Melinda Barton

When Did Indians Become Straight?: Kinship, the History of Sexuality, and Native Sovereignty

mandy — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 08:00:00 +0000

In When Did Indians Become Straight?, Mark Rifkin takes on a monumental task, exploring the intersections between sexuality, race, colonization/imperialism, sovereignty and nationhood as they apply to Native American tribes and their struggles over the centuries. As someone who is both of Native descent and gay, I was intrigued.

Queer theory and Native American studies have frequently intersected as examinations of the complex and varied Native American understandings of gender and sexuality have frequently informed both Native and non-Native explorations of what it means and has meant to be queer and what the ideal future situation for queer people would look like. Having read a great deal of these examinations, I expected, perhaps, too much.

Rifkin has some good points to make about how discourses on sexuality and appropriate family structure have affected the construction of race and the recognition of peoples of color as legitimate in the eyes of the nation-state, how “tradition” has frequently been reconstructed to erase those parts of actual tribal tradition and culture that are offensive to outsiders, how the imposition of the nuclear family structure was used in the United States government’s attempts to eradicate Native American tribes as distinct peoples, etc. Unfortunately, he doesn’t make these points very well.

Rifkin’s use of language can only be described as abusive and exploitative. As a writer, I frequently wished to liberate them from his grasp and set them free to follow their natural habits in their natural habitats. Rifkin commits so many of the crimes against the English language common amongst academics that it would be tedious to list them all, but the highest of his crimes is perhaps the misuse of terms, such as heteronormativity, to mean what he needs them to mean rather than what they actually do.

The language alone would be bad enough, but Rifkin also seems to argue points that are valid in a manner that makes them seem invalid or at least suspect. For instance, in exploring the role of the nuclear family ideal in the racialization of Native Americans, Rifkin chooses to explore Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison, the biography of a White woman become Seneca clan mother. Unfortunately, his focus on the circumstances surrounding the sale of Mrs. Jemison’s lands in Seneca territory as evidence for the primacy of her Whiteness glosses over the fact that much of the back and forth as to her identity as White or Seneca had little to do with racial ideology and much to do with pragmatism, land speculators using whatever twist of law and fact would most quickly grant them access to a prime investment opportunity. The evidence is not sufficient to the argument. Ultimately, it seems that in trying to bring so many ideas and theories together into a cohesive whole and to do so by relying heavily on a very limited literary canon, Rifkin’s arguments frequently become muddled and disjointed or simply fall apart at the seams.

As much as I wish that more people would explore these areas of both Native American studies and queer theory, I can’t in good conscience recommend this book.

Written by: Melinda Barton, April 7th 2011

Best Lesbian Romance 2011

mandy — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 20:00:00 +0000

Edited by Radclyffe

Cleis Press

Best Lesbian Romance 2011 is just that: some of the best lesbian-themed romantic short stories you’ll read this year. Beyond just lesbian romance, this interesting compilation seems to center around variety. Set in a variety of locales, covering various relationship stages, drawn from various cultures and subcultures, and even drawing upon various genres, the stories in this collection leave virtually no stone unturned as far as variety is concerned.

Locations shift from the Slovenian countryside to a Magdalene laundry in Ireland, from a small community theater to a bingo parlor, from a grocery store to a werewolf pack’s hunting grounds, bringing with the change of place, a change in culture and subculture that leaves the reader pleasantly disconnected from it all. Characters detail everything from the first stirrings of teenage love to the subtler romance of a long-established relationship made new by pretense, the feelings we remember and the ones we relatively younger lesbians hope to some day experience. They’ll make you laugh, cry, sigh, and even wish you grew fangs at the turn of the new moon.

So, variety is covered. Diversity, however, seems to have gone missing. Although the demographic characteristics of some of the characters is anyone’s guess, the impression given is that the characters are overwhelmingly of the Caucasian persuasion and generally able-bodied, even if a few are four-legged part of the time. I don’t know if that’s acceptable in 2011. I’ll give the editor the benefit of the doubt and assume that there weren’t many submissions from women of color or the differently-abled, but a compilation without diversity seems a bit too limited.

I’m torn. I loved the stories and greatly enjoyed reading them. Radclyffe did a great job of picking some wonderful, exciting, intriguing, well-written entries. But I want more. I want women of color. I want women who find love that transcends physical limitations, the kinds so many of us experience in our daily lives. (Sorry, but turning into a werewolf doesn’t count if the woman you love is also a werewolf.) I want a compilation that leaves as few of us out as possible, that allows most, if not all, of us to see ourselves and sigh just a little bit at the memories of our own loves. I don’t think that’s wanting too much.

Written by: Melinda Barton, April 6th 2011

Best Lesbian Erotica 2011

gwen — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 20:00:00 +0000

Edited by Kathleen Warnock

Cleis Press

As the title indicates, Best Lesbian Erotica 2011 is a compilation of short erotic fiction from a variety of authors, both established and obscure. What the title fails to express is that this is not just yet another compilation of middle-of-the-road lesbian erotica. This edition, unlike others before it, centers on lesbian outsiders, the ones whose radical gender bending and subversive sexuality sometimes makes the rest of us just a little bit squeamish.

The history of lesbian feminism has been filled, unfortunately, with a bit too much self-righteous policing of lesbian gender expression and sexuality, a sometimes defensive response to the pressure we feel to reject heteronormativity while being just enough like the heterosexuals to be “acceptable.” Of course, many a put-upon femme can tell you of the pressures to be identifiably lesbian and very much “unacceptable.” While I am quite the middle-of-the-road, vanilla sort of lesbian, I think it’s about damned time, really, that we lesbian feminists get over ourselves and embrace how very diverse we Sapphic types can be and how very different our community is from the heterosexual majority.

For me, reading Best Lesbian Erotica 2011 was most definitively a “getting over myself” moment. Some of the stories fit right in to what I consider erotic, mainly because I could identify myself or, at least, my type, in the characters. Most were foreign to me. The characters and settings were recognizable enough in type. I have, after all, been a member of the lesbian community for nearly two decades now. But what distance there is between having observed and having experienced! Reading stories written from the perspective of those who blur the lines between genders and push the boundaries of human sexuality put my own gender identity and sexuality in a strange sort of perspective. It was, admittedly, a bit discomfiting at times but overall, rather enjoyable.

Ultimately, while most of the stories in the compilation are well written and structured and quite creative, I think that whether a reader enjoys them will depend a great deal on what she brings to the reading. For the lesbian outsider often excluded from such compilations, this one will surely be a welcome opportunity to find her fantasies expressed and her identity reflected in a way that is too seldom encountered in mainstream lesbian fiction. The insiders will be taking a journey in a strange land with the occasional rest stop in familiar territory. An open mind will be as vital on this expedition as a good map.

Written by: Melinda Barton, February 28th 2011

Elena Undone

gwen — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 20:00:00 +0000

Directed by Nicole Conn

Wolf Films

When I discovered that the director of Elena Undone was the same Nicole Conn who’d directed Claire of the Moon, I was a bit nervous. Claire of the Moon was one of the first lesbian films I ever watched and, as such, it was extraordinarily exciting on first viewing. As age and experience caught up with me and I watched the film again from the perspective of someone who’d studied film, I was disappointed. It was, I think, a bit like watching popular 1980s sitcoms as an adult and realizing how very cheesy my childhood had been. Fortunately, my expectations for Elena Undone were proven wrong… very, very wrong.

Elena Undone is the story of Peyton (the stunning Traci Dinwiddie) and Elena (the also stunning Necar Zadegan), one a famous lesbian writer, the other a presumably heterosexual, married photographer. As this is a lesbian film and not real life, presumptive heterosexuality is no barrier to lesbian love. Romance, of course, ensues when the two encounter one another at a meeting for potential adoptive parents and meet again at a session run by a love guru named Tyler (the hilarious Sam Harris), who is all on board with a potential Sapphic dalliance for his presumably straight friend Elena. Because this is a lesbian film, the voice of lesbian pragmatism asserts itself in the form of Peyton’s friend and neighbor Wave (the gorgeous and hilarious Mary Wells), who reminds Peyton frequently that the pursuit of heterosexual women isn’t exactly healthy or realistic.

The film starts a bit slowly and intersperses the main story with interludes from love guru Tyler. At the first interlude, I found myself inwardly groaning, but that soon gave way to a real enjoyment of Tyler’s pontifications. Once the rhythm of the film was set, it was incredible. The first kiss between our two protagonists, which broke the record for longest movie kiss, reflected an incredible on-screen chemistry between Dinwiddie and Zadegan, a chemistry made even more intense during the love scenes. With the exception of the Dinwiddie and Zadegan pairing, the brightest spots in the film were the moments between Wells and Dinwiddie. It may be my undying love for redheads and slightly unhealthy obsession with various UK accents talking, but I can’t help thinking that the only thing that could have made the film better was more Mary Wells.

Overall, with great acting and incredible visuals, Elena Undone is a much welcome addition to the lesbian film canon, one I intend to watch repeatedly and share with as many friends as possible, starting with you. So, go watch it already. You can thank me later.

Written by: Melinda Barton, February 24th 2011

Going to Extremes: How Like Minds Unite and Divide

gita — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 08:00:00 +0000

By Cass R. Sunstein

Oxford University Press

If eras, like essays, had main topics, the main topic of our era would be extremism. For the past nine years, there has been no escape from various extremisms. Both foreign and domestic, left and right, alien and all-too-familiar, these extremisms have been the topic of the week virtually every week since... Well, I guess I don’t need to tell you since when, do I? It would be difficult to offer any fresh perspective on the topic. After all, haven’t we heard it all by now? Apparently not.

In Going to Extremes, Cass R. Sunstein offers an perspective on extremism that has been missing far too often—the rational one. Bringing together research from a wide variety of fields in language that is accessible to the average reader, Sunstein tells us a little of what we already know about extremism and a lot of what we should know. Each of the five chapters handles one aspect of the topic: the dynamics of group polarization, why and when extremism occurs, how extremism affects movements, how extremism can be prevented, and finally, good extremism. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the book is this last part, the good extremism.

The term “extremism” is so negative in its connotations that it is a bit jarring to see it paired with the word “good.” However, Sunstein’s work makes clear how extreme can be good within the right constraints and under the right circumstances. The Civil Rights Movement, for example, while definitely good, was a bit extreme after all. From the research covered in the book, it seems that the basic dynamics of extremes don’t seem to change much when we shift from good extremism to bad. The constraints and the circumstances are, ultimately, what make all the difference between a nonviolent social justice movement and a violent terrorist faction. How those constraints and circumstances are created, for good or ill, should concern us all.

If you’re not in extremism overload by now, you should give the book a chance. Hopefully, it will pleasantly surprise you as it did me.

Written by: Melinda Barton, January 27th 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

The Words of Extraordinary Women

kristin — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Carolyn Warner

Newmarket Press

I have a confession to make. As a little baby nerd-in-training, I would spend hours in the living room reading Bartlett‘s Familiar Quotations along with various other reference works that weren‘t really meant to be read in that way. Despite my complete lack of understanding of anything resembling cool and my utter ignorance of virtually everything pop cultural, I still knew that that wasn‘t something you went around telling people unless you aspired to pariah status. Despite being years away from earning feminist street cred, I knew that there was something wrong with virtually everyone in these books being male. Where were all the quotable women?

Fortunately, for the future word nerds of the world, Carolyn Warner noticed that problem too and decided to do something about it. In The Words of Extraordinary Women, Warner collects the bon mots of than 400 famous, and occasionally infamous, women, organizing them into eleven broad categories: the arts, character, education, faith, family, humor, leadership, politics, self-image, success, and women. From Sappho to Sonia Sotomayor, from former slaves to presidents, prime ministers and princesses, the women Warner chooses fit no particular mold. Although they are drawn overwhelmingly from the United States, there is more representation of the various races, cultures and classes than one usually sees in your standard book of quotations.

It would be easy to find fault, nonetheless, in her choices. The categories are, at times, a bit too broad, so much so that one wonders how a particular quote fits at all. The quotes are given without context, depriving them, in places, of the power they wield within their proper setting. Some women, beloved by writers and readers alike, are notably absent. I find myself wondering what book of women’s quotations could possibly ignore the witticisms of the imminently quotable Molly Ivins, but surely that is merely a matter of personal taste.

However, I think overall The Words of Extraordinary Women, while not suitable as a reference tool for the advanced writer, would serve well as a young woman’s introduction to the women who came before her and the contributions they made to the sum of human wit and wisdom. Perhaps, it will inspire her to some day join them.

Written by: Melinda Barton, October 2nd 2010

My Sweet Wild Dance

kristin — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 18:00:00 +0000

By Mikaya Heart

Dog Ear Publishing

It is always difficult for me, as a writer, to review another’s work. I find sentiment and solidarity too often hold sway, making me a bit kinder than I should be to those whose ghastly prose tarnishes the craft I have spent so many long years attempting to master. As someone’s whose known both praise and condemnation in my own career, I find myself, perhaps far too often, seeking some positive contribution I can offer to a fellow wordsmith, something which at least partially redeems the frequently soul-crushing process of reading critiques of one‘s own work. After wading through My Sweet Wild Dance, reluctantly in the end and with only the reviewer’s duty as motivation, I find there is neither sentiment nor solidarity enough in the world.

The language itself is not truly horrific, but neither does it offer any literary value. The constant use of the present tense, which can offer such intensity and immediacy in the right hands, seems a meaningless affectation here. The descriptions are rather vague and well, nondescript. The much-ballyhooed dialect shift between British and American English is barely noticeable as neither is written very convincingly as a distinct dialect. And there are no sentences or passages that grab the senses or make you want to read them again to relive the experience. The words are just there.

So, language is a but not the problem. It’s the plot, the perspective, and the characters that truly offend. Although purportedly the true story of “an extraordinary and courageous woman,” My Sweet Wild Dance comes off as nothing more than New Age navel-gazing, devoid of both empathy for the other characters that people the book and any sign that either the author or the protagonist has done enough real self-reflection to confront her own perceptions or prejudices. The central narcissism of the book is best exemplified, I think, in the author’s choice to deny many of her male characters a unique identity, labeling them all John as “what matters is how they affect the protagonist, Chris, at that time period.” No female character is similarly treated; each is given her own name at least. However, none of the characters, male or female, take on any real depth or humanity. They are merely one-dimensional stage props for Chris, who manages to be only two-dimensional herself while flitting disjointedly from one poorly portrayed, stereotypical life-event to another.

The worst aspect of the book is the gratuitous misandry that simply leaps from the page. Through most of the story, we are presented ad nauseum with one detestable male character after another, not a single one given the option of being merely unlikable. Instead, men are indicted, by both implication and outright accusation, of being nothing more than child abusers, molesters, and rapists, devoid of any sympathy for or true emotional connection with anyone or anything beyond their own genitals. We do eventually see a male character with some humanity, but he is set up to apologize for his sex and is described as if he, a man of integrity, is some sort of rare species and thus further proof of the depravity of the overwhelming majority of men.

The problems only compound themselves from there as we travel into the land of New Age woo and pseudo-empowerment. But really, it’s no more worth further dissection than it is worth reading.

Written by: Melinda Barton, September 19th 2010

And Then Came Lola

admin — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Directed by Ellen Seidler, Megan Siler

Wolfe Video

Based loosely on the art-house classic Run Lola Run, And Then Came Lola shows photographer Lola’s desperate attempt to get to a crucial meeting on time, with her girlfriend’s career and their relationship on the line if she fails. Like the title character of Run Lola Run, Lola will get three chances to get it right, with the action resetting to the beginning after each of the first two attempts. Interspersed within and between Lola’s obstacle-filled journeys through the streets of San Francisco are on-the-couch moments with the five main characters of the film, who divulge their romantic entanglements and issues to a therapist who is more involved in the story than it first appears.

As is the case with many small-budget independent films, the technical aspects of And Then Came Lola leave a bit to be desired. The mediocre quality of the sound, lighting, and camera work can be distracting at first, but generally fade into the background once the story unfolds.

The acting ranges from mediocre to good without any really great moments, though the chemistry between Jill Bennett (as Lola’s girlfriend Casey) and Cathy DeBuono (as Casey’s ex-girlfriend Danielle) is definitely a bright spot. It is always a treat to see these two together on film as their real-life love for one another produces amazing on-screen fireworks. Unfortunately, connecting with the film requires sympathy for Lola (played by Ashleigh Summer) and her relationship with Casey, but the relative lack of chemistry between Lola and Casey leaves you rooting for Danielle.

As for the plot, while the resets of Lola’s journey are interesting (if unoriginal), the interconnectedness of the lesbodrama at the heart of the film is more than a little cliché in the lesbian film genre. Here it is difficult to tell whether cliché is completely a bad thing; however, as there is no small amount of truth in the film’s representation of the insularity and near incestuousness of the lesbian community. We lesbians do have a particularly bad habit of maintaining connections with our exes, and their exes, and their exes’ exes, and so on.

Although I recently saw And Then Came Lola on a list of the worst lesbian films, I don’t think I would go that far. It wasn’t Go Fish level bad, just a bit unsatisfying. Ultimately, it’s not a film I would watch again, considering the wide range of lesbian films now available, and it’s not one I’d recommend.

Written by: Melinda Barton, June 20th 2010

The War on Welfare: Family, Poverty and Politics in Modern America

admin — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 16:01:00 +0000

By Marisa Chappell

University of Pennsylvania Press

In The War on Welfare, Marisa Chappell compiles a comprehensive record of decades of antipoverty and anti-welfare movements and coalitions, the policies and programs they influenced, and the biases that both shaped and undermined their objectives. From the War on Poverty of the 1960s to the eradication of welfare in the 1990s, Chappell follows an ever-changing debate where the arguments first marshaled by one side were later embraced by another and the realities of poverty clashed with the ideals of those who sought to eliminate it.

Split into five sections, The War on Welfare moves from sections dealing with three major issues affecting the debate to comprehensive examinations of the Carter and Reagan administrations. The three major issues comprising the first three sections of the book include the racialization of the poverty and welfare debates, the role of the male-breadwinner family ideal in the feminization of poverty, and the majoritarian political strategies of the 1970s that led to both sides (or perhaps many sides) categorizing the poor as either deserving or undeserving. Through extensive sourcing, Chappell demonstrates how attitudes about race, gender and class contributed to the creation of welfare policies that were ineffective at best and disastrously counterproductive at worst, leading to an increase in poverty and precluding escape from poverty for many women and minorities.

Overall, Chappell does an extraordinary job of marshaling the evidence necessary to demonstrate the shared guilt of various “liberal” and “conservative” organizations and interests in preventing any serious attack on poverty in the United States. However, the presentation of that evidence leaves a bit to be desired.

First, in her valiant attempt to include each and every organization and coalition involved in the debate, Chappell often ends up creating an alphabet soup of acronyms that is difficult to follow. The same can be said for her introduction of so many main and supporting characters that the names tend to blend into one another after a while, leaving it difficult to remember who did what when.

Secondly, by using the vague labels of "liberal" and "conservative," presenting a bipolar politics rather than a political spectrum, and failing to address the ambiguities of political labels, Chappell tends to confuse some of the issues raised by the evidence she presents. For instance, she fails to clearly address how many “liberal” organizations in antipoverty coalitions were economically liberal, but socially conservative (and vice versa), and how many of those organizations are, in fact, more appropriately labeled as moderate or centrist. Finally, by using primarily “on the record” materials such as policy pronouncements and issue papers, Chappell fails to seriously address the backroom deals and covert exchanges that often have a far greater influence on policy than public debates indicate.

In the end, The War on Welfare is most useful as a research tool for policy wonks needing an extensive guide to the public positions taken by movements, organizations, political parties, and various important individuals. For the casual reader needing an introduction to the issues, it’s probably a bit too much and too little.

Written by: Melinda Barton, March 28th 2010

Love the Questions: University Education and Enlightenment

admin — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 16:02:00 +0000

By Ian Angus

Arbeiter Ring Publishing

In Love the Questions, Ian Angus attempts to document the evolution of the university as a social institution, the problems presented by recent shifts in the structure and funding of the modern university, and possible solutions that will allow for modernization without the loss of the university’s most vital traditional roles. While stories of the decline of social institutions are far older than the university itself, Angus does an extraordinarily good job of demonstrating that there is a real loss involved in the corporatization of the university and the commodification of both university credentials and knowledge itself.

What is the purpose of a university education? Should it provide job training, enlightenment, or both? How does the withdrawal of public funding and the increasing dependence on private interests affect the university’s ability to provide unified knowledge to its students and a critical viewpoint to society at large? How does the loss of the university’s independence from the capitalist marketplace undermine the academic freedom and flexibility that previous generations of scholars and students could expect? What role is left for the university in the new networked society where the university library is no longer the vital, centralized repository of knowledge and information? What is lost when the new corporate model replaces scholarly professorships with low-wage teaching positions detached from the research and publication that once characterized academia? These are but a few of the vital questions Angus asks on our behalf.

In an age where the value and purposes of post-secondary education and just how much of it will be available and to whom are matters of ongoing controversy, Angus is by far not the first to raise these issues. However, the context and perspective he brings to the questions are interesting and refreshing, though a bit depressing at times. While reading this book, I found myself reflecting on my own college days and how much I value the experiences that current and future college students may never have. I wonder how alien these young students’ perspectives would be to my own as a young college student.

Like Angus, I question what becomes of those who receive job training at the exclusion of an opportunity to enlighten themselves, and what becomes of a society that doesn’t offer its young people the chance to really engage the broad knowledge of the ages rather than simply assimilating the current state of a narrow field. What happens when our horizons are limited to their market value? In the end, Angus does offer some hope that we can preserve some of the best of the past as we adapt to modern circumstances, but each possible solution will require a kind of commitment that may be impossible in today's cynical, commodified world. Let’s hope not.

Whatever relationship an individual reader may have to university education, Love the Questions has something to offer, even if that something doesn’t involve the final answers to the ultimate questions.

Written by: Melinda Barton, March 23rd 2010

Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization

admin — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 09:00:00 +0000

By Michael Rothberg

Stanford University Press

In Multidirectional Memory, Michael Rothberg offers an alternative to competitive memory, or the idea that the capacity to remember historical injustices is limited and that any attention to one injustice diminishes our capacity to memorialize another. Rothberg also disputes the idea that comparisons between atrocities erase differences between them and imply a false equivalence. In focusing on the Holocaust, Rothberg navigates between two extremes: the tendency to proclaim the Holocaust so distinct that it should not be compared to anything else, and the tendency to universalize the Holocaust, turning it into an abstract lesson about good and evil that can be applied to any and all atrocities. His solution is “multidirectional memory,” which describes collective memory as “subject to ongoing negotiation, cross-referencing and borrowing; as productive and not privative.” In other words, comparisons can both aid in understanding and illuminate differences.

In part one, Rothberg explores the idea of “boomerang effects” found in Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism and Aimé Césaire’s works on colonialism and genocide. Through these works and many others, Rothberg examines how, prior to a full accounting for the Holocaust and its reinvention as a historically unique event, scholars such as Arendt and Césaire were constructing the Holocaust and totalitarianism as colonial practices, ideas and structures brought to Europe from the colonies. While Rothberg does a serviceable job of explaining and justifying the productive nature of the comparisons in the abstract, he glosses over the unfortunate concrete relationship between colonial genocides and the Holocaust, specifically Hitler‘s modeling of concentration camps after the North American reservation system and his co-opting of the language and tactics of the so-called Wild West. He mentions these links briefly, but so vaguely as to conceal them from any reader not familiar with the historical facts.

In part two, Rothberg focuses on the works of W. E. B. Du Bois, André Schwarz-Bart, and Caryl Phillips as they explore the light the Holocaust and anti-Semitism shed on the Black experience in the United States, Europe, and the Caribbean. Here, the comparisons are limited to the abstract connections between the historical oppression of people of African descent (including slavery, colonialism, segregation, and genocide) and the Nazis’ racialization, ghettoization, and extermination of the Jews. This section also emphasizes both peoples’ histories with “ghettos, ruins, and other diasporic spaces.” This is perhaps the best example of multidirectional memory in the book.

In parts III and IV, Rothberg explores various works (both literary and cinematic) to examine the connections between the Holocaust and the Algerian War in the waning days of French colonialism and the opening days of the Eichmann trial that would transform the public discourse surrounding the Holocaust. Here, Rothberg does a better job of distinguishing the abstract connections between colonialism, racism, and the Holocaust from the concrete connections between French treatment of the Algerians and French complicity in the Holocaust. Perhaps most disturbing is the implication that a timely attempt to address French complicity in the Holocaust may have prevented many if not all of the atrocities committed against the Algerians, as both involved the same people, places, and tactics.

Overall, Rothberg does a decent job of showing how multidirectional memory can improve understanding through comparison; however, the book fails in a few places. By limiting himself to elite discourse, Rothberg underestimates the public’s capacity to undermine or diminish memory of one atrocity through competition with another as part of the self-fulfilling nature of competitive memory. He also doesn’t seem to fully explore how the taboo against comparisons in general and certain comparisons specifically undermines attempts to make such comparisons productive. Finally, his language is often so stereotypically academic that it may be inaccessible to non-experts. In the end, I am left uncertain whether to recommend the book or suggest that readers attempt to find some other work that addresses these concepts more clearly and completely.

Written by: Melinda Barton, February 12th 2010

The Edge of Change: Women in the 21st Century Press

admin — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 17:01:00 +0000

Edited by June O. Nicholson, Pamela J. Creedon, Wanda S. Lloyd, Pamela J. Johnson

University of Illinois Press

My bias as a journalist and editor made me want to love The Edge of Change, but the stubborn remnants of the journalistic outlook into which I was indoctrinated gave bias a real beating. So, in the end, I just liked some parts and hated others.

The concept was great, but the construction was lacking. Many of the book’s chapters, which range from personal essays to academic discussions to interviews, deal with many of the relevant issues well enough to be important counterpoints to the often male-centered nature of modern media criticism. Any journalist, male or female, who wants to make it in this rapidly-changing field, to improve how the media functions, or to preserve what is best about the press would do well to consider the issues the book raises about the need to adapt, the value of diversity, and the responsibility of representing the communities in which we work.

However, the book’s organization, shifting formats, and lack of focus often distract from the book’s theme. For instance, some of the essays and interviews focus so intently on the individual that the context is lost and we learn little about how these individual experiences relate to or illustrate the major trends affecting women in the press. On the other hand, some chapters deal with the state of the press in general and skip discussions of gender altogether. Scattered throughout the book, these chapters would probably have made more sense as an introductory section. These are just two examples of an organizational logic that seems to defy intelligibility as its eight major parts shift from a temporal perspective to women’s affect on the press to women’s professional roles to issues of diversity to the choices women make in their careers, with each category popping up in the “wrong” section here and there.

Yet, these problems are minor compared to the book’s two glaring flaws: the complete avoidance of class issues and a beginning chapter comprised of worn-out gender stereotypes and pseudo-scientific claptrap. Over the last few decades, journalism has become increasingly exclusive in terms of class, a fact that has garnered much criticism and has played a major role in the development of a modern press that is less reflective of the race, class, and gender composition of the general population and the pool of potential journalists than it was thirty years ago. Yet, this disturbing trend and its effect on the future of the press garner not a single mention. The second major flaw deserves its own essay, but I’ll have to settle for giving it its own paragraph.

In a chapter titled “The Female Mind: Biology of the Twenty-First Century Woman,” Helen E. Fisher, biological anthropologist and Chief Scientific Advisor to the online dating site chemistry.com, peddles the usual pseudo-scientific theories on innate sex differences that describe a natural order in which men and women somehow miraculously evolved 1950’s U.S. gender roles on the African Savannah in the Pleistocene. Fisher, like so many other purveyors of pseudoscience, ignores the actual scientific evidence concerning sex differences, the tremendous overlap between the sexes, and the variations across time and space that make it impossible for many of these traits to be innate products of human evolution. The inclusion of this chapter, with its bad science and worse logic, is downright insulting to intelligent readers specifically and women in general. For that fact alone, I’d suggest skipping this book.

Written by: Melinda Barton, January 22nd 2010

An Angle of Vision: Women Writers on Their Poor and Working-Class Roots

admin — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 09:00:00 +0000

Edited by Lorraine M. López

University of Michigan Press

In An Angle of Vision, we are presented with a series of extraordinarily well-written essays centered upon one of the most taboo topics in U.S. culture: class. More specifically, we are presented with first-person, female-centered examinations of two groups who are steadily disappearing from both the public discourse and the popular culture of the United States: the poor and working class. As the myths of meritocracy and the “middle class nation” take up ever more space in the public discussions that the United States has about itself, the space assigned to these two groups shrinks. When the poor and working class do garner some attention, their stories are generally told from and distorted by a perspective completely alien from their own. They are spoken of or for, but do not truly get to speak for themselves.

This anthology is then both welcome and needed, especially since it grants us the perspective of a group far more diverse that can usually be expected. We hear the voices of Dorothy Allison, Bich Minh Nguyen, Angela Threatt, Sandra Cisneros, Joy Harjo, Mary Childers, and others in the dialects born of distinct cultures and subcultures from around the United States and throughout the world. Having only their gender and class background in common, these women writers represent a variety of races, ethnicities, sexualities, generations, and geographies and do so in a way that makes the foreign familiar and approachable.

However, their stories, written in the intersections between multiple identities, share common themes that emerge explicitly and implicitly throughout the book. Perhaps the most compelling is the lingering doubts of “authenticity” that plague those who find themselves moving into a world where discussions of the class in which they were born is deemed taboo and one is expected to achieve (or at least fake) fluency in the dialect of the privileged. Despite the cult of social mobility immortalized in the American Dream, one is often supposed to pretend not to have moved at all since such an admission may embarrass those who were born into their social status.

Having grown up in desperate poverty in the Deep South and finding myself suddenly part of the shrinking middle class, I found these essays in general riveting and deeply authentic. It is, perhaps, difficult for me to overcome my class bias enough to truly understand how they would be taken by someone who does not share the writers’ experiences with class. However, I hope that the appeal of truly great writing, filled with pathos and humor, might overcome any discomfort readers may have with the topic.

Written by: Melinda Barton, January 21st 2010

Epistemic Injustice: Power & The Ethics of Knowing

admin — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 00:52:00 +0000

By Miranda Fricker

Oxford University Press

In Epistemic Injustice, Miranda Fricker identifies and explores the role of identity prejudice (based on race, class, gender, sexual orientation, religion, etc.) in producing both systematic and incidental epistemic injustices or injustices against people in their capacities as speakers, informants, or participants in the community’s sharing of knowledge. Fricker also carefully traces the injurious practical and epistemic effects these injustices can have on those who are stereotyped by identity prejudice. Finally, she attempts to define the joint intellectual-ethical virtues that may help “hearers” identify and counteract identity prejudices in their interactions with the victims of these injustices.

Fricker’s primary focus throughout the book is on testimonial injustice, a deflation in the credibility granted to a speaker based on identity prejudice. Using the theoretical framework of epistemology, a State of Nature model, and both literary and real world examples, Fricker carefully differentiates instances of credibility deflation resulting from true injustice from those that constitute mere bad luck and shows how testimonial injustice relates to and often causes discrimination against, objectification of, and dehumanization of the powerless. Although the vocabulary of epistemology is foreign to many of us, most members of marginalized minorities will probably recognize the real world incidents and structures that produce testimonial injustice as well as the very real effects that it has on our lives. Women, specifically, would understand the lack of credibility afforded to women and the damage that can cause both professionally and personally. Whether it is being ignored, underestimated, or undermined in the workplace or having to fight against the “no really means yes” stereotype that permeates the rape culture, we have experienced testimonial injustice and its effects first hand.

Secondary to testimonial injustice is hermeneutical injustice, a gap in hermeneutical resources (or social vocabulary/means of communicating) that prevents the victim from making sense of or giving voice to his or her experiences. As with testimonial injustice, Fricker draws on a variety of resources to explore the injustices perpetrated when there simply are no words for what someone is experiencing or when the manner in which he or she communicates ensures that the hearer will neither understand nor attempt to do so. In one of many examples provided in a rather powerful exploration of hermeneutical injustice at work, Fricker examines the difficulties women had of making sense of and combating unwanted “flirting” in the workplace prior to the coining of the term "sexual harassment." It may seem alien to those of us who grew up in the wake of second wave feminism, but there simply were no words for many of women’s experiences and this often placed women at a tremendous disadvantage in even understanding what was happening to them and even more so when it came to doing something about the problems they faced in a male-dominated world.

This brief summary, I’m afraid, does not fully encapsulate Fricker’s detailed examination of all of the epistemological and practical implications of identity prejudice in the epistemic relationships built around the community‘s need to share knowledge. Nor, I’m afraid, does it do the book much justice. Although Fricker does tend towards academic language, she does so less egregiously than most and her liberal use of clear, concrete examples makes her ideas relatively easy to follow even for someone with no background in epistemology. Overall, Epistemic Injustice is an exciting examination of a widespread problem that is rarely discussed in such terms so that it can be understood and communicated and perhaps, someday, solved.

Written by: Melinda Barton, December 25th 2009