Annette Przygoda

Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future

gwen — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Many people shy away from trying to understand economics. They assume that because they don’t know much about tax or trade policies, or because they don’t understand what a derivative on Wall Street is and does, that economics is too complicated, and they leave the fate of the economy in the hands of the “experts”. The trouble with this is that the experts often have a vested interest in keeping everyone else in the dark in order to make a profit.

Enter Robert Reich. In his newest book Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future, the former US Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton and currently professor at the University of California, Berkeley, manages to make a complicated topic digestible. He presents a thorough, yet easily accessible analysis of patterns in America’s economy since the Great Depression.

His underlying premise is that the American economy swings back and forth like a pendulum between times of economic contraction (to varying degrees) and times of economic growth and prosperity. He argues that in this pattern lies another pattern that provides the key to understanding why things went so horribly wrong in 2008 and have not gotten much better since: the concentration of income at the top and a flat growth of income for everyone else. Reich steps beyond the now common analyses that see the root of the economic crash in 2008 in the mortgage crisis or in the scrupulous behavior on Wall Street. He points out that while it is true that Wall Street’s strategy of betting against the American economy and making profits off of people losing their homes contributed to an accelerated downward spiral into the Great Recession, the real issue that led to the economic collapse has been the ongoing erosion of income for the vast majority of Americans.

Reich notes that in the year leading up to the crash in 2008, the top one percent of the American population earned twenty-three percent of the nation’s income. The last time income was so concentrated at the top in the US was in 1928, just before the Great Depression. He explains that the time of economic prosperity that the US experienced after 1945 was a result of macroeconomic policies that ensured a fairer distribution if income and wealth. The Social Security system, Medicare and Medicaid, regulation of the housing and loan market, increased power of labor unions to negotiate higher wages, and programs designed to create jobs were legacies of the New Deal that between 1947 and 1975 created a time where ordinary Americans earned enough money to consume the products they were producing. However, the pendulum swung back starting in the late 1970s. Reich points out that when it became increasingly difficult for American workers to be able to afford to consume, they turned to, and ultimately exhausted, three key coping mechanisms: women entering the workforce, working longer hours, and when that failed to generate enough income, borrowing against your house.

Reich puts the current Great Recession in political and historical perspective. He points out that the path toward the crash really started in the 1980s, when the emphasis on free-market economics and the linking of Wall Street and key decision-making position in politics made the pendulum swing away from a basic bargain that meant that average Americans could afford to live a decent life. He points out that the only way to really get out of the Great Recession is to reverse that trend and ensure that income is distributed more fairly to allow Americans to consume, which would trigger production of goods through increased demand, which in turn would trigger job growth.

Reich ends his book with a series of suggestions for how to achieve this: a reverse income tax, where those earning less than $20,000-$30,000 annually receive wage subsidies rather than paying income tax, higher marginal tax rates for the wealthy, a carbon tax, school vouchers that are based on family income, college loans linked to subsequent income, Medicare for all, and a delinking of money/corporate interests and politics. While this plan sounds utopian, especially given the current trend toward electing politicians who run on an even more drastic deregulation and anti-government platform, Reich makes it very clear that unless we make the pendulum swing toward fair distribution of income again, which can only be done through government action, the Great Recession is here to stay and might, ultimately, undermine the social and political peace in America.

We can’t afford to not understand this. We can’t afford to not understand economics.

Written by: Annette Przygoda, November 12th 2010

Exposing One of the Greatest Intrusions of Religion into American Politics

admin — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Interview with Reed Cowan

Some interviews are more timely than others. In this one, producer and filmmaker Reed Cowan explained his underlying motivation for writing, directing, and producing the critically acclaimed documentary film 8: The Mormon Proposition. Cowan also talked about the “holy war” of the Mormon Church: the fight against marriage equality.

What was your motivation for writing, directing, and producing 8:The Mormon Proposition?

I was raised a Mormon, and I still have many high level friends who are Mormon. I’ve watched and been aware of their involvement in political campaigns for a long time, like their involvement in campaigning against the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s and early 1980s, and now their involvement in any campaign against same-sex marriage. I wanted to tell the truth about their involvement, especially since a key strategy of theirs has been to remain in the background. Their campaign to support Proposition 8 and other measures like it has been one of the greatest intrusions of religion into politics in America, and it has been swept under the rug. I wanted to tell the truth and expose “the man behind the curtain.”

The PR department of the Mormon Church openly told us that they were “invited to participate in a coalition of faiths,” when in fact they were the ones who were doing the inviting. They invited Catholics and other religious groups to participate in a coalition to support Proposition 8. In their efforts to remain in the background while pulling all the strings, the Mormon Church has done a great disservice to other religions. I have my issues with other religions and their stance against the LGBT community as well, but what the Mormon Church has done is to send others into the battle for them. This is almost spineless, to let others take the bullets for you in what is essentially your fight. I wanted to expose that.

A key part of the documentary is exposing the financial contributions the Mormon Church made or encouraged for the “Yes on 8” campaign. To your knowledge, has the church been similarly active in campaigns in other US states where marriage equality was on the ballot?

The records that we have show Mormon involvement all over the US, and in other countries as well; most recently, in Argentina, for example. Any place where the issue of same-sex marriage comes up, the Mormon Church is active. Luckily, in Argentina, their efforts were not successful.

Marriage equality is a controversial and divisive issue, not just within the Mormon Church. Have there been any personal ramifications for you since making this documentary?

I lost my family over this film. It was like dropping a nuclear bomb on family relationships. The relationship with my sister is irreparable. The relationship with my father is irreparable. The other part of it is the hate mail, and a lot of them mention my son, Wesley. He died in a swing set accident a few years ago, and I have gotten a lot of hate mail where people mention this and tell me that I deserve what happened and that I will never see my son again.

Two days ago, a federal judge rules that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional. What is your personal reaction to this ruling?

I am thrilled that documents from our film were part of the evidence in this case and part of the debate in court. I am thrilled that this has become part of the public discourse about Proposition 8. I also feel like the LGBT community now has traction again. The ruling has given us hope. It will no doubt go all the way to the Supreme Court, so there are still more steps to be taken along the way, but it has given us hope.

Based on your knowledge of the Mormon Church and their strategies, do you expect them to continue or even ramp up their efforts in supporting the “Yes on 8” side as this case moves to the Supreme Court?

You bet! They not only have said as much, but all of the evidence we have shows that they will never stop. This is a holy war for them. They will never stop, which is why it was so important to make this film and to show what they are really all about.

Written by: Annette Przygoda, August 28th 2010

The Solitude of Prime Numbers

admin — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 08:02:00 +0000

By Paolo Giordano

Penguin

My best friend often teasingly tells me that the books I recommend to her are all too depressing and sad. I always counter that I recommend books that make me laugh. Now, that either means that I have a sick sense of humor, or it simply illustrates that the stories I most enjoy reading combine painful topics and awkward characters with humor, sarcasm, and witty writing.

Paolo Giordano’s The Solitude of Prime Numbers is exactly such a book. Giordano’s debut novel is the story of Alice and Mattia, two awkward and painfully lonely teenagers. Alice is marked by a childhood skiing accident that leaves her limping and deeply insecure about her body. In those cruel teenage years, she develops an eating disorder in an attempt to regain some control over her body. Mattia is haunted by suffocating guilt after the disappearance of his twin sister when he was nine years old. Alice and Mattia connect over their pain, their awkwardness, and their acute sense that they don’t fit in. But their bond is fragile, subtle, and built on a silent agreement that neither reveal the source of their pain to the other. Even in their connection, they remain isolated and lonely, never fully able to overcome what keeps them emotionally locked into their own worlds.

Eventually, their lives go in different directions and they separate, without ever openly communicating what they feel for each other. But despite being thousands of miles apart, neither Alice nor Mattia is willing or able to let go of their unusual bond. Reunited by a chance encounter, they are faced with a decision: to truly let the other in or return to a life without the other.

Giordano masterfully paints a world full of pain, loneliness, and love. While the humor in The Solitude of Prime Numbers is very subtle, it is there, in the background. It makes the tragedies bearable, the loneliness less hopeless. So yes, this novel is sad and depressing. But it is also incredibly powerful, and it will make you chuckle softly from time to time as you follow Alice and Mattia in their struggle to survive their childhood experiences.

Written by: Annette Przygoda, July 11th 2010

Everything Matters!

admin — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 16:01:00 +0000

By Ron Currie, Jr.

Viking

Someone should count how many coming-of-age novels have ever been written that focus on white, male characters. To me, it seems like every time I browse around in a bookstore and skim through the back covers of books in the “New & Hot Fiction” section, the onslaught of these story set-ups just doesn’t end. I realize that some topics never get boring, like love, betrayal, or war. But in a seemingly endless sea of new and existing stories about the teenage and early adult years of white men, it must be incredibly hard to create a story that is exciting and different.

This is where Everything Matters! comes in. Or so I thought. Based on descriptions and reviews elsewhere, I decided to override my own personal annoyance with characters like Holden Caulfield, Pip, or Adrian Healey. Hailed as a small miracle and a delightful read by reviewers at NPR or the New York Times, Everything Matters! is the story of Junior Thibodeau who is born with the knowledge that thirty-six years into his life, an asteroid will destroy the earth and all human life. Written in a quirky, rather unpredictable sequence of countdowns and changing narrative perspectives, the book follows Junior’s life from early moments in his mother’s uterus to the final moment. Junior hears a voice that tells him exactly what will happen, not just in terms of the earth’s demise, but also throughout his life. That would be unusual enough, but Junior is also portrayed as a genius who seems to be able to accomplish anything, including discovering the cure for cancer in only two weeks, if he sets his mind to it. Yet, despite these super-human abilities and an all-encompassing knowledge of the future, Junior must grapple with the fact that no matter what he manages to achieve, the world will still be destroyed.

This is what makes, or should make, Everything Matters! different than other coming-of-age stories. The plot allows for unique opportunities to explore existential questions, to play with the irony of creating a character that is capable of ending suffering from diseases, poverty or global hunger in a situation where none of that really matters. Or does it? And this is where the book falls short. Of 302 pages, only the last thirty or so actually dive into the possibilities that are set up by the story. It is here that Currie tackles, and somewhat heavy-handedly, the “why bother making an effort in life if you know it’s all going to end soon anyway?” questions. The rest of the novel very much gets lost in the sea of other coming-of-age novels. We hear too much about how Junior screws up with the love of his life, how as a result, he spends years getting drunk in cheap, dirty bars and how he still manages to be the hero for his family (and briefly also for all mankind). It’s all too familiar and too much.

Technically, the book is very unique. The narration switches back and forth between the omniscient, all-knowing narrator (the voice that Junior hears) and the various characters in the novel. The book starts with a countdown, but then abandons the countdown for large parts of the book, only to pick it up again toward the end. For someone interested in playing with structure and narration, it might be well worth the read just to see what Currie manages to come up with. However, I often felt that Currie was a bit too much into playing with technique at the expense of the story itself. There were numerous times in the book where I thought that often very bizarre sub-plots were inserted only to incorporate another writer-technicality, with little or no purpose for the content of the story. Again, it was all a little much.

All in all, I can’t say that Everything Matters! did away with my annoyance with yet another supposedly witty but deep story about some white dude in his teens and early adulthood. There is a lot of potential in the set-up to make this a different and exciting read, if Currie lost some of the showing-off of technique and the all too common features of the development of his protagonist. A few stronger female characters would be nice, too. As it stands, Everything Matters! over-promised and under-delivered for me, but I would love to see someone pick up on where the last thirty pages of the novel left off.

Written by: Annette Przygoda, June 18th 2010

From Criminality to Equality: 40 Years of Lesbian and Gay Movement History in Canada

admin — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Directed by Nancy Nicol

Intervention Video

I was around eight years old when I went to my first Pride parade with my mom and her girlfriend. I was fourteen when my mom went on national television for a campaign demanding the right to marry for lesbians and gays. And I was twenty-five when I married my long-term girlfriend within months of same-sex marriages becoming legal in my country. In many ways, the struggles for social equality and equal rights for LGBTQ people have been tied to key events in my life, and these days at Pride, as a thirty-two year old, I often feel like an old timer, like a living, breathing embodiment of history.

I know every detail of key steps in the lesbian and gay rights movement since the late 1970s because they have been a part of me. But when I say I know every detail, I mean every detail of the German lesbian and gay rights movement. When I moved to Canada a few years ago, I realized that I knew virtually nothing about how these struggles have played out in my new home.

Nancy Nicol’s film series From Criminality to Equality closed that gap in knowledge for me. On four DVDs with a total playing time of over six hours, Nicol chronicles the history of the lesbian and gay rights movement in Canada. Starting with the struggles over anti-discrimination clauses in the Human Rights Act in the 1970s and '80s, to the fight over marriage equality in the late 1990s and early 2000s, wach DVD focuses on separate issues within a certain timeframe. When watching the entire series, the interconnectedness of these issues through time becomes very apparent. Key individuals of the lesbian and gay rights movement appear again and again, and the films show a clear progression of issues from the step out of criminality to societal and legal recognition of same-sex relationships. Each film is jam-packed with information, and while some segments are a bit lengthy, the series provides an enlightening summary of the past forty years of LGBTQ history in Canada.

The most moving of the four DVDs for me was Politics of the Heart, which portrays lesbian and gay families in Quebec as they fight for equal parenting rights. Not only did it remind me of my own history growing up with two mothers, it also presented a perspective the other three films lacked. It reminded the viewer that even in times when lesbian and gay people didn’t have the same rights as heterosexuals, we found unique and often very creative ways to live our lives and live them well. Politics of the Heart shows that queer families existed in spite of not being recognized by law or the broader society. As one friend put it: “I would have liked to have seen less about the fights and more about our alternative lives. We don’t just exist in opposition to heterosexuals.”

While it is certainly important to remember and highlight that the path to equality has been a bumpy one, as someone who has lived, breathed, and been defined by the struggles for LGBTQ equal rights, the film series missed an opportunity for showcasing one of the key features of that distinguishes the lesbian and gay rights movement from many other social movements: that we love who we love, not in opposition to something, but in embracing who we are and what makes us happy.

Written by: Annette Przygoda, March 24th 2010

City of Borders

admin — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 11:27:00 +0000

Directed by Yun Suh

I grew up in Berlin. The images of the wall, of barbed wire around strips of no-man’s land dividing the city, and of rigorous border controls and heavily armed border guards were a normal part of my life for a long time. When the wall came down in 1989, these images disappeared out of my every day life, but they are so much a part of my history that seeing them again in City of Borders brought back that claustrophobic feeling of knowing you can’t move about freely in your city, of being acutely aware of your own vulnerability in the face of stone, steel, and weapons that are designed to keep you in place.

It would be missing the point to compare living conditions in current-day Jerusalem to Cold War-era Berlin. What City of Borders highlights so impressively is how unique the political and social context is for people living in Jerusalem and its surrounding areas. Knowing what it feels like to live with walls and borders and barbed wire every day added a layer of meaning to the documentary by filmmaker Yun Suh for me that made the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stand up for the entire sixty-six minutes of the film.

City of Borders tells the stories of gay and lesbian men and women in Jerusalem, Ramallah, and Givat Ze’ev. This one simple sentence entails all of the stunning complexities that City of Borders addresses: issues of sexual identity in the context of fundamentalist interpretations of religion are embedded in the larger context of the political conflict between Israel and Palestine. Personal experiences are not, and cannot be separated from the political realities the men and women in City of Borders live in.

We get to know Boody, a devout Muslim Palestinian man who risks his life climbing the fence from the West Bank into Jerusalem to go to the city’s only gay bar, Shushan. Boody later decides to leave his hometown Ramallah, as well as his friends and family, to immigrate to the U.S. because of constant death threats against him and his family for being an openly gay man—and Ramallah’s first drag queen.

We learn about Samira and Ravit, a lesbian couple who not only faces repercussions for living an openly lesbian life, but also for breaking another big taboo: a love relationship that centers intimacy between Jews and Palestinians. We meet Adam, a young gay activist who lives in a Jewish settlement in the West Bank and is a staunch defender settlement policy, thereby introducing one of the most complex political issues between Israel and Palestine into the mix. Finally, we follow moments in the life of Sa’ar, owner of Shushan, and at the same time the first openly gay man elected into city council in Jerusalem.

These four stories combine to show us—sometimes subtly, sometimes aggressively—that borders in the region are more than walls and barbed wire, that perceptions of us versus them, of "I versus the Other," are so deeply ingrained in both religions, history, and politics in the region that even a moment of intimacy between lovers can turn into a moment of fucking the enemy.

City of Borders is remarkable in many ways. It is packed full of images and insights that stayed with me long after I put the DVD back into its case. The most remarkable aspect of the documentary is that it does not (over)simplify. It layers the realities of the political conflict, complex religious controversies—both within and between Islam and Judaism—and the clash between historic roots and modernism on top of personal stories of finding and accepting sexual identities. It is this approach that drives one point home very loudly: there are no easy solutions to dealing with the borders in our minds.

Written by: Annette Przygoda, November 24th 2009

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

Girl + Girl: Classic Lesbian Short Films

admin — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 16:48:00 +0000

By Various Directors

Wolfe Video

Reviewing a diverse film collection that includes a variety pieces can be a tricky task. This has certainly has been the case for reviewing this collection of lesbian short films. The DVD features a range of lesbian shorts produced between 1988 and 2003 in Europe, Canada, and the U.S. The collection not only spans periods where lesbian filmmaking was not accessible to the wider public, but includes a range of culturally diverse perspectives on filmmaking, art, and the representation of lesbian life in cinema.

From a historic perspective, the collection is interesting and enlightening; it includes classic coming-out stories like Cheryl Farthing’s Rosebud (1991, UK) as well as the film festival favorite Maid of Honor(1999, USA), two short films that represent one aspect of the development of lesbian filmmaking in terms of topics covered and also appeal to a broader audience. From a purely entertainment driven perspective, not all of the films included in this collection are easily accessible. I struggled with the quirkier films where stories and images get lost in the films’ focus on artistic merit.

But as much as the diversity of the collection presented a challenge for writing a cohesive review, it also meant that I could skip ahead and get lost in an absolute masterpiece that is included on this DVD: Canadian director Leah Pool’s Rispondetemi (1991) is the life story of a woman as it flashes before her eyes in fifteen minutes while she is rushed to the hospital after a car accident. The film not only highlights themes, images and perspectives that return again in Pool’s later work such as Lost and Delirious, but also represents fifteen minutes of gripping, breathtaking cinema. This short film alone turns the DVD into a must have collection for anyone who enjoys the kind of dazed and confused (or should I say lost and delirious?) state of mind after having watched a truly amazing film.

Written by: Annette Przygoda, April 27th 2009

The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture and Social Change

admin — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 18:03:00 +0000

By Angela McRobbie

Sage Publications

UK-based scholar and author Angela McRobbie has written extensively on women in contemporary popular culture. All of her writings present interesting and thought-provoking analyses of the roles assigned to women in various cultural spaces ranging from women's magazines to visual media. While her previous writings appear somewhat more optimistic about the ability to use subversive strategies as a form of resistance to the power dynamics and constraints inherent in popular images of women in the world of consumer culture, her newest book represents a departure from her earlier lines of argument. In [The Aftermath of Feminism](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0761970622?ie=UTF8&tag=feminrevie-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0761970622), McRobbie examines our current social and cultural landscape, one that is often referred to as "post-feminist," and presents a compelling analysis of how images of women in contemporary pop culture contribute to an "undoing" of feminism. Throughout the book, McRobbie positions post-feminism as not just anti-feminism (in the sense of anti-feminism being a straightforward backlash against feminist positions and ideas), but as a form of backlash that "takes feminism into account." This taking into account casts feminism itself as a thing of the past, as something that is no longer needed in a time when women are encouraged to pursue an education, a career, and be sexually independent. At the same time, it plays off of stereotypes that have cast feminism as associated with and often equivalent to hatred of men. McRobbie convincingly exposes this "taking into account" in popular television shows and movies, like Sex and the City and Bridget Jones's Diary, and analyzes how the obsession with femininity and middle-class whiteness in these and other programs undermines feminism as a whole.

While the analyses revolving around popular culture are enlightening and rich in complexity, the most powerful passages of the book are those in which McRobbie ventures beyond pop culture and analyzes the post-feminist "undoing" of feminism in consumer culture, the workplace, representations of "female" disorders or (symbolic) violence. It is particularly this venturing beyond analyses of television shows that turns [The Aftermath of Feminism](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0761970622?ie=UTF8&tag=feminrevie-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0761970622) from an interesting read into one of the most powerful analyses of why feminism is not a thing of the past and maybe more needed today than ever before.

Written by: Annette Przygoda, January 21st 2009

If I Am Missing or Dead: A Sister's Story of Love, Murder, and Liberation

admin — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 13:58:00 +0000

By Janine Latus

Simon & Schuster

Janine Latus’ bestselling memoir, If I Am Missing or Dead, is remarkable in many ways. Latus took her training as a journalist and freelance writer and transformed a painful story of growing up with an emotionally abusive father and numerous incidents of sexualized violence and domestic abuse into an adamant account of conflict and resistance in a context of victimization and violence against women.

The memoir revolves around Latus’ own struggle to break out of a series of abusive relationships, as well as the story of Latus’ sister, Amy, who faced many of the same problems in her relationships with men, and was eventually murdered by her boyfriend. The title of the book repeats a line in a letter Amy taped to a drawer in her office desk only a few weeks before she went missing, and her body was later found buried at a building site-a letter that informs those looking for her that Amy suspected her boyfriend of being capable of killing her. It represents the deeply disturbing conflict that runs through both sisters’ stories: the fact that both women were acutely aware of their victimization in their relationships with men, and the ultimate danger they were in, but found themselves trapped in a toxic mix of abuse, shattered self-worth, and an undying hope to finally find love and respect from the men in their lives.

Latus does not shy away from exposing this conflict, and at the same time, her journalistic stance enables her to describe it without commenting, without (self-)blaming. This very aspect is the key strength of the book. It allows the reader to empathize, identify with the Latus sisters, or see themselves in the book, without being drawn into the all too familiar compulsion to blame women for choosing the wrong men and staying with them even after the relationship turns abusive.

The author and her sister did not choose. Instead, they were surrounded by men who grew up learning that abusive behaviour is acceptable and caught in a life that taught them that men are driven by uncontrollable urges to take what they want-even if that means emotionally, physically, or sexually abusing their daughters, girlfriends, or wives.

Written by: Annette Przygoda, June 13th 2008