Heather Leighton

Hey, Shorty!: A Guide to Combating Sexual Harassment and Violence in Schools and on the Streets

mandy — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 09:00:00 +0000

By Meghan Huppuch, Mandy Van Deven, Joanne N. Smith

Difficulties concentrating in school, shame, depression, guilt, fear, low self-esteem, poor body image, and powerlessness are just some of the repercussions that victims of sexual harassment at school experience, according to research conducted by Girls for Gender Equity (GGE). This Brooklyn-based nonprofit organization works to “improve gender and race relations and socioeconomic conditions for [the] most vulnerable youth and communities of color.” Joanne N. Smith, Mandy Van Deven, and Megan Huppuch of GGE have collaboratively written Hey, Shorty!, which tells GGE’s story, while providing a model for teens to teach their peers what constitutes sexual harassment and how to prevent it. The book also gives activists, educators, parents and students a hands-on guide to combat sexual harassment and violence in their schools and neighborhoods.

In September 2001, just a few months after GGE had started meeting to play basketball, an 8-year-old girl was raped on her way to school in the area. In response to the victim blaming that GGE founder Joanne Smith heard, she decided to discuss gender stereotypes and discrimination with the girls in the league. This evolved into Gender Respect Workshops, developed and facilitated by Mandy Van Deven with male and female students in the classroom. She discovered that sexual harassment was a major issue in the lives of the students, particularly girls and LGBTQ youth. Soon after, the Sisters in Strength program was born, and today it has become a paid year-long internship for teen girls of color to advocate for the enforcement of sexual harassment policies in New York City public schools through workshops and direct action.

Sisters in Strength’s first task was to raise awareness about the problem in the community, which led to their making Hey... Shorty!, a short film that later won Best Youth Documentary at the Roxbury Film Festival. They screened their film at the Street Harassment Summit, where they shared what they had learned with other members of the community.

A second Sisters in Strength project involved hands-on participatory action research. The teen interns collected information through surveys, focus groups, and slam books, or notebooks with written prompts that students can respond to anonymously. After compiling their data, they concluded that sexual harassment was rampant and normalized. Their research results were presented at GGE's Gender Equality Festival to other community organizations. Under Meghan Huppuch’s leadership, GGE went on to form the Coalition for Gender Equity in Schools with more than twenty other area organizations.

The work of GGE may well have given us the solution to bullying that we have so desperately sought. When we are sexually harassed, we believe we are alone and somehow deserve this treatment. In other words, we internalize our pain and suffer in silence. But from GGE’s research and community action, we see that this pervasive problem lies not within the person being harassed, but with the external forces that perpetuate and enable sexual harassment to exist in our schools and on our streets.

GGE is an empowering initiative for teens, our future leaders, and Hey, Shorty! is an essential resource for parents, teachers and community leaders who want to take action against bullying and sexual harassment in their communities. Chock full of capacity-building activities and ideas, Hey, Shorty! is indispensable for anyone who wants to create an environment where everyone thrives.

Written by: Heather Leighton, April 30th 2011

The Girls’ History and Culture Reader: The Twentieth Century

mandy — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Edited by Miriam Forman-Brunell, Leslie Paris

University of Illinois Press

The Girls’ History and Culture Reader: The Twentieth Century is an anthology of influential essays written by top scholars that have defined the field of American girls’ history and culture over the last thirty years. Girl-centered research is considered a relatively new and dynamic field of investigation that is believed to be critical for gaining a deeper understanding of women and gender, and a fuller appreciation of how generation influences American culture and society. Edited by Miriam Forman-Brunell and Leslie Paris, The Girls’ History and Culture Reader addresses twentieth century forces such as fashion, consumerism, immigration, civil rights, music, leisure and labor and how these factors impacted the lives of girls.

The twentieth century was marked by increased choice and freedom for women, which translated into change, albeit not identical, for their younger counterparts. With more opportunities in society, girls took part in sports, went to camp, pursued higher learning in greater numbers, became consumers and members of the labor force, and participated in pop culture like never before. However, their greater independence also meant increased scrutiny by older generations. Girls were still seen as innocents requiring protection in an increasingly predatory world, while their sexual curiosity and independence induced considerable anxiety.

For those of you who thought you had a good handle on the events that influenced women’s history in the twentieth century, you might glean some interesting new information from this book. I certainly did. For instance, menstruation was taught to girls in the 1900s devoid of any instruction on fertility. Instead, teachings were from a purely hygienic point of view, and unsurprisingly, had strong backing from companies manufacturing disposable sanitary napkins. Equally surprising was the fact that single mothers in the Los Angeles area were known to initiate juvenile court proceedings to bring their wayward daughters and their much-needed incomes home. However, the most astounding in this collection was the essay on mid-century psychoanalysis, which posited that a healthy Oedipal relationship between daughter and father was the pre-eminent path to sexual maturity. At its limits, it appeared to condone incest as an expression of a girl’s own desires.

My personal favourite in the collection was an essay by Susan J. Douglas on the acceptance of Black music in the 1960s, and how girls groups gave a voice to the struggles of young women and showed them the potential for strength in numbers. For all those fans of Nancy Drew, there is also a great essay on our favourite sleuth. Ilana Nash convincingly shows that while our heroine was a model of intelligence, independence and empowerment, her stories also reinforced patriarchal privilege and conservative gender ideology.

Although there is a focus on White middle glass girls, which the editors acknowledge, The Girls’ History and Culture Reader also contains compelling essays on the double bind of Mexican, Chinese, and Italian-American girls, who had to deal not only with the cultural constraints of their own homes but also with those of American society at large. While there is an essay on Black girls and the institutionalization of double dutch, the book falls short in providing an idea of how Black girls’ lives changed throughout the twentieth century.

This book is a great resource for anyone wanting to research the lives of girls in a specific decade of the twentieth century, as each essay ends with an extensive bibliography. This is also a great reference for fledgling authors wanting to create an accurate depiction of the lives of girls in the twentieth century. After reading this book, I came away thinking that twentieth century history should be revised to reflect the changes experienced by girls, an area thus far ignored.

Written by: Heather Leighton, March 27th 2011

The Orphan Rescue

andrea — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 08:00:00 +0000

By Anne Dublin

Second Story Press

The Orphan Rescue opens in Sosnowiec, Poland in the late spring of 1937 as twelve-year-old Miriam and her grandfather take her younger brother David to an orphanage. Miriam’s grandparents have no other choice. The Depression has been a financially trying time for everyone, and when her locksmith grandfather injures his hand and can no longer work, the family is faced with a difficult decision. Young Miriam is pulled from school to work as a butcher’s assistant, while David must go and live at the orphanage, headed by the beady-eyed, vulture-like director, Mr. Reznitsky. After already losing her parents, Miriam is devastated to say good-bye to her brother and vows to bring him home, one way or another.

The Orphan Rescue offers the pre-teen reader a strong girl character in Miriam, who is true to her word and perseveres until she fulfills her promise, even when it requires her to tell lies and transgress the rules. In the book’s afterword, the author, Anne Dublin, shares how The Orphan Rescue is based on the true story of her cousins, Miriam and Alter Chaim. Dublin also states in this section that she wanted today’s children to know that poverty throughout the world still forces families to send their children to orphanages and take them out of school to work.

Although this book is intended for pre-teens, I decided to read it to my 8-year-old daughter. She thought Miriam did the right thing because brothers and sisters have an obligation to protect one another. But she also believed “that was a long time ago, they don’t have orphanages today.” I told my daughter that these types of institutions no longer exist in our country, but we still have foster homes. This led to a fairly lengthy conversation about the few alternatives some parents have when they lose their jobs or become ill and have no immediate family to help them out.

As a former teacher, I can see that The Orphan Rescue would make a good class reader, as the subject matter holds the interest of strong readers, while the story is easy and short enough to accommodate those with lower reading skills. The book also provides teachers with numerous areas of discussion and starting points to explore other areas, such as European Geography, World Religions, the Depression, Genealogy and Child Labour.

Another idea might be to create a second version of this book for stronger or older readers. The first few chapters are very dramatic and could have been fleshed out with more period details to draw the reader further into the narrative.

Overall, The Orphan Rescue was a rich story and all the more compelling because it was true.

Written by: Heather Leighton, March 26th 2011

The Social Media Survival Guide: Strategies, Tactics, and Tools for Succeeding in the Social Web

mandy — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 08:00:00 +0000

By Deltina Hay

Quill Driver Books

If you’re like me, you have a blog and a Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, YouTube and Flickr account, but when someone starts to talk about CMS, metadata, Squidoo lenses, or the semantic web, you quickly tune out. We’re all aware of how vital the social web is for reaching new audiences, but we’re unsure of which tools are best suited to our online objectives, or which tools are the best investment of our time. In The Social Media Survival Guide, Deltina Hay walks you through the basics of using the most popular social media tools and helps you to devise your own strategy to meet your online objectives and hopefully save you time.

An added bonus, this book comes with a very useful CD to help you prepare your own social media strategy plan so that you can add the tools that best suit your needs and expand your social media presence. The CD worksheets and forms are also indispensable for maintaining records and keeping your online information consistent. The Social Media Survival Guide is intended for "do-it-yourselfers, resourceful business owners, motivated authors, innovative publishers, and directors of IT or marketing departments.” However, I could easily see some young self-starters using this book and CD to carve out a niche for themselves among older, more technically-limited business owners.

The Social Media Survival Guide is divided into fifteen chapters and appendices for code lovers with a burning desire to install WordPress or create an RSS Feed or widget from scratch. The book begins with your social media strategy plan, which you will repeatedly return to, and it offers seven sample strategy plans, which are especially helpful if your own profile mirrors one of the samples.

The book can be divided into three different parts. The first applies to the general public and addresses tags, or key terms; RSS feeds and blogs; building a WordPress site; and Pod, Vid, and Webcasting. The entire book is more useful if you have a WordPress blog or website because the subsequent chapters refer to how this Content Management System (CMS) can easily accommodate a large range of social media tools. The second part addresses Social Networking (Facebook) and Micro-blogging (Twitter), Social Bookmarking (Delicious) and Crowd-Sourcing (Digg), Media Communities (image-, video- and document-sharing) and Widgets. Although I thought I knew everything in this section, I still gleaned some useful information about some features on the ever-changing Facebook, and the section on document-sharing is definitely worth a look, particularly if you work in publishing. However, the author should have focused more on StumbleUpon rather than Delicious, whose future is uncertain.

The last section would be most useful to business people, but it’s still worth the read to learn about the other available tools. This section covers the Social Media News Room, other Social Media Tools (geo-tagging, event tools, etc.), Integration and Streamlining Tools, the Future of Social Media (Web 3.0), and How to Measure Success (Analytics, Search Optimization, etc). Deltina Hay uses easy-to-follow language throughout The Social Media Survival Guide. The chapters follow a logical order, and the book itself will serve as a great reference guide if only for eighteen months; by then the social media landscape will transform itself yet again.

After reading this book, which was initially overwhelming, I can honestly say that I learned a lot. I’ve also seen the limitations of Blogger as a CMS and have already made plans to change my blog over to WordPress. However, I wish that the publisher had fleshed out the Vid and Webcasting section and provided a script, as was done for Podcasting.

In the end, I found the book at 450 pages was too long for anyone who was not taking a course in social media at a college or university. Although the author is thorough, I believe that the publisher might be better off to break this text into three separate books to make it more palatable to the social media enthusiast. Otherwise, I fear that this textbook might stay on a to-do list until it’s old news.

Written by: Heather Leighton, January 17th 2011

The Curious Case of the Communist Jell-O Box: The Execution of Julius & Ethel Rosenberg

gwen — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 12:00:00 +0000

By Michael Hoerger, Mia Partlow

Microcosm Publishing

What could possibly be the connection between imitation raspberry Jell-O, communism, and the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg? I was intrigued. After all, what self-respecting leftist would not be interested in the case of the Rosenbergs, who at the height of the Red Scare were convicted of smuggling secrets to the Russians? The Curious Case of the Communist Jell-O Box (CCCJB) is a political zine by Michael Hoerger and Mia Partlow, which folds out into a full-sized poster, but for maximum enjoyment you have to read it as you unfold. In other words, the story unfolds as you do.

The authors use the theme of the Jell-O box to great effect. This seemingly innocuous product and its unlikely association with communism initially lighten the darker themes of espionage and subsequent execution. The ubiquitous gelatin dessert box then takes on a more sinister significance when presented at trial as a sophisticated communications device. Yet this evidence, which was central to the prosecution’s case, was never recovered, and unsurprisingly when shown a replica under cross-examination and asked whether they recognized the box, the witnesses all answered “yes.”

In CCCJB, Hoerger and Partlow write that the show trial and execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were used to fuel public paranoia about communists and lefties in order to give the FBI and its leader, J. Edgar Hoover, greater powers to infiltrate and use extralegal means to quell any real or apparent leftist threat. If you read closely, you’ll see that the writers do raise the possibility of our late-defendants’ guilt, but it seems there’s a larger message in this zine—the unnecessary demonizing of the left or anyone who dares to raise the virtues of truth and justice.

Your inner geek will be tickled pink with reproductions of the now-declassified transcripts from the 1950 Grand Jury trial and a declassified CIA memo that supplies background material on how to counter pro-Rosenberg propaganda. The collage of period newspaper clippings and sensational headlines from both sides of the political spectrum with their scratchy and at times illegible letters give the zine a genuine 1950s look and feel.

CCCJB left me wanting to find out more about the Rosenbergs and the two children they left behind, and a link to further reading about the case would have been appreciated. But overall this was a well-planned undertaking and a lot of entertainment for just two bucks. I checked out the authors’ website, and they have other food-related political zines with their own declassified documents… excellent… excellent!

Written by: Heather Leighton, December 21st 2010

Make Me A Woman

brittany — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 16:00:00 +0000

By Vanessa Davis

Drawn & Quarterly

It’s no stretch to say that mainstream media gives us a limited range of what women can be, so much so that when we find a book that actually reflects the complexity of womanhood, we’re ecstatic. Make Me A Woman is just that book. Readers will be able to readily relate to Vanessa Davis and the daily events of her life, while also encountering just enough difference to sink into some pure escapism.

Make Me A Woman is a collection of Davis’s diary comics and drawings from 2004 to 2010. In watercolor, pen and ink, and pencil drawings torn from the pages of her sketchbook, Davis unveils the events of her childhood in South Florida, her life in New York in her early twenties, and finally her move to California, where she currently lives with her boyfriend. Davis tackles those seemingly indescribable everyday events—such as developing a crush on a stranger in her daily commute and dealing with awkward sexual encounters or unrequited love—with biting wit and aplomb.

Aspiring artists out there will find this collection inspirational. Davis details her series of low-paying jobs with an eye trained firmly on her career—a paid cartoonist. She also pens a few panels about facing the artist’s worst demon: procrastination. In addition to creating strips about her Jewish identity and hanging out with friends, this autobiographical cartoonist creates some of her funniest panels about her relationship with her mother and sister. Although Davis’s mother is the űber cool founder of the Palm Beach Jewish Film Festival, she makes her daughters cringe by her mere choice of words, as mothers are wont to do.

I found Davis’s collection of strips enjoyable. I loved the tiny details she adds to her comics, and the hilarious asides that she slips in. But what I love the most is the range of feelings that the cartoonist expresses in her art, such as anger, annoyance, disappointment, anxiety, physical pain, pining, self-pity, embarrassment, and bliss. What’s more, it’s refreshing to see a cartoonist who is not afraid to draw herself with some weight on her and does not obsess about her size in the book, except for the fat farm she went to in her teens, which she “enjoyed.”

I’ve read through the collection three times, and each time that I get to the end, I want more. Although her critique of artist Robert Crumb alone was worth the price of the book, I still wish that Davis had delved more into her life as a cartoonist.

Written by: Heather Leighton, November 21st 2010

Enough!: A Buddhist Approach to Finding Release from Addictive Patterns

beth — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Chönyi Taylor

Snow Lions Publications

Ordained by the Dalai Lama in 1995, Chönyi Taylor is a retired psychotherapist who fuses Buddhist teachings with western psychology to assist psychotherapists and health care professionals in helping individuals to break the pattern of addiction. In Enough!: A Buddhist Approach to Finding Release from Addictive Patterns, Taylor states in her acknowledgments that the most insidious addiction is not related to drugs, but to our own self-pity and smallmindedness. In her words, addiction is primarily a state of mind, the result of an initial personal decision that is repeated until it becomes habit-forming or compulsive. The problem is not the availability of alcohol, drugs, sex, or food (pick yer poison), but our initial and subsequent choices to use these things for short-term pleasure.

Because addiction begins in the mind, this is where the addictive pattern has to be broken. The process is slow and involves, first and foremost, recognizing the existence of a problem and finding the motivation to change. The next step is to become mindful of what we are running away from or the things, people, places, and emotions that trigger our addictive pattern. This is how we uncover the causes and effects of our addiction. Being addiction-free also involves breaking the hold of selfishness, as it only enables addiction. The self-centered mind exaggerates impending disasters if our addictive need cannot be met. Dramatics and catastrophic-thinking need to be undone by equanimity or even-mindedness. The three basic steps towards breaking the pattern are mindfulness, introspection, and equanimity. Repeated practice through meditation of these three elements should make them pattern forming.

Taylor gives the basics on how to meditate and ends each chapter with a meditation. In Enough!, we learn that we are all addicted to something. Even if our addiction is only to negative thinking, it still unintentionally undermines our potential for satisfying happiness. Although I found mindfulness and introspection relatively easy to grasp, I had a hard time getting my head around equanimity or curbing the exaggerated thinking and emotion-fueled jumping to conclusions. But I guess I’m not alone, as the book has four meditations on that alone: equanimity towards our feelings, environment, people, and ourselves. There is also an inspiring chapter on managing pain, making choices, and building self-confidence.

This book is meant to be read slowly, and the meditations duly practiced, preferably with an experienced group leader to reap maximum benefit. I also recommend that you not read more than one chapter at a time or choose a chair with a very straight back, as the abundance of abstract nouns makes this book highly soporific. Although I didn’t find the real-life cases that Taylor chose to be very helpful, I found her approach to addiction extremely positive and highly enlightening.

Written by: Heather Leighton, October 14th 2010

Death to the Dictator!: A Young Man Casts a Vote in Iran’s 2009 Election and Pays a Devastating Price

admin — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 00:05:00 +0000

By Afsaneh Moqadam

Sarah Crichton Books

Less than one year after Iranian demonstrators took to the streets to protest the fraudulent re-election of hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as President of the Islamic Republic, writer Afsaneh Moqadam tells the true story of Mohsen Abbaspour, a man in his early twenties who votes for the Reformist party and its leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi. Swept up in the euphoria of possible change, the once politically apathetic Mohsen finds himself alongside his friends and fellow reformists in the streets posing the greatest challenge to Iranian authorities since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The Presidential Guard, Basijis and police eventually suppress the demonstrators through brutal force and mass arrests. Like many fellow citizens, Mohsen is arrested, taken to the notorious Evin prison and then to Kahrizak. He is repeatedly interrogated, tortured, and raped until he is finally released on August 29, 2009.

In the letter that accompanied this book, the publisher vouches for the truthfulness of this account and informs us that a pseudonym has been used to protect the author’s identity. Given the relatively short period since the events of June 2009, the requisite anonymity is unsurprising, especially since Moqadam could well be Abbaspour. This book offers an insider account of what transpired in June 2009 from the perspective of a twenty-something secular protester and gives the reader a rare glimpse into how a young Iranian views the ruling party, his parents’ generation of revolutionaries and the shift in power from the mullahs to the neo-fascist Revolutionary Guard and its protector, Ahmadinejad. This perspective is particularly significant when we consider that Mohsen and his generation are largely the result of a pronatalist policy implemented in the 1980s in order to create an Islamic army of twenty million. This policy backfired producing a baby boom made up of individuals similar to Mohsen: educated with bleak employment opportunities and little if any interest in military service.

Another interesting aspect of the story is the speed at which change apparently occurred. Shadi, a veteran of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, tells Mohsen that it took them a year or two to get as far as the reformists had in just two weeks. Moreover, just ten days after the stolen election, brazen and fearless protesters began chanting the previously inconceivable, “Death to Kamenei!” The story sheds light on how technology acted as a catalyst in this revolt. In spite of using spy-ware provided by a major cellphone maker and slowing Internet speed to a snail’s pace, the authorities were unable to keep up with the transfer of information and images through new technology and social media.

Although many readers will find the rape and torture difficult to stomach, this part of the story must nevertheless be told. The more people become aware of rape and torture, the greater the likelihood that one day they will take a stand against these acts. Death to the Dictator! reads like a true account; however, in addition to a few structural problems, the English was somewhat stilted, which did interfere with the flow of the story and led me to believe that this book was released prematurely. Nevertheless, if you’re interested in knowing more about one Iranian’s experience during this tumultuous time then you will enjoy this book.

Written by: Heather Leighton, August 30th 2010

The Selves

admin — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Sonja Elizabeth Ahlers

Drawn and Quarterly

Sonja Ahlers’ The Selves is a visual essay which combines collage, poetry, watercolor, calligraphy, prose and fabric. The result is a multi-layered and textured work that reveals something new every time you leaf through it. Although pastiche and mixed media immediately come to mind to describe Ahlers’ work, it may also be considered a new genre or a new way of looking at our lives as women in relation to mass media. As passive consumers of pop culture, we assimilate the images and narratives that mass media serve us. Unable to discern the promoters from the products and the dreams they’re selling, we model our various “selves” from babyhood to old age around the ideals these promoters project. At least, that’s my interpretation of the book, but yours may be very different. Now imagine someone appropriating these same images and presenting them in a new way as social commentary. For instance, Ahlers presents an intellectual side of Marilyn Monroe using a rare photograph of her reading, next to a text by Gloria Steinem describing how hard it was for men to reconcile Marilyn’s love for books with her physical appearance. We also see repeated images of Princess Diana throughout her life, from a young woman who marries a prince, to a princess who never lives happily ever after. We also see a very young Angelina Jolie in the company of her father, reminding us that beauty and fame do not exempt anyone from pain. The public is indeed very different from the private. Some serious themes such as suicide, child abuse, self-mutilation, female rivalry and abortion are raised in The Selves, but this book is not without humor. The images Ahlers uses are readily recognizable to any woman born in the 1970s or early '80s, and nostalgia is guaranteed. I enjoyed the author’s unapologetic acceptance of these images into her life and presenting them in a new light to show another side or expose another issue. This visual essay may be hard for some to embrace, but I applaud any artist-cum-author who takes on this challenge and does it well enough to land a publisher. Moving away from the old confines means not letting others define what an acceptable genre is.

Written by: Heather Leighton, August 26th 2010

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

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

By Sandra Steingraber

Da Capo

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

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

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

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

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

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

Written by: Heather Leighton, June 9th 2010

The Next Generation of Women Leaders: What You Need to Lead but Won’t Learn in Business School

admin — Sat, 29 May 2010 16:02:00 +0000

By Selena Rezvani

Praeger

Has the glass ceiling been shattered? There is a widely accepted perception that it has. However, as author Selena Rezvani points out in chapter one of The Next Generation of Women Leaders, although women make up 46.5 percent of the U.S. workforce, they constitute only 15.7 percent of corporate officers. What you won’t learn in business school, which Rezvani discovered from interviewing top women executives, is that social, economic, psychological, and even generational barriers still prevent women from reaching the top. But don’t despair. This book is chock full of highly useful tips and information to help women of all ages creatively circumnavigate these roadblocks and negotiate their way to the top.

A John Hopkins University MBA graduate and successful consultant, Rezvani conducted thirty interviews with top women executives in the corporate, non-profit and government sectors. She then analyzed her data for trends. The overarching themes of her analysis are covered in chapters two through nine, and address everything from career orientation to maneuvering office politics, networking and negotiating. Although this may sound like any other book on how to succeed in business, it contains plenty of information that might otherwise take you your entire career to learn. In fact, The Next Generation of Women Leaders reads more like a handbook that you will go back to at different stages in your career.

There is an emphasis in this book on networking, which many of us are tired of hearing about. However, Rezvani’s presentation is empowering. She describes networking as a lifetime activity that helps women forge lasting relationships, learn more about their areas of business, discover other career paths and develop outside interests and skills. She also emphasizes the importance of women’s networks and having women as role models. The author includes some helpful tips on networking etiquette and where to focus your energy.

Given my own particular situation as a mother and professional, I was interested in the chapter on work-life integration. The author tackles the “You can have it all” message that women have bought into and addresses the underlying societal pressures on women to be the successful executive, the cookie-baking mother, the physically fit and attractive partner, the friend, the crafter, the daughter, etc. Rather than attempting to balance, or juggle work-life demands, we are instead to integrate a select few work-life priorities that give us the most satisfaction. In a nutshell, the “you can have it all” message does little more than hold us back.

The author originally wrote this book because of the dearth of business books targeting Gen X and Y women, but there’s something in this book for women of all ages, especially those trying to rejoin the labor force or attract talent to their companies. I usually give away the books I review, but this one is now on my bookshelf.

Written by: Heather Leighton, May 29th 2010

The Spare Room

admin — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 16:01:00 +0000

By Helen Garner

Picador

Many of us love our friends just as much as our family members. We often believe we would go to great lengths to protect them, as does Helen, the narrator of The Spare Room. Garner's novel is the story of a fifteen-year-old friendship between two women in their sixties, a period that is perhaps the busiest in a woman’s life with competing familial, social, and in many cases, professional demands.

Nicola, an artsy bohemian who turned her back on mainstream culture in the 1970s, goes to stay with Helen in her spare room in Melbourne so that she can undergo alternative Vitamin C treatments for her stage-four cancer. Selfless Helen, who initially does whatever is necessary to accommodate her friend, quickly butts heads with Nicola’s coping method of choice: denial. As Helen puts her life on hold caring for Nicola for a mere "fortnight," which turns into three weeks, she quickly becomes overcome with fatigue. Her exhaustion stems not only from the constant care she feels her friend needs, but also from having to hold her tongue in the face of money-grubbing charlatans and her much-loved friend’s magical thinking regarding her disease.

It may be difficult to imagine this as light reading. However, Garner is a master of concision, and it is difficult to find even a single superfluous sentence in her 175 pages. In addition to shedding light on the limits of friendship, she also celebrates key aspects of friendship between women: the validation of thoughts and feelings, the understanding, and the laughter. In fact, it is Garner’s use of rich, dark humour that knocks the stuffing out of death and illness in this book and keeps the narrative rolling.

Although many young women will feel this scenario is still a long way off, Nicola’s harsh look back on what she made of her life will cause some to realize just how insidious and powerful mainstream culture is. Our strong and seemingly invincible bohemian mothers and aunts who chose their counterculture lives in the 1970s have not always been immune to the pervasiveness of the status quo and how it still manages to creep in and colour their basic personal views. The Spare Room gives us all a much needed reminder of the work that we as women still have ahead of us, not only in striving for equality in material terms, but also in acknowledging and validating our own personal struggles with mainstream culture as we head down the road less traveled.

In short, The Spare Room should be read not only for the quality of the writing but also for the situation that everyone will be pushed one day to consider. This is a perfect book for an intergenerational book club.

Written by: Heather Leighton, April 29th 2010

Aya: The Secrets Come Out (Volume Three)

admin — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Marguerite Abouet, Clément Oubrerie

Drawn and Quarterly

Last summer, in dire need of some pure escapism, I stumbled upon the four-volume Aya comic book series. Inspired by author Marguerite Abouet’s childhood, this series takes us back to the late 1970s on the Ivory Coast to a suburb of Abidjan, Yopougon, known affectionately as Yop City to its residents. What initially piqued my interest was finding a series taken from the point of view of Aya, a nineteen-year-old African woman—indeed a rare occurrence. Although the bright and studious Aya is the main character, the storyline revolves around the lives of three Yop city families: Aya’s and those of her two friends, Bintou and Adjoua.

Aya is different from her friends. She is serious and plans to become a doctor, while her friends prefer the nightlife of the maquis, a type of outdoor restaurant and dance bar. Aya is a friend to many in her community. She empowers the powerless, but also puts her friends in their place when they need it. Aya is not perfect, and her family has its share of problems.

In The Secrets Come Out, the third volume of the series, the mistress of Aya’s father stirs the pot when she arrives unannounced on his doorstep with two additional little surprises. Aya is deeply ashamed of her father’s behaviour and begs her mother to teach the wayward Ignace a lesson. This event is quickly overshadowed by the announcement of the skinny and bespectacled Koffi, Bintou's father, that he is going to take a second wife the same age as his daughter. His news creates an uproariously funny fallout in the community. Of the four volumes, The Secrets Come Out is by far the most humorous.

Instead of concentrating on the various scourges that plague Africa, the Aya series presents the quickly changing fortunes of people living on the Ivory Coast, and there are also a few bonus features at the back of the book to get you better acquainted with some of the customs, recipes, and lingo used there. We see an Africa replete with intrigue, beauty, and humour. The Yop City of the late 1970s mirrors many of the same social issues that we were dealing with ourselves at the time in North America: homosexuality, infidelity and the changing roles of women. As for polygamy, although it is illegal, we can’t forget that it is practiced in North America.

Although the story of Aya will draw you in, it is the panels by Clément Oubrerie that gives this series its pure escapism. Not only are his drawings good, but his choice of colours are exceptional. I particularly enjoyed the range of blues and violets that he used for the night scenes. This is an excellent translation from the original French series.

Written by: Heather Leighton, April 19th 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