literature

A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s

mandy — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 18:00:00 +0000

Stephanie Coontz has taken on a project of mythical proportions with her latest work, A Strange Stirring, an examination of the impact Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique had on American society and culture in the 1960s. A Strange Stirring looks at both the book’s message to women during this stifling time and investigates the life of Friedan herself, giving the author credit for her truly remarkable work while laying bare some of the controversies surrounding the groundbreaking work.

Coontz has put together a comprehensive picture of what life was like for women in America during the 1950s and '60s. Aside from reading Friedan's book, her research includes books and articles from the same time period to investigate the sociology of American society. She also interviewed women with regard to their experience of Friedan’s book. This approach fills in the details with political, legal, social, cultural, and emotional issues to create an intricate view. Anyone born in the 1970s or later will find themselves immersed in the Mad Men-like world of middle class, suburban housewives.

In an era when women’s lives were predetermined, Friedan’s voice was one of hope and redemption. Women who had been marginalized, demonized, and used to prop up their husbands and children (but only if they did it ‘right') discovered they were not alone in their frustration and despair. Coontz gives credit where it is due, while also making sure to remind the reader that Friedan was not singlehandedly responsible for the birth of the women’s liberation movement.

A Strange Stirring is thoughtful and diligent in its research. Educational and incredibly illustrative of this time period in American history, I can’t imagine a better study of this pivotal work, and truly appreciate its honesty, clarity, and well-rounded approach.

Written by: Kari O’Driscoll, February 20th 2011

Charles Bukowski: Poet on the Edge

mandy — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 09:00:00 +0000

Huntington Library

San Marino, California

The Huntington Library is a sprawling estate—part research library, museum, and botanical garden, all of which are tucked away in the uber-rich city of San Marino, CA. It's the kind of city that would have rejected ol’ Charles Bukowski—or Hank Chinaski, as he’s known in his many books and poems. So, this blindingly bright, beautiful library seemed an odd location for a retrospective of Bukowski’s work, but the two rooms that housed his life story were magic.

I try not to be ashamed to admit that Bukowski is my favorite writer. I discovered him around the age of thirteen, and while other geeky book-loving girls I knew were reading Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women or Emily Dickinson’s breathy, delicate prose, I was devouring every Bukowski book in the library.

I had no idea that poetry could be so biting, so drunkenly sincere, so sexual, or so human. I had no idea you could write poems that weren't about feelings and flowers, but about the city and skid row, about being down and out or working shit jobs while living paycheck-to-paycheck. As Bukowski put it, his genius stemmed from his interest in “whores, working men, and street-car drivers—lonely, beaten-down people.”

Even as a young girl, I considered myself to be a feminist, and it was difficult to explain how I could feel so strongly for a notorious womanizer, a man who valued women mostly based on how good their legs looked. In his defense, Bukowski was also working class, a voice for the disaffected, though that’s hardly a defense. What I know, however, is that love is complicated, and my love for Bukowski is as complicated as his deep (and brutal) love of women.

For me, the single best part of Charles Bukowski: Poet on the Edge exhibit was what you saw immediately upon entrance: the writer’s desk. I stood and stared at it for a good ten minutes. Technically, there was just an old beat up radio, a typewriter, an incredibly thick pair of glasses, a couple of pens, and a stained wine glass, but it felt like so much more than that. Bukowski is a hometown hero for Angelinos, our patron saint of the downtrodden, and to see his desk exactly as it was when he was hammering away was nothing short of amazing. There was a recording of Bukowski reading aloud playing in the distance that was sort of intermingling with a never-ending loop of the poet’s favorite classical music, and it was sort of like he’d never left us, like we were standing in the middle of his late-night living room.

I’m not sure how Bukowski would feel about a retrospective of his life and work appearing at such a snooty, manicured museum, but I’m happy his wife Linda Lee made it happen. Part one, entitled “What Matters Most is How Well you Walk Through the Fire,” detailed his childhood. Bukowski endured a particularly painful adolescence, mostly because of an extreme case of acne that left his face and chest covered in boils. It’s doubtful he knew that the last chapter of his life would end with the heading “Hollywood,” as many of his books have now been made into mainstream movies.

For fans well-versed in his story, the eight-part walkthrough provided little insight into his inner workings or his writing, but being able to see childhood photographs, edited drafts of poems with Bukowski’s scribbles in the margins, and incredibly rare chapbooks was a real treat. Despite his many shortcomings as a human being, I respect Bukowski as a writer. Even after his struggle had ended and he began receiving the acclaim that escaped him for nearly thirty years, Bukowski was still simple in his needs and desires. “All I need now is what I needed then,” he said. “A desk lamp, a typewriter, the bottle, the radio, classical music, and this room on fire.”

This exhibit will run until February 14, 2011.

Written by: Tina Vasquez, February 8th 2011

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

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

92nd Street Y

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

The Vintage Book of American Women Writers

mandy — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 20:00:00 +0000

Edited by Elaine Showalter

Vintage

Anyone who has taken their share of English literature survey courses will tell you that the women considered great enough to be included within the literary canon are few to be found, as women writers have been marginalized throughout history. Even today, the title “great American novelist” is one that has yet to be bestowed upon a woman, and many women writers whose work has literary significance find their work disregarded as "chick lit." The Vintage Book of American Women Writers helps to give women their due. The 848-page book traces the history of women writers in America, beginning with Anne Bradford, the first woman to be published in Puritan America, and ending with such contemporary writers as Amy Tan and Jhumpa Lahiri.

Among the most noteworthy additions on the table of contents is feminist Kate Chopin, who was revolutionary in her time for depicting women who hungered for an independent life outside of the confines of marriage and children and who sought out their own sexual fulfillment. Included within this anthology are “Story of an Hour” and the two connected stories: “At the Cadian Ball” and “The Storm.” “The Storm” was particularly groundbreaking; written in 1894, it presents a woman who, in the throes of lust, commits adultery during a violent thunderstorm. Due to the sexual explicitness of the story, it was never published until 1969, over seventy years after Chopin originally wrote it.

Continuing along the same vein are works by Dorothy Parker (“Big Blonde”) and Edna St. Vincent Millay (“First Fig,” “Second Fig,” and “What My Lips Have Kissed”). Both writers also portrayed women who expressed sexualities that challenged societal mores, although this specific story by Parker displays a woman who becomes trapped by the limited role she is left to carry out in society.

Even with multiple English degrees under my belt, I found there to be many stories and writers within the anthology I had not read, or even heard of. Among the writers whose legacy has been somewhat left to obscurity is Alice Bradley Sheldon, who posed as a man and wrote under the pen name James Tiptree, Jr. in order to better her chances of publication. Tiptree, who once belonged to the CIA, wrote compelling science fiction works. The included selection, “The Last Flight of Dr. Ain,” reflects both her background in the CIA and the knowledge she gained through her Doctorate degree in experimental psychology. Also included within this collection (and one could not imagine any anthology of women in literature not including them) are a selection of poems from Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, and Adrienne Rich.

The Vintage Book of American Women Writers makes note of the struggle women have fought in order for their voices to be heard within the literary world. Of course, many people are apt to argue that there are many wonderful and historically significant women writers who did not make it into the collection, but there is only room for so many in one book. In the end, this anthology successfully underscores the overlooked importance women have played in literary history.

Written by: Adrienne Urbanski, January 17th 2011

Thiefing Sugar: Eroticism Between Women in Caribbean Literature

farhana — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 12:00:00 +0000

By Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley

Duke University Press

Tinsley’s fascinating study of “women loving women” examines their colonial and postcolonial experiences in Dutch, French, and English-speaking areas of the Caribbean. This volume, in the Perverse Modernities series by Duke University Press, takes its title from the writing of Trinidad-born poet-novelist Dionne Brand, whose cane-cutter character Elizete uses the phrase “thiefing sugar” to describe her feelings for another woman, Verlia. The metaphor refers to the time when slaves could be whipped for selling sugar from the plantations for any reason; it embodies both transgression and forbidden pleasure. Tinsley points out that using the term is “stealing language itself” to evoke a “transformative desire” to change the status of women and challenge the injustices of society.

Thiefing Sugar: Eroticism Between Women in Caribbean Literature incorporates black, queer, and feminist theory into its analysis. It draws on literature, history, geography, anthropology, economics, and linguistics to paint a colorful, multilayered portrait of Caribbean women. Texts from Suriname, Jamaica, Haiti, Martinique, and Trinidad (along with occasional references to Cuba, Grenada, Aruba, the Bahamas, and elsewhere in the region) are used to explore the history of sexuality and the complications of Creole traditions. Tinsley begins with love songs sung by black working-class women to their female lovers, along with accounts of birthday parties and erotic dances and religious ceremonies, as well as messages exchanged in the symbolic language of flowers, to show the intricacies of gender identities in the West Indies.

In succeeding chapters she turns to Luminous Isle, an autobiographical novel by the white Jamaican woman writer Eliot Bliss, then to the erotic poems written in the 1920s by Haitian poet Ida Faubert, Mayotte Capécia’s novel I Am a Martinican Woman, Jamaican writer Michelle Cliff’s novel, No Telephone to Heaven, and, finally, Dionne Brand’s poetry collection No Language Is Neutral, in order to trace “their poetics of decolonization” and to point out how these texts suggest reconfiguring gender history to acknowledge the strength and beauty of Afro-Caribbean woman-identified women. Tinsley’s brilliant, sensitive explications, her frequent references to artworks from the area, and her descriptions of lush landscapes make reading her work a delight and a surprise.

However, I do wish that she had studied more than one Hispanic writer, Fidel Castro’s niece Mariela Castro Espín. But I understand that bringing in a substantial number of texts in Spanish would have enlarged her project’s boundaries to perhaps unmanageable proportions. Several references to U.S. interventions in Grenada also left me wanting more information on the effects of North American activities in the region. I hope that Tinsley herself or one of her readers will expand on the groundbreaking work she has done in this book. I highly recommend it to a cosmopolitan audience.

Written by: Kittye Delle Robbins-Herring, December 3rd 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

Calyx (Summer 2010, Issue Vol. 26 No. 1)

annette — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 16:00:00 +0000

Edited by Editorial Collective

Serving as a forum for women’s creative work, Calyx, a literary journal of art and literature, has been publishing new, emerging and established female writers and artists for the last thirty-four years. The seventy-fifth issue celebrates Calyx’s success and progress, while showcasing the journal’s continued commitment to providing readers with an eclectic mix of poetry, short stories, photography, and other work.

All of the art and literature in Calyx is written or created by women and speaks to themes and issues relevant to the female sex. Be it a photograph, a ceramic sculpture, a nonfiction story or a poem, readers can identify with the issues of loss and hope that permeate the pieces in this journal.

Perhaps the most striking and provocative work in the seventy-fifth issue of Calyx is the art. RoCa Rodriguez Calero’s Virgen Maria collage offers a twenty-first century depiction of Jesus’ mother. The artist’s statement reads: “Instead of the traditional passive woman in blue who looks demurely down… the icon of the Virgen Maria has been contemporized and made more identifiable as a strong, intelligent, striking, and, yes, ‘hot-looking’ woman.” Deep reds and pastel purples and blues combine to reveal a fierce-eyed Virgin Mary. We see a Mary who is confident and proud—which is much different than the typical image.

Kate McCauley’s photographs Pelo and Inward concentrate on the present. Inward features an older woman deep in thought, while Pelo shows the face of a younger girl—the only one in the group of children to turn and look at the camera. Both images evoke a sense of mystery and beckon the viewer to ask questions and look at the photograph again and again.

While all of the stories in the Summer 2010 issue are intriguing and grabbed my attention, Amanda Leskovac’s nonfiction piece Where to Put a Period stood out. Leskovac tells her story of heartbreak and abortion while dealing with life as a quadriplegic. She broaches sex, society and men with wit and the full mastery of her craft.

The majority of the poems in Calyx also are engaging and fresh. Susan Lilley’s "Home Free," Michelle Brittan’s "I Go Back to May 1983," and Julie Moore’s "Intersection" were my favorites as all three poems deal with loss eloquently. Lilley writes “for a minute I feel home free/both parents safely dead, and/my children before daybreak/breathing in the same house.” Here, she captures the bittersweet moment of the death of the speaker’s parents and the return of her children. Moore’s “the day your organs, packed/in ice, were carried in coolers/across Ohio” give rhythm to an accident and depict the speaker’s inability to forget it.

"I Go Back to May 1983," which is after a Sharon Olds poem, recounts the meeting of the speaker’s parents who were once only pen pals. The ill-fated relationship leaves the speaker questioning her existence. She describes how her mother loses her identity in the process of living in America and having a child with a man she can’t relate to: “An accidental commitment to a whole continent, an embodiment/of one life closing and another unfolding, her food/becoming my food, my bones replacing her bones.” It’s a beautiful piece that speaks of multiculturalism, severed families and the creation of life at the cost of dramatically altering another’s.

Without naming names, some of the poems leave something to be desired in terms of mastery of craft. These works seem to have been chosen solely for the messages they attempt to convey. While they do cover pertinent topics, the diction and poetic structure in some of them doesn’t compare to the level of craft in the other works.

Aside from this one flaw, Calyx’s seventy-fifth issue is a refreshing read, complete in its variety of art and literature that relate to and inspire women.

Written by: Michelle Tooker, October 25th 2010

Literary Readings: Margaret Atwood (9/20/2010)

mandy — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 16:00:00 +0000

92nd Street Y

New York, New York

Have you ever overheard such a riveting, witty conversation that you simply had to eavesdrop? Listening to Margaret Atwood and Valerie Martin quibble over every possible tangent to Atwood’s latest paperback The Year of the Flood felt much like playing the part of an enchanted voyeur. The incredible chemistry of these two old friends was stunning unto itself; the subject matter was a combination of defining dystopia and rabbit starvation, elucidating the mythology of bees, and examining city lights and migratory bird patterns. Even still, they were hilarious.

As Martin introduced her friend of thirty years, she joked that the impossibility of Atwood having been so prolific with her writing and appearances could only mean that she must have a secret “Saskatchewan double” typing away for her in the tundra. Later on during the Q&A, as one writer tried to outdo the other, there were many gems.

The story of The Year of the Flood is meant to examine the path of those with lesser means in a dystopian world of privilege set in the future. Centered on a utopia thrust into a dying world, three narrators tell the story of the God’s Gardeners, a fictional cult that operates in slums and praises Mother Earth on rooftop gardens. This is a future where Al Gore is canonized and characters wait out the annihilation of the planet in spas while persisting on avocado masks. A waterless flood, in the form of a man-made virus, has essentially eliminated humanity.

Atwood reading from the podium felt much more like a traditional reading, with a bits of scene setting and three excerpted selections (one for each narrator in the novel). That is, until Margaret Atwood sang a hymn called "We Praise The Tiny Perfect Moles" for Mole day, a children’s festival of the God’s Gardeners. As Atwood has become a sort of a modern day patron saint of the dystopia genre, perhaps all this is her way of giving back.

I went into this event an enormous fan of Atwood, and left even more in love. If you have yet to read Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, stop reading this drivel I have penned and go find that book. It will change your life.

Written by: Nicole Levitz, September 21st 2010

Unfastened: Globality and Asian North American Narratives

admin — Tue, 18 May 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Eleanor Ty

University Of Minnesota Press

In a similar vein as Caroline Rody’s The Interethnic Imagination and Rocío Davis' Begin Here, the monograph Unfastened has been a treat to read for the simple fact that author Eleanor Ty forefronts a wide range of readings that demonstrate the continued evidence of the heterogeneity that embodies the field of Asian North American literature. Ty’s book is called unfastened, precisely because it is a descriptive that designates the continuing complexity that has been emerging with the textual terrains around concepts of mobility, displacement, and diaspora that make fastening Asian North American literature to any one place practically impossible.

In the primary texts that Ty so elegantly analyzes, multiple nations, multiple local spaces, and multiple subjectivities are always imagined, such that her readings flow contextually, specific to particular aesthetic forms and contexts, but always linked by the notion of “globality.” Ty is careful about her terminology. She purposefully does not use the term Asian American precisely because she carves out a specific place for Asian Canadian cultural production in her work, which has had a long history of being too reductively classified within Asian American more broadly.

She also distinguishes globality from the globalization, rendering globality the more salient feature of her critical reading practice precisely because it is more connected to issues of economic differentials and power inequities that arise as bodies, cultures, ideas, technologies, etc. migrate to new locations and establish new spatial configurations. As Ty clarifies, “Issues of globality include concern for earth and our environment, health and the spread of disease across national borders, the globalization of markets, and the production of goods.”

The wide range of primary text readings are truly astonishing and we see what a fan of Asian North American narrative Ty is as she meticulously crafts her analyses to continually point to the ways that Asian North American writers are thinking about globality and routing that issue directly within their textual terrains. Taken together, Ty concentrates on Brian Roley’s American Son, Han Ong’s Fixer Chao, Larissa Lai’s Salt Fish Girl, Hiromi Goto’s The Kappa Child, Ruth Ozeki’s All Over Creation, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s The Mistress of Spices, Sunil Kuruvilla’s Rice Boy, and Lydia Kwa’s This Place Called Absence, among others. Many of these authors are ones that have received very little critical attention, even though their works present such rich terrains upon which to consider the complexities of globalization.

While all the chapters provide sprightly interpretative readings in which texts cannot be fastened within one context or sociocultural moment, some standouts include chapter two’s “Recuperating Wretched Lives: Asian Sex Workers and the Underside of Nation Building” and chapter five’s “Shape-shifters and Disciplined Bodies: Feminist Tactics, Science Fiction, and Fantasy.” Given the astonishing range of writings being produced, Ty’s conclusion offers a corrective to the concept of Asian American literature, offering that the rubric of “global novelist and global writing are more accurate for terms and for works,” especially with respect to the increasingly non-domestic contexts of many narratives.

Ty leaves us then with the concept of the “Asian global,” conceptualized in part because such narratives “arise out of and are contingent upon globalization—the movement of people, capital, and production across the north and south—and because they are no longer located just in North America or Britain.” In ending this brief review, it would seem the possibility that Ty is pushing for a potentially new field rubric in which Asian global texts written in English appear front and center. In this way, the move to diasporic and transnational critiques which typically and traditionally have not shifted beyond a two-country paradigm can be supplanted with this Asian global literary studies model that pushes scholars to contextualize texts from multi-focal spatial axes.

Cross-posted at Asian American Literature Fans

Written by: Stephen Hong Sohn, May 17th 2010

Daughters of Empire: A Memoir of a Year in Britain and Beyond

admin — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Jane Satterfield

Demeter Press

The poet and essayist Jane Satterfield writes a hauntingly discontinuous prose-poem about a sort of exile. To those of us with dual citizenship—or, perhaps, to those for whom home is two places, neither tidily reconcilable with the other—Daughters of Empire speaks poignantly to the longing for connection between past and present, mother and daughter, literary inspiration, and career frustration.

The author here teases us with the possibility of a conventional narrative of exile: what will happen when a woman who spent most of her formative years in the United States becomes pregnant and has a child while being cast aside by a prospective employer and emotionally abandoned by a narcissistic and controlling husband? Will she find in this land of her birth and ancestry an escape from the soul-deadening labor of fixed-term teaching in American institutions, and instead find joy in teaching Larkin and Plath and Heaney and Hughes to students who understand and appreciate the value of being taught by a working poet? Will she find in the geography of her own imagination the spiritual bond to the Brontë sisters that she seeks?

Our relationship to place is similarly discontinuous, and home, whatever that means, is an ongoing negotiation. Satterfield’s narrator is unstuck in time, just as she is unstuck geographically, so we get poetically rich spots of memory: “I stand on Charlotte Brontë’s front steps, thinking I’m going to be sick,” she tells us on the first page—either a vertiginous reaction to this confrontation with her nineteenth-century literary forbearer, or perhaps a bit of first-trimester nausea. And then suddenly it’s several years earlier, and she’s a different sort of exile, not quite fitting in to this group of students or that literary community brought together in American college towns. And then she’s a punk, a Johnny Rotten, but with much more ambivalent feelings towards Queen and country.

And then she’s in Corby, a “piss hole in the dead heart of England” where she was born, traveling with her mother through a reconstruction of her own ancestry and her mother’s shared dual sense of place. But then, heartbreakingly, she’s starving emotionally and perhaps physically as a mother estranged from her husband, whose Fulbright Exchange, in the mid-1990s, was in part responsible for this year in England which serves as a potent but unstable center of this narrative.

Because of the evocative power of her memory and the clarity of her language, she draws the reader willingly into this vortex. And yet, she resists closure. Does she find career fulfillment? Can she bridge the imaginative/historical gaps and construct a satisfactory home? Can she free herself from this dreadful relationship? The memoir asks instead that we participate in her desires, in her lyrical remembrance, in her evocative moments that shuttle back and forth through time, woven together by her search for identity, for her discovery of home.

Written by: Rick Taylor, April 27th 2010

Sapphistries: A Global History of Love Between Women

admin — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Leila J. Rupp

New York University Press

Sapphistries is an epic journey through real and fictional love between women. It is so epic that the author, Leila J. Rupp, had to coin a new term to describe this type of book. It is not just a history; it is an interweaving of prehistoric musings, fictional accounts that draw on suppositions of what it must have been like in times when no evidence was left of when and where these kinds of love was forbidden, right up to the modern day. I say these kinds of love because Rupp has effortfully but effectively convinced me that I need to know about the whole she-bang. It’s not easy to keep track of lesbians throughout history when people didn’t self-identify as such.

This book takes in the whole gamut of potential interpretations of women-loving-women: social males, women who live as men but retained their female identity, third and fourth gender identities, women passing as men, two spirits, secret weddings, school girls having accepted but secret relationships as a cultural yet unofficial rite of passage in various modern cultures... as a run-of-the-mill modern lesbian, I was a little overwhelmed. This varied interpretation of ‘Sapphistries’ is extremely broad, and definitely widened my perspective on what I think the author would like me to consider a part of my culture.

Primary and secondary source material across the span of human history is combined with fictional accounts throughout the book. I personally found the interweaving of fictional accounts and historical details a little too seamless at first. I had to flip back and forth a few times mid-tale to remind myself which was which, but I eventually got the hang of it and had a much better contextualized grasp of what I was reading. I thoroughly enjoyed the re-tellings and re-imaginings of ancient women-loving-women. With Rupp's first-person interjections and a storytelling tone, the book reads like a long and enjoyable university lecture delivered by a witty, warm, and knowledgeable teacher.

I would recommend this book for women’s studies, literature, queer theory, or history syllabuses. I even suspect it would make for an excellent module on its own, with some supplementary reading thrown in. It’s no coffee table book—this is some serious reading and I personally would want a sherpa to guide me through it the next time I read it.

Sapphistries is particularly invaluable for queer theory because of the vastly broad picture it presents of the grand scope of women who love women—regardless of whether they identify as queer or not. This book opened my eyes to the many positive and negative perceptions and lifestyle choices of those who were a part of ‘Sapphistry’ in the past, and I look forward to seeing how it informs future study and thought.

Written by: Chella Quint, March 21st 2010

Between the Sheets: Nine 20th Century Women Writers and Their Famous Literary Partnerships

admin — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 17:02:00 +0000

By Lesley McDowell

Overlook Press

The adage, “Behind every great man is a great woman,” is a backhanded compliment to women, and one that implicitly avers a submissive feminism of codependency. At first glance, it is easy to misjudge Lesley McDowell’s Between the Sheets as a kind of backward-feminist interpretation of women writers’ literary careers, such that the success of these writers was primarily a product of the men who mentored them and who essentially produced their success.

Feminist scholars of the last three decades, of course, have written texts contesting and criticizing relations between prominent male and female literary figures. McDowell’s objective, however, is to prove that these female luminaries should not be cast as victims in these relations: “The aim of this book is...to demonstrate that none of the women artists mentioned here were victims at all, but that they chose their own fates knowingly and without the taint of victimization; that they chose such relationships in order to benefit their art and poetic consciousness.” This objective is what makes McDowell’s text praiseworthy in the larger scope of feminism: her book is an effort to move away from the culture of victimhood that plagues feminism today. In order to avoid trite notions of female victimization at the hands of men, McDowell attempts, as she explains, “to situate these liaisons at the center of these women’s emotional and literary lives, not to detract from their achievements, but to emphasize them, to show how important these relationships were to them, and why.”

The structure of Between the Sheets splits nine case studies, or literary relationships, into three sections, delimited by historical chronology as well as the geographic locale in which these relationships primarily took place. Part One, set in the 1910s and1920s, explores the relationships of Katherine Mansfield and John Middleton Murray, H.D. and Ezra Pound, and Rebecca West and H.G. Wells. Part Two, the “Paris Set” of the 1920s and 1930s, considers the relationships of Jean Rhys and Ford Maddox Ford, Anaïs Nin and Henry Miller, and Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Satre—the last relationship of which, for me as a former student of philosophy, made me giddy with tales of Beauvoir and Satre pimping out their students to each other (oh, how fantastically perverse!). The third and final section is devoted to transatlantic relationships from the 1930s-1950s: Martha Gelhorn and Ernest Hemingway, Elizabeth Smart and George Barker, and Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes.

McDowell culls her information from diaries, letters, and journals, which, in all, makes for a thorough but accessible reading. The information being imparted is not revelatory, but the subtle, argumentative slant of the text is laudable for its elevation of women commonly stereotyped as victims who lived passive lives in relation to the men they loved. Anyone interested in some crisp, literary gossip should take a look at this book.

Written by: Marcie Bianco, February 7th 2010

A Truth Universally Acknowledged: 33 Great Writers on Why We Read Jane Austen

admin — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 17:01:00 +0000

Edited by Susannah Carson

Random House

Why do we read Jane Austen? Beyond the books themselves, films and BBC miniseries adapted from classics like Pride and Prejudice draw large audiences. Are we drawn in by Austen's characters, delightful yet no-nonsense writing style, or detailed unveiling of social dynamics? Maybe it's the happy endings that keep us coming back. Or is it the sheer joy in her snarkiness, snugly couched in proper language?

Anyone who enjoys Austen's work, from the casual reader on to the obsessed "Janeite" could likely come up with her own answer. In A Truth Universally Acknowledged, editor Susannah Carson gathers a tumult of theories and stories about the love of all things Jane. Only ten of the thirty-three essays appear to be penned specifically for this volume, including a thoughtful personal essay by Margot Livesey, a well contextualized and nicely written John Wiltshire piece exploring the film adaptation issue, and a shallow lark by Amy Heckerling (known for her Emma-inspired film Clueless). The rest is re-purposed: for example, Amy Bloom's accessible, friendly introduction to a 1992 edition of Persuasion; E. M. Forster's droll, well-known 1936 essay "Jane Austen: The Six Novels;" and an entertaining but predictably sexist Martin Amis piece.

The book kicks off with a foreword by Harold Bloom. Like a number of writers included in this volume, it's possible he was included mainly to pump up the star power of Carson's contributor list (Jay McInerney, anyone?) Bloom is one of the world's foremost literary critics; featuring him first, however, implies that his angle is one Carson cherishes. He uses the opportunity to declaim—with no proof whatsoever—that "Austen has no more a political or social agenda than she has a religious one... Those who now read Austin 'politically' are not reading her at all." Such pompous and dismissive declarations, handed down from on high by a guy, completely ignore how the personal really is political.

Austen's work is intimate, feminine, and intensely personal. She reveals the stark realities of being a woman in Regency England, where marriage carried utmost importance. Marry wrong or get caught shacking up, and you might end up exiled from all those you previously socialized with, including your family. The Bennett sisters in Pride and Prejudice must marry appropriate gentlemen not just to secure their own futures, but so that their parents won't be kicked out of their home. Girls who fall for rakish rogues, like Marianne in Sense and Sensibility or Lydia in Pride and Prejudice threaten their own happiness and the potential for their sisters to marry. Anna Quindlen's essay on gender in Austen, included in the book, examine some of these issues.

The primary problem with A Truth... lies not in the writing, but the editing. Shoehorning thirty-three essays between two covers does not an effective anthology make. The book could have used more direction, more selectivity, and a stronger guiding hand. If you're enough of an obsessive "Janeite" to fully comprehend all the essays included here, chances are you've already read many of them. If not, you may feel lost in some chapters and bored by others. A starry-eyed love of Austen often trips up many writers; reading A Truth... sometimes feels like perusing a fanzine written by grad students. The editor makes no bones about her own fan-girl status. "Opening the cover to this volume," she opines on her work, "is like opening a door to all the clamorous merriment of a book club meeting." Clamorous merriment? She even rocks a saucy yet precious Elizabeth Bennet-esque hairdo in her author photo.

Still, A Truth Universally Acknowledged may inspire the reader to examine more closely Austen's work—and the many novels and films it has inspired. It would make a great gift for the Janeite in one's life, and if we read with great patience, the rest of us may come to value its wide range of essays.

Written by: Tiffany Lee Brown, January 23rd 2010

Freudian Mythologies: Greek Tragedies and Modern Identities

admin — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 01:00:00 +0000

By Rachel Bowlby

Oxford University Press

In college, I heard a joke that summed up Freudian theory to a tee: A Freudian slip is when you say one thing and mean your mother. This joke, referencing a Freudian theory that an unconscious thought may reveal itself as a verbal manifestation, sums up the popular idea of psychoanalysis, the branch of psychology Freud created. Popular culture often ceases at what Freud wrote in the nineteenth century, ignoring all of psychology before and after. Freud’s theories captured the popular imagination and have not given up their grip for 100 years. After all, how familiar are you with B.F. Skinner’s work?

Freud’s existence in popular culture has led to the application of his Interpretation of Dreams in numerous contexts, including looking back at the Greek Tragedies. Freud himself gave birth to the Oedipus complex to explain the male child’s gender identification as they grow up. The hypothesis has been simplified into the idea that a little boy wants to kill his father and marry his mother, which is a very simplistic reading of both the theory and the myth.

I bring this up to explain Freudian Mythologies. It is very telling that Bowlby is an English Professor, not a psychologist or a classicist. This book is in the unenviable position of being too complex for the average reader and not complex enough for even college students. Her reading of Freudian mythology and of the ancient tragedies is correct, but she adds nothing new to any of the criticisms. A further explanation of the Oedipus myth through a Freudian lens is not necessary; Freud explained it himself. A reading of the Danaeds is more interesting, but is ultimately concluded with the statement that Freud didn’t understand women. One must have read extensively into the Freudian catalogue, to point that they must be on a first name basis with Anna O. They also must be aware of the stories of Ion, the Danaeds and both versions of Oedipus. At the same time, they must not understand basic Freudian attachment.

After a while, the tragedies themselves become secondary to Bowlby’s attempts to explain Freudian theory. The more interesting story, one touched upon at the beginning of the book, is how Freud chose which version of which myth. Why did he omit the earlier version of Oedipus, where his birth father molests and kills a little boy, bringing on the curse Oedipus ultimately fulfills? Why did he not address Apollo as Ion’s father? This is an area where something new could be uncovered. Simply using Freudian mythology to describe Greek tragedy adds nothing; after all, Freud did it himself.

If you are comfortable but not overly familiar with Freud’s theories or the Greek tragedies, Freudian Mythologies might interest you. However, if you are acquainted with either, this book won’t hold your interest.

Written by: Taylor Rhodes, January 16th 2010

Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness and Liberation

admin — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 17:03:00 +0000

By Eli Clare

South End Press

The best resistance literature describes a specific moment in history and is written within the context of an organized movement. As the disability movement gains more exposure and support, Eli Clare’s Exile and Pride will join the list of classics among resistance literature. Clare’s bold yet gentle narration of his experience as a disabled American gives readers an inside look at the consciousness of the movement.

Exile and Pride seeks to discover and explore how the disabled community can create pride, what words or symbols demonstrate this pride, and which collective or personal histories should be celebrated rather than simply witnessed. As a transgender individual with cerebral palsy, the activist also explores the various ways his body has been stolen and abused, and how such abuses can be avoided in the future by a revolution in the way mainstream society views and treats disabled individuals.

My favorite part of the book is the chapter titled “Freaks and Queers,” in which Clare provides readers with a history of the American “freak shows” that toured the country through the beginning of the twentieth century. Clare explores the lives of those who were exploited and who made a living off being known as a “freak.” Clare speaks about, and sometimes to, such people with a touching, yet bold, sensitivity that he has come to be known for. He also introduces his audience to a time and place that few who do not read Exile and Pride will ever ponder.

Clare uses the exploration of the freak show as a backdrop for exploring the larger issue of language, labels, and the process of “reclaiming” that so many oppressed communities undertake. The disabled community is of course no different. While embracing the terms cripple and queer, Clare pushes back on the use of the word freak and uses his unique brand of storytelling and personal narrative to explain the reasons why. It is Clare’s contention that freak not only implies self-hatred, but also reinforces historical lies and abuse of the disabled, such as those perpetrated by the freak shows.

I think one of the defining characteristics of resistance art is that it effectively raises the awareness of those in the mainstream. From the history of the freak show to Clare’s personal experiences and lyrical narratives, the book does just that.

For instance, although I have never watched it, I also never realized the annual Jerry Lewis marathon was a source of such anger and irritation for so many disabled individuals. I am also thankful to know about the “medical model of disability,” one that paints disabled people as being sick, and waiting for a cure, one that forces many to obtain non-medical, adaptive equipment from a doctor instead of a website. It is awareness of such issues that will bring the cure to ableism that Clare and millions of other disabled individuals and allies seek.

As a severely disabled individual who also has advanced degrees and has authored two books, Clare may be seen as “transcending” his disability. However Clare adamantly rejects such notions and instead envisions a world where people such as him as seen as full participants in mainstream society. Such a vision requires inclusion, not celebration, of those with “special needs” who live full lives. Clare turns his nose up at the insistence of mainstream culture to find “supercrips” who have “overcome” their disabilities.

Of particular interest to Feminist Review readers is Clare’s analysis of the line between being “a sexual object and a sexual subject” in the chapter “Reading Across the Grain.” I have never read such a poignant analysis of the subject that so few, even in feminist academia, fail to recognize. Clare gracefully describes how the media and the pornography industry have led women to believe that being objectified is a manifestation of their own sexuality. The confusion between self as object and self as subject has created a culture where violence and degradation are accepted forms of sexual expression. Unfortunately, as Clare points out, feminist debate over the topic of pornography and sexual expression remains polarized.

As an individual with disabled family members, I read Exile and Pride in a quest typical of those in the mainstream that Clare expresses frustration over. I read the book in an attempt to come to some understanding of the world in which those different from me live in. What I was reminded of and what I now seek to make a part of my own deeply ingrained consciousness is that those different from me don’t live in a different world. We all live together in the same world, but with vastly different realities. As feminists our role is to remember and expose these realities.

Written by: Janice Formichella, January 11th 2010