trauma

Thousand-Cricket Song

annette — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 10:00:00 +0000

Thousand-Cricket Song is a compelling collection of poetry. My copy is smudged with fingerprints, creases, and other signs of wear from the use I've given it in only one month. I often read one poem at a time, and found myself needing time to consider new ideas or read up on history. The subject matter is heavy; poet Catherine Strisik spent time in Cambodia. She wrote her poetry based on her observations there.

Usually, her writing style is simple, straight-forward, and speaks for itself. These are the poems I love the most. At other times, she gets a bit too enthusiastic for details, offering long, sometimes muddled, prose. I say this with some restriction, though. It's difficult to blame someone for needing to paint a perfect picture from memory.

There's so much good in this book, that I need to restrict myself from naming too many titles. "The Woman At Pol Pot's Grave" is possibly the best of the best. "The New Holy Medicine" is so perfect that I want to hear it spoken over a musical background. Her poems concerning genocide, suicide, miscarriage, prostitution, and rape make me want to heal the entire human race. I was often surprised by and unprepared for these details. Words hit us hardest when they are based on truth.

Though Catherine covers the trauma and tragedy of Cambodia's history, she also embraces its beauty and relationships. Women, children, residents, and friends are sometimes weaved into parties and temples. Her poem "Seeing Hands," written about her intimate experience with a blind masseuse, is now counted with some of my most favorite poems of all time. Most importantly, she openly admits to being a complete outsider and awkward observer in "In The Nail Salon, Siem Reap." The author is obviously humbled in the company of genocide survivors.

Pick up a copy of this collection if you want to learn, grieve, and be blown away.

Written by: Jacquie Piasta, September 24th 2010

Song Over Quiet Lake

admin — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Sarah Felix Burns

Second Story Press

In Song Over Quiet Lake, Sarah Felix Burns tells several intertwining stories of loss, love, and healing. The novel centers on an unlikely friendship between a young white woman, Sylvia, and a Tlingit elder, Lydie Jim. Both are students at the University of British Columbia, and they meet when Sylvia is assigned to be Lydie’s tutor. Although their relationship is formal at first, they gradually become deeply drawn into each other’s lives.

Sylvia learns the painful story of Lydie’s past: snatched away from her family at a young age and forced to attend a residential boarding school, Lydie has spent her entire life struggling to salvage enough dignity, rootedness, and love to take care of her own children in the face of a world determined to tear First Nations families apart. In return, Lydie learns about the tragedy in Sylvia’s past: the younger brother who was kidnapped as a toddler, leaving Sylvia’s mother frozen in time and grief, unable to love her two remaining children.

Sylvia and Lydie narrate most of the novel, but interspersed with their voices are the voices of the other characters in the web—Sylvia’s erstwhile boyfriend River, Lydie’s sons Jonah and Mitchell, Sylvia’s mother Miriam, and several others. Serving as an overlay to the personal stories, the broader historical narrative shows up in the voice of a priest who was once one of Lydie’s boarding school teachers. Well-intentioned but passive, the elderly priest relives his memories of complicity—his participation in the residential school system, his failure to stop a cruel practical joke that resulted in a young boy’s death, his refusal to demand that Canada grant asylum to Jews fleeing Nazi Germany.

All the characters in Song Over Quiet Lake are victims of the ravages of historical or personal tragedy, and they are victims of the intergenerational transmission of unresolved trauma. They are struggling to move forward with their lives, to emerge from past sorrows in order to build something new. They are also struggling to be able to give at least a little bit to each other, like the song (referenced in the novel’s title) that Lydie’s mother gave to Lydie as a young child. Even when Lydie returned from boarding school having lost her native language, with the result that she could no longer speak with her mother in words, they could still sing together and know they had each other’s love.

The novel’s dialogue is limp and stilted, and the prose as a whole lacks life. However, the characters are convincing and moving, and their complex, interwoven lives tell important stories about national guilt and communal resilience.

Written by: Ri J. Turner, April 7th 2010

Arc and Hue

admin — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 16:01:00 +0000

By Tara Betts

Willow Books

It is deeply satisfying to encounter poetry like Tara Betts’. The widely published poet, author, and Rutgers University creative writing professor bears witness to the true grit of life, including poverty and appearance-based assumptions and experiences that categorize one as other, even among an already marginalized population. These experiences, and the enduring human spirit, are what give color and shape to each life, and it is this thematic material that Betts portrays in her debut collection, Arc & Hue.

Rich in vivid images and musicality, this collection is an authentic portal into the very pulse of life. With the use of repetitive forms like sestina and canzone and the smooth lyrical flow of her free verse, Betts’ poems are imbued with hope, strength, and beauty amid trauma, violence, and the isolation of otherness.

From the weight of death and violence to the vibrancy of moments both ordinary and momentous (lynching, hair care, Hurricane Katrina, lovemaking, pestilence in the slums), each poem is consistently resonant and haunting. Betts can be humorous and playful with form, yet still communicate something substantial, as she demonstrates in “A Survey on Enjoying Verse” and “Neruda’s Email to Slam Poets.” The anxiety and desire of an urban pulse throbs in the strong, sensual language of “Block Party Speculation” and the grief of domestic violence and miscarriage are washed with the power of loving someone new when the narrator stands in the shower with both loss and renewal in “When I First Listened to Billie.”

Arc & Hue crossing my path further fuels my hope that one can indeed maintain awareness of and connection to the world beyond ourselves through the work of poets and artists. A visit to the writer’s blog clued me in to her extensive publishing history—from erotica to live theater to an upcoming young adult novel and a second collection of poetry. Betts is also active in literacy and girls’ empowerment projects, and she has performed her work around the world.

Written by: Matsya Siosal, March 27th 2010

Invisible Sisters

admin — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 22:50:00 +0000

By Jessica Handler

Public Affairs

The loss of a loved one can wreak havoc on the closest of families. There doesn’t seem to be a formula that can predict which families will survive a tragedy and which families will break apart as a result. In her painfully honest and touching memoir, _Invisible Sisters, _Jessica Handler revisits the heartbreaking losses of not one, but two of her sisters: Susie (from leukemia at age eight) and Sarah (from a rare blood disorder in early adulthood).

Survivors’ guilt is a term that describes the feeling that arises when one pulls through an unimaginable situation while others do not. Whether it be victims of genocide, natural or man-made disasters, or plane crashes, the survivors are left to ponder “why them and not me?” Handler writes about the burden she carried of being the “well sibling” in a family that slowly foundered under the weight of sorrow and tragedy.

She describes her father, a union lawyer and activist who found it easier to help those less fortunate, but was helpless when it came to rescuing his own family. Her mother’s focus was to keep moving forward and hold the family together at any cost: chairing the PTA, saving newspapers for fundraising drives, and chauffeuring Jessica to piano, clarinet, and ballet lessons all the while navigating an endless round of doctor’s appointments. After Susie is hospitalized (again), she writes about the death of her parents’ marriage in spare but moving terms: “That night while I slept, my parents began the slow and terrible turning away from one another that erodes families facing the death of a child. My father became heart. My mother became mind.”

By the end of Invisible Sisters Handler has journeyed back into the past to revisit the journals she kept as a teenager and has also gained access to the voluminous medical records that charted the course of her sisters’ illnesses. Her bravery in revisiting her family’s story and her decision to choose life over the memories and images of the past that continue to haunt her to this day is inspiring.

Written by: Gita Tewari, September 25th 2009

Breaking Down the Wall of Silence: The Liberating Experience of Facing Painful Truth

admin — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 00:14:00 +0000

By Alice Miller

Basic Books

In an episode of the television series Homicide: Life On The Street, detective John Munch muses on how to crack the case of a brutal murder. In his typically caustic, world-weary way he quips darkly about motive, “If it’s not one thing, it’s a mother.”

Alice Miller would add “or the father” to that line. And she would cite the collective truth-repressing forces of traditional patriarchal society—family, academia, clergy, politicians and the psychiatric community—all influential agents that encourage a child to dismiss or dance around its trauma story as if it were an electrifying third rail. Forgive and move on is the catchphrase of the day.

Not so fast, says Miller. First, air the bloody wound before forgiveness. Bad parenting must be addressed at the root. Denying and repressing guarantee that more innocent victims will be scapegoated to satisfy long festering rage. Miller contends that trauma from abuse is responsible for all of mankind’s neuroses and psychoses, and could lead to our extinction in this fragile technological world. Society must get better at protecting children against what she calls the “poisonous pedagogy”: humiliation, neglect, hitting, shaming with verbal and emotional abuse, and of course, rape, delicately called molestation by polite society.

Breaking Down the Wall of Silence is Alice Miller’s thirteenth book focusing on childhood trauma. Miller is an articulate and empathetic supporter of abused children and grownups who struggle with the betrayal and trauma that result from abuse. An impassioned evangelist for children’s rights (she is a psychologist, an abuse survivor and author of the highly acclaimed The Drama of the Gifted Child), Miller continues to make her case with great force that if the majority of people and lawmakers remain psychologically illiterate, we might as well resign ourselves to nuclear war in the near future.

As in most of Miller’s books, she uses high profile case studies to illustrate her points. She has previously written of the humiliations and beatings that were standard fare in the childhoods of Hitler and Stalin, and how those angry boys grew up to be murderous dictators who projected onto the world stage their revenge in the form of mass murder and torture. In this book, she delves into the childhood of yet another tyrannical basket case: former Romanian president Nicolae Ceausescu. This havoc-wreaking man, emotionally and physically battered and shamed as a child by his own father, rose to power and blow-torched his rage all over his country. He is dead, executed for his crimes, but the hideous abuse lives on to this day in Romania.

I was particularly intrigued by Alice Miller’s study of Ceausescu because a couple of years ago I wrote a magazine article on volunteer vacations. While interviewing people who combined a love of travel with charity work, I talked to several everyday heroes who rolled up their sleeves to work in Romanian Failure-To-Thrive baby clinics. They reported that children were still being abandoned due to the lingering poverty and ignorance from the Ceausescu regime, and so many babies needed holding and feeding that many of these volunteers declined the sightseeing part of their trips in favor of working full-time with the children.

Astonishingly (and inspiring to me about the higher nature of some humans among us), every single person I interviewed returned for a second and third tour of duty to reach out and help. They all were very emotional when I spoke with them. The horror they experienced was overwhelming and their voices quivered in the retelling. One woman brought her daughter with her and the daughter has decided to go into international law to help protect children. Another man was a banker who devotes a month each year to go to Romania and help out.

The most important and urgent case Alice Miller makes in this book is that we must legislate firmly against child abuse and be selective about the political leaders we elect to represent us.Breaking Down the Wall of Silence should be read by all who have children, or are considering having children. That said, if one is caring enough to even know about Alice Miller, then one is probably preaching to the choir.

I just watched a documentary called Deliver Us From Evil about the Catholic Church’s systematic repression and cover-up of child abuse by priests. Back in 2005, Pope Benedict was facing a ground-breaking lawsuit accusing him of conspiring to cover up the rapes of boys by a seminarian. He asked President George W. Bush, Jr. for immunity from lawsuits in the United States. It was granted.

I’ve been reading Alice Miller’s books for a long time and believe she is still a voice in the wilderness calling upon us to evolve as human beings. How do we do this? Respect children and implement laws that enforce greater protection against violence perpetuated on children. Punish people and institutions that inflict and hide abuse. The psychiatric field must also offer a model of treatment that encourages practitioners to be courageous, enlightened witnesses and guides for their patients. Gatekeepers in this field must be constantly on the alert for traumatized therapists seeking to exploit, consciously or unconsciously, victims of abuse. These wolves in sheep’s clothing must be weeded out of the field.

Alice Miller praises feminists for being pioneering whistle blowers on abuse and offers hope when she writes toward the end: “Fortunately the number of therapists who are trained in the new methods is now growing.”

This is a beautiful, fierce, necessary book written by an emotionally intelligent lioness who continues her efforts to break through the wall—one brick, one book— at a time. I highly recommend it.

Written by: Cheryl Reeves, March 5th 2009

To Love What Is: A Marriage Transformed

admin — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 12:46:00 +0000

By Alix Kates Shulman

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Two a.m. When you are young, this is the time that bars close, new love springs unbidden in doorways, and entire dramas are played out in the time it takes a traffic light to change. When you are older, with marriage and children under your belt, it is the hour at which a ringing phone wakes you in terror, not annoyance; when a voice in the darkness signals illness, not invitation; when awakening in a strangely empty bed, one will know that something has gone awfully wrong with the person whose warmth still lingers in the covers. It is that hour which opens To Love What Is.

At 2 a.m. Alix awakens and realizes her husband is no longer in bed with her. Instead, he is on the floor some nine feet below their loft bed, utterly still and grievously injured. While this would be sufficient trauma to begin any proper memoir, we are then informed that Alix’s husband is seventy-five years old, and no ambulance is cutting a wailing path to his aid. Their seaside cabin was chosen for the very qualities which now jeopardize her husband’s life: no running water, no electricity, no neighbors for miles, and a road that is cut off by the tide. Alix’s husband Scott survives, but is irrevocably changed by the traumatic brain injury he sustains in the fall.

The story evolves as we see Scott’s physical injuries resolve while his mental condition does not improve. Scott recovers enough to leave the institutionalized world of hospital care, but is in no way mentally capable to resume his former life as an artist. The accident changes the course of two lives; as Scott is enveloped in a mental twilight, his wife is left to become his caretaker, his guide, his translator, and his advocate.

The poignant center to this book is a decision. Alix Kates Shulman, an accomplished writer and avowed feminist, was accustomed to her independence. She was used to having time on her own, a place to write, a life separate from that shared with her husband. Indeed, her marriage was founded on the preservation of these ideas. As it becomes clear that her husband’s mind will never fully recover, that he will need her constant care for the balance of his life, Alix’s friends advise her to place him into attended care, to continue her life alone for the sake of her art. Alix’s choice is not made lightly, nor does her decision resolve the issues at hand. She chooses love and honors her vow of commitment to her husband, all the while trying valiantly to hold on to her sense of self. She does not allow the role of caretaker to subsume her; instead, she remakes the role to fit her.

When she cannot make enough time to write alone, she begins to write about the ordeal of caretaking and, in doing so, finds a way to reconnect with her husband. In Scott’s lucid moments, she reads him the passages she has completed, and their shared memories form a dialogue running throughout. We see the couple as college students in the first blush of love, see them separated by circumstance, and see them come together again decades later, marrying only after each has lived a life apart.

It is the choice that faced Shulman that resonates with me. How many of us, when embarking on a committed relationship, have not contemplated those same presumably far away what-ifs? Richer, poorer, sickness, health… questions we hope not to have to answer before death does part us. When pressed, how far would our vows carry us? Alix rises to the challenge, caring for her husband while tending to herself, and maintaining her voice throughout. We see the darkest hours, when Alix fears the husband she knew has been lost forever, and the beautiful hours when he emerges from the shadows of his mind and enlivens the page, showing us the person Alix treasures.

As the book moves backward and forward in time, we fall in love with Scott just as Alix did, and we see in the end that there was never a choice to be made, only a new twist in the path to be navigated. The book closes not with Scott’s demise, as I had feared, but simply with the couple looking into the future (albeit one reshaped as neither could have expected), with their love altered, but not diminished.

I read this book straight through, morbidly convinced that nothing would come out well in the end. I feared along with Alix that the husband she knew was gone forever as surely as he sat breathing before her, and I cheered when she found ways to connect with him again after all. This book was oddly comforting, showing that even if the worst thing imaginable does occur, there can still be joy, laughter, and as Scott terms it, fucky-fucky. I loved this book and would not hesitate to recommend it to anyone, married or not.

Written by: Melissa Ruiz, September 27th 2008

Live Through This

admin — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 11:19:00 +0000

Interview with Sabrina Chapadjiev

In the late nineties, playwright, singer-songwriter, and spoken word artist Sabrina Chapadjiev was an impassioned student playwright in college when she experienced an intensely creative period that put her on the brink of self-destruction. She had recently learned that a young, fierce playwright she had long admired, Sarah Kane, had committed suicide, and she was worried. Chapadjiev wondered: “Would the same pull that led me towards Sarah Kane lead me down a similar path?”

It ultimately did not – but it did lead her to investigate women artists’ relationship to self-destruction. The result is Live Through This: On Creativity and Self-Destruction, a standout collection edited by Chapadjiev that features the work of such writers and artists as Nan Goldin, Patricia Smith, bell hooks, Eileen Myles, Diane Dimassa, and Cristy C. Road.

Elevate Difference recently interviewed Chapadjiev about what surprised her most about compiling this anthology, what happens at her current “Rage to Page” workshops, and how editing work on the most dire periods in these artists’ lives led her to see what is most redemptive about self-destruction.

**In the introduction to Live Through This, you write about your earliest understanding of brilliant and self-destructive women artists. At what point did you decide to explore women artists’ relationship to self-destruction in a full-fledged collection? **

I started exploring my own relationship to self-destruction during my sophomore year in college while writing a play entitled Whatever Happened to Savannah? It was a pretty out-there play, with dueling pianos and dance pieces standing in for actual characters. I had each of these crazy little scenes linked by a psychiatrist, who explained how these scenes formed the mental landscape of a patient named Savannah. I was asked to put it on again when I returned my senior year (I didn’t stay in college for my junior year), but wanted to flesh out the piece into a more accessible play, with a severe plotline and characters. I realized I could write Savannah’s part easily, but I couldn’t get a handle on writing from the psychiatrist’s perspective. So, I started researching by going to the bookstore and reading all these psychiatry books.

Since I came from a world that intuitively understood self-destruction so well, reading about the analytical experience of it floored me. There was a total disconnect; their description of self-destruction didn’t match mine at all, but I could see how, in their diagnosis, it was right. So, you have these doctors diagnosing self-destructive experiences as bad, but then I had my own personal experience, in which [these experiences] honestly felt like the first time I had been in control of my life ever. Since then, I’ve been interested in bridging that gap.

Who is your intended audience for the book?

There are two answers to that: one public and one personal. The public answer is that I wanted this book to reach out to anyone currently struggling with these issues who feels that they don’t have any control or perspective on why this is happening. There are so many books out there that talk about cutting, depression, suicide, and such, but most of them are either damning the tendencies without seeing the power inherent in them, or they make it seem like being a cutter will become your entire identity. None of them talk about the fact that these self-destructive acts are being performed by powerful hands that, if [they] held a different tool, could perhaps shape a different identity.

The personal answer is that I put this book out for myself when I was in college ten years ago.

Many of the contributors have a radical feminist sensibility. How did you seek out and select the writers and artists for Live Through This?

I went to my personal superheroes – the artists and thinkers that I think are the most cutting-edge, brilliant women working today – and asked them if they had a story. It’s definitely a hard question to ask: “Hey, I really admire you. You wouldn’t happen to be self-destructive and want to write about it, would you?” I approached possibly sixty women that I admire and then sent calls out through avenues that I wasn’t getting responses from. Three of the essays came from those calls for submissions, which I sent out to playwright forums, dance forums, and just generally spread around any way I could. However, a majority of the women are ones that I simply asked to be in the book. Of course, some of them said “no” many times. In fact, half of the artists in the book originally said “no” to me, but I was beyond persistent, and they finally came around.

When you compiled the collection, did you receive any contributions from women whose work you’ve long known that completely surprised you?

Yes. The one that I was most surprised about was the submission by Patricia Smith (“A Little Hell Breaks Loose”). I am a huge Patricia Smith fan and only knew her from the spoken word scene. She is undoubtedly the best spoken word poet I’ve ever seen. She’s like a bomb that knows how to explode, word by word.

I had no idea if she had a story that she would want to share for the book. I wrote and asked her, and her response was, “I don’t know if I want to go down that road again,” making it seem like she’d already written about it. I didn’t know what she was talking about, though. I had to ask her about three or four times to write, and each time she was a bit hesitant about writing her piece, but I still had no idea what she was going to write on.

When I received her submission, I was floored. I had no idea that she had been a journalist at one time, and had no idea she had survived a very public controversy. I also could never imagine that someone as strong and brilliant as Patricia Smith would ever think of killing herself. Same for bell hooks. I am honored that these women are giving enough of their personal trials that we can learn from them, especially since they themselves seem so absolutely solid and effortlessly revolutionary now.

How has publishing this collection changed your own understanding of self-destruction?

It’s funny, when I was trying to get submissions, I wasn’t sure if I would get any. I knew what I wanted. I wanted women I thought were so strong to tell me of a time when they weren’t, so that there’d be hope for people currently dealing with these issues. I wanted to hear stories of triumph, survival, and personal enlightenment. But as I worked with the authors, I was very careful to not have the exact same story every time. I made sure that they spoke of their journeys, but also tried to focus it, so that they would speak on different themes: isolation, medication, desire, and creation. In fact, every piece has a different undertone, which started to get me thinking of the different elements that encourage both self-destructive and creative habits.

For me, though, the most incredible revelation was understanding that the difficult periods these women went through often formed the base root of their strengths today. Seeing how these periods, or these continuing trials, have shaped them in a positive way made me understand how important it is for a woman to survive her own struggle – not only for herself, personally, but because, ultimately, her struggle is tied in with an element of society that has put her there.

Certain critiques of the collection center on its exclusion of male voices, with one reviewer saying that the book perpetuates the idea that “all women’s art is therapy.” How do you respond to this type of critique, and did you ever consider including male voices?

I did consider including male voices for, like, a second. Then I was like, “That would be a completely different book!” Although men certainly have their own ways of self-destructing, women most often internalize their feelings and take it out on their bodies – instead of taking it out on the world. I felt like I wasn’t equipped to handle editing a book about men’s relationships to self-destruction, though I think that’d make a terrific book and that someone should take that concept and run to a publisher with it.

As for the reviewer saying that the book perpetuates the idea that “all women’s art is therapy,” well that reviewer did something that is common with people who review this book: instead of actually writing a book review, she used it as a stepping stone to further her own ideas about women, art, and genius. This has happened a few times with reviewers, mostly because the people interested in reviewing Live Through This often have some personal vested interest in it. Sometimes they forget to review the book at all, and simply use it as a platform to express their own frustrations and theories on this subject. Keeping that in mind, I can’t respond to her comment, as I don’t feel she was actually responding to the book at all, or what I was trying to do with it.

All I can say is that I’m glad that Live Through This may be used in the discussion on women and self-destruction, but I don’t see the book as the tome on “Women’s Mental Health” or even, as this reviewer wanted it to be, a “Theoretical Manifesto on Women’s Artistic Genius.” It is simply a collection of personal stories of triumph and pain, collected in hopes that anyone dealing with self-destruction feels less alone and is able to see the value in their own story. If mental health and art theorists want to use it as a stepping stone for furthering their own personal opinions – fine – as long as it encourages a dialogue and not a diatribe.

You’ve been running “Rage to Page” workshops, where participants explore “themes that surround female self-destruction: shame, power, and control, as well as ways to channel self-destructive behaviors into creative ones.” What’s been most striking to you about connecting with people through these workshops?

I have run these workshops as well as lectured to people of all ages, and I think the most amazing thing I have realized is how the concepts touch people of all ages differently. When doing workshops at a college, where the participants are sometimes seventeen years old, the sense of shame is ridiculous. It’s also strange, because the vehement pride about their self-destructive acts is obvious.

Conversely, one time, a group of four sixty-plus women attended a lecture of mine, and the quiet sweetness they displayed to one another astounded me. There were tears in some of their eyes, with their partners reassuring them, and I realized how they had struggled in absolute silence with this for years when they had only been shamed. They were also able to relate the differences in the mental health community, and how it has changed radically over the years. So, yes, the most striking fact about doing these workshops and lectures is noticing how people of different ages relate to it.

Have you heard from many readers, and are there any reader responses to the collection that have struck you quite deeply?

I have had people write me to say that just the concept of this book has saved their lives. That’s amazing. There have actually been several lovely messages like that, where women write to thank me or to simply say that the book made them feel less alone. One reader took a picture of herself hugging the book and posted it on Flickr. But I will also say that the negative response has been equally amazing, because it has absolutely begun a dialogue about how self-destruction, women, and creation are seen. One reviewer said that “shit happens,” and she didn’t want to hear about these women surviving – that they should get over it. A radio host became very offensive with me when I wouldn’t detail precisely my own experience. She wanted me to show her my deepest scars to compare them with her own. It was strange.

People who want to read this book don’t look at it casually; they look at it guardedly, with their own personal experiences triggered under their sleeves. It often elicits an either love/hate response. And I am totally psyched about that, because, either way, it has begun a dialogue.

What do you want a reader to ultimately take away from Live Through This?

That our “weaknesses” are only signals of the potential of our strength.

Photo Credit: Dave Sanders

Written by: Ellen Papazian, August 21st 2008

Live Through This: On Creativity and Self-Destruction

admin — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 11:14:00 +0000

Edited by Sabrina Chapadjiev

Seven Stories Press

Live Through This is truly a feminist work. It takes the expressed experiences from individuals coming from a wide array of backgrounds, who candidly and publicly share their experiences with issues labelled taboo and private, offering strength and conscience to readers everywhere.

The format of this work is an anthology of pieces from some of the most groundbreaking American cultural producers. The magnificent list of contributors includes photographer Nan Goldin, academic and feminist bell hooks, trans activist and writer Kate Bornstein, porn star and perfomance artist Annie Sprinkle, and DIY artist Cristy C. Road. Live Through This is a collection of expressions and artworks from powerful women and transgender activists expressing their survival from a multitude of issues ranging from depression, sexualized violence, abuse, and self-destruction. It is successful at invoking both outrage and sympathies, leaving one galvanized. Each selection is unique and powerful in its own way, and takes a wide form of presentations. There are essays, photographs, poems, comics, and more - truly something for everyone - and I found myself digesting each work separately from the other. It's that good: all of the short selections stand out with their own message.

Perhaps what I got most out of Live Through This was a curiosity about the presentation that some of the strongest, most beautiful, and talented individuals suffer through unthinkably trying tribulations, that what doesn't kill us certainly makes us stronger and experiencing some of life's most unwanted traumas is by no means correlated with failure. Easier said than done, but the public vocalizing of pain and suffering from these amazing figureheads offer hope and validation for a diversity of individuals everywhere.

In a society inundated with oppressions stemming from difference (in gender, race, sexuality, class, ability, etc.), it is a remarkable thing to have survived the unliveable, as these contributors so bravely put forth. Captivating, concise, and humbling, Live Through This is easy to put down between pieces and become just as immersed upon picking it up again.

Written by: Yujean Park, August 20th 2008

Strange Piece of Paradise

admin — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 22:05:00 +0000

By Terri Jentz

Picador

When I picked up this memoir in early July, I was expecting to navigate a woman’s difficult journey from surviving a brutal, anonymous trauma into an enlightened state through making peace with the crime scene and its effected community. What I did not anticipate was the systemic analysis of social problems, personal depth and conscious processing that this book contains. Trying to describe Jentz’s words with my own feels trite and insulting, but because this is one of the most important books I’ve ever read, I owe this story’s survivor that much.

On a summer bicycle trip across the country in 1977, Jentz, along with her traveling companion and college roommate, were attacked by an axe-wielding cowboy in an Oregon park. Surviving the attack with only large laceration scars on her arm as physical proof, Jentz and her friend were shuttled home and the case was never solved (those two details are somewhat unrelated). After long years of unprocessed traumatic grief and anger took their toll, Jentz decided the only way to attain peace was to retrace her steps, solve her own attempted murder and confront the community that was left in the wake of her personal tragedy.

But in addition to Jentz’s own remarkable journey back to small towns in rural Oregon, she positions her passage in conjunction to problems far larger than her own. With a poignant deconstruction of misogyny—“mass psychosis in humankind everywhere that devalues women”—alongside a very revealing look at the survivor, Jentz transports you into a world where deep emotions are commonplace, tragedy touches everyone, and community is real. She also speaks to the very real anxiety many women face daily, just in living their lives, and many times, I would have to limit how much I would read in a day or week to prevent my own neurosis from overtaking me. This is perhaps the greatest compliment I can give to the depth and breadth of Jentz’s work. Collective consciousness should be forced to bear the weight of women’s fears in a way it currently does not, and by communing with this story of total reclamation and survival, I felt less alone in a world that doesn’t yet morally or legally protect us.

Often left speechless when trying to summarize Strange Piece of Paradise, this is one of the best books of my lifetime. Terri Jentz’s reflexive, powerful words can be retraumatizing at time, but I’ve never felt safer putting my own experience within the context of someone else’s. May her words travel as far as she has.

Written by: Brittany Shoot, October 2nd 2007

Support Zine

admin — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 12:57:00 +0000

Edited by Cindy Crabb

Microcosm Publishing

“How do you define consent? Have you ever talked about consent with your partner(s) or friends? Do you know people, or have you ever been with people who define consent differently than you do?”

Thus begins one of the best zines I have ever read on the subject of healing from sexual abuse. This zine is specifically geared towards friends, lovers and allies of survivors, and is written in an accessible, loving, realistic way, including writing and comics by a dozen or so contributors who are healing from or supporting others with abuse histories (many have experienced both). Their words are painful, but also comforting for those of us who have struggled in this realm – the message is not tragic, it is one of hope and community and, well, support.

Topics include: consent, boundaries, triggers, dissociation, power dynamics, survivor guilt, recovering from trauma, flashbacks, staying present, confronting rapists, denial, panic attacks, and more. Being in the middle of these experiences can feel out of control and indefinable, making it impossible to communicate with a partner, especially if they are taking it personally. So having these words to consult and share could really make a difference. The advice is straight-forward and specific, while still relying on your intuitive and empathic powers, which makes the healing journey feel more like an adventure and less like torture, no matter how painful it is.

“It’s okay for us to have to work hard at what other people take for granted. The goal is not to return to some arbitrary centerpoint of normalcy from which we were robbed as children. We are not deviants. The goal is to heal, to be on a continuum of healing,” writes Chris Somerville in his essay, “Safe Sex for Survivors.”

While we’re all aware that most sexual abuse happens to girls at the hands of men, this zine also includes a lot of writing from the perspective of male survivors, and several stories of men being pressured into sex by women, which I’ve rarely heard talked about. Also, this zine manages to avoid demonizing abusers while holding everyone accountable for recognizing power dynamics and honoring other people’s boundaries. In one piece, the editor writes about the fucked up act of initiating sex with a sleeping person, and admits to having done this herself:

“Do they think about our abuse histories? Or the fact that we can’t say “no” when we’re asleep? Do they understand our complex defense systems and how vulnerable and terrified we might feel waking up to this assault? … The truth is, I used to crawl in people’s beds too. I thought of course all guys wanted it. I never considered the fact that I might be capable of assault. But of course, I am. A lot of us are.”

Whether or not you think you need it, whether or not you’re a survivor, or dating a survivor, or even having sex, you would probably benefit from reading this zine. And the people you choose to be intimate with will probably thank you for making their safety a priority.

Written by: Nomy Lamm, January 17th 2007