personal stories

These Here Are Crazy Times 2

farhana — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 20:00:00 +0000

Every so often, I’ll be on the phone with my ninety-one-year-old grandma and she’ll reveal a tidbit I’ve never heard before. The most recent revelation—admittedly several years ago now—was about her only serious boyfriend before meeting my grandpa. He hadn’t been interested in religion, and my gram just couldn’t envision a future with such a man, much as she loved him.

My grandpa, a theology professor who fit the spiritual bill, has been gone for a decade, but while I’m always working to pry memories from Gram’s Alzheimer’s infected brain, I’ve got a nice little book full of grandpa’s handwritten notes about every major event of his life. The once-blank journal contains 365 questions about childhood, marriage, children, and aging; always an educator, he filled it out like a homework assignment and gave it to me before he died.

Most people aren’t lucky enough to have such compendiums of information about our loved ones after they’re gone. Even fewer would know what to do with it. Sarah May’s zine, These Here Are Crazy Times 2, about her late grandmother, Martha Luzier Birdsall, is filled with stories about working in a coal mine, getting married in the Methodist church, and losing a brother in WWII, many of which bear resemblance to my own family history. Several years before her death, Sarah May’s grandma gave each of her grandchildren a folder full of poetry and family history, but it wasn’t until years after she’d been gone that Sarah May started poring over her grandma’s personal stories about losing everything but a yard full of turkeys and a big vegetable garden during the Great Depression and dating an enlisted guy who showed her his incomplete divorce paperwork as an afterthought.

Some people have a knack for storytelling, and it’s clear that Sarah May inherited hers from her grandmother. Pick up this small booklet for stories about how things have changed—and how, when it comes to some things like dismissive doctors and broken hearts, they haven’t changed at all.

Written by: Brittany Shoot, February 18th 2011

Living Downstream: An Ecologist’s Personal Investigation of Cancer and the Environment

admin — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Sandra Steingraber

Da Capo

In the original 1997 edition of Living Downstream, Sandra Steingraber was the first to compare data on toxic releases with data from U.S. cancer registries. In the last ten years since this edition was published, there has been rapid growth in the understanding of environmental links to human cancer and new published findings that corroborate the evidence Steingraber compiled in 1997. With a Ph.D. in biology and a Master's degree in creative writing, Steingraber has been the recipient of many awards, including Chatham College's Rachel Carson Leadership Award in 2001 and a Hero Award from the Breast Cancer Fund in 2006. Living Downstream is both a personal story of Steingraber's battle with cancer and her investigation into the potential sources of carcinogens released into the air, land, and water in and around her hometown of Normandale in West-Central Illinois, as well as in other areas of the United States.

Thirty years ago, when Steingraber was a twenty-year-old college student, she learned that she had bladder cancer and was surprised when her urologist asked her whether she had ever been exposed to textile dyes or worked in a tire factory or the aluminum industry. The author later learned that bladder cancer was considered a quintessential environmental cancer. In other words, there was more evidence linking it to toxic chemical exposure than to any other type of cancer. However, although bladder carcinogens had been identified, they continue to be used by industry even today. The obvious question, of course, is why have these chemicals not been banned. The reader quickly discovers that cancer causation is complex, as is proving the source responsible for this disease.

The author reminds her readers that of the 80,000 synthetic chemicals currently in use in the U.S., only about two percent have been tested for carcinogenicity and only five have been banned under the U.S. Toxics Substances Control Act since 1976. We also learn that the U.S. environmental regulatory system does not require exhaustive toxicological testing of chemicals before they are marketed. Legal limits are set on chemical releases, but, as we recently learned with bisphenol A (BPA), trace amounts can be more harmful to humans than higher doses. Moreover, we are often exposed to many contaminants simultaneously in the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we ingest, and the land where we live and work.

Often compared with Rachel Carson, Steingraber makes some compelling arguments in favor of the precautionary principle, or the better-safe-than-sorry approach to chemicals. She also advocates the principle of reverse onus, which holds producers responsible for proving that their products will not harm the public, as is the case for pharmaceutical companies.

Sandra Steingraber has the expertise in science to give her the necessary authority to present an investigation of this scope and the impeccable writing to make it accessible to a wide audience. Although some environmental texts can be dry, Steingraber's writing and personal story make for a compelling read. Her drive and commitment to finding the missing pieces of the cancer jigsaw puzzle are humbling. I only wish that she had included a map of Tazewell County, Illinois, which we repeatedly visit throughout the book. A few diagrams of some the atoms she describes would have also been nice.

In short, if you have ever thought that the environment may have played a role in the death of a loved one and would like to know more, this is the book for you.

Written by: Heather Leighton, June 9th 2010

I Just Lately Started Buying Wings: Missives From The Other Side of Silence

admin — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 16:01:00 +0000

By Kim Dana Kupperman

Graywolf Press

I Just Lately Started Buying Wings is a collection of memories and letters, speaking out from places of silence. Throughout the text, Kim Dana Kupperman conveys an enduring need to bring chosen tragedies to light and does so vigorously. She talks about her past in a cautious and gentle style, like cleaning a raw wound with salt water: painful yet cleansing.

The book unravels stories about difficult moments in life, describing the deaths of her mother and father, the after effects of radiation pollution in Chernobyl, and failed intimacy in her romantic relationships. She explores the many inner emotions that come along with these trying stages in life, and exposes her past bravely. One of her stories describes her trips to Russia and Ukraine, a private quest to learn more about her family's history. She constantly uses her imagination to investigate her ancestors, like fantasizing her grandmother walking the streets of Kiev. She is constantly searching for a connection between her identity and kin, but instead, she finds herself detached and is “reminded that the business of returning to a place that doesn't belong to me is impossible.”

This intimately detailed storytelling releases sweet sorrow that is rich and poetic. Each chapter is full of vivid imagery that fully traverses all the senses. She inspects small details in her memories: the smell of her lover's breath, or the texture of her mother's feet. The reader is brought daringly close to these personal realities. However, within the numerous events and settings, there is a pervading disconnectedness that distracts from the powerful writing. The loose themes of ancestry and “failed flight” ineffectively tie all these tales together.

Apart from the dispersed themes, Kupperman's “missives” are pungent; full of pain, resentment, and bitter love.

Written by: Cinthia Pacheco, June 8th 2010

Brainscan #24 and #25

admin — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 16:01:00 +0000

Alex Wrekk

Putting one’s life on display is, in essence, quite a courageous act. Yet in this time of reality television, it is becoming more of a norm, infused with a sense of banality. Thank goodness for zines, where our need to know intimate details of strangers’ lives is a collaboration of intelligence between people who actually think about stuff, write with a purpose, and use their experiences to connect, grow, and reach out to their community.

Brainscan is an extremely personal zine. Its author, Alex Wrekk, is a zine superstar, and rightly so. Author of the popular how-to guide of zine-making, Stolen Sharpie Revolution, over fifteen years of zine-making under her belt, and the most intimate details of her life photocopied, stapled, and mailed around the world, this is a woman committed to taking her experiences in life and putting them on display in a way that is not for ratings or profit. Rather, she does it for the love of writing, creating, and sharing.

The most recent issues of Brainscan, #24 and #25, (which come as a set when ordered from Alex’s site Small World Buttons) are quite different from each other yet enjoyable in their own ways.

Brainscan #24 is a small collection of vignettes containing snippets from Wrekk’s life, such as her love for good beer and why her zine is called Brainscan. They are musings that give a good overview of Wrekk’s thoughts and attitudes without delving very deeply into any particular subject, making it a quick read and a nice sneak peak into someone else’s brain.

Brainscan #25, on the other hand, is much weightier, and concentrates on the story of Wrekk finding her way back to her true love, Paul, after being in an abusive marriage and growing exponentially as a person. Issue #21 of Brainscan is widely known throughout the zine community as it detailed the breakup of Wrekk’s marriage and is celebrated as a courageous story of overcoming abuse. This current issue touches on some of those subjects but is more of a celebration of finding the strength to love and being true to your heart.

The zine sometimes gets a bit painfully intimate to read, bordering on too much information, but it leaves you breathless with its honesty. It is constructed nicely, both visually and thematically, with flashbacks of Wrekk’s early relationship with Paul interspersed through a chronological telling of the dissolution of her marriage, and journey through learning to love herself and other people in new and radical ways.

Grammar and spell-check go out the window, on par with the zine making genre which rebels in both content and construction to mainstream publishing norms. Reading Brainscan is like you have gone into Wrekk’s house, sat on her bed, and read her diary, but she invites this intimacy, keeping no secrets. This style of writing is extremely feminist as it takes subjects women are told to keep hidden and be ashamed of and puts them out into the world, with a sense of acknowledgment and pride in personal growth, and the sharing of stories, in turn facilitating community dialogue.

Written by: Jyoti Roy, June 3rd 2010

Taking Women in New Directions: Stories from the Second Wave of the Women's Movement

admin — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Paula Kassell

Hudson House

Paula Kassell's Taking Women in New Directions is not what it sounds like. Rather than being stories about the women's movement in the '70s and '80s, it is primarily a collection of articles that Kassell wrote for the feminist newspaper, New Directions for Women (which she also co-founded and ran out of her own home for seven years). The newspaper was published from 1972-1993, and at its peak had a circulation of 65,000.

The articles themselves are in the form of newspaper clippings, one every page or two (for a total of sixty), and are accompanied by family and personal photos, all of which makes the ninety-seven-page book seem more like a scrapbook than a text. Other than the clippings and photos, there is an eight-page history of the newspaper, also written by Kassell; a couple of pieces about Kassell written by others, Kassell's feminist curriculum vita; and some correspondence between Kassell and an editor. The result is an odd mix of self-promotion and social history.

This doesn't mean that the book is without value. It functions well as a primary source of second wave feminist writing. Kassell always documented her sources and was careful to provide detailed information about the books and organizations she referred to. The articles, editorials, book reviews, and columns, which are presented chronologically, cover a wide range of feminist issues, from equal pay to reproductive rights. One thing that was interesting about reading the book was seeing how many of the issues Kassell wrote about are still not resolved today.

The publisher, Hudson House is a “vanity” press. I give Kassell credit for putting forth the effort to compile the contents, have the book published, and undertake book signings at the age of ninety-one. (The book was published in 2008.) The impression I got is that Kassell wanted to leave behind a testimonial to her work in the feminist movement, primarily, but not solely, in terms of her contributions to New Directions for Women. For example, one of the her accomplishments was to help persuade the New York Times to begin using the honorific “Ms.” (It was one of the last major newspapers to do so.) And she is justifiably proud of all the organizations she joined or helped to found over the years.

The strength of this book is that it shows how the personal life of one woman can contribute to the impact of an entire movement. It is a good answer to those who say that the feminist movement is no longer necessary because all of its goals have been met. And yet the things that have changed have been through the efforts of women like Paula Kassell.

Written by: Ellen Keim, June 1st 2010

Was That Supposed To Be Funny?

admin — Mon, 31 May 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Lauren Barnett

One can never truly pinpoint what feminism looks like. Sometimes it’s the faces of celebrities, proudly claiming the F-word; sometimes it’s a swarm of protesters gathering on the National Mall. And sometimes it’s a crown of broccoli asserting its dancing ability to a bullying stalk of asparagus. In her latest work, Was That Supposed to be Funny, Brooklyn-based cartoonist/blogger Lauren Barnett uses personal anecdotes as well as personified vegetables to invite the reader into her quirky, droll mind.

While the comic does not serve as the site for feminist criticism, Barnett’s presentation of her own experiences as a woman offers fertile ground for exploring the cultural constructs that pervade the female experience. The title alone, inspired by a sixth grade note between the author and a classmate, conjures memories of bra-snapping boys, sexist teachers, landlords, and doctors plus a lifetime of pop-culture references in which the joke is on us. While hunting for an apartment, she is nearly scammed out of her $500 deposit, and completely scammed out of the apartment. One is left to wonder, would the apartment have been secured if the boyfriend with whom she will share it had been the one handling the shady broker?

The most poignant—and strangely hilarious—moments are Barnett’s inclusion of actual diary entries from her adolescence, written verbatim, and brought to life in black and white illustration. Watching Jaws, a nine-year-old Barnett is saddened by the death of “the pretty girl” and later makes history as President of the United States Niki Taylor, supported by her secretary, and best friend, Cindy Crawford. Barnett’s work is a charming and unique representation of the third wave of feminism and a generation of women no longer succumbing to silence. In a country where women are still underpaid and outnumbered by men in a number of fields including publishing, animation, and comedy, Barnett bravely inserts her voice into the dialogue. The result is a sublimely feminist, refreshingly entertaining, and utterly relevant documentation of one woman’s world.

Written by: Alicia Sowisdral, May 31st 2010

Lahore with Love: Growing Up with Girlfriends, Pakistani-Style

admin — Mon, 10 May 2010 16:01:00 +0000

By Fawzia Afzal-Khan

Syracuse University Press

A poet’s power lies not only in her well-crafted images but in the rhythm of her recitation. As I read Lahore With Love, the memoir of Fawzia Afzal-Khan, I longed to hear her read the volume aloud. Many parts of her story poured out in a stream of consciousness, and her anecdotes deftly wove between youth and adulthood, lighthearted desires and the pain of loss, politics and the laughter of girlfriends.

Afzal-Khan interweaves her personal story with key elements in the history of the establishment of Pakistan, her homeland, which was formed just ten years before her birth. The painful string of military dictatorships running her country creates a mirror for the tragic experiences endured by her girlfriends. As she writes, with foreboding, “I have sensed disaster coming their way, my way, my country’s way.” In some ways, Afzal-Khan escaped disaster: she is a professor in the English Department at Montclair State University (New Jersey), a scholar of postcolonial studies, a poet, and an actress. Yet while she lives a successful life in the United States, she carries with her a complicated sorrow and relief, a pain of loss that is aggravated each time she visits Pakistan and sees some new wounds inflicted upon her home and her loved ones.

Lahore With Love gives us vignettes of upper middle class life in a culture where propriety called for gender-segregated social gatherings, but someone was always ready to break rules. The line between acceptable “colonial” habits (Catholic school) and the dangerous “Western decadence” (art school) was at times thin and slippery. As the author forges her own self-identity, the nation also seeks a shape; she heads to the U.S. to obtain her PhD, and Pakistan begins to undergo Islamization, with new layers of reactionary rules added to the old. There is nothing dry about the presentation of material; in one bloody chapter, the story of Shia martyrs is juxtaposed with bullfighting in Spain.

At times I would have enjoyed seeing the vignettes fleshed out more fully, and I suspect some readers will want a volume of Pakistani history by their side to read further about incidents to which the author refers. However, any changes to the unique narrative structure would detract from the author’s intense style. Her voice is the one we use when we long for a reunion with dear friends who are now gone, or hunger to return to the past to stop tragedy from striking, or barely restrain our anger at the callousness of our fellow humans.

Afzal-Khan asks, “Are we doomed to inhabit this binary universe or can we challenge the system that turns us into the roles we wear like selves?” She sets for the reader a powerful mold-breaking example when she self-identifies as “actorsingerpoetactivistmemoirist.”

Written by: Lisa Rand, May 10th 2010

I Have a Song for You

admin — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Bucket Siler

I am so excited to be reviewing a zine this month! My love of little magazines and homegrown self-publishing began as soon as my level of dexterity allowed for scissors, paste, and a stapler to be wielded with semi-precision. This love of writing, crafting, and publishing blossomed into a passionate obsession during my first year of college, when I edited the school literary journal and stayed up all night making chapbooks. So it was with especial glee that I received Bucket Siler’s second zine, I Have a Song for You.

This collection of six stories, three letters, and one piece of “miscellany” is beautifully made with delicate thread binding that should be handled with care. Each cover is Gocco handprinted (Gocco is a home screen printing device) and bears a sweet, cheerful, hand-painted balloon in one of varying primary colors. Other whimsical, comic-style object illustrations are sprinkled throughout the zine (in black and white) and made me think of the comfort that can be found in ordinary things, like public school-style chairs, a pair of dice, cup of black coffee, or a swing set.

Known to be the first page many browsers flip to when deciding whether or not to purchase a magazine, the final page is one usually dedicated to bold and compelling content. In this case, the final page of I Have a Song for You is the single item of “miscellany”: a collage of quotes that are funny, imaginative, sad, and kind of crazy. It’s the perfect window into the flavor of this zine and Bucket Siler’s writing.

The opening story, “The Sun Shines Forever,” has a teacher who risks her job to connect with a troubled student because it seems the teacher may need that connection to the limitless possibilities youth can dream. In a story about a marshmallow creature who becomes the “secret friend” of the protagonist, the marshmallow could be a metaphor for a tender, lonely heart, or it could be that the character is crazy, or maybe little marshmallow creatures really might come in and out your window someday, when you need them most.

Of her own stories Bucket says her “one-shot zines” are a mix of “some nonfiction, some fiction, some magicalness.” Until reading this description of her work I couldn’t quite put my finger on the quality Bucket calls “magicalness,” but yes that’s it! While there are strong threads of loneliness and confusion throughout the collection, I also picked up on a voice that held hopefulness and youth. Bucket Siler has songs for the lonely, the lost, those most in need of something to believe in.

Written by: Matsya Siosal, April 10th 2010

American Thighs: The Sweet Potato Queens' Guide to Preserving Your Assets

admin — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 00:02:00 +0000

By Jill Conner Browne

Simon & Schuster

Jill Connor Browne, the self-proclaimed Sweet Potato Queen, is fifty-five and lives in Jackson, Mississippi. Her newest book, American Thighs, is an amusing but lightweight look at aging from an older Southern woman's point of view. She can be quite funny—I love the phrase “our inexorable trudge into Geezerdom”—though the topics she covers tend towards the trite: how a new hairstyle won't help you get a new job or boyfriend, how silly it is for her daughter and her college classmates to dress up in fancy gowns for football games, and so on.

The book is a collection of anecdotes from Browne's life and those of friends, acquaintances, and readers, and with each chapter on a distinct subject, it lacks a unifying theme. In “No Matter What Skin You're In,” she relays several stories dealing with the importance of skin care and visiting your dermatologist. She notes that attitudes towards skin damage prevention have changed noticeably from when she was younger, when it was most people's goal to get a deep tan in the summer. “For many hapless White people, this was and is simply a physical impossibility—not that they allowed the absolute absence of melanin in their skin to serve as any kind of deterrent or discouragement.”

Using a semi-bawdy humor that is sprinkled throughout the book, Browne also tells an amusing story of a man who went to the dermatologist to have a mole near his genitals removed. The nurse administering his shot said, “Just a little prick.” Poor Jud could only respond, “That's just adding insult to injury.”

Another chapter, “Howdy, Sports Fans,” contains a story about Browne and two female friends catching a big fish on a lake, the football game rituals at her daughter's college (Ole Miss), and an inspirational story of a sixty-eight-year-old woman who became the gold medalist in the long jump in the Senior Olympics, although she had never been a fitness buff before. It's a good representation of the mixtures of smartass observations and incredible and inspiring stories in the book. Sprinkled throughout the text are Browne's “Asset Preserving Tips,” which include such epiphanies as “karma does not like smug,” and emphasizing the importance of exercise for both your body and mind.

I was put off by Browne's penchant for capital letters and colloquial phrases. Yes, you may say “prolly” instead of “probably” when speaking, but in a written text, please use the correct term. And while selective capitalization can effectively highlight big ideas, when used five times on a page it loses its punch.

Browne has a bit of the “folksy wisdom” some find endearing in Sarah Palin, but Browne is a lot smarter and isn't afraid to swear when the occasion calls for it, which makes for a rather refreshing antidote to the Southern belle persona. Like many “advice” books that are really anecdote collections, American Thighs does not offer anything revolutionary. It contains stories that are by turns cute, amusing, and inspirational, and reading it will certainly add some lightheartedness to your day.

Written by: Karen Duda, March 17th 2010

Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963

admin — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 17:01:00 +0000

By David Rieff, Susan Sontag

Picador

When reading fictionalized journals, one never experiences the sense of the guilt that results from a real intrusion into someone’s private thoughts and personal life. The fictive writer simply does not exist. When the journal being read belongs to someone who has had a very real public persona, the reader will always experience a few uncomfortable moments. In reading Susan Sontag’s journals, this feeling is amplified tenfold. Firstly, these are the journals of a young woman who eventually became a famous writer and intellectual—the journals start when Sontag is only fourteen years of age. Secondly, the fact that her son, editor and author David Rieff, edited the journals for publication and glimpsed his mother’s private garden is a bit daunting.

From the outset, the thorny question of the dual son-editor role that David Rieff plays should be addressed. Any editor would have chosen to trim down the journals, which span sixteen years of Sontag’s life. This period, and the resulting length of the journals, would be excessive for any publication, and Rieff plans to issue two other tomes covering the rest of her personal writing. In choosing to publish the journals in the first place, the decision to “censure” some of its parts seems questionable. Censure is a term Rieff clearly rejects, citing “the literary dangers and moral hazards of such an enterprise.” But, how could he not let his own emotions act as filters to his mother’s journals’ contents? Rieff sometimes selects “a few representative entries,” while other times he omits complete sections intentionally (as with Sontag’s notes about her trip to Italy) and includes thoughts that had been redacted in the original journals by Sontag herself. Inexplicably for someone so prolific in her journal-keeping, there is a notable absence of notebooks for the years 1951-1952, the years Sontag was first married.

Sontag’s journals were clearly not meant for an audience, contrary to some journals of other famous authors. In his (often moving) introduction, Rieff recognizes that his “decision [to publish] certainly violates [his mother’s] privacy.” The notebooks consist of Sontag’s private thoughts and experiences, and also of random lists, facts, and information. They were most certainly kept by the author to remind herself of some of these pieces of information: films seen, books read, or to be read. It could be argued that the fact that she abbreviates some of her lovers’ names meant she was concerned about possible readers (or snoops) and she also codes some words/ideas with an “X” which Reiff does not (cannot?) interpret.

Sontag’s journals provide some fascinating insight into the author’s development from late adolescence into adulthood, and provide rare glimpses into very private aspects of her life: her homosexuality, her divorce, and various other life experiences. Her “feelings” and personal insights, which we normally associate with a personal journal, are only a minor element in the journals, but probably what most readers will seek the most in her private writings. Although much of the material starts off with a date and the editor provides some guidance in deciphering the entries (possible locations, for example), one only gets the sense, but for brief moments, that we are “along for the ride” with Sontag. As all who have attempted to write journals know, the writing is often sporadic, linked to decisive moments in life and/or strong emotions. For Sontag, as they are for most people, these notable periods were the beginnings of her studies in university and of her writing, her homosexual adventures, the birth and raising of her son, and some of her travels. These snapshots show a different side of Sontag, one that does not always match her public persona. She questions her reactions to love and carnal pleasures, motherhood, marriage, and filial relationships, among other things.

Usually, the publication of journals or correspondence takes place many years after a person’s passing. Sontag passed on in 2004 and this publication allows us to discover another side of her, since the journals were the vehicle for, as she called it, her “sense of selfhood.”

Written by: Sophie M. Lavoie, February 3rd 2010

A Place of Belonging: Five Founding Women of Fairbanks, Alaska

admin — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 09:00:00 +0000

By Phyllis Demuth Movius

University of Alaska Press

The thing I remember most about my brief visit to Alaska is that even in Anchorage, I could feel the lessening of human population as soon as I stepped off of the plane. It was palpable, the very lack of people, the beautiful expanse of green just across the water, and I found it soothing in such a deep, soulful way that I promised myself I would return.

Alaska is still a frontier in some real ways and within our collective imagination, although with modern conveniences it is nowhere near what it was for the five women whose stories make up A Place of Belonging. Each settled in Fairbanks between 1903 and 1923 and helped to build the still struggling frontier town.

Even today, if a girlfriend told you she was up and moving to Alaska, it might seem a brave and courageous thing to do. Despite what Sarah Palin did to its reputation, Alaska was and is a place of great freedom and empowerment for a lot of the women who helped to settle it and who live there today. When the settlers of Fairbanks were trying to find food and clothing to make it through an Alaskan winter, no one questioned the value of every single participant. And when stories of the suffrage movement were told by people coming from the lower states and Europe, these settlers shook their heads and legally empowered women years before the arguments had been quelled in more urban and purportedly intellectual communities.

A Place of Belonging has great academic value, both for women’s studies and the study of U.S. history, as it gives detailed accounts of the lives of these five very different women, citing correspondence and including over seventy black and white photos. Personally, I found it interesting and stimulating reading with enough narrative to entertain while documenting these inspiring lives.

Ms. Movius has an M.A. in Northern Studies from the University of Alaska and has published three other works on the territory.

Written by: Jen Wilson Lloyd, January 22nd 2010

Trailer Trashed: My Dubious Efforts Toward Upward Mobility

admin — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 23:20:00 +0000

By Hollis Gillespie

skirt!

Hollis Gillespie is a mother, writer, friend, sister, girlfriend, daughter and more. Her third book, Trailer Trashed, is comprised of touching and hilarious essays that shed light on all the different aspects of her life. Personal memoirs and essays are very much “in style” as far as writing styles go, but Gillespie’s book is the most up-front, unapologetic, laugh-out-loud, emotional one I’ve read recently.

Gillespie's father sold trailers and drank heavily and her mother made missiles for the government. Her sister moved to South America and runs a bar. She collects trailers (yes, this inevitably stems back to her upbringing and her father’s job!) and worked as a flight attendant while being terrified of flying. The collection of people in her life is beautiful in it’s variety and eccentricity.

Gillespie's writing seems to flow without fear and without rancor for situations that could cripple others: her father drank, she’s a single mother, her family moved a lot, she gave up drinking, etc. The collection is honest and forthright with messages of life and love woven throughout. The general message—though never written so banally as this—seems to be to carry on, persevere, and get things done no matter what obstacles or challenges you might face. Surround yourself with people you love and who love you.

If you are in the Atlanta area, take advantage of the many classes and workshops that Hollis Gillespie offers. She teaches everything from new media and blogging to get your book published. The workshops run every couple of weeks. One of the little gems I gathered from simply looking around her website is that if you’re writing about yourself, particularly about trauma or stress you’ve gone through, make sure that you don’t write with pity or with bitterness. It’s a tidbit I’ve begun reminding myself of as I write.

Written by: Kristin Conard, September 27th 2009

Andheri

admin — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 23:53:00 +0000

Directed by Sushrut Jain

Tenth Road Productions

This short film was Sushrut Jain's final project at the USC School of Cinematic Arts. He plans to expand the character study into a feature length film. Shot on the street in a Mumbai suburb of the same name, Andheri does an exceptional job of communicating what it feels like to walk down the street in urban India. Every movie with an Indian scene seems to have a few crowded streets where the camera jostles and token cows, beggar children, and colorful saris move through the frame. Granted, all that does happen on the street in India, but unlike Bollywood movies, Western studio productions, and poverty porn films (ahem, Slumdog Millionaire), Andheri's street scenes are mundane. No men with painted faces carry a pile of cloth the size of a Volkswagen on their heads. It does not happen to be Holi when people throw colored powder all over each other. Unless creepy old men on buses are an icon—and perhaps they are, although not a particularly Indian one—this film is devoid of cliché. Ignoring these pointed images of India, Jain seems to have just held a camera at waist level and taken a walk on a random weeknight.

The story is of a young woman (Swati Sen) employed, apparently for her whole life, as live-in maid to a rather grotesque woman (Daisy Irani) obsessed with soap operas and a good foot soak. She is disrespected, but not (in this version of the story, at least) abused, and seems well taken care of, however limited her options. The movie hints at all the themes that Indian cinema and films about India generally hit on—caste and social order, poverty, Muslims, romance, and the shackles of tradition. Should our heroine make a break for it?

Out on the street a whole potential alternate life opens up. The short film takes place in that suspended period when you've made your move, but there is still time to turn back. The story, Jain has explained, came from the stories he heard from maids, working people, and other underground characters in India. Andheri's plot was loosely based on one story he had heard, the teller of which got to take part in the filming.

In Indian cinema a film like this is called a "realistic." Funny that a very obvious word becomes a tag line. Although, as in the West, the action flicks and canned rom-coms will always dominate, there is the opportunity now for personal stories to find an audience.

Andheri has been well received at festivals, winning official selection at over a dozen events this year. It was shot with a relatively small crew of about twenty on. Go figure, a random weeknight in Mumbai. Jain is, in addition to expanding the story of Andheri, working on a coming of age comedy about boys taking their board exams, but all they want to do is start a heavy metal band.

Written by: Ann Raber, September 23rd 2009