strike against anti-Muslim prejudice in the West or rejuvenate the Muslim civilization is not a means to women’s liberation. Ultimately, Lazreg’s research depicts how the practice of veiling is constructed out of reasons external to what a Muslim woman really wants to do. Until states mandate veiling by law, as in the Islamic Republic of Iran, or prohibit veiling by law, as in France, Muslim women will never realize the meaning of autonomy and choice. Their human rights will remain marginalized.

Wearing the veil is not the triumph of Islam over its detractors. At the present historical conjuncture, it degrades Islam to the level of a creed and impoverishes its humanistic import. This is time for women to free themselves of it and by the same token free men, too.

Cross-posted with Gender Across Borders

Written by: Maria Khan, October 17th 2009

The Coat Hanger Project

admin — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 08:52:00 +0000

Directed by Angie Young

Comprised of an impressive array of interviews, statistics, and visual demonstrations, The Coat Hanger Project is an informative documentary about the symbolism—and reality—of the coat hanger and its relationship to abortion. Circling back again and again to the coat hanger, the film weaves personal and political histories of abortion and reproductive justice in the United States and around the world.

The film’s strength is in the interviews, which range from SisterSong’s Loretta Ross and SPARK’s Paris Hatcher to pre-Roe v. Wade abortion providers, clinic escorts, lawyers, activists, hotline volunteers, members of Feminist Outlawz, and advocacy organization leaders. Director Angie Young also interviewed a number of women from divergent backgrounds who either personally had illegal abortions or knew loved ones who did—and not all survived.

Throughout the film’s many stories are sobering statistics: 60,000 - 80,000 women around the world die each year from illegal abortion complications, and upwards of five million suffer from temporary or permanent injury. Yet, fewer than one percent of legal abortions performed in the United States result in a major complication. Perhaps most enlightening, some of Young’s interviewees grew up outside of the U.S. and have location-specific stories that shed further light on abortion as a global issue.

The history of underground feminist abortion networks like JANE are also detailed with clarity and sensitivity. These stories are juxtaposed with modern legal cases outlawing or placing restrictions on abortion. South Dakota, which only had one abortion provider as of 2006, is an excellent case study in how government interference still limits women’s options post-Roe. Protest footage from both sides is added to support the activist angle, though like the rest of the film, the clips show a much more favorable example set by the pro-choice protesters.

One anonymous interview with a former female soldier is particularly poignant. Military hospitals do not offer abortion services to women serving in the U.S. military, nor do female soldiers have many options if stationed in countries without abortion services. After inducing her own abortion at home, the female soldier needed care from a military hospital. Sadly, it’s no surprise that her care and treatment was less than sympathetic.

From a technical perspective, the film sometimes leaves a bit to be desired. The interviews were apparently not always linear, which has lead to awkward fading between clips in an attempt to make cohesive sense of subjects’ stories. Some of this may have been unavoidable, but it’s unfortunate that Young was not able to better prepare her interview subjects or re-shoot key interviews. My DVD was also badly compressed, leading to a lot of pixilation. This issue could have easily been solved in post-production and can still be corrected for future copies of the film.

Maybe most interesting, the film highlights unusual—if anecdotal—discrepancies, such as the fact that in some states, feral cat rescue programs receive more funding than abortion services. Not to pit humans and animals against one another—especially since I’ve long been involved in animal advocacy—I found this to be one of the more illuminating examples of how lacking abortion services are across the United States.

Inspiring and rich with important history and contemporary facts and analysis, The Coat Hanger Project is informative whether you’re already familiar with trigger laws or always assumed those “no coat hangers” buttons were worn by anti-sweatshop activists.

Written by: Brittany Shoot, September 22nd 2009

Will Work for Drugs

admin — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 01:38:00 +0000

By Lydia Lunch

Akashic Books

I have always wanted to like Lydia Lunch. I’ve always admired her assertiveness and her dark attitude, and at times, even her severely sarcastic wit. I couldn’t ever get into her music though, so I thought I would try moving on to reading some of her short stories in Will Work for Drugs, a collection of Lunch’s fiction, personal essays, and interviews.

The beginning part of this book drags on and only slightly picks up towards the end with Lunch’s interviews. My favorite part was the interviews because, strangely enough, this was where Lunch seemed the most sincere, the most candid, and the most herself. The stories and essay sections were jumbled together, and they were not labeled as to which was which, so I never really knew if I was reading about some true event in Lunch’s little known past or peeking into her fantasies.

Regardless of whether they were stories or essays, in each one it was also extremely difficult to understand what was going on, where the action was, or the overall message Lunch wanted the reader to come away with. Lunch relies heavily on overtly flowery metaphors for everything, so much so that each story seemed to be mostly descriptions rather than actual stories. This section read more like prose, much like the style of Patti Smith, which was done well at times; however, overall I found Lunch’s choices similar to excerpts from a teenage goth girl’s diary: trying too hard to impress the reader with her darkness and toughness. Maybe her die-hard fans will appreciate Lunch’s newest work, but this reader remains unconverted.

Written by: Jen Klee, September 4th 2009

Personal Politics

admin — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 16:09:00 +0000

Interview with Rebecca Walker

The Feminism 101 dictum “the personal is political” has been writ large across third wave feminist founder Rebecca Walker’s work since she published her first book, the 1995 anthology To Be Real: Telling the Truth and Changing the Face of Feminism—her generation’s response to second wave feminism.

Since then, she has written memoirs and edited anthologies that explore her own biracial identity (Black, White, and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self), raising a son (What Makes a Man: 22 Writers Imagine the Future), and first-time motherhood (Baby Love: Choosing Motherhood After a Lifetime of Ambivalence).

Her latest book—the anthology One Big Happy Family: 18 Writers Talk About Polyamory, Open Adoption, Mixed Marriage, Househusbandry,Single Motherhood, and Other Realities of Truly Modern Love—is a re-envisioning of the American nuclear family, partly inspired by Walker’s memories of her own “fragmented” family (her parents are feminist icon Alice Walker and civil rights lawyer Mel Leventhal). The collection features essays by Dan Savage, Dawn Friedman, Min Jin Lee, and asha bandele, among others.

Walker’s recent work has ignited some debate, including discussions about whether there’s a difference between loving an adopted child and a biological one (Walker says there is) and whether a mother-daughter estrangement as dramatic as the one that played out between Walker and her mother signals a greater generational “rift” between the second and third wave feminist movements.

Feminist Review recently interviewed Walker about her new book on families off the “hetero-normative grid," the power of disclosure in her work, and why she never anticipates controversy.

You’ve written two memoirs and edited three anthologies, including your latest, One Big Happy Family. How are these processes different for you?

A collection is more like a prism than a magnifying glass. Anthologies are more democratic—everyone has their say. The form is radical in that it implicitly acknowledges many voices; the truth of multiplicity is built into its DNA.

In terms of process, I work with other writers the way I try to work with myself—to get to the heart of the story and support its birth. I try not to get too focused on craft. If I meet someone who can’t write a paragraph, but has a true, moving story, I’m there. I encourage that inside voice and coax it out. I do that for myself, and yes, I would say it is a joy, an honor even, to do that for others.

Who is the audience for One Big Happy Family?

One Big Happy Family is for you, your neighbors, the Supreme Court, and your uncle Robert. It’s for anyone doing family differently than the way it’s done on TV or at their grandmother’s house. It’s for people who are making up their version of family as they go along, following love and their own longing for connection. One Big Happy Family is for those who refuse to let love be defined by anything other than the truth of its existence. It’s a kind of Dr. Spock for the millions of people living life off the nuclear, hetero-normative grid.

You open the anthology with a piece by Jenny Block about her polyamorous marriage. Why that particular piece as the opener?

Polyamory has a PR problem—people think those who love more than one person at a time are part of a seamy scene, nymphomaniacs, or delusional, at best. Jenny Block, who wrote the essay, is so not any of those things. It’s one of my favorite pieces in the book because she is so honest and accessible, brave and tender. The essay does a great job smashing the stereotype, and I like that. Putting it front and center pushed the envelope.

You wrote in Newsweek about how President Obama has changed our concept of manhood. Do you feel he and Michelle Obama will shift national discourse on family values?

Modeling partnership between mutually adoring and respectful equals certainly feels like a step in the right direction. I’m encouraged by their apparent openness to families of all kinds, and by their insistence on putting the health and well-being of their children first. It seems so simple, and yet, so many do not do the work.

You’ve written memoirs that have raised the curtain on your childhood and, with Baby Love, your estrangement from your mother. Many writers choose to keep their private lives to themselves, while others make the so-called private, public. Why have you chosen disclosure for your work, and how do you feel it has served you as a writer and activist?

As a child of feminism, I think the real question would be why wouldn’t I choose disclosure? Feminism 101 teaches that the personal is always political—this does not stop being true because the personal may negatively impact the matriarchy.

My work has given voice and agency to many. Like the feminist writers whose work I’ve devoured for decades, I prefer to live my own life, and tell my own story, than have it presumed, projected, or in any other way defined by those who would benefit from my silence. I think my readers resonate with that and are encouraged and emboldened to do the same in their own lives. In this area, you could say I’m classically second wave.

You’re a feminist leader who produces work that sends ripples through some feminist communities. To Be Real shifted the focus of second wave feminists to include young women’s realities. Your statements about the difference between loving a biological child and an adopted child caused a bit of controversy, as did your writing about your estrangement from your mother. In a sense, your personal choices, beliefs, and experiences have become political for many. What do you think of your ability to provoke such a response—and is this a burden, a blessing, or neither?

It’s fascinating, surprising, frustrating, and revelatory. What’s odd is that I never anticipate controversy. I suppose that is to say that my point of view is not calculated in any way. I am nothing if not brutally honest, emotionally raw, and deeply hopeful. I tend to anticipate the best in people, to expect them to—no matter how challenging to their ego or ideas about who they are—rise to the occasion of simple listening and acknowledgment of different viewpoints. This expectation is a blessing, certainly. It sets a bar to which I, myself, aspire.

A burden? Not for me.

Written by: Ellen Papazian, July 8th 2009