women

Reading Lips: A Memoir of Kisses

payal — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Let the whole world put on a pair of rubber gloves and plunder and pillage. We have no secrets any longer. We have become public property.

Women who write about their lives face challenges that male writers do not. Not only are women charged with writing about their own lives, with creating selfhood on paper, they are somehow additionally responsible for upholding the idea of womanhood. In this way, they bear the responsibility for representing, and in a sense, for creating the lives of all women. (Considering the diversity of possible identities which women take on for themselves, this is at the very least, a difficult task.)

While we might ask whether a woman writer should even be obligated to tell a story other than her own, for women who read life writing, the question might as easily become: which parts of a woman’s life are hers and which belong, through the construction of womanhood, to all women? Which part of this woman’s life is mine?

In Reading Lips: A Memoir of Kisses, Claudia Sternbach navigates the terrain of personal memories and public ones. Through her nimble use of language, which is delightfully suffused with sarcasm, she connects with women of various ages and experiences. The emotions of the moments, if not the moments themselves, ring true to experience.

“But please,” she writes to her future husband, “You and your soon-to-be platonic friend, enjoy the pool. Enjoy the tennis courts. Bring her up here to the rose garden for a picnic.”

Sternbach also connects with women by wittily drawing on cultural references or events that are familiar to every reader: “…Ma won’t let me leave until my plate is cleaned. Because you know about those starving babies in China.”

While Sternbach never states that she is speaking to a specific idea of womanhood and, in fact, directly backs away from the idea that she speaks for anyone, the effect of this effort to form a connection with other women and their lives is that Reading Lips is less a story of one woman’s life, and much more a celebration of the experience of living a woman’s life. It is a celebration of an idea of womanhood in which “Teddy put his lips right up to mine and they stayed there … and right then I could see our whole long lives.”

Written by: Elizabeth Brasher, April 29th 2011

The Vintage Book of American Women Writers

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

Edited by Elaine Showalter

Vintage

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

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

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

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

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

Written by: Adrienne Urbanski, January 17th 2011

Her Place at the Table: A Woman’s Guide to Negotiating Five Key Challenges to Leadership Success

gita — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 08:00:00 +0000

By Judith Williams, Deborah M. Kolb, Carol Frohlinger

Jossey-Bass

Her Place at the Table, as its subtitle suggests, offers women a guide to leadership success in the modern work environment. Each of the “five key challenges” forms a chapter. The first challenge is drilling deep, gathering the information needed when deciding whether to take on a new job or project, or when negotiating the circumstances under which you take on a new job or project. The second challenge is mobilizing backers, building a support network and setting the rules of engagement that every good leader needs. The third challenge is garnering resources to ensure you have the tools you need every step of the way. The fourth challenge is bringing people on board and overcoming the inevitable resistance to change. The fifth and final challenge is making a difference, which may mean actually changing things, or giving yourself credit and taking credit for what you’ve accomplished.

Although designed a bit like a self-help book or how-to manual, Her Place at the Table avoids many of the normal pitfalls associated with these genres. Most self-help books and how-to manuals present a world that’s just a bit too rosy. Everything’s easy. You’re perfect and wonderful. The world is your oyster. All you have to do to succeed is ask the universe to give your perfectly wonderful self what you desperately want and truly deserve. All stuff, fluff and nonsense. Her Place at the Table, on the other hand, engages with the world as it is and deals honestly with the internal and external obstacles that women face in the workplace. From the introduction through all five chapters, the authors detail the myths and misconceptions that hamper women’s progress in our careers and give detailed strategies on how these challenges can be overcome, including specific examples from real women who have overcome these challenges to succeed in their own careers.

Some of the strategies detailed in the book may be out of reach for women just starting their careers, or may not work for every individual situation. However, the advice is generally realistic and practical. I found myself wishing I’d read the book long ago, perhaps before encountering some of the traps the authors tackle. Now that I have read it, I intend to revisit it often and to recommend it to as many women as possible, starting with you. Go. Read.

Written by: Melinda Barton, January 9th 2011

Images of Women, Volume 2

alicia — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Robin Greenstein

Windy Records

Several years ago, native New Yorker Robin Greenstein issued Images of Women, Volume 1, which delivered fourteen folk songs about women’s depiction in the genre, based on her concert-lecture on the topic. Images of Women, Volume 2 delivers fourteen more numbers about women, mostly traditional in musical style.

Songs range from comical to jaunty to sorrowful. In “Father Grumble” a farmer complains that he works harder than his wife, but when they switch chores he ends up swearing “by all the leaves in the trees and all the stars in heaven / that his wife could do more work in a day than he could do in seven.” “Born in the Country” has a rockabilly beat but the structure of the blues; our lusty but proud narrator tells us “a country girl ain’t anybody’s fool” and warns her former lover to stay away on pain of death.

“The Cruel War” focuses on women’s lot in wartime: a woman begs to accompany her lover to war and eventually he relents. In “Bold William Taylor” a woman disguises herself as a soldier to find her lover. Discovering he has abandoned her for an heiress, she guns him down. In a bizarre twist, the captain of his regiment who witnesses this act is not only impressed by her determination, but makes her captain of a ship! Overall, the sparse arrangement fits the plaintive tune perfectly.

Woody Guthrie’s “Union Maid” extols the virtues of an organizer who refuses to be scared by the company’s hired goons, while the narrator of “I'm Gonna Be An Engineer” by Peggy Seeger (Pete’s sister) is discouraged from pursuing her dream. The disc concludes with a rendition of Christine Lavin’s “Good Thing He Can't Read My Mind,” which hopefully will make listeners aware of one of the funniest folk musicians today.

Greenstein's songs are backed by acoustic guitar and banjo, and fiddle often sets the pace. The steady bass gives many numbers a singsong beat, and harmonica, percussion, harp, and recorder add just the right touch. This is a basic introduction to folk music and a sing-along tribute to the changing roles and perceptions of women through the ages.

Written by: Karen Duda, November 2nd 2010

Glamour: Women, History, Feminism

admin — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Carol Dyhouse

Zed Books

The word glamour has lost a lot of its allure and power these days, bandied about by fashion writers who use glamour interchangeably with polished, chic, elegant, and sophisticated. (Hey, I've been guilty of this occasionally!) That was the conclusion I came to after reading Glamour: Women, History, Feminism by Carol Dyhouse, a scholarly and well-researched book by a social historian.

Society's attitude towards glamour has changed depending on the fashions of the time, Dyhouse argues. Although it might be easy to peg glamour as a male-manufactured concept that traps women with rigid concepts of female attractiveness and breeds a vicious consumer cycle, she sees glamour differently. Instead, glamour is a force associated with "women on the make": women who use the trappings of glamour—clothes, cosmetics, furs, feathers, and lavish jewelry—to transcend class and gender barriers and prescribed societal norms, and to escape the drudgery and burdens of everyday life.

To support her arguments, Dyhouse looks at the evolution and vilification of glamour throughout the twentieth century. Screen sirens and Hollywood films popularized it in the 1930s and '40s and inspired working class girls to emulate the styles of their favourite actresses. However, even when glamour was at its peak, conservative societal elements objected to it. Older generations deemed wearing cosmetics immodest. The editor of British Vogue encouraged young girls to sport a "natural English look" instead of the crass painted-on look of American actresses. The upper classes disapproved of working class girls dressing "above their station" in the hopes of attracting suitors who were better off.

Glamour fell out of fashion in later decades. The 1950s saw the rise of Dior's New Look and domestic femininity, which stressed demure, elegant beauty over artifice and excess—more Grace Kelly than Gloria Swanson. The '60s marked the rise of the gamine girl (e.g., Twiggy, Jean Shrimpton, Audrey Hepburn), whose mod clothes and doe-eyed innocence stood in marked contrast to the womanly aura of glamour girls. The emphasis on natural looks in the '70s meant an even more radical departure from glamour. But there were some signs of a resurgence: musicians, Motown acts, and the founding of Cosmopolitan magazine paved the way for the glamazons of the 1980s and the resurgence of full-blown glamour.

I realize I'm being glib in my summary of Glamour, but a short blog post can't do justice to the wealth of detail and research that Dyhouse presents here (with lots of illustrated examples, no less!). A scholarly book can easily slip into joyless perfunctory prose full of -isms and jargon, but she writes with a genuine enthusiasm for her subject. I really enjoyed this glamorous romp through the twentieth century, and hey, if anything, I will never take the word glamour for granted again.

Cross-posted at Solo Lisa

Written by: Lisa Wong, August 20th 2010

Desigirls

admin — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 16:01:00 +0000

Directed by Ishita Srivastava

Sometimes you stumble upon really small, obscure films that leave such an impact that you just want as many people to see it as possible. Desigirls by Ishita Srivastava is one such film. Filmed as a graduate thesis project at New York University, this twenty-minute documentary explores a refreshingly new topic—the South Asian lesbian community in New York City. I had the opportunity to watch the film and speak to the director afterward. Even though Desigirls is a student film, Srivastava approaches the topic with maturity and a sincerity that makes it a truly engaging film.

The film follows two women—Priyanka and ‘A’—as they discuss their sexual identities and their role within the South Asian queer community in New York, represented by two key institutions – the Desilicious parties and the South Asian Lesbian and Gay Association (SALGA) meetings. Priyanka is an openly pansexual woman who embraces her sexual identity and is an active member of the community. ‘A’, on the contrary, is living a double life, afraid to come out to her parents and secretly exploring her sexual identity.

Srivastava explores the lives of the two women with sensitivity, never intruding too much on their space. While Priyanka willingly offers herself to the camera and interacts freely with it, ‘A’ turns out to be the more interesting character to follow since her anonymity allows her to be emotionally vulnerable in front of the camera. The segment where she discusses her relationship with her brother is particularly moving. Srivastava does a commendable job of letting the characters be, without forcing much upon them or from them.

At times the film becomes ambitious in its scope, trying to accomplish too much in its very short runtime. Srivastava attempts to develop the two main characters and also explore the various events centered on the community. There’s enough in there to be expanded to a longer documentary. Of the two main events, the film focuses more on the SALGA meetings even if that wasn’t the original intention. Srivastava has the ability to make the viewer feel comfortable with what’s going on in front of the camera. The presence in the SALGA support meetings doesn’t seem intrusive, and shadowing Priyanka's and A’s lives keep the viewer hooked.

The most fascinating elements in the film emerge from the observations and statements made by the various characters. At one point Priyanka decisively states that her friends from India are far more tolerant of her sexuality than the Indians she knows who have been raised in the U.S. Meanwhile ‘A’ exhibits certain resentment in the dichotomy of never being able to come out to her conservative parents yet witnessing her brother having much more freedom in lifestyle choices than her. Thus the film effectively presents the fractures present within this very small community. All in all, Desigirls is a low budget student film for sure, but the story it tells is very powerful nonetheless, and one that desperately needed to be told.

Read Pulkit's interview with Ishita Srivastava at The NRI

Written by: Pulkit Datta, June 10th 2010

A Thread of Sky

admin — Wed, 26 May 2010 00:01:00 +0000

By Deanna Fei

Penguin Press

Six Chinese American female characters form the main narrative perspectives of Deanna Fei’s ambitious first novel, A Thread of Sky. There is family matriarch Lin Yulan, once a revolutionary for the nationalist party in China, and her daughters Irene and Susan. Irene is a bereaved widow looking to herself reconnect with her three daughters: Nora, a finance and marketing success; Kay, the one most connected to her Chinese ethnic roots; and Sophie, the youngest who struggles with an eating disorder and was just accepted to Stanford University. Irene’s grand plan to unite the family is to plan a trip to China, a venture in which only women will be invited.

Lin Yulan’s revolutionary past is one that sets the tone for the generations that follow, as she raises both Irene and Susan to be independent women who strive for careers of their own. When Irene’s career as a scientist begins to find a renaissance after the birth of her first two children, she discovers she is pregnant again. Irene’s mother wants her to abort the child, but Irene does not, and yet, despite Irene’s own commitment to raising a family, the values instilled in her by her mother regarding the importance of self-sustainment are also ones she hands down to her daughters.

There are many complications on the trip, and all revolve around romance and relationships (perhaps with the exception of Sophie). Nora’s crumbling relationship with her Caucasian WASP-y husband leaves her in an escapist mindset when she assents to go on the tour. Having arranged a meeting with her grandfather while she was in China previously, Kay possesses her own agenda about the impending trip. (Lin Yulan and her husband, Kay’s grandfather, parted on bad terms when she left for the United States, making Kay’s overtures both risky and somewhat sentimental.) Sophie would rather stay at home preparing for her freshman year and developing a relationship with her African American boyfriend, Brandon. She also finds herself dealing with an eating disorder that arises not long after her father dies. Susan, a poet, although seemingly happily married to Winston, still finds herself thinking about an ill-conceived affair with a former creative writing student named Ernesto.

At one point early on in the novel, The Joy Luck Club is referenced. It is an apt moment that recalls the self-consciousness of many Asian American writers publishing today. In that novel, Jing-mei returns to China, sets foot on what is believed to be a kind of homeland, and finds some sort of resolution within the last handful of pages. This kind of return journey is not the one that Fei has planned. Indeed, the tour of China is just the beginning of a narrative about the complications of intergenerational relationships between these Chinese American women. Fei lets her characters find footing by exposing their flaws and judiciously characterizing their various goals and motivations. The novel finds its surest stride within character construction.

There is, of course, one other major “character,” which is the way Fei configures China. The Chinese American women struggle to find clear and transparent attachments to nation and place. China is not a landscape that yields easily to them, but Fei is clear to mark these women off differently than other tourists and mobile elites. Indeed, there is a large discourse related to China’s modernization that is being interrogated any time the six women find themselves in bazaars or markets, where global capitalism is ambivalently represented.

There is a delicate balancing act in the characters' desire to root out problematic inequities arising from China’s modernization while simultaneously discovering that such problematics are difficult and thorny to address. The most compelling parts of the novel are rooted here, especially when Kay attempts to constitute a mode of transnational feminism that is thwarted at almost every turn by the way upward mobility becomes one of the ways by which China’s future is brokered. It is clear that Fei’s novel does not broker to presenting China as an exotic, unchanging landscape that can be claimed by the credit card. Rather, it is complex and shifting, a place that is constantly being razed and rebuilt, preserved in some locations, but disintegrating in others.

A Thread of Sky does not conclude with easy answers and, instead, leaves many open questions. In this suspended state of expectance, the novel resolutely moves outside of sentimentalism and resides in a domestic drama that unfolds unceasingly and with admirable restraint. In this regard, A Thread of Sky manages to offer a visually stunning tableau of China’s evolution in the twenty-first century without shifting into the superficiality of a travelogue, letting the reader’s sense of an already complex geography change as her characters do too.

Cross-posted at Asian American Literature Fans

Written by: Stephen Hong Sohn, May 25th 2010

Everyday Nationalism: Women of the Hindu Right in India

admin — Sun, 09 May 2010 16:01:00 +0000

By Kalyani Devaki Menon

University of Pennsylvania Press

Everyday Nationalism, a publication in "The Ethnography of Political Violence" series, offers readers a provocative and sometimes disturbing look at Hindu nationalist organizations and the role of Indian women in representing the nationalist movement. Kalyani Devaki Menon conducted her principal fieldwork in and around Delhi from January 1999 to January 2000, acting as a participant observer; interviewing women activists; visiting schools and training camps associated with the movement; and taking part in women's education classes, meetings, rallies, and protest marches. She reports that “gender and sexuality were pivotal to the narratives of self and 'other' produced by the women” she worked with, and that women played a crucial role in building the broad-based support for the movement that brought the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) into power from 1998 to 2004.

The nationalist movement in India remains powerful, drawing thousands of women and men to accept a sociopolitical vision that is “xenophobic, exclusionary, and tremendously violent,” a view of India that sees Muslims and Christians as invaders, defilers both of Hindu women and the sacred soil itself, the body of the goddess Bharat Mata (Mother India). Hindu nationalists assert the need for “violent reclamations of Hindu masculinity” and for vengeance on outsiders who have violated the honor of Hindu women. Menon asserts, "This gendered construction of history, that perpetuates the logic of revenge, is widely promulgated to young female recruits, and remains central to mobilizing support for the politics and actions of the movement today." She makes clear to readers that she disagrees with this policy, yet she does not comment directly on the horrible irony of a politic that encourages Hindu youth to rape Muslim women and Christian nuns as payback for the sexual assaults said to have been enacted on Hindu women now and in the past.

The image of women as vulnerable victims is somewhat offset within the movement's various organizations by efforts to strengthen and toughen girls and women. Camp sessions include military drill, endurance training, yoga, and rough physical games. Women are taught to overcome their fears and to defend themselves. One woman activist said, “Girls today want to be free. We ask them, do you want to be free or strong?” Hindu nationalists criticize the desire to be free like Western or feminist women, claiming Indian women should be strong in order to serve the Hindu state, but still subservient to their husbands and male leaders. In Hindu societies, women are traditionally seen as “mothers, wives, and caretakers of their families.” Nationalists consider the whole Hindu nation to be an extended family, and in this context, women find reasons for civic activism: they become, in a sense, mothers of the nation.

Most Indian women marry, and many Hindu women nationalists are married, but many activists in the movement are either female renouncers; religious sadhvis, who give up worldly attachments but remain political; or pracharikas, unmarried celibate female volunteers who devote all their energies to the movement. A number of other women activists are widows or separated from their husbands. In a sense, the political organizations to which they belong become their families. Women find a favorite role model in a historical figure, Queen Jijabai, mother of the Hindu king Shivaji in the seventeenth century. Male historians concentrate on Shivaji himself, but the women nationalists portray Jijabai as an “enlightened mother” who played a key role in the nation's destiny by inculcating Hindu values in her son.

Menon's witness is compelling because she acts as intermediary between the people she studies and her readers, who need to understand what's going on in the crucial Indian subcontinent. Just as she translates Hindi texts into English, she explains many customs and beliefs that may be unfamiliar to non-Hindus. I found her presentation enormously helpful and would recommend _Everyday Nationalism _to anyone interested in religious movements, rightist politics, or both.

Written by: Kittye Delle Robbins-Herring, May 9th 2010

Offending Women: Power, Punishment, and the Regulation of Desire

admin — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 16:02:00 +0000

By Lynne A. Haney

University of California Press

In Offending Women, ethnographer and sociologist Lynne Haney takes readers on a journey into “a world that few people would otherwise have access to”: the everyday reality of the lives of incarcerated women. She introduces readers to incarcerated mothers who are housed together with their children and serving terms in community-based prisons, a type of facility that is becoming increasingly widespread in the US. Haney uncovers the complex layers of control and contestation in these institutions, as well as the relationship of dominance and power that characterize them. The book analyzes the practices, programmatic narratives, and effects of two state prisons in the US, and offers ethnographic and theoretical insights into how programs like these work. Haney's primary aim is to explain how the treatment of imprisoned women has changed over the past decade.

Haney finds that these “alternative” prisons, contrary to their stated goals, often disempower women by transforming their social vulnerabilities into personal pathologies. She exposes the complex gendered underpinnings of methods of control and intervention used in the criminal justice system and links that system to broader discussions of contemporary government and state power by asking why these strategies have emerged and what forms of citizenship they have given rise to. While the intentions of the state were to "empower" and "enhance self-reliance," Haney suggests they instead push women into a state of disentitlement.

Offending Women uncovers two fundamental ways in which states of disentitlement operate: through the narrowing of woman’s needs and the regulation of women’s desires. Enriched with vivid images and details on incarcerated women’s lives, this book reminds us of incarcerated women's social realities. All of them faced poverty and experienced neglect, abandonment, and restricted access to social support. The fact that they not only survived histories of abuse, but managed to keep their familial bonds intact is outstanding. Offending Women acknowledges and honors these women's survival in a social system that promotes their demise.

Written by: Olivera Simic, April 18th 2010

The Taste for Civilization: Food, Politics, and Civil Society

admin — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 16:01:00 +0000

By Janet A. Flammang

University of Illinois Press

At a time when Western society is becoming more and more dependent on cheap and rapid sustenance of often dubious nutritional value, Janet Flammang’s study is an important reminder of both the way it was and the way it perhaps should be. In The Taste for Civilization, Flammang sets out to present what she calls “table activities” as central to respect, citizenship, and a greater good. Inevitably (because of both the topic and her expertise in Women’s Studies), the author’s analysis explicitly and logically makes gender a key factor in this construction. This researcher’s previous book was an analysis of the importance of studying women’s movements at all levels in political science, entitled Women’s Political Voice: How Women are Transforming the Practice and Study of Politics. As politics evolve, the “politics of food” could be said to be what is being examined in this new work.

This attractive volume (the cover photo is especially lovely) is divided into five parts and thirteen chapters, including extensive notes, a bibliography, and a handy index. An historical analysis of meals and food preparation in (principally) the Western world is included, and Flammang shows demonstrates her extensive knowledge of a wide array of topics from ancient Greek philosophy, to the Enlightenment thinkers, anthropology, sociology, and modern psychological studies. Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, and Freud are all called upon in the text, whether it is to define society or to explain women’s role in the feeding process.

Flammang begins with the premise that “table activities” (in other words, “everyday food practices” or “mealtime rituals of food preparation, serving, and dining”) are central to socialization, and therefore tackles the conundrum of women’s shifting position in this activity (from traditional gender roles, for example) and the possible consequences on Western civilization (the end of communication, discussion, and consensus?). Naturally, the author does not pass judgment on women for their lack of investment in the rituals (enough do!), but rather examines this important social change as it presents itself and proposes possible solutions to this important shift in practice. Interestingly and importantly, the author also analyzes shifting “food practices” along racial and class lines in several chapters.

Flammang also draws the topic away from the domestic sphere and discusses food-related issues that are regional, national, and international. Her discussions of the effect on North American society of certain food stuffs, like the use of bleached white flour or processes such as canning, are intriguing. Along with testimonials from the general population, she includes cultural references to changes brought about by immigration, including the semantic importance of food for certain groups (e.g., “breaking bread”). In chapter ten, entitled “Delicious Revolution,” she examines Alice Water, California chef and cookbook author, who has also extended her revolutionary food philosophy to schools where she is a vocal advocate for healthy meals in schools for all children.

Surprisingly, Julia Child, is not mentioned explicitly by Flammang, despite having been again prominent in the media since the 2009 movie retracing certain aspects of her life. At times, the subtitles of the chapters are sometimes puzzling and the author cannot avoid a certain amount of repetition (French philosopher Brillat-Savarin seems to be a favourite). Despite these remarks, this thorough analysis is exceptionally well written, and of interest to anyone who has even a remote curiosity as to the link between food and civilization in Western society.

Written by: Sophie M. Lavoie, April 11th 2010

Baba Yaga Laid an Egg

admin — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Dubravka Ugresic

Canongate

When she sleeps, her nose scrapes the ceiling of her small cottage. Her breasts hang from a pole over the fireplace, and she has a leg made of iron. She lives alone in a hut on chicken legs, and her gates are topped with human skulls. Passing heroes can flatter her and order her to do their bidding, but heroines must serve her in order to win her favor. Baba Yaga, a complicated crone from Central and Eastern European mythology, is a theme explored and exploded in Dubravka Ugresic's Baba Yaga Laid an Egg.

The novel has three parts, all set in Central and Eastern Europe. In the first, a woman deals with her aging mother's increasing senility and travels to their hometown in search of memory and meaning. In the second, three old women visit a health resort to relax and rejuvenate; romance and death follow. The final part is a meta-level, scholarly treatise of Baba Yaga written written from the perspective of a minor character in the first story and as though a folklorist had teased out all the feminine symbols woven throughout the previous two stories.

Baba Yaga Laid an Egg is an exploration of women growing older in a post-Soviet state where distance between people is becoming the norm. Like Baba Yaga, the older women in these stories are dealing with their aging bodies, are often alone or isolated, and are frequently misunderstood, though they help or hinder other characters as they please. While these women are marginalized, they are definitely not powerless. They have the power to transform lives, and this is usually done through wealth they've accumulated during their younger years.

At its core, this is a book about women, bodies, and journeys. While Baba Yaga Laid an Egg is a thicket of fairytale symbols and references to life in the former Soviet bloc, it can be enjoyed by those who don't have a prior interest in either fairytales or the locale. Ugresic is a clever writer who shows in this book that imaginary lands are dangerous places and little old ladies aren't as toothless as they may appear.

Written by: Catherine Nicotera, April 2nd 2010

Woman's Prison

admin — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 01:00:00 +0000

Directed by Katie Madonna Lee

Although Woman’s Prison is not a documentary, writer/director Katie Madonna Lee presents a realistic story of poverty and the struggles women, children, and to some degree, men face who experience it. From birth, Julie Ann Mabry is a quiet, shy person, who just wants to be safe with her mother (played by Lee). Sadly, her father takes away that option by murdering her mother, and she is left quietly battling predators, including her uncle.

When Julie encounters heart-wrenching situations, she does not lose hope. After she runs away from her uncle, she meets Butch, a guy who, at first, takes care of her. Because he does not force himself on her, she feels safe—but the honeymoon wears off when he begins to see her as just another financial burden in the two-bit town they live in. In one of the scenes, Julie is so hungry that she sneaks money out of his wallet to buy groceries at a nearby store.

Without community support or education, Julie drowns in postpartum depression, which leads to a prison term after she shoots Butch. She is given the choice of shutting up, putting up with the situation and getting out on good behaviour, or taking a stand to end the escalating sexual abuse that she suffers at the hands of one of the prison guards. Julie must decide whether prison is safer than the outside world, where her voice is silenced at every turn.

Lee has done a great job of assembling a cast of unknowns to play these characters. The movie has its finger on the pulse of poverty and how it gnaws away at both young and old. Woman’s Prison may be too painful for some audiences, but I hope they see it. Julie Ann Mabry is not just a character; she is thousands of women in America who have and will continue to experience such struggles.

Written by: Nicolette Westfall, February 27th 2010

Self-Defense for Radicals: A to Z Guide for Subversive Struggle

admin — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 17:02:00 +0000

By Mickey Z.

PM Press

While it’s true that most conflict can and should be resolved with nonviolence, even peace-loving radicals like Mickey Z., the author of this alphabetical guide to self-defense, acknowledge that an absolute aversion to violence is nearly impossible in our war-loving (yet God-fearing) society that seems to tolerate blood-n-guts for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

In a country where a woman is raped every forty-six seconds, peaceful resolution can quickly become a warm fuzzy afterthought. The reality is that standing up for something usually requires standing up against something. That something may be a repressive and stubborn government, or it may be a big, scary and armed figure looming in the dark. Either way, knowing how to use your body in emergencies is as important as knowing how to argue for your beliefs in the face of adversity.

Mickey does not discourage standing firm in pacifism, but advocates that we all (especially women, who are statistically at a greater risk of physical attack) prepare for the worst. You may choose not to live in fear of fire, but this doesn't mean you forgo the fire alarm. In this vein, Mickey has armed us with a manual of self-defense techniques cleverly written with the help of motivating anecdotes and quirky cartoons by fellow radical, Richard Cole. Whether it is mustering every bit of might in our bodies to scream and run, or delivering a precise finger jab to the eyes followed by a hard kick to the balls, Mickey supplies us with a handy bag of tricks to use under pressure. The guy knows what he's talking about—with a personal history of martial arts, kickboxing and personal training—he values equally the power of body with the power of mind.

Sprinkled with quotes from Bruce Lee, Emma Goldman, Malcolm X, and others, Mickey Z.'s Self-Defense for Radicals makes for a quick and entertaining read for anyone conscious of the potential danger we face. Pass it on to your mother, sister, daughter, and anyone else whose safety you worry about. It is an empowering statement dovetailing the greater feminist movement, however personally defined. Mickey states that, "many physical attacks are essentially oppressive gestures spawned by a perceived ability to exploit a weaker (sic) gender. Any struggle to eradicate such gestures is by definition self-defense."

Essentially, we can conceive fighting back as feminism in action. Whether you are a practiced veteran of the martial arts, or a ruthless bar brawler, the fight remains the same and there is only one winner. To dive into the essence of this provocative parallel, start with the section "I" for individuality. Then learn and practice tactics like the left hook, the elbow jab, and scan your surroundings to make sure you have access to such multifaceted weapons as a broom, scarf, pocket change, or a hot drink. And remember, “You are the weapon. Everything else is a tool.”

Written by: Katy Pine, January 31st 2010

Violent Partners: A Breakthrough Plan for Ending the Cycle of Abuse

admin — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 09:00:00 +0000

By Linda G. Mills

Basic Books

Author Linda G. Mills is a scholar, lawyer, social worker, and the founder of the Center on Violence and Recovery at New York University. In Violent Partners, Mills challenges the tenets of the battered women’s movement. These basic principles held that: domestic abuse was caused by deeply rooted misogynist beliefs, which condoned violence against women; women were rarely violent; if women endured the abuse and didn’t leave, it was because they feared the consequences; and criminal action had to be taken against violent men.

Mills proposes a controversial breakthrough plan to end the cycle of violence, which includes counseling for violent couples who want to stay together, group counseling, and healing circles. The author believes that the criminalization of domestic abuse has been unsuccessful in ending the cycle of violence and, in many instances, has only exacerbated the problem. Although Mills uses many compelling cases to support her arguments, she fails to give the reader a specific case to illustrate what it might have been like to be a victim in the late 1960s, before the women’s movement had championed the cause. This would have given the book a more balanced perspective.

The author also uses some statistics that give a skewed picture of violent women in intimate abuse cases. For instance, the author cites a U.S. Department of Justice-funded study, which has neither footnote nor name, showing that arrests in California for domestic violence between 1985 and 1995 grew by 37% for men and 446% for women. These figures were to illustrate the author’s claim that the number of violent women was dramatically increasing. However, there is no mention that this surge could be attributed to increased reporting by men or greater public awareness vis-à-vis domestic violence. In addition, these figures don’t give the reader a clear idea of the percentage of domestic violence cases that are actually perpetrated by women. In Family Violence in Canada: A Statistical Profile of 2004, published by the Canadian government, it states that “females are more likely to be victims of spousal violence (85% vs.15%),” a figure based on domestic abuse offenses reported to police.

Mills objects to the generalization that men are always the perpetrators and women are always the victims. She believes that both partners play a role in the dynamic of violence and that understanding this dynamic is key to stopping any recurrence. I believe that the author’s intention was to emphasize the importance of understanding the dynamic rather than pointing a finger at one gender, but unfortunately, what many may take away from the book is that women are just as violent as men. This, in turn, could seriously undermine the support for and financial well-being of the current system, which has undeniably saved tens of thousands of lives in the past thirty years.

The book is convincing in its explanation of who becomes violent and why, and the impact of domestic violence on future generations. Mills is also successful in showing the complexity of intimate abuse. What’s more, the author makes it abundantly clear that we now know a lot more about family-related violence than we did thirty years ago and that with our new wisdom, we should embrace new solutions.

I applaud the comprehensive approach that involves looking for new ways to stem violence in future generations. I also found the peacemaking and healing circles to be a promising and relatively inexpensive remedy, which could work in certain situations. However, I would only recommend this book to therapists, public health policy makers, and professionals working with victims of abuse and in the criminal justice system.

Written by: Heather Leighton, January 29th 2010

Woman as Design: Before, Behind, Between, Above, Below

admin — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 18:34:00 +0000

By Stephen Bayley

Conran

Stephen Bayley’s Woman as Design is a large, and fairly heavy, coffee table book that examines how a woman’s body has inspired and changed the world. A woman’s body has been used as the inspiration (whether conscious or unconscious) for a myriad of products including cars, soda bottles, and buildings.

Divided into two parts, part one focuses on the sexualized and eroticized parts of a woman’s body and dress in a more historical context. Part two moves to the outside world and the changes and trends that advertising, fashion, movies, cosmetics have undergone through time in relationship to women’s bodies. The general lesson is that those in power have shaped and changed women’s bodies, sometimes literally in terms of corsets and bras. Women are, in turn, seen as sex objects to be desired and claimed or virgin Madonnas who are sacred and untouchable.

The organization seems a bit convoluted, and it could have been made more concise. With the seemingly non-linear direction of the book, it’s one you can pick up and flip to a page at random, but it isn’t one you sit down and read through. Woman as Design is also not a book that you pick up as a scholar looking to further your knowledge on the topic, but it does provide some great illustrations that really help prove Bayley’s points.

Woman as Design is filled with large color photographs, some of which are reproductions of famous paintings and sculptures, like the Venus de Milo. Quotes from historical figures, actresses, designers and architects accompany many of the photos. There is a stunning set of images of a woman using her breasts as a type of performance art, and I have never seen breasts move like that before. Since many of the images involve nudity and close-ups of various parts of the female form, the book is not recommended for young people without accompanying text and context.

Bayley’s text does not necessarily present any new or radical ideas on how women’s lives and bodies have been shaped by culture, but it does make the idea easily accessible.

Written by: Kristin Conard, January 2nd 2010