liberation

Love, Race, and Liberation: ‘Til the White Day is Done

admin — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Edited by JLove Calderón, Marcella Runell

The subtitle of of JLove Calderón and Marcella Runell’s curriculum, Love, Race, and Liberation, comes from the poem “Dream Variations” by Langston Hughes.

To fling my arms wide
In some place of the sun,
To whirl and to dance
Till the white day is done.

Love, Race, and Liberation is a multimedia project that aims at heart-level transformation, even while it equips activists for ground-level work for racial justice. The work is sponsored by NYU’s Center for Multicultural Education and programs, Eradicating Racism (1 + 1 + 1=ONE), and World Up.

This text includes twenty lesson plans, which can be used together or individually, and eleven love letters from performers, writers, educators, and activists. The lessons, suitable for grade eight (approximately age thirteen) and above, are designed to take 90-120 minutes. Extension activities are included in many lessons, as well as supplemental resources. A couple of the lessons make use of the PBS film, Race: The Power of an Illusion (California Newsreel), and the film is recommended in the introductory notes. The topics covered include social identity, racial socialization, white privilege, immigration, cultural appropriation, and being an ally. There are lessons on newsworthy aspects of racial justice, notably housing, education, health care, and criminal justice.

Love, Race, and Liberation makes an excellent resource for a classroom teacher or community organizer. Whether a reader uses every lesson in the book, or chooses those topics most relevant for a given group of students, this guide will be very useful. From my reading of this book, I have already covered a couple of index cards with book titles, author names, and websites to explore.

The lessons on social identity had me remembering my undergraduate Sociology courses, when many of my classmates had not considered the multifaceted nature of our identities, or the ways in which our ideas of ourselves are socially constructed. As a white woman, I continually welcome lessons on being an effective ally in the struggle for racial justice, and Love, Race, and Liberation includes many practical reminders in this vein.

I found the love letters sprinkled throughout the curriculum very powerful. All of them reinforce the question that is the heart-matter of this volume: why are we in this struggle? To paraphrase Sofia Quintero: I am not in this to save anyone, but to liberate myself. Love, Race, and Liberation provides a welcome new set of tools for the job.

Written by: Lisa Rand, August 23rd 2010

The Pregnant Widow

admin — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 08:01:00 +0000

By Martin Amis

Knopf

I’m so upset that I’m not at Hay Festival right now. Because the lineup looks phenomenal. Not only is Stephen Fry doing a talk, but Zadie Smith and Martin Amis are both on the lineup. Now, Smith is awesome for all sorts of reasons, and, coincidentally, I actually read White Teeth at Hay Festival last year. But this year I’d be more interested in seeing Amis—which is surprising given that he is a grumpy old man with a penchant for misogyny. Or so the legend goes. He, in fact, denies this claim, and tells us that his book, The Pregnant Widow, is "very feminist"—although he admits it will get him in trouble.

Indeed, it has not been received particularly well from the lovely group of people at BBC 2's The Review Show. Supposedly about the feminist revolution and the destruction that it wreaked on the people who were affected by sexual liberation, I found (as, it seems, did Germaine Greer) that there was an awful lot of focus on body parts. Scheherazade has big tits. Gloria has a big arse. And Keith’s girlfriend Lily has neither. That seems to be all that matters for a lot of the book. Keith’s main mission is to sleep with as many of the girls as possible, and then (spoiler alert) he marries all of them in succession.

The characterisation of the female characters is weak. Scheherazade is a ridiculous appropriation of the "poor little rich girl" stereotype, lifted from a piece of chick lit where marriage is the only goal. (I am aware that comment is derogatory to chick lit and, as I am reading a book about that very subject at the moment, I thus present this long back-covering disclaimer.) Scheherazade is the only woman who ends up happy, because she gets married and has kids, ignoring the sexual liberation movement. Woop. Well done, girl.

Violet, however, Keith’s free-spirited sister, gets destroyed. Killed off because she has too much sex. She is apparently based on Amis’ own sister, Sally, whom he is convinced was killed by her promiscuity, or some other such ridiculous reason. Maybe it had actually nothing to do with feminism, and neither does the demise of Violet, who appears to have mental health issues and is dire need of help. That is why she dies—not because feminists allowed women their sexual agency and made it less (not completely) shameful to have sex as a woman.

Keith is an overly whiny character. He needs to get some courage and just deal with his issues. He always seems to want to blame someone else for his own failings in life—and it’s irritating. He is not a lovable character and, quite honestly, I’m not rooting for him for most of the novel. Or any of it, actually.

Despite all this, and despite Amis’ desire to elevate his own (or Keith’s own, although it’s supposed to be semi-autobiographical) struggle to a higher level by associating it with 1970s feminism, I really enjoyed The Pregnant Widow. The personal is not always political, which I think Amis might need to think about before he tries this sort of thing again, and despite it making me angry every now and again (particularly the pretentiousness of Keith’s character), I liked it.

The Pregnant Widow is evocative, well-written, and clever, and the story is enjoyable. (Although I do feel it tapers out a bit when we get into serious mid-life crisis territory.) It’s not the usual "zOMG look how postmodern I am" offering from Amis, and I really liked it. Maybe even loved it.

Written by: Amy Elizabeth Richards, June 11th 2010

Smash the Church, Smash the State!: The Early Years of Gay Liberation

admin — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 16:51:00 +0000

Edited by Tommi Avicolli Mecca

City Lights Books

Like all good memoirs of the 1960s and early ‘70s, Smash the Church, Smash the State! takes readers back to a time when revolution seemed imminent. Change was in the air and the fifty-one essays comprising Tommi Avicolli Mecca’s important anthology vividly capture the heady exhilaration of queer activists on both U.S. coasts as the possibility of being out-and-proud became increasingly tangible.

The book is both a look back and a look forward. Its wide-range includes biographies of several unsung LGBTQ heroes as well as a retrospective of community rebellions—including Stonewall—that presaged the contemporary gay rights movement. Other entries run the gamut, from poetry to manifestoes. There’s an analysis of the persistent racism and sexism that dogged early organizing efforts and an incisive look at the mainstreaming of LGBTQ concerns that ultimately dampened the ardor of queer liberationists. Several essays also offer mournful reflections on the withering of pro-LGBTQ socialist and anarchist groups in favor of political organizations that are less challenging to the social order.

In the book’s first section, "Out of the Bars and Into the Streets," contributors conjure their anticipated liberation from racism, sexism, homophobia, classism and middle-class dreariness. It’s hard not to envy the energy, passion, and daring of thousands of queer activists who challenged authority and brought a constantly evolving understanding of sex and gender into everyday life.

So what happened? The post-Stonewall liberation movement, writes contributor Doug Ireland, was a celebration of otherness, an affirmation that it was okay for queer values and concerns to be different from those of straight society. That sensibility began to wane, he writes, when a swath of the community began arguing for marriage equity and the right to bear and raise children. Many LGBTQ folk also expressed a yearning for spiritual acceptance by the religious bodies they’d been reared in. Some opted to become preachers, lay pastors, or religious educators—and raised a ruckus when they were denied admission. Still others wanted simple domesticity, complete with home ownership, a new car every couple of years, and a family pet. Ireland calls this faction “the gay citizenship movement” and concedes that it edged out the radicals, as if the two poles could not possibly co-exist.

This unresolved tension continues to rankle, and Smash the Church, Smash the State! does a good job of laying out the conflict. At the same time, the essays do little to engage LGBTQ community members who see the American Dream as their birthright. Unconcerned with the issues that galvanized gay liberationists, they want to live conventional lives without being hassled for whom they love.

The activists writing in Smash the Church, Smash the State! are distressed by this, angry that so many LGBTQ people are politically unaware and/or disinterested. I understand their concern and agree that opposition to militarism, war, and the isms that restrict us needs to be disseminated to the widest possible audience. At the same time, when we say we favor non-conformity, it means we support people’s right to make decisions we hate, whether it’s joining the military, becoming a police officer, or moving to the suburbs. The existence of queer Republicans and soldiers may befuddle progressives, but we have no more right than Focus on the Family to dictate who can do what when.

Worse, it’s a losing battle since no one can stop this assimilation. Instead, it behooves those whose lives exemplify the culture of difference—lives beautifully heralded in Smash the Church, Smash the State!—to proudly strut their stuff. What better way to honor the rainbow that has come to symbolize diversity?

Written by: Eleanor J. Bader, September 28th 2009