stereotypes

Love, Honor, and Betray

brittany — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 20:00:00 +0000

Before I started to read it, this book held lots of promise; the cover tells of the author’s previous books being on the New York Times bestseller list. Unfortunately, I had not had the pleasure of reading any other of Kimberla Lawson Roby’s books. Since reading Love, Honor, and Betray, I have come to realize that one of its characters, the Reverend Curtis Black, was at the centre of a series of an eight books by the same author. This series forms a sort of soap opera narrative around this character and his family that has apparently had quite a bit of success. Lawson Roby is certainly a very prolific writer, having published fifteen books since 1997 and been the recipient of many prizes at the African American Literary Awards Show. Her books have a cult following.

Since reading the book, I have realized that I am perhaps not the best person to critique it. My feminist bent is too strong to not be offended by much of what the novel contains. The easy good versus evil dichotomy is maintained throughout the novel, with the main character, Charlotte, painted as a despicable woman and completely vilified by the author to suit the narrative that centers on the “good” Reverend. For example, when the Reverend’s ex-fling passes away, he wants to take in his baby daughter, Curtina, and raise her in his family. However, his wife Charlotte openly hates this child and spends the entire book treating her badly, until the end when she realizes she may lose her husband. While multiple women chase after the handsome Reverend, he stays faithful to his wife while she cheats on him with not just one stranger picked up in a bar, but with a former lover whom she reconnects with on Facebook.

The action in the novel never stops. There are naughty photos of Charlotte sent by cell phone to blackmail her into a subservient sexual relationship. There is a crazed paedophile holding teenagers hostage in a high school. There is a spectacular car crash that almost costs the Reverend his life.

All the characters are attractive one-dimensional mannequins who live an opulent way of life. This lifestyle is probably eons away from any of Lawson Roby’s readers. Charlotte gets back at her husband by maxing out his credit cards ($25,000) at the shopping centre, her son with the Reverend, Matthew drives a brand new luxury car at the age of seventeen, and they have a fulltime housekeeper. The ultimate cliché was the Obama-style fist bump the Reverend and Matthew give each other often in the novel.

Perhaps if I had read the previous novels, this would be a more interesting story; I have been known to follow soap operas in the past. But, the only thing that kept me turning the pages was the fact that I couldn’t believe that it could be any worse. Towards the end of the book, I was able to conceive of a redemptive factor through the fact that Lawson Roby’s publisher had included discussion questions for reading groups. Perhaps the purpose of the book is to discuss its transparent dichotomy and its one-dimensional characters?

Written by: Sophie M. Lavoie, March 15th 2011

Freak Nation: A Field Guide to 101 of the Most Odd, Extreme, and Outrageous American Subcultures

gwen — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 20:00:00 +0000

By Kate Stevens

Adams Media

As the subheading states, Freak Nation is truly a field guide to American subcultures. Its format presents each group as if it were a species of bird in a bird-watching guide. For instance, you can learn where they are typically found, what their most distinctive trait is, and how to recognize one in “the wild.” Much of this humorous book plays upon stereotypes and pokes generous fun at these subcultures and what makes them so, well, fascinating.

The subcultures are divided into the following categories: collectibles, fashion, art, food and drink, lifestyles, music, sports and games, pastimes and careers, politics, sex, society, and technology. It’s a bit difficult to determine what criteria the author used in selecting these categories and deciding whish group should be placed in each. I would argue that a great many of them would fall under the general heading of lifestyle. The entire “food and drink” section, for example, certainly qualifies as a lifestyle (i.e., vegans, macrobioticists, etc.). “Pastimes and careers” is another general heading that could include all of the sports players and fans, as well as the tattoo artists and slam poets. Qualms about categorizations aside, a great many of Stevens’ vivid descriptions had me guffawing and thinking of friends and acquaintances that perfectly fit into the various stereotypes.

Although many of these groups were already familiar to me, there were a few that were completely new or foreign to me. For instance, I had never heard of Bilderbergers, or major political and business figures from the U.S. and Europe that meet for an annual hush-hush conference. I was also unfamiliar with Bennies, who are apparently people that spend their summers at New Jersey beaches. The name BENNY is an acronym of the places from which these people hail: Bayonne, Elizabeth, Newark, and New York. Even if you do already know all about these various subcultures and groups, this book still makes for a fun, tongue-in-cheek guide to some of the more extreme and adventurous members of our society.

Written by: Shana Mattson, February 26th 2011

Imagining Black Womanhood: The Negotiation of Power and Identity Within the Girls Empowerment Project

beth — Sat, 20 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Stephanie D. Sears

SUNY Press

Imagining Black Womanhood by Stephanie D. Sears is a sociological account of the experiences of young African-American girls within the Girls Empowerment Project (GEP), an “Afri-centric, womanist, single-sex, after-school program” in Sun Valley, the largest housing development in Bay City, California. Set against the backdrop of a “nation’s collective anxieties” regarding Black women and girls, Imagining Black Womanhood is a well-researched and thoughtful interrogation of race, gender, and class and how the experiences of young Black girls struggling to resist stereotypes within and outside the GEP project speak to broader questions of power, privilege, and politics. Despite the (ironically) unimaginative title, Imagining Black Womanhood is a commendable effort by Sears to question, with equal academic rigor, discourses of empowerment, as well as oppression, in addition to showing how the biases that inform many of the stereotypes that these girls must struggle against come from across the political spectrum and across racial lines.

Sears sets the historical stage well, by tracing images of poor Black women and girls as “welfare queens” to the Reagan administration’s dismantling of the welfare state and its promotion of “trickle-down” economics, with its explicit finger-pointing at the “impoverished African-American female” as an undeserving recipient of benefits. By laying bare the racial and gender stereotypes that underlie these and other predominant images (such as “teen mothers”) of young Black women in the public imagination, Sears demonstrates how discourses from both Black and dominant communities have attempted to control the sexuality of young Black women—and have shaped the context for the growth of projects such as GEP.

Against this background, Sears describes how despite its aim to “empower” and enable Black girls to counter racial and gender stereotypes, GEP inadvertently reproduced many of these discourses in both its structure as an organization as well as its method of work. GEP’s explicit aim, when it initially conducted an assessment of problems such as teen pregnancy and poverty among Black girls, was to “challenge and change…unequal power relations and resource distribution”—that is, the structural issues underpinning Black girls’ social status in Sun Valley. However, despite this goal, GEP’s more pragmatic choice to try and effect change in areas where they could have most impact, meant that they ended up addressing the symptoms of discrimination rather than challenging the structures of power responsible for them. In doing so, GEP fell back on middle class cultural values and notions of “respectability,” attempting to erase what they viewed as the cultural markers of the “ghetto underclass”—such as the hypersexualization and objectification of young Black women—but with them, also the sense of self-hood and lived experiences of the young girls of GEP.

The above is illustrated most interestingly in the section entitled “Dance Lessons,” in which Sears shows how the struggle over sexuality, power, and identity between GEP and the young girls who attend it, is enacted through the “embodied politics” of dance. Prompted by the Afro-centric ideology of GEP, GEP staff’s attempts to encourage the girls to perform African dances (this bearing, in their eyes, the respectable currency of tradition) is countered by the girls’ desire to “express who they are” through contemporary hip-hop numbers. Sears stages the generational and class confrontation between the GEP staff and the girls through their conflicting perceptions of “appropriate” displays of sexuality, respectability, and respect, thereby asking the question that lies at the heart of Imagining Black Womanhood—what does “empowerment” mean, and to whom? How are notions of empowerment intertwined with class and cultural values? And what happens when processes of empowerment attempt to reconstitute the identity of she who is seen to be a “recipient” rather than an equal participant in this process? Sears’ book is a dense but rewarding read, not just for academics but for anyone interested in confronting these questions.

Written by: Kaavya Asoka, November 19th 2010

Queen of the Night

andrea — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By J.A. Jance

William Morrow Printing

There is only one word to describe J.A. Jance’s Queen of the Night: lazy. Reading it makes you feel like you’ve turned on a bad soap opera. Plot lines pick up in the middle, then disappear. Certain twists appear out of nowhere, and connect to nothing else. Some characters come in with no introduction, relationships are assumed between others.

The book is apparently a sequel to Day of Dead, though this is not mentioned anywhere. It opens with a murder on a beach in San Diego in 1959. This murder is not the mystery to be solved; it’s solved three quarters of the way in, and is not connected to anything else. The focus then shifts to Tucson, Arizona, where a cast of dozens is introduced and haphazardly connected to each other. The story is focused around an annual party for the opening of the Queen of the Night flowers.

The mystery lacks edge, making it feel like color-by-numbers plotting. We know who the murderer is before the murder is committed, and this person is barely connected to the rest of the characters. The murderer is not sympathetic enough to draw the reader in, and not depraved enough to be interesting. If you’ve watched a procedural TV show in the last five years, you easily can follow all of the threads to their inevitable end.

I wanted to get angry about the Native American stereotypes, but the fact is all of the characters are badly drawn. That said, some of the Native Americans are stoic older types with names like Looks at Nothing, who use traditions to decide everything, including whether to go to parties. Others are more westernized and feel bad about it. Or they are portrayed as greedy, superstitious drunks who live in fear and rob at will. The Anglo characters are wealthy, kindhearted, and well-educated.

The laziness even negates some of the potentially interesting ideas, like the fact that one of the older women is haunted by her abusive first husband, and believes she has early onset Alzheimer’s. How can her grandson also see him? (Answer: he’s a future medicine man, because tribes need medicine men, obviously.) But wait, no, it is just the interaction of some medication she’s taking. (But her grandson? Medicine man!)

The characters of Queen of the Night are easily drawn and the plot is boring, although simple to follow. However, Jance is a talented author as evidenced by her previous books such as Birds of Prey and Partner in Crime. Find one of those books, if you are really interested in reading her best work.

Written by: Taylor Rhodes, November 4th 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

The Codes of Gender: Identity and Performance in Pop Culture

admin — Mon, 17 May 2010 00:01:00 +0000

Directed by Sut Jhally

Media Education Foundation

The main theme of The Codes of Gender is “commercial realism.” As explained by the narrator of this film, Sut Jhally, Professor of Communication at the University of Massachusetts, a code of gender has to be understood as a shorthand language, a set of rules and behaviors. This is how Jhally analyzes the ways in which both women and men are portrayed in advertisements and on the covers of glossy magazines.

The film is based on the works of the Canadian social anthropologist Erving Goffman, who was born in Alberta in 1922. His greatest contribution to social theory and to gender representation was the analysis of visual communication between spectators, the subjects of their attention and how attitudes about gender are shaped by culture and society.

The film starts with an explanation of the difference between biological sex identity and constructed gender identity, which leads to the process of contrasting these identities in magazine advertising for commercial films. Gender expressions on magazine covers are skillfully manipulated to reflect the identity of women and men– not as they are, but how they should be, according to a societal norm. The women in the advertisements are posed in awkward positions. They lie down with their heads tilted off balance, stand on one leg, or kneel to suggest powerlessness, submission and dependence. Women become sexualized and accepting of their helplessness, embodying both men’s desire and subordination to them. In contrast, men are portrayed as active. Their poses suggest power, strength, and control.

As an example, Professor Jhally uses a clip from the Seinfield TV series that shows the lead character dating an attractive woman with hands that are big, rough, and strong, like the ‘normal’ hands of a man. Jerry Seinfield is put off by the image and loses interest in the woman.

A second example is Danica Patrick, an American auto racing driver, who is also an athlete and therefore does not fit with the stereotypical image of ‘natural’ femininity. But Patrick is portrayed on the magazine covers in the same way as other women. She lies down, ready to be gazed at–weak and submissive. Paul Marciano, founder of Guess, is portrayed as selecting images of passive women for Guess advertisements, as if he was making a statement that ‘women should know their place.’

Another striking feature of the visual images is the association of women with childhood. As though they never left this part of their lives behind, in commercials women are frequently portrayed as childlike, with fingers in their mouths. Women's posture with men is that of father and daughter: constantly hiding behind men, snuggling with men for protection, or resting their heads on men’s arms in sweet and helpless positions. Men, on the contrary, are shown in straight posture, muscular and strong, and project a hyper-masculine image of ‘accepted normality’.

The Codes of Gender will be of interest to all who question the visual images of what is deemed natural and normal. The film is well-made and presented, and it serves as a fitting tribute to Goffman (who died in Philadelphia in 1982). His work was underestimated when he was alive, but his contributions to ‘the codes of gender’ are as equally valid today as they were thirty years ago.

Written by: Anna Hamling, May 16th 2010

Afraid to Go Home

admin — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 07:50:00 +0000

By Baden Hill

JB & ME Publishing

Afraid to Go Home tells the story of Cathy, a successful career woman who is the head of a large company’s HR Department, but, after two failed marriages, trapped in an abusive relationship with Fred. The book’s subtitle reads: “A novel about domestic violence drawn from the true stories of women who have been tormented at the hands of others.” While the author may have researched domestic violence, Afraid to Go Home paints a picture that misses key points regarding the central dynamics of abusive relationships, and perpetuates victim-blaming stereotypes in its portrayal of the characters.

Cathy Circe (a not-so-subtle reference to the Greek goddess who lured Odysseus’ crew to their destruction) is a rape survivor whose inability to cope with the trauma prevented her from being with her high school sweetheart (and “love of her life”), Chris. She is presented as having been irrevocably damaged by the attack. While it is important to acknowledge sexual violence has life-altering consequences, what comes across in the depiction of her character is the myth that rape survivors are so injured that they cannot relate to men in a healthy way. Cathy is positioned as doomed to enter abusive relationships because she feels she deserves to be hurt, confuses abuse with love, is driven to re-live the trauma by engaging in risky behaviour, and is incapable of recognizing the danger of her situation—beliefs that place the responsibility for violence on those who are the victims of it instead of those are its perpetrators.

Fred is an openly aggressive man who is violent on a daily basis, controlling, and beats and rapes Cathy regularly. Though not initially clear in its victim blaming representation, Fred’s character is one-dimensionally evil, and the reader is given no insight into how the relationship progressed to that point. The poorly explained relationship invites the reader to question Cathy—why does an otherwise smart and successful woman marry and stay with such a monster?—instead of exposing the complicated dynamics of abusive relationships that often involve a subtle and gradual progression of various forms of violence mixed with apologies, loving charm, regret, and promises to never hurt again. Because we’ve never known Fred to be a nice guy, the reader concludes Cathy is so broken that she can’t even recognize, and thus flee from, pure evil.

There are many other similarly problematic characterizations: the overweight secretary who responds to her wedding being called off by sleeping with her boss (who only complies out of pity) and living as a crazy cat lady in a messy house and women repeatedly getting on their knees to reward a guy for doing the right thing.

In Afraid to Go Home’s 415 pages there was enough room to explore the complexities of domestic violence, as well as develop a plot and characters that could shed some light on how perpetrators manage to lure in, manipulate, and control their victims. Instead, the book invites victim blaming and is full of stereotypical female characters. While it is nice the author didn’t give in to the temptation of having Cathy rescued by a prince on a white horse at the end, Afraid to Go Home is one of those books that means well, but actually does more harm than good.

Written by: Annette Przygoda, September 16th 2009

District 9

admin — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 17:01:00 +0000

By Neill Blomkamp

WingNut Films

In 1982 an alien spacecraft descends into the Earth’s stratosphere and hovers for months over Johannesburg, South Africa. Humans, alternately fearing that the aliens are hostile and hoping that they are harbingers of technological advances, board the ship. They are disappointed to discover that the aliens are neither, being nothing more than incredibly ill and malnourished refugees from a distant planet. Human governments around the world provide aid for the aliens while they bicker over what to do with them. Eventually tensions between humans and the aliens (derisively known as “prawns”) spill over and the aliens are herded into District 9, a trash strewn shanty town. The aliens are then restricted from entering certain parts of South Africa.

After nearly thirty years, the world’s governments turn over control to Multi-National United (MNU), a private contractor much more interested in the advanced weaponry of the aliens than their well-being. A bumbling field agent for MNU, Wikus van der Merwe (Sharlto Copley) is put in charge of relocating more than a million aliens further away from Johannesburg in a new camp. After being sprayed by an unknown substance during a raid, Wikus begins a frightening metamorphosis into an alien. Realizing that Wikus can operate the weaponry due to the fact that his DNA has begun to change (the aliens’ guns cannot operate without alien DNA), MNU plans to experiment on Wikus. Wikus, rightfully fearing for his life, escapes from custody and hides out in District 9 where he seeks help from an alien known as Christopher Johnson. Christopher, who is earlier seen disputing the legality of an eviction notice, has plans of his own.

Inspired by the forced removal of sixty-thousand residents from District 6 in Cape Town, District 9 functions as a metaphor for apartheid-era racial policies. The “prawns” are definitely meant to symbolize members of racial minority groups as they are bipedal, employ verbal communication that is easily understood by humans, and even engage in inter-species sexual relations. The (mostly white) humans put in charge of policing them unthinkingly utilize colonialist arguments to justify their oppressive tactics; “prawns” are stereotyped as uncivilized, aggressive, lacking in initiative, none too bright, and lacking the same concept of land ownership that humans have. And Wikus’ transformation from human to alien mirrors the fates of scores of South African whites who lost their legal standing as whites once the government discovered their “non-white” ancestry.

Despite its interesting premise and inventive storytelling, this movie is eventually undone by its flaws. First, there are a lot of plot holes. For instance, MNU’s decision to kill Wikus and harvest his organs doesn’t make much sense. Isn’t he much more useful to them alive than dead?

Second, racial stereotypes of Africans abound. While always unacceptable, racial stereotypes definitely don’t belong in a movie with an anti-xenophobia message. However, that did not deter the filmmakers from presenting extremely negative images of sub-Saharan Africans. Every black person in District 9 was either: 1) an unthinking toady of white authority figures (Mandla Gaduka), 2) a violent criminal, 3) a believer in witchcraft and superstition, or 4) some combination of 1-3.

I found it very telling that the Nigerian warlords don’t live much better than the “prawns” they regularly exploit. (Even though quite a few Nigerians do live in South Africa, the filmmakers should not have assumed that an international audience would know that, which is yet another flaw in this movie.) I also thought it was odd that none of the South African blacks featured in the film seemed to see any parallels between the aliens’ predicament and their own recent history.

Finally, the third act quickly disintegrates into a standard Hollywood shoot-em-up, and District 9 relies too heavily on gore. Once the audience became aware that the aliens’ military hardware can literally blow its targets to bits, the filmmakers should have kept much of the violence off-screen. I covered my eyes numerous times, and I am not exactly squeamish.

Despite its imperfections, the mockumentary District 9 does make you think while managing to be entertaining, a feat few of the movies released this year have managed to pull off. In fact, District 9 is likely to find a wide audience and make more than a few “Best of 2009” lists.

Written by: Ebony Edwards-Ellis, August 15th 2009

Compulsion

admin — Mon, 18 May 2009 05:42:00 +0000

Directed by Sarah Harding

Nesrine Malik’s scathing review of the ITV drama Compulsion got me thinking a lot more about modern day adaptations of pre-twentieth century literary works featuring ethnic Indian actors. She has fair enough reasons to be perturbed: it seems that when diversity is presented on British TV, what’s served up for a wider, mostly White audience are actually tired stereotypes of overbearing family members, arranged marriages, and the ever recurring theme of honour and shame. Oppressive family values have become the only representative force for British Asians in the media.

The impetus for disaster in Compulsion begins with Parminder Nagra’s character Anjika, who flatly refuses a marriage arranged by her dad, sending out all sorts of warning signals to women out there who disobey The Great Patriarch. The one person who knows of her troubles happens to be her sleazy chauffeur, Flowers (played by Ray Winstone). He offers to ‘fix’ her potential suitor in exchange for one night of sex with her, which she later, tearfully, accepts. So far very Indecent Proposal.

This leads to her discovering how great sex with Flowers is, sealing her doomed fate. But with every tryst she demands of him, we are made to feel diminishing sympathy for her, and somehow more for Flowers, as by now he treated as a sex object(!). Murder and a spontaneous yet elaborate cover-up ends with Flowers dead, leaving Anjika happily off the hook to marry her secret White boyfriend. The end.

Compulsion reminded me, in many ways, of Gurinder Chadha’s cinematic reworking of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, which was renamed, innocuously enough, Bride and Prejudice. The change from ‘pride’ to ‘bride’ seems to suggest a stronger gravitation towards the subject of marriage than the already marriage-heavy Austen original. Here again we see a replay of a corseted, pre-feminist era transposed to the lives of a modern-day, middle class Indian family. Unlike the updated reinvention of Emma in Amy Heckerling’s Clueless, Bride and Prejudice saw no need for a contemporary take that reflected the relaxed attitudes to pre-marital relationships that exist amongst South Asian families today simply because Indians are all perceived to be pretty Victorian anyway!

Now, the similarities between Compulsion and Bride and Prejudice illustrate the melodramatic consequences when Anglo-Indian relationships are attempted. To begin with, both are adapted from works and attitudes from a bygone era. (Compulsion is adapted from a seventeenth-century play called The Changeling by Thomas Middleton and William Rowley.) In Compulsion, Anjika’s White boyfriend is kept a secret from her father due to his initial disapproval, while her sexually-charged relationship with Flowers leads to her self-destruction. Bride and Prejudice’s Lalita and Darcy bicker over their cultural and racial differences, but are reconciled in romantic terms when they end a ‘forbidden’ interracial relationship between Lakhi and Wickham.

There’s also a sense that a middle class happy ending prevails over a working class one. Although we know that Anjika is guilty as hell for keeping mum about her suitor’s murder, she’s seen at the end of the film on her wedding day with her White Cambridge-graduate husband, not with the brutish family driver—the perfect happy ending. In Bride and Prejudice, the servant’s son and scruffy backpacker Wickham is pursued and humiliated in public by both Lalita and Darcy for what only seemed to appear like an illicit outing with Lakhi on the London Eye and at the cinema.

This is where the film departs from the novel’s narrative. Not only do Darcy and Wickham fight to restore Lakhi’s honour, but they exchange blows in a cinema where a classic Bollywood film is being screened. What happens on screen mirrors their circumstances: an actress has her clothes ripped off by a villain, and her honour is at stake, just as Lakhi’s is. The hero suddenly comes into view and he and the baddie fight. Predictably, the heroes, on screen and off, win. The mirroring effect, though skilfully executed by Chadha, seems consciously symbolic. I can’t help feeling that this was her way of compensating for the lack of Indian or Bollywood heroes who, by convention, rescue Bollywood damsels in distress. Further, politically conscious Lalita had once accused Darcy of imperialism, so without classic Bollywood stand-ins it would be overly ironic if Mr. Imperialist alone ended up rescuing Lakhi from possible shame.

Interestingly, Darcy’s Whiteness would never arise as an issue in Bride and Prejudice despite Lalita’s mother remarking, “Pity he’s not Indian.” Also, he manages to redeem his capitalist/imperialist persona after bringing Lakhi home, and ultimately, his transformation from critic to lover of Indian culture is iconified in his playing a kind of traditional drum at Jaya and Balraj’s wedding at the end of the film.

Asian fusion. East meets West. Orientalism. These are the cliched expressions that come to mind when films like Bride and Prejudice are repackaged to meet a growing demand for the easily consumable exotic. The end product becomes a strange hybrid of sorts, belonging neither in Hollywood nor in Bollywood. But one thing’s for sure: through such vehicles (Compulsion included), stereotypes thrive.

Written by: Alicia Izharuddin, May 18th 2009

Things I’ve Learned From Women Who’ve Dumped Me

admin — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 17:04:00 +0000

Edited by Ben Karlin

Grand Central Publishing

I have a love/hate relationship with liberal publications, like the New York Times, that discuss progressive issues and at the same time print articles that seem to use stone age mentality to “prove” the differences between women and men. I am forever intrigued by science’s never-ending love affair with sexual dimorphism, and articles with the headlines “What Do Women Want?” and “Varying Sweat Scents Noted By Women” seem to fill the pages of publications every day.

I have a similar love/hate relationship with Ben Karlin’s collection of essays, Things I’ve Learned From Women Who’ve Dumped Me, which expounds on gender differences for the sake of humor and, at times, offers a bit of insight. I am not alone in my intrigue because, unsurprisingly, this book is a national bestseller.

It also comes as no surprise that the “I” in the title refers exclusively to men, as heteronormativity runs rampant in this book. With the exception of one essay, written by Dan Savage, most of the essays detail the faults and failures of previous relationships and how those relationships prepared the dumped ones for marriage. Marriage is a reoccurring theme in these essays, and it is depicted as the final, succeeding goal for most of the men. Not much seems to be learned in these essays, as the men just realize ways to finagle their way into a less demanding, more comfortable relationship.

While the matters mentioned above encompass the latter part of the love/hate relationship, there is the part of me that loves to read a book like this. As it is a humor book, I release the hold of my feminist lens a bit, and relax into what is otherwise an engaging book. Part of me is curious what the average, mainstream male thinks today of their relationships with women. This book is not so much a birds-eye-view into the hearts and minds of men, but more of a carefully crafted, one-sided story of woe, and nonetheless an honest exposure of feelings.

While many of the essays rest on age-old stereotypes, some essays reveal insights that are often overlooked in the discussion of men and sexuality. In the opening essay, Dan Vebber discusses his lack of sexual drive and utter fear of intercourse, Andy Richter writes about coping with male body issues, and Rodney Rothman tells a tale of teenage heartbreak. It is essays like this that make this book unique and unlike the common portrayal of gender dynamics that is present in contemporary media.

This book offers readers more to think about than the average easy read, while still maintaining its funniness and fluidity. You might not learn much from this book but it is at least a fun way to further your love/hate relationship with indulgent gender commentary.

Written by: Krista Ciminera, April 14th 2009

Ten Things I Hate About Me

admin — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 23:33:00 +0000

By Randa Abdel-Fattah

Orchard Books

I was excited when the book Does My Head Look Big in This? came out a few years ago. In that book, author Randa Abdel-Fattah tells the story of Amal, a young Australian Muslim woman who decides to wear hijab and navigates the challenges of expressing her identity as an Australian Muslim. Books about young Muslims in the West (a political and not geographic definition, obviously, given that I’m including Australia) aren’t exactly common, so it’s always exciting when these things do come up.

Abdel-Fattah’s second book is Ten Things I Hate About Me. Unlike Amal, Jamilah, the protagonist of this book, works hard to keep her Australian identity separate from her Lebanese-Muslim identity. At school, she is Jamie, and with her bleached hair and coloured contacts–no one knows that she is Arab or Muslim. The novel takes us through the stress and anxiety that Jamilah faces in keeping her culture and religion hidden, and her eventual path towards finding a sense of comfort to be able to express all elements of her identity.

I’ll say right now that this book is not an especially amazing literary work. The plot is interesting but somewhat predictable. (Fair warning: there are some minor spoilers ahead, but nothing that you wouldn’t have guessed yourself while reading the book.) A lot of the characters are fairly one-dimensional and seem to be there just to make a point: Jamilah’s father immigrated to Australia from Lebanon and has a Ph.D., but works as a taxi driver; her sister Shereen wears hijab (often in the form of scarves decorated with political slogans) and spends all her time out at political rallies and other activities related to social justice. (A religious woman in a scarf who’s really active and vocal? Amazing!)

I guess it’s useful to have these characters there as a way of challenging some of the stereotypes that readers may have, but as Melinda wrote about in relation to Does My Head Look Big in This?, sometimes it felt as if the novel was banging us over the head with its attempts to challenge stereotypes. I would have liked to see some of these characters be a bit more subtle and complex.

That said, the novel still raised a lot of themes that are worthy of discussion and reflection. The story begins with a conversation about the anti-Arab riots that happened on Sydney beaches in December 2005, with one of Jamilah’s classmates (himself a Muslim of Arab background) talking about the injuries he received while fighting against the racist mobs. Some students are supportive of him, while others taunt him, suggesting that the people rioting were right; one student, Peter, complains that “Man, you ethnics and Asians are always complaining... Oh, help me! I’m a victim of racism. The white people are out to get me. Get over yourselves!”

These racist remarks (complicated by the fact that Peter is one of the most popular guys in the school and spends a lot of the book flirting with Jamilah) continue throughout the story. I appreciated that Abdel-Fattah didn’t hold back on describing the racism that Jamilah was facing: it’s not simply a story of multiculturalism where everyone is happy and things like racism are an exception to the harmonious norm, but rather a more raw (and, I would argue, more truthful) portrayal of some of the ugly racism that does exist in Western societies. There is also an argument made about Muslims and Arabs being held accountable for the actions of other people from their communities in ways that other groups aren’t: in one conversation with her aunt, Jamilah argues that:

"When those teenage boys gang-raped girls in Sydney, it was the boys’ Lebanese-Muslim background that was put on trial. I went to school and I watched Peter Clarkson cross-examine Ahmed for a crime he did not commit. I read headlines describing the crimes as ‘Middle Eastern rape.’ I’ve never heard of Anglo burglary or Caucasian murder. If an Anglo-Australian commits a crime, the only descriptions we get are the colour of his clothes and hair.”

Along with this is a really honest portrayal of the effect that racism has on Jamilah. To explain why she hides her background at school, she says:

“I don’t have the courage to be up-front about who I am. I’d rather not deal with people wondering if I keep a picture of Osama bin Laden in the shape of a love heart under my pillow. Call me crazy, but I’m also not particularly excited about the prospect of having to stand accused every time somebody who happens to be of Lebanese background commits a crime.”

This silence, however, takes its toll. When she later talks about another moment where Ahmed stands up against racist comments, she reflects that, “The same prejudice and bigotry that silences me, vocalizes him. And even though my silence protects me, I’m the one walking with my head down.” When the aforementioned Peter tells Jamilah (or, perhaps more accurately, Jamie) that he likes that she is not self-absorbed, she thinks to herself, “”News bulletin: I’m not obsessed with the sound of my own voice because I don’t have a voice. I’m stifling it beneath layers of deceit and shame.” Jamilah’s sense of vulnerability and shame is palpable throughout the novel, and conveys a strong message about the personal impact of racism.

Although my own background is very different from Jamilah’s, there were several moments where I felt that I could really identify with her struggles to juggle several elements of her identity that are so often portrayed as exclusive to each other. Even when it’s not about actually hiding our identities, the fact of belonging to multiple communities that are often understood as separate can be complicated and difficult to handle. The extent that Jamilah goes through to keep some aspects of her identity hidden might seem a bit extreme, but the idea of downplaying certain parts of our identity in certain spaces definitely resonates. Add in the social pressure of high school (which, actually, I did find a bit exaggerated in this novel, but it’s relevant nonetheless) and the need to fit in becomes even more intense. As our protagonist says, “The Jamilah in me longs to be respected for who she is, not tolerated and put up with like some bad odour or annoying houseguest. But it takes guts to command that respect and deal with people’s judgements. Being Jamie at school shelters me from confronting all that.”

Her confusion about how to understand her multiple identities comes out in several places throughout the book. I like the way she illustrates the juggling metaphor here:

“All I want is to fit in and be accepted as an Aussie. But I don’t know how to do that when I’m juggling my Lebanese and Muslim background at the same time. It’s not like juggling an orange, and apple, and a banana. They’re all fruit and all fruits are pretty much equal, right? But the way I see it, juggling Aussie and Lebanese and Muslim is like juggling a couch, a mailbox, and a tray of muffins. Completely and utterly incongruous. How can I be three identities in one? It doesn’t work. They’re always at war with one another. If I want to go clubbing, the Muslim in me says it’s wrong and the Lebanese in me panics about bumping into somebody who knows somebody who knows my dad. If I want to go to a Lebanese wedding as the four hundredth guest, the Aussie in me will laugh and wonder why we’re not having civilized cocktails in a function room that seats a maximum of fifty people. if I want to fast during Ramadan, the Aussie in me will think I’m a masochist. I can’t win.”

As the story progresses and Jamilah’s hold on the strict separation of her Australian and Lebanese-Muslim identities beings to weaken, she begins to realise the effect that this separation has had on her and on her relationships to the people around her.

“All I want to know is what place I have in this country I call home. It all comes down to emotional real estate. Finding your place, renovating it as you go along (a haircut here, a university degree there), and having neighbourly relations with other property owners. So far, I’ve figured that dyeing my hair blonde, poking my eyes with contact lenses, and living a lie at school all guarantee me a share in the Australian property market. But I’m starting to realise how empty my bit of ‘place’ is. It’s got no soul. The cosmetics are fantastic and would look great on domain.com. But you can’t smell life. It tastes like stale cookies and sounds like socks on carpet.”

Cheesy? Well, yeah. And perhaps a bit simplistic, given the racism that was discussed earlier. It’s not as if just deciding to be yourself is necessarily going to make for an easy ride. But the sentiment is interesting, the idea that her attempts at self-preservation in fact become a form of self-destruction and self-silencing, and ultimately prove to be unsustainable.

The personal impact of this silence is also strongly felt at points. Since not a single person at her school knows about her religious and cultural background, Jamilah’s friendships at school remain stunted and superficial, prompting this reflection:

“I don’t have a proper relationship with my so-called closest friend. We’re like the two sides of a train track, each comfortable in our parallel existence. We don’t intersect or touch each other. But sometimes you need to collide. You need to crash and make an impact just to feel your friendship is alive. To feel that it’s more than passing notes to each other in class and sharing fries at lunchtime. I don’t have any collision scars from this friendship. And as deliberate as that is, it’s not something I’m proud of.”

The novel also addresses family issues in interesting ways. Jamilah’s father is very strict with her, and much less so with her brother, who goes out clubbing and drinking. Jamilah’s frustration at this double standard is expressed throughout the book. At the same time, she is very conscious of how this could be seen from the outside, and of not wanting to perpetuate a stereotype of Arab Muslim families as inherently sexist and oppressive. When her friend Amy asks if she’ll be coming to a party, she pretends that she’ll be going, because:

“I’m too embarrassed to tell her that my dad won’t let me go. I don’t want her to pigeonhole me as a poor, pitiful, repressed Lebanese girl. I know that my dad’s strictness is cultural and religious, but I also know it has a lot to do with my mother’s death as well, and the fact that he’s bringing us up alone. I don’t understand him. I don’t always agree with him. But I know that I’m not a stereotype and I’ll do everything in my power to protect myself from being seen as one, even if that means lying to my closest friend.”

The “I’m not a stereotype” idea comes up also in her conversations with “John,” an online friend to whom Jamilah has revealed more about her life than she has to her friends at school. When she mentions that she would be “dead meat” if she ever had a boyfriend (and, more importantly, if her father found out), he responds by asking, “Are you serious? Like those honour killings you hear about?” Jamilah’s frustrated response is to tell him, “No, you space cadet. Sheesh, this is why I hate opening up to people about my family! Can’t I be metaphorical without having my dad equated to a Taliban warlord?”

Okay, so the family stuff isn’t exactly subtle. The book is really clearly trying to make a point that families can be conservative and strict without filling the kinds of stereotypes that non-Muslims might expect. Although the lack of subtlety doesn’t make for amazing literature, I do have to say that the point is a good one, and it’s nice to see something that tackles these stereotypes head-on. Moreover, Jamilah is ultimately able to convince her dad to make small concessions: after some persuasion, she is able to get a part-time job, and after much persuasion, she is even able to go to her school’s formal. I think these changes speak louder than the direct points that she makes, since they demonstrate that her family’s rules are not carved in stone, and that restrictions can be resisted from within, without requiring some kind of saviour from the outside. I’m hoping that readers will understand that, by extension, other cultural rules (and resistance to them) can be equally dynamic, even when they seem monolithic and repressive from the outside.

Religion plays a fairly minor role in the story; Jamilah identifies as Muslim, but this isn’t the focus of the novel (this is actually pretty refreshing—someone can be Muslim while also having lots of other dimensions to her life! Who knew?) Various family members demonstrate different levels of religiosity, which is presented as something normal. Even the hijab is—shockingly—not a major issue. Jamilah’s sister wears it, but it is talked about more as a fashion and political statement than a religious one (although it is acknowledged as both.) There are a few more direct conversations about religion (again with obvious points that the author wanted to convey, like when Jamilah’s aunt argues that, “The Koran has been manipulated and abused to exploit women”), but it was nice to see a story about a Muslim girl that didn’t only revolve around the fact that she was Muslim.

I wasn’t thrilled with the cover of the book. The cover features a strip of photos of a girl, alternatively wearing hijab and not wearing it. This annoys me, because although a lot of the book is about Jamilah trying to balance her Muslim-Arab cultural-religious identity with her Australian identity, she never talks about wearing a headscarf. Her Lebanese culture is talked about in terms of music and food, but not at all in terms of hijab, and it’s annoying to see that on the cover as the representative picture of Jamilah’s Lebanese-Muslimness. Moreover, what does this say about the picture where she’s not wearing hijab? Is that the picture where she’s “Australian”? Can’t she have her head uncovered and still be seen as Lebanese and Muslim as well as Australian? If the whole point of the book is to demonstrate that these identities shouldn’t be mutually exclusive of one another, it seems problematic that there is one way to “look” Arab and another way to “look” Australian.

Overall, while it was often trying too hard to make its points, this book was an entertaining read, and an interesting look into the life of a girl trying to balance her cultures and religion, to cope with the racism and sexism that she faces, and to find a space where she feels at home.

Written by: Krista Riley @ MMW, March 17th 2009

Taken

admin — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 12:04:00 +0000

Directed by Pierre Morel

20th Century Fox

Reading this review will tell you all you need to know about Taken. If you haven't see the film, perhaps now is the time for you to cease reading, as spoilers abound. Then again, the film follows an overused and clichéd Hollywood format that makes spoilage an inevitability if you've a tendency for moviegoing, and my commentary on Taken might be more worth your while than viewing the ninety-minute film. The choice is yours to make.

Ever wonder what you'd get by mixing sexist stereotypes with ones about Muslims? Oh wait, I think that's happened before -- many, many times. Taken is just the most recent example of this ever-present phenomenon, and it has brought in $124 million to date. Apparently tired tropes sell.

Liam Neeson plays the estranged father, Bryan Mills, of Kim (Maggie Grace), a spoiled yet sweet seventeen-year-old girl who lives with her mother (Famke Janssen) and step-father in posh American splendor. Mills recently quit his job—which he describes as being a "preventer" for an unspecified special ops entity run by the US government—in order to build a relationship with his daughter. The conflict begins almost immediately, as Kim requires her father's legal permission to go on an adult-free, intercontinental vacation with a friend to follow U2's European Tour. (She initially tells her dad she'll be spending the summer in Paris). Dad tells Daughter that the world is a dangerous place. Mom tells dad he's being overprotective. Dad caves in hopes of engendering Daughter's love.

When Kim and her friend Amanda, a sexually permissive nineteen-year-old whose sole role in Taken is to put the two young women in danger by following her hormonal whims, arrive in Paris they are promptly snatched up by a group of men, but not before we learn that Kim is a virgin. We discover within minutes (thanks to Dad's "particular set of skills") that the girls have been taken by a group of Muslim Albanians that specialize in kidnapping of young, foreign girls who are traveling alone (read: without male protection) and are to be sold into sexual slavery. The star and crescent tattoo on the captor's hand somehow lets Dad know that he has ninety-six hours to save Daughter.

So how does Mills do it? By being hyper-masculine to the point of invincibility, of course. These Muslim men stole his property, after all, and he wants it back. (The kidnapping is to be read, in part, as the fault of overly permissive and naive Mom who used guilt to override Dad's "reason" to allow Daughter go to Paris, which included colluding in Daughter's lying to Dad and using ridiculous Dr. Phil-like platitudes about "not smothering" Daughter.) The mission of this now-enraged father will not be thwarted, and all tactics (including rampant killing and bodily torture) are at his disposal to save poor Kim while her purity is still in tact.

Being a virgin, and therefore highly valuable, Kim is singled out for sale to a wealthy businessman. Unfortunately, sluttish Amanda is not so fortunate and Mills finds her dead of a drug overdose, a punishment for failing to be sexually chaste. After looking in a number of seedy places, Mills works his way up the food chain to the elite meat market where he sees Kim sold—after being described as "certified pure"—for half a million dollars to an older Arab man. (Kim isn't the girl sold to this man. He has bought a veritable harem of virgins who are dolled up and dressed in white lace robes, which veil their young faces, before being bought to his bed chamber.)

I already told you that Mills saves Kim, and that's where the story neatly ends. We don't find out what happens to the rest of the girls or the traffickers that Mills encounters on his quest. And really, he makes it quite clear that he's not interested in their fate, which he sees as just a part of the business. Mills only cares about the fate of Kim because she is his daughter, and therefore, his quest was personal. (He tells this to one of the higher-ups, just before he kills him.)

Lest lascivious France escape unscathed, the French government benefits from human sexual slavery too, padding their pockets through the sale of female flesh. Interestingly, the system of trafficking itself is never scrutinized; it's simply accepted as the way things are. Except that what is shown in Taken is not really the way things are in the world of sex trafficking.

For starters, it is extremely uncommon for an American girl to be trafficked. Instead, the victims tend to be women who "originate from countries experiencing political and economic instability, internal displacement, militarism, civil unrest, internal armed conflict, and natural disasters." Women who are trafficked tend to be from Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, and Latin America, not the United States—but reality doesn't serve Taken's cautionary, paternalistic, white supremacist tale. In order to effectively convey its fearmongering, Taken needs its victim to be a picture of feminine perfection: lily white, innocent, young, beautiful, and American. (Kim even dreams of being a singer instead of taking advantage of her family's economic privilege to pursue a more cerebrally engaging career.)

The use of anti-Muslim and anti-feminist fare in Hollywood blockbusters is certainly nothing new. (What is interesting, though, is how other reviews have ignored—or promoted—their use in Taken.) It is ironic that the makers of Taken actually reinforce the ideas that make sex trafficking possible. Advocating for social, political, and economic equality of marginalized populations is one method endorsed to curb the sale of women and build struggling economies through legal means. You see, viewing someone through a lens of humanity has the funny effect of making it more difficult to treat them as chattel or evildoers. I guess the makers of Taken didn't get that memo.

Written by: Mandy Van Deven, February 12th 2009

He’s Just Not That Into You

admin — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 05:01:00 +0000

Directed by Ken Kwapis

New Line Cinema

He’s Just Not That Into You wasn’t a terrible movie. Despite its manipulative moments, this film did manage to skip many of the eye roll-inducing rom-com conventions. This movie just wasn’t that romantic or particularly funny. In fact, He’s Just Not That Into You is filled with disempowering messages.

Loosely based on the book of the same name, the story revolves around (yikes!) nine interconnected twenty- and thirty-somethings looking for love in Baltimore. Beth (Jennifer Aniston) has been living with Neil (Ben Affleck) for seven years and is anguished over his refusal to marry her. Beth works with Janine (Jennifer Connelly) who is unhappily married to Ben (Bradley Cooper), who eventually starts cheating on her with Anna (Scarlett Johansson). Anna receives dating advice from Mary (Drew Barrymore) who is so clueless that she isn’t aware that “MySpacing someone is the new booty call.” Gigi (Ginnifer Goodwin), who works with Beth and Janine, is on a quest for romance, which has her making an overeager fool of herself with the men she dates. Gigi starts getting brutally honest advice from Alex (Justin Long) after his buddy Conor (Kevin Connolly) blows her off after a date. Conor, coincidentally, feels unrequited love for Anna, even calling her right after his date with Gigi. (Anyone confused yet?)

Keeping up with the interlocking story arcs didn’t distract me from the anti-feminist messages. The women in this movie didn’t do much other than agonize over and obsess about relationships. Nearly every line of dialogue that comes out of the women’s mouths is about the men who are (and aren’t) in their lives.

I took offense to the fact that Gigi receives so much advice on how to act with men from a man who has made a second career out of loving and leaving women. While Gigi’s attempts to take things into her own hands make her look obsessive, immature, and just plain stupid, why couldn’t she have received this earth-shattering info about her behavior from female friends? After all, women co-wrote the book and the screenplay. What do Liz Tuccillo and Abby Kohn know that their female characters do not?

I also objected to Alex telling Gigi that if a man wants to be with a woman “he will make it happen.” In my opinion, this statement is really an underhanded way of telling women not to go after what they want. According to Alex, women shouldn’t be proactive in the dating game because men are the ones who green-light romances. The fact that Beth, who suggests that Gigi “break the rules” about dating, can’t get her man to commit to marriage only reinforces this idea. Alex also never once tells Gigi to worry about how much she actually likes the guys she dates, which, incidentally, is the best dating advice I ever got.

Another thing that bugged me about this film is the way gay men were depicted. While He’s Just Not That Into You passed on the stereotypical 'wise black woman' role, the screenwriters inserted no fewer than five mammy-esque gay men. Is there a law that states that gay men can only appear in mainstream Hollywood fare if they are providing straight people with a shoulder to cry on?

Sorry, folks. I’m just not that into this film.

Written by: Ebony Edwards-Ellis, February 9th 2009

The Female Complaint: The Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in American Culture

admin — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 00:10:00 +0000

By Lauren Berlant

Duke University Press

Lauren Berlant is the George M. Pullman Professor of English and Chair of the Lesbian and Gay Studies Project at the University of Chicago. She is the author of several books, including The Queen of America Goes to Washington City, and The Anatomy of National Fantasy. Her newest spectacular work, The Female Complaint, reflects the role women have played in movies and books through the twentieth century. Her poignant reviews of work depict the subservient role women have subjugated themselves to through media, movies and published works. Her open and honest perspective shows the methods and means women have used when placed in patriarchal society.

In "Poor Eliza," she looks at the role of the sexual slave girl, Tuptum in "The King of Siam" and how the play staged to perform Uncle Tom’s Cabin turns out to be Tuptum’s way of speaking out against the king, rather than portraying the cultural knowledge the little drama was set up to depict. The king’s fury about the performance is contrasted by the slave girl’s desire to be with the man she loves, rather than in the palace, subject to the king’s carnal desires. As the book moves on, Berlant continues to point out the roles women have been cast into to remain seated in the one-down culture of Western thinking. The Female Complaint is a brilliant book that brings to point how culture creates the stereotypical woman and how the marketing of this role continues to be exploited through book and film.

Written by: Mary O'Hara, June 9th 2008

Me, Penelope

admin — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 00:56:00 +0000

By Lisa Jahn-Clough

Houghton Mifflin

Writer Lisa Jahn-Clough presents a deteremined character named Penelope who deals with her life bit by bit and rants while finally facing her proverbial dragons. While finishing high school in her own way, Penelope attempts to accomplish feats she thinks necessary before heading into the college world.

Her living situation with her mom Viv (who dates a younger man and detests being called "Mrs." at any point) and a college student, who only appears some of the time, seems to be the ultimate in any high school student's dream. However, both Penelope and Viv attempt to cover up and avoid facing a past tragedy that both women feel is their fault. This ongoing angst culminates at the end and leads to the redemption the reader anticipates throughout the novel.

As Penelope interacts with her classmates, her potential sexual conquests, and Toad, her best friend from childhood, she encounters personalities based on established stereotypes. lAlthough the reader sees how Penelope's character maintains her individualism, several people in her life play up the stereotypes commonly found among the high school set.

An excellent read for the young adult and mature reader, Me, Penelope develops clearly with an identifiable plot line and conflicts. Jahn-Clough reveals a precocious, fascinating and quirky character who makes her way in the world with a cautious and unique self-awareness. Penelope definitely is kooky, but this makes her absolutely real. The voices she hears guide through various challenging scenarios in her daily life. Reading like a journal entry at points, the book progresses well, giving the reader some space to digest the actual substance of the story while cheering once reaching the climax.

Written by: Carolyn Espe, June 25th 2007