Interviews

Written on the Body of The Erasable Woman

mandy — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 08:00:00 +0000

When did you start writing poetry?

At a very young age—probably when I started writing with chalk on my bathroom door or adding my own two cents to my parents’ biology textbooks they tell me I always furiously flipped through. I experienced a lot of racism, (hetero)sexism, and different kinds of regulation at a young age too, and I think what that did was make me really quiet and closed up in a lot of ways. But expressing myself creatively was something I did to become myself again—whether that be through writing, acting, music, or just telling stories about how I imagined my life to be, instead of the scary, oppressive ways I often experienced it.

Who has influenced your writing?

First and foremost, my family: my parents and sister created an environment for me where creativity was valued and encouraged. Now still, there are so many ways I am creatively inspired by the lives and perspectives of my friends and family, even in ordinary moments. I’m also lucky to be a part of Asian Arts Freedom School, a creative arts and radical Asian history and politics group, where the conversations and stories continually influence and push my own writing.

As for famous people, some who come to mind are Arundhati Roy, Jhumpa Lahiri, Shyam Selvadurai, Audre Lorde, Gloria Anzaldua, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna Smarasinha, Himani Bannerji, and Andrea Smith.

The Erasable Woman is your Master's thesis project; why did you choose to write it in poetry?

I was sick of writing like an academic. (Laughs.) My topic was exploring colonial violence against racialized queer women, as well as how broad systems of oppression or histories can manifest intimately on women’s bodies, and in personal relationships. I find that poetry can express this intimacy in ways academic writing cannot. A lot of people in academia would not consider poetry a legitimate way to express theory or politics, but poetry is theory, it is knowledge, and it is political. I was really lucky to have a supervising committee who understood and supported this kind of project (Enakshi Dua and Priscila Uppal).

Why the title The Erasable Woman?

The Erasable Woman is a title of one of my poems, and I feel it fits the entire collection. A major theme that runs through my manuscript is erasure…being forgotten, lost, ignored, invisible, expendable, and disposable. At the same time, it asserts a physical, spiritual, sexual, emotional, and undeniable presence in the midst of being and feeling erased. That’s one of the ways I tried to express the complexity of what it means to experience oppression and survive/resist it at the same time.

Erasure is such a key and powerful way that violence is allowed to continue. [It] speaks to the ways in which racism and other oppressions in feminist movements is ignored, and the well-being of women of colour is not considered. Also, the value of challenging sexism, homophobia, and transphobia in a lot of anti-racist or queer initiatives is often marginalized and not given enough importance. So many things in this world are structured through erasure: mainstream education denies the violence of colonial conquest on this land by largely painting it as a benign, peaceful process; national media doesn’t pay enough attention to the ways in which violence impacts marginalized bodies or communities; survivors in/of abusive relationships are silenced and shut down when they try and fight/talk back; queer or unconventional love/desire is constantly trivialized and demonized; expressing or feeling certain kinds of emotions is minimized. I wanted to explore these topics in my own way.

How do your identities influence your work?

I can’t separate myself from my social position, or my mashup of identities, and I can’t separate myself from my writing, so it all becomes intertwined. In this particular work, it was important for me to center the voice of a queer woman of colour, because it’s not a perspective that’s often given attention—in literature, feminism, anti-racism, or queer politics.

How did you came to the decision to use images in your collection?

I always start with a feeling or idea I need to express (sometimes desperately), and I follow my intuition, as well as work with my skill set, to give shape and form to that feeling or idea the best and most honest way I can figure out how. For example, at one point I wanted to create something that expressed how the bodies of women of colour are judged and marked by oppression just by living in the world. So, one of the pieces that appears in my collection (called "bodysnatchers") contains a series of photos with oppressive words actually written on the body. It just made the most sense.

The Erasable Woman is currently not available to the public. Can you tell us what your plans are for this wonderful collection of poetry?

The Erasable Woman is still a work in progress that I am currently fine-tuning, and I hope to get it published in the near future. I’m really excited about how it’s shaping up and have been doing readings at various events. I now have a website, which is new and still under construction, where people can read some of my work and check out other things I’m up to.

Read the full interview at Black Coffee Poet

Written by: Janet Romero-Leiva, December 29th 2010

Women's History Has Many Points of View

mandy — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Interview with RE/VISIONIST

With the question "who gets to write history?" at its center, RE/VISIONIST is an online publication started by a handful of graduate students at Sarah Lawrence College who study women's history. Many historians push to catalog the discipline of history as a pure science, but this group is instead interested in critiquing the supposed objectivity of their discipline, and giving credence to subjective perspectives. Even more, the editors aim to analyze history through the lens of multiple feminisms. I opened a dialogue with one of the editors of RE/VISIONIST, and in true feminist style, she responded to my questions by conducting a roundtable discussion amongst the staff.

How did RE/VISIONIST come about?

Thea Michailides: Sarah Lawrence has a creative, vocal, and lively undergraduate community but—outside of the writing program—there really wasn't a space for graduate students to exchange ideas and feature our work. Roz's idea of establishing a blog or online journal gave us the opportunity to put what we were learning in the classroom to practical use.

Roz Hunter: As students, RE/VISIONIST offers us the opportunity to use an historical lens to examine contemporary issues and serves as an outlet to discuss how gender plays out today. We come from a multitude of educational backgrounds—including Women's Studies, Anthropology, English Literature, Political Science, and Fine Arts—and we aim for an interdisciplinary approach to current events.

Kate Wadkins: I find myself surrounded by a lot of entrepreneurial women who are pursuing their dreams of creative and scholarly work. For a long time, I wished I had access to some kind of publication to pull all this work together. RE/VISIONIST provides a resource for feminist voices.

What pnline spaces embody aspects of what you are trying to achieve?

Nydia Swaby: Racialicious is definitely an example of the kind of work we want to be doing. I also like Paradigm Shift; their tag line—"Use the 'F' word. Discuss. Evolve. Grow with Us. Change NYC. Change the World."—made me feel powerful, and I really enjoy their blog. Equal Writes, which was started by a group of students at Princeton, aims to do something similar to the work we do in saying that Feminism is not a dirty word.

Your publication features issues you see as absent from the larger discourse on women or feminism. How are you attempting to revise, revisit, or re-imagine the historical and contemporary issues you write about?

Nydia: We are reclaiming the notion of revising history not because we want to erase the things that happened in the past, but because we want to build on them. The name was inspired, in part, by a course that all first-year Women’s History Graduate students are required to take at Sarah Lawrence called "Visions/Revisions: Issues in US Women's History.”

Victoria Sollecito: Right, it was an historiography course, and it really pushed us to think about how history gets written and why and by whom and how it changes over time. So revisionist is a dirty word and feminist is a dirty word and we are both! How awesome is that? And we are using feminism as a framework for this re-visioning of history and culture and the media and politics and everything else.

Roz: The discipline of women's history aims to create a re/vision of the past and tell the stories of groups who have been written out of history books. Women's history can serve as a tool to uncover the lost social histories of remarkable individuals and groups who have been previously ignored. We believe that you cannot study history without critically analyzing the roles race, gender, sexuality, religion, ability, age, and class have played, and still play, in it. We strive to make sense of the social hierarchies that have and do exist, and how complex systems of domination (whether it be male domination, racial domination, or class domination) all work together to continue to oppress and marginalize. We aim to uncover lost histories.

Nydia: I became interested in writing about Amy Ashwood Garvey because it really shocked me that she was such an integral part of the Pan-African movement (many have suggested that she was the co-founder of the United Negro Improvement Association), yet you hardly ever find references to her in history books. Writing about her work seemed fitting for RE/VISIONIST because we aim to uncover these kinds of lost histories.

Kate: An exciting discovery I had was reading an excerpt from bell hooks' Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center where she describes challenging the notion of gender-as-the-ultimate-oppression by radical women of color and their White allies as "the basis of revisionist feminist theory." Reading this crucial starting point for intersectional feminist theory as revisionist was both inspiring and solidifying for our mission.

What you think about the term feminism? Is it an important term to use, to interrogate, to dismantle, to celebrate?

Roz: Many of our staff writers and contributors are wary of the term. We do celebrate the word, but we purposely pluralize it in our mission statement. It is very common to hear (White) women criticize the younger generation for not embracing the term, but we have many reasons to reject it. Feminism has had a history of exclusion and many feminist writings, speakers, and activists have used feminism to reinforce the status quo of race and class oppression. Feminism has often meant the promotion of the rights of White women at the expense of the rights of people of color, immigrants, queers, and the poor. We recently posted a quote from Barbara Smith that articulates some of our thoughts on feminism:

Feminism is the political theory and practice that struggles to free all women: women of color, working class women, poor women, disabled women, lesbians, old women—as well as white economically privileged, heterosexual women. Anything less than this vision of total freedom is not feminism but merely female self-aggrandizement.

Thea: The word feminism is important to preserve even though it has the power to be both divisive and galvanizing depending on the characteristics of the audience. I see feminism as a tool for unifying women in an era that encourages individuals to focus on relationships with those who share their unique experiences of oppression along—for example—racial, ethnic, and generational lines. This tactic may aid in revealing spaces where history has been negligent, but it also undermines the potential for unity. Women need to seek appreciation for their shared experiences while learning about those that are specific to their contexts. Feminism, as a word and an idea, offers a means for describing this coalition of sorts.

How do you overcome the exclusionary aspects of academic discourse?

Victoria: We want to move away from a definition of history that restricts the writing of history to senior tenured faculty members in history departments and restricts the subjects of history to dates of battles and the lives of the presidents. It isn't that those things aren't important; it's just that we feel like a twenty-first century visual artist's reflections on gender norms and expectations about sexuality are as important as any textbook.

Kate: Pop culture has its claws on the emerging minds of youth, as well as our psychic selves, and if we don't recognize its importance, we're just limiting our critique. This is a problem that exists in history, in pop culture, and in our lived experience—hence our aim to discuss all of those arenas and not privilege one.

Thea: We cannot avoid that we are engaged in the academic world and are, therefore, privileged no matter how vigilantly we may examine our work and the work of others in RE/VISIONIST. I feel our aim should be to recognize that, even as we try to illuminate the people and experiences traditional history has overlooked, we too are a part of an elite and, as such, may perpetrate similar acts of negligence.

Photo credit: Nydia Swaby

Written by: Lizzy Shramko, November 27th 2010

Living and Loving in Dos Lenguas

mandy — Sat, 20 Nov 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Interview with Janet Romero-Leiva

Janet Romero-Leiva is a queer, feminist, Latina visual artist and writer whose work explores immigrant displacement, denied aboriginality, queer and of colour existence, living and loving in dos lenguas, and the continuous intersection of identities that shape who she is and how she moves in this world. Janet immigrated to Canada at the age of seven and has since been trying to find her footing between America of the north and America of the south. She loves smoothies and cartwheeling, and can often be found reading children’s books at the Toronto Women’s Bookstore.

Why did you start writing poetry?

It was by accident; I didn’t really know that is what I was doing, but I started writing because I felt a need to express and somehow release things I was trying to make sense out of—like my queerness, my feminism, my latinidad, and my experience of being an immigrant child.

What is your writing process?

I write a lot when I am trying to sort something out—a thought, a feeling, an experience. Mostly it’s from a feeling of discomfort or confusion. I will usually sit with the feeling for a while before I write about it and will usually write down a line or two so I can revisit it when I feel capable of going back to that discomfort. When I do go back to it, I write about the experience itself, what feelings came up for me and when I have felt this before. Then I edit until I manage to capture the feeling more than the actual experience.

Who are your influences?

Chrystos was the first poet I read that made me think I could write too, so I obviously love her. Also Gloria Anzaldua, Cherrie Moraga, Audre Lorde, Qwo-Li Driskill, and Lee Maracle.

You used to manage the Toronto Women’s Bookstore. What is lacking in the publishing world?

The publishing world is lacking feminists, queers, people of colour, trans people, working class people, folks with (dis)abilities, immigrants, and older people's writing. A big problem is that the majority of people in publishing are not the people on this list, so they don't see a problem with this. It’s not that no one is publishing people of colour, queer people, etc. It’s that the big publishers and bookstores make it very hard for the independents to stay in business. I think another factor is that, because we have not seen ourselves represented in literature, it is hard to imagine that this can change, so part of it is believing that this is possible for us.

What role do you see poetry having in activism?

I equate poetry with activism. We need to hear/know/understand the world from various perspectives, and I think poetry allows us to express and hear things in a way that traditional methods—like speeches and academic writing—do not because it evokes a feeling, and when you leave a talk/conference/march you will forget the words you heard, but the feeling will stay with you.

What advice do you have for young writers, women of colour writers, and queer writers?

Keep on writing, regardless of what people say—good or bad—and continue to write what you need to write. Share your writing. If no one hears what you have to say then it is only you who will benefit from your work, which is great and important as a growing and learning tool, but it is also great for us to hear you, to normalize our reality, and be an influence to others who may not have the words to express the many wonderful and difficult things we live.

Read the full interview at Black Coffee Poet

Written by: Jorge Antonio Vallejos, November 20th 2010

Nirvana of Pussy: A Conversation with Tucker Max

brittany — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Interview with Tucker Max

All I wanted to know was if Tucker Max was for real. Ladies and gentlemen, let me tell you, he is. Explaining that if he has learned anything over the past five years, it is that people are fucking stupid, clearly the infamous Tucker Max was extraordinarily candid when we talked about his new book Assholes Finish First. His candor was particularly astounding, as he knew I was a writer for Elevate Difference, a site with a mission to advance political and social justice, while Max is embodiment of all things politically incorrect. He is particularly known throughout the feminist community for his drunken antics with women, which I personally believe have been consistently misconstrued, and this was my chance to find out if I was right.

Perhaps it was the simple fact that I was dared to read Max’s first book I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell that so quickly brought me into his fold, or the fact that reading it made me feel like a subversive sex-positive feminist. More than anything, it was my curiosity about the man behind the controversial books that made this book reviewer seek out the infamous sex writer.

Speaking on the phone, before I even got through my introduction, Max jumped in to explain that his work is not a commentary on male sexuality, but simply writing about his real life. He is a man with some seemingly outrageous stories to tell and us aspiring sexologists should make no further assumptions. Fair enough.

Max believes that we are a society still “too prudish and buttoned-up” to teach sex education properly. He quickly conceded that the next generation of sex ed will largely center on porn and work like his own, and even Tucker Max finds this “shameful.” The fact that anyone is learning about sex from his books and not from school or their parents is truly shocking. Thankfully (or not), virgins across America are turning to Tucker Max for their intellectual and physical sexual education. The fact that thirty-year-olds with no sexual experience and barely-eighteen-year-olds all reach out to him as a sexual celebrity and a familiar person to take their virginity—literally—is surprising, even to Tucker.

Assholes Finish First is Max’s follow-up to the best-selling I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, and it takes so-called “fratire” to a new level. Dividing the book into his pre- and post-fame lives—a decision that emerged as he was writing and friends (the familiar Nils and Bunny to fans) noted a clearly different tenor between these stories—gives a new richness to his work. Because these are tales from only one man, the juxtaposition honestly showcases how fame can change one’s life, especially when compared with examples of other celebrity works.

The book’s bonus section contains stories from the women Max has slept with, written from their own perspectives. He knew this would appeal to his female audience—about half his readership. It also gives a different level of credence to his body of work, because as readers we finally get to hear someone else’s side of his stories—something I wondered a lot about and am sure others have as well. Oddly enough, the accounts from both sides line up more often than not.

What is most striking to me in his post-fame stories is Max’s cognizance about the state of his own life. Most people don’t spend their days writing about themselves; they don’t have that kind of time for self-reflection. Max takes this opportunity and really looks at himself as an outsider. He is in the midst of the common transition from playboy to family man but often documents it as an outside observer. Perhaps most interesting, it is not his own words that encapsulate his feelings about the state of his life but those of his friend (which he does include in the book).

We talked about this quite a bit on the phone. Fame has brought him to this so-called “nirvana of pussy.” The ladies come to him, and they come in droves. What he emphasized was how his life is in transition, from living out his teenage dreams of endless sexual conquests to his adult aspirations for a relationship. He stated outright that, “I don’t know how to live a committed, monogamous relationship, but I want to. Living the life every nineteen-year-old guy wants,” he told me he is now “moving out of it...not fully in either phase.”

More striking was the confession that this “nirvana of pussy” was the “complete opposite” of what he expected. Max’s lesson is an obvious but universal one, even in a book about gratuitous sex: Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it. He qualified this, saying that it would be “totally disingenuous” to whine about it now. This is what he wanted. The fact that the lived reality was not the same as the dream is a fact of life that needs to be swallowed hard.

After I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell sold over 1.5 million copies, he had unique creative freedom with editors and publishers on the second book, Assholes Finish First. This was why he felt he could include abortion so explicitly, even using the phrase “baby killer.” Though he did not appreciate my take that his story about unintended pregnancy is a PSA for condom use, he did agree he was more actively spelling out advice in his vignette than he usually does. “[I’m] so tired of idiots taking the wrong thing out of what I write,” he said. Lots of sex does not mean lots of unsafe sex. It just means lots of sex.

A big secret: He can quote Betty Freidan. Under her definition, Max is a self-declared feminist. So why the incessant anger from the feminist community? He believes he is often labeled a misogynist because he doesn’t worship all things female. He also thinks “extremeophiles,” those who see all porn as rape, had a large role in much of this labeling. Max estimates that twenty-five percent of his readership is comprised of self-identified feminists, with women as half of his overall readership.

To him, the reality is that that he “makes fun of people,” at-large. Not women, not men, just people that he thinks suck. “Sometimes a woman can be a bitch or a guy can be a shithead, [and they] need [to be called out],” he told me. According to Max, calling someone a slut has nothing to do with his or her sexual experience. It is the power of the label itself. When he’s using such a label, he doesn’t know the reality of that individual’s life. He’s doing it just to get a rise out of someone, because he can.

His most vehement reaction to my series of questions on feminism was around what I see as a common thread in his books, the Madonna-whore dichotomy. Max sees the entire dichotomy as “bullshit” and says it just doesn’t apply to his work.

As our conversation wound down, we talked about his wide readership. Ranging from sixteen-year-olds, who view him as a demigod, to fifty-year-olds reliving their glory days, what makes Tucker Max so appealing? In his eyes, he is simply “objectively funny [and] painfully, authentically raw,” something we don’t see much in media, if at all. He “exists outside the machine.” It shows.

The book launch I attended was at a West Village dive bar, up the stairs in the back, and totally public. Max has no sanctioned book reviews on the jacket of a follow-up to a New York Times bestseller. His Cinderella tale of success—of having his manuscript rejected by every publisher, to building an audience through his blog, and gaining the leverage to write the exact book he wanted—was one of the first, though in the blog-to-book world, has become commonplace. Central to his wide readership, he claims, is his balance between self-indulgence and corporate appeal. He is attempting to create the best art that he can while resonating with his wide audience. Yes, Assholes Finish First is art.

Written by: Nicole Levitz, November 16th 2010

The Necessity of Climate Change: Women of Color Speak from the Ivory Tower

mandy — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Interview with Morgane Richardson

Morgane Richardson graduated from Middlebury College in 2008 feeling that American colleges recruit women of color, but have no idea how to address the issues they face once they are enrolled. As a result, many of these women suffer depression, anxiety, and isolation in silence. Morgane decided to do something about this situation, and less than two years later, she has collected submissions from women all over the country who have had to navigate issues of race, class, and gender at elite, predominately white college campuses. With these stories, Morgane created Refuse the Silence.

Morgane is planning to publish a book and present a report to college administrators with a suggested plan of action to improve the college climate for women of color. In this interview, Morgane discusses the various misconceptions and stereotypes surrounding women of color in academic environments and the ways her website tries to support these women.

How do you determine which submissions should be part of Refuse the Silence?

All of the submissions we receive will be a part of Refuse the Silence; if not in the book, then definitely on our website or in our final report on the status of women of color in elite institutions. The decision about which entries will be reproduced in book format will be made by a handful of people, including the team that is selected to generate our final report, our editors, and the publisher.

What is the most surprising thing you have learned about the concerns of women of color at elite colleges?

To be honest, nothing. Thus far, none of the stories I have heard have been surprising. I know where these students are coming from because I either experienced it myself or know friends who did during their years living on these campuses. What I am really surprised by is the reality that little has changed. Students of color have racial epithets written on their walls every semester. College judicial boards and health centers are inadequately prepared to deal with women who are victims of sexual assault. The list goes on and on.

Are there ways you intend to address the issues of women of color who are neither members of elite academic communities nor part of the academic community?

I chose to focus on women of color in elite academic settings because that is what I know and what I can speak to. That being said, I have found that many of the stories and issues I hear from the women who are sending in submissions can be applied to women of color as a whole. White privilege, interracial dating, and the cost of an education are issues that affect all women of color. And the truth is, as a feminist, I work to give all women of color a voice.

Refuse the Silence is just one project that seeks to empower a specific group of the women of color population. Eventually, my hope is that this model can be used to help a wider demographic of women of color. I just need a lot more time and funding to make it happen.

Given the shortage of women of color as mentors, not only within the academic world but also the corporate world, what is your advice to women who are either in school or graduating looking to connect and learn from other women of color?

My main advice is to share your story! No one will understand what you are going through if you don’t make your voice heard. So many women of color feel as though they must keep their "issues" or experiences to themselves in an attempt to remain strong. Often times young women and men of color see their independent, strong, single mothers push forward without asking for help and grow up believing they must do the same. Refuse the Silence tells women they can also be strong by sharing their stories.

On a more tangible level, I recommend women of color find a mentor with whom they feel comfortable speaking. They can reach out to faculty and staff members, but also to alumni networks. As alums, we understand what they have experienced, and most of us are willing to listen and guide them in whatever direction they choose.

Do you think it is a misconception to believe that minorities in academic settings only want to seek out students within their ethnic or racial group?

Even at a young age there is a natural gravitation amongst people of color towards each other, especially in predominantly White settings. I don’t think there is anything wrong with that, especially when you are assimilating to a White culture, and when you have to be a part of that culture in order to succeed. The reality is, not everyone can survive in a predominantly White, elite, academic institution. On top of the stress of being a woman, searching for your identity, studying, and trying to make friends, people automatically separate you on the basis of your race. That added stress is overwhelming, and while some women of color can survive it, others need the support of a group of people who can understand it.

What are your thoughts on the argument that single-sex and all-Black colleges are no longer needed?

On a personal level I am as weary of an institution that is predominately Black as I am an institution that is predominately White… or an institution that is all-male or all-female. Academia is meant to be a place where you learn about theory and read from textbooks. But it is also a place where you learn about our society and how people function within it. I don’t believe you can obtain an honest and clear understanding of your global community if you are only surrounded by people who share similar experiences or come from a similar background.

That being said, as long as we continue to live in a White, male dominated society, I do believe we need these kinds of institutions. For me, it wasn’t the right setting, but for others, it might be.

What do you say to women of color who are worried that sharing their stories may backfire and hamper their success?

Actually, that is something we are dealing with right now. I recently received an email from a young woman we interviewed last year who has asked us to take down her video entry. She asked us because she is tired of dealing with people in her community who approach her and feel sorry for her after having seen her entry online. This is the first time this has happened with Refuse the Silence, but there are many women of color who decide not to share their stories because they don’t want to deal with the difficult outcome. I think this especially happens in elite institutions where your personal history and resume mean everything.

I recognize that it's a personal decision to fight, and then to fight loudly. But how do we move forward if we are afraid to speak out? How can we expect anyone to listen to us if we don’t say anything?

Based on your research so far, are there resources you recommend to women of color in college that will help them through their college years?

Find your peers and local women of color organizations! If anyone knows about what you are going through, it’s the people around you. I am not that far removed from college, and I remember how difficult it can be to reach out to those communities. So, I also recommend that women of color go online and start using social media to find people who are interested in fighting for a similar cause. There are tons of activists blogging about race and gender. There are feminists on Twitter speaking about women’s rights. And there are professors and heads of large organizations looking to see what is happening in the world. If a story on Refuse the Silence moves you, reach out to me and I will put you in contact with that person.

Many women of color do not identify as feminists. What are your thoughts on this position?

I have always said that I am a Black woman or, more recently, a Black feminist. No matter what my political and social beliefs are, people will always see my race before they see my gender, and that automatically separates me. I am not fighting solely for my freedom to be a woman. I am fighting for my freedom to live equally in this world as a Black woman.

I come from the understanding that feminism is about women and, in theory, should be race-neutral. But it is not. The feminist movement—and I’m sure everyone has heard this a thousand times—is rooted in White, middle class privilege. We live in a racist society, so it should come as no surprise that women of color can feel alienated within feminist groups.

I use this quote often, but I think there is no successful feminist revolution without an end to racism, among other -isms. Not all women can benefit from feminism if those systems are still in place. While I make a conscious decision to incorporate race as part of my identity as a feminist, others choose not to or may not see a reason to. So, to directly and simply answer the question, I understand why some women of color choose to not identify as feminists.

Can you share a personal goal you have and a goal you have for the site in the next year?

I recently made a big move out to Los Angeles, and I am terrified that I will be losing the feminist community I found in New York City. So, my personal goal is to make sure I find, and also create, a strong feminist network here that will provide me the space to continue growing and learning. As for Refuse the Silence, our team is working hard to make the project financially sustainable.

The full interview can be read at The Daily Femme

Written by: Cherie @ The Daily Femme, November 11th 2010

Monica Droga: Indie Musician, Bollywood Star, Feminist

mandy — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Interview with Monica Dogra

Gone are the times when people would migrate only to the West to find better lives. Now we witness a reversal of sorts, with NRIs going back to India to seek the same opportunities that their parents or grandparents had left India to find. Monica Dogra is one such NRI who is rocking the independent music scene in the homeland. She’s one half of what is arguably the most successful indie music band in India, Shaa’ir n Func, and is also making her film debut as one of the leads in Aamir Khan's upcoming Dhobi Ghat, directed by Kiran Rao. Here’s her exclusive interview:

Tell me a bit about your background. American born confused desi?

American born desi, definitely not confused. I was born and brought up in Maryland, just outside of Baltimore. My parents had migrated to the U.S. from India. I was always a super active performer from a really young age.

How did you get into music in the first place?

My mom is a singer as well so I grew up around Hindustani classical music, going to classical concerts when I was young. And then my parents split up when I was twelve and I was raised by my dad. He was the opposite, like, be a doctor, go to business school, etc. But I still had such a deep-rooted love for music that I couldn’t deny it.

How do you balance being American with being Indian?

I think kids today are much more aware of other cultures because of examples in the media. But we were reminded of being different every single step of the way. People would ask, “Where are you from? What’s your ethnicity? Why don’t you have a red dot on your head?” Those are things that we grew up with, even though you’d have an American accent and you were born and raised in the U.S. We would reply with, “Do you mean where are my parents from? Or where I was born?” What box should I check today? I am American, but I am also through and through Indian.

What sparked the move to India?

I just decided to go to Bombay for five days to check it out and I ended up falling in love with the city, the culture, with the monetary freedom I had there. My savings could take me so far. In those five days I was free writing for hours every day. Stuff was just pouring out of me in real time. So I went back. I just had a feeling that I needed to be there.

How did you meet Randolph and how was Shaa’ir n Func born?

In those first five days, Randolph came to a party. It was a room of twenty people with no smoking, no drinking allowed. There was a saxophonist, a bansuri player, I’m a singer and a poet. There was a girl doing interpretive dance. It was so tripped out. It felt like a scene from a movie. So Randolph walked in, he had a guitar, and he started playing. I liked his vibe a lot. Our music is a combination of influences. We do heavy doses of rock, electronic music, spoken word and funk. We call it conscious dance music.

When I went back to Bombay I bumped into him and I asked him to play with me. I wrote the record, he and I recorded it, we got a distribution deal, we were getting paid to do shows, and it all kicked off. Sometimes when you do the right thing, life is like “good job, I’ll give you this.” And that just kept happening, not without a lot of sweat and hard work though.

Most of your fans are young women, which is a surprising demographic to be so supportive of alternative music in India.

I pride myself on having such a big female following. I’m a feminist and seeing these beautiful women loving our kind of music is empowering, especially in a country where it’s not easy being a woman. Every day, before I walk out of my house in Bombay, think about how I’m going to get reacted to on the streets, “Oh I need to cover this, I need to cover my legs.” My friend got her butt grabbed in the middle of the street. Those are things that are not okay. There’s still a need for feminism. I’m going talk about how there are only ten female directors in Indian cinema because it’s true. We still need to work on that. It bothers me how feminism is a dirty word. I see myself as an empowered, intelligent, sexual female. I find intelligence to be sexy. I put that into my music and everything that I do.

Do you think there’s a divide between the mainstream film-centric world in Mumbai and the indie scene?

The indie scene is so anti-Bollywood, but I’m not like that. In order to change the system you have to change it from within. Most bands are English-speaking and completely anti-traditional anything. I’ve never seen things that way. I grew up watching Bollywood movies and for me that was my only reference point for India. Another reason for this divide is the dependence on connections. “Who’s your mom? Who’s your dad? Why should I pay attention to you?” That kind of vibe is off-putting. But things are changing, more rapidly now than ever before.

That brings us to your film debut. Tell us about Dhobi Ghat and working with Aamir Khan and Kiran Rao.

It came out of nowhere. Kiran saw me in a magazine and wanted me to audition. I was touring at the time in London. When I got an email from her production house I was like “Thanks, but that’s okay.” They emailed me a couple of times. So out of curiosity, I auditioned. For my second screen test they said, “You have to come tomorrow but we just wanted to give you a heads up that you have to do your screen test with Aamir Khan!” Deep breath. Freaking out. I prepared as much as I could. I walked in, he introduced himself and then said, “Let’s begin” without giving me the chance to be struck by his star presence. The reading went well. I got the role the very next day.

What was it like working with the Kiran and Aamir duo?

Kiran is such an amazing woman. She’s so talented, so beautiful and truly unique. There’s no one like her in the industry. Aamir Khan is such a normal guy with such normal desires. I admire him because he uses his star power and does something with it. He is the only one who is really doing it and doing it well. The film has turned out beautiful and I can’t wait for it to be released.

What do you see in your future? And the future of indie music in India?

There’s a powerhouse of talent in India, a huge range. It’s my firm belief that if people are given the platform to get their talents out there, the arts scene would seriously just explode in ways that we’ve never imagined. Shaa’ir n Func is three albums old and our audience is constantly growing. We’ve done shows all over India and hopefully we’ll make more music and reach out to more people. Actually, the real goal is to write a song that I wouldn’t mind playing twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. I want to write that song.

As a NRI who’s returned to the homeland, do you see India as your land of opportunity?

It’s odd that both my mom and dad struggled to provide me with the opportunity to grow up in the U.S. and have access to everything, and then I would have to go back to India to emancipate myself, to feel comfortable with who I am. India has become my land of opportunity because I made it that. I created my opportunities. I was willing to give up a lot of things to achieve my dreams. India, for me, has a kind of freedom that the U.S. lacks. I love that chaos, I needed that chaos. And it has helped me thrive.

Cross-posted from The NRI

Written by: Pulkit Datta, November 6th 2010

Hide Your Face(book) in Shame: Facebook and The Censorship of Female Sexuality

admin — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Interview with Self Serve

A lot can happen in ten minutes. You can make your morning commute to work. You can do twenty sit-ups. You can have an orgasm. If you are business owners Molly Adler and Matie Fricker of Albuquerque's Self Serve Sexuality Resource Center, ten minutes can be all the time you need to inform people about the hazards of labiaplasty.

Also known as female genital cosmetic surgery (FGCS), labiaplasty is a controversial elective medical procedure that involves the surgical re-shaping of labia in order to make a woman's vulva look more “appealing.” A 2007 statement about FCGS, issued by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), read as follows: "Women should be informed about the lack of data supporting the efficacy of these procedures and their potential complications, including infection, altered sensation, dyspareunia, adhesions, and scarring."

In true sex-positive, DIY spirit, Adler and Fricker, along with Alee Ross-Raymond, put together a YouTube video called You Don't Need Labiaplasty. According to Matie Fricker:

“We created a video that included pictures of vulvas from Betty Dodson’s genital art gallery. So many women have body dysmorphia, and seeing unedited photos of healthy diverse genitalia is important. The video also included an impassioned plea to love your body. We had posted two versions of the video on YouTube. One of the video's start screens had Molly’s face on it, and [the other] was a full frontal vulva in an unaroused state. The video with the vulva on it got ten times as many hits.

“I posted the video on our Facebook page with the vulva because it was clear from our experience on YouTube that people wanted to see the female body. I posted the video on our Facebook page and the response was overwhelmingly positive. Many women thanked us and confessed to insecurities they had long carried.

“One of the comments was negative. Of our 1,300+ fans we lost one. I spoke to Molly about it the next day... and we decided we were going to post our next status update asking what our community felt was appropriate. The only people who saw the video were people who had self-selected to be our fans. We had decided we would ask our fans what they wanted to see and adjust accordingly.”

Before the women could act on their decision, Self Serve’s page and all of their administrative pages had been removed from Facebook.

Molly Adler sent off a message to a representative in Facebook's User Operations department seeking the reactivation of all accounts. On August 2, 2010 Adler was told that all of the personal accounts belong to Self Serve administrators were reactivated, but that the Self Serve page itself would not be reinstated due to terms of use violation.

Would Facebook have banned the Self Serve account had it not used that screen shot, but still used images of vulvas throughout the video? Would Facebook have banned the account had the video been posted completely devoid of any genital images? Why does Facebook consider a vague notion of safety and an honest discussion about the very real hazards of female genital modification to be at odds with one another?

These questions are not just “what-ifs.” Sadly, they're also rhetorical. At the time of this writing—over a month after the banning of Self Serve's page—the administrators of the Self Serve account never heard got a reply to their last e-mail, and their account is still suspended.

Self Serve isn't the only women-owned sexuality boutique to have its Facebook page banned. Chicago's Early2Bed also lost their page. E2B founder Searah Deysach started her feminist sex shop in 2001 because she “love[s] sex toys and wanted to create a safe space for people to buy and explore them.” Deysach started a company Facebook page about two years ago. According to Deysach, while it existed, the page was warmly received with around 500 followers.

And then one day, the Early2Bed Facebook page simply disappeared. “No specific reason was given so I read the rules and the only thing we could have possibly violated was the obscenity clause, but we had... nothing more 'obscene' than the other sex shops that have pages.”

Like Self Serve, E2B was notified about the account's banning by email. Like the owners of Self Serve, Deysach contacted Facebook to find out what could be done. Unlike Self Serve, however, no reasons were given for the E2B account disappearance. Deysach went on to say that she has received “no responses to our many emails.”

So what's the deal with Facebook? Why are they so freaked out by lady parts and the sex-positive women who seek to celebrate them?

In order to get some sort of answer out of Facebook regarding their position on this issue, I went to the source itself—specifically, to the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities and to the Facebook Principles. Please keep in mind that Facebook claims that the former is “derived” from the latter.

Section 3 of the Facebook Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, labeled “Safety,” states: “You will not post content that: is hateful, threatening, or pornographic; incites violence; or contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence.” Here, Facebook lumps sex and violence together, putting them on par with one another. Not only that, but they are apparently also willing to consider nudity synonymous with pornography. Herein lies one of the (many) problems.

Section 4 reads as follows: “If we disable your account, you will not create another one without our permission.” That's all well and good, but how can a former user get permission to create a new account when representatives stop responding to their emails?

Further along, section 4.5 states that no one under the age of thirteen can have a Facebook account. How can Facebook hide behind the argument of “safety” as a justification for censoring images of women's genitalia? The United States is the company’s biggest market. By age thirteen, most children educated in U.S. public schools are already learning sex education. Granted, it's likely an “abstinence-only” curriculum, but children are still being exposed to anatomical representations of the human genitals by that point in their lives. Furthermore, Facebook has its own “Safety Center,” including a sub-section labeled “Safety For Parents.” The information provided includes ways that an account's privacy settings can be modified to block those profiles that users do not want to see.

Section 5 is “Protecting Other People's Rights.” SRR Secs. 5.3 and 5.4 state that “We will provide you with tools to help you protect your intellectual property rights. If we remove your content for infringing someone else's copyright, and you believe we removed it by mistake, we will provide you with an opportunity to appeal.” I find the language of this section particularly contentious, as it seems that “protection of other people's rights” in the Facebook world extends only to the possibility of intellectual property infringement; it has nothing to do with the right to free speech. In fact, it doesn't just seem that way; it is that way.

Let's move on to selections from the unintentional hilarity that is “The Facebook Principles.” From Principle 3, “Free Flow of Information”: "People should have the freedom to access all of the information made available to them by others. People should also have practical tools that make it easy, quick, and efficient to share and access this information."

Yes, they should. But when people are denied access to that information by: a. dictating what is acceptable speech; and then b. banning accounts belonging to individuals or organizations who try to share important information that you have nonetheless deemed “unacceptable,” a company proves itself to be stunningly ignorant and embarrassingly hypocritical all at once.

From Principle 7, “Fundamental Service”: "People should be able to use Facebook for free to establish a presence, connect with others, and share information with them. Every Person should be able to use the Facebook Service regardless of his or her level of participation or contribution."

Unless Facebook deems that the information you're trying to share is “pornographic” rather than, y'know, informative (not to mention supported by the American medical establishment), in which case you get the boot.

From Prinicple 8, “Common Welfare”: "The rights and responsibilities of Facebook and the People that use it should be described in a Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, which should not be inconsistent with these Principles."

It would be nice were this the case, but sadly, it's not. The SRR is inconsistent with the supposed Facebook Principles. You can try to spin it otherwise, but the proof is in right there online, plain as day for everyone with the most basic critical analytical skills to evaluate.

From Principle 9, “Transparent Process”: "Facebook should publicly make available information about its purpose, plans, policies, and operations. Facebook should have a town hall process of notice and comment and a system of voting to encourage input and discourse on amendments to these Principles or to the Rights and Responsibilities." Facebook will not, however, respond to e-mail pleas from otherwise conscientious users with noble intentions and loads of supporters.

It was extraordinarily savvy of Facebook's PR team/bevy of lawyers/Department of Cognitive Dissonance to start pretty much every sentence of its "Facebook Principles" with the phrase "People should have..." Yes, people (and groups and organizations and businesses, et al) should have all of those things Facebook has delineated among their supposed principles. But a quick perusal of the SRR, combined with the reality of their actions in relation to supposedly "objectionable" content, clearly indicates that this is simply not the case. It's as though they're saying, "You totally should have these things–but you don't. And you won't. Because we're not gonna let you."

The larger question is this: How do sex-positive individuals, businesses, and organizations combat this sort of societal resistance to–and censorship of–female sexuality?

In response, Molly Adler and Matie Fricker at Self Serve told me, “We can continue to try following the rules, terms etc., and challenging this notion that all sexual information and all images of the human body are obscene. That notion is obscene! The more space and voice sex positive feminists are given to speak for shame-free, guilt-free positive sexuality, the more perhaps our culture will steer in that direction.”

Searah Deysach added, “We need to continue to be vocal and fight censorship when we can! We need to band together to be a louder voice. We need to keep promoting sex positive imagery and ideas wherever we can. Facebook is huge, but there are lots of other venues out there.”

Written by: M. Brianna Stallings, September 3rd 2010

Exposing One of the Greatest Intrusions of Religion into American Politics

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

Interview with Reed Cowan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Written by: Annette Przygoda, August 28th 2010

Maria's Story: Twenty Years Later

admin — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 00:53:00 +0000

Interview with Monona Wali, Pamela Cohen

Earlier this month, I saw a twentieth anniversary screening of Maria's Story: A Documentary Portrait Of Love And Survival In El Salvador's Civil War at The Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts in San Francisco. Before attending, I had an abbreviated understanding El Salvadorian politics, and the subject of the documentary, Maria Serrano. Filmed in 1989 by two young American women, Maria's Story reveals the daily struggles and heartbreaking memories that lay in the wake of the political unrest that ravaged her town in El Salvador. The film chronicled a two-month journey for all involved. Ultimately, the film unfolds into a narrative about Maria’s role as a leader of a Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) guerrilla camp, which was about being a mother, wife, and a community member. I recently spoke with the directors of the film, longtime friends Pamela Cohen and Monona Wali.

Were there moments during the filming of Maria's Story in which you felt that there were advantages to your position as women directors?

Pamela Cohen: I don’t know if a male director would have been drawn to Maria in the same way we were. We chose to put a female face on this war; we wanted to address the Che Guevara guerrilla image, because that’s not who was on the front lines.

Monona Wali: Because we are women, we were sensitive and committed to the human side of the story. There were times when we were drawn to the bigger side of the war, but beyond knowing the statistics, the instinct to stay close to Maria and stay close to her came from being women and cementing the relationship with her, which was affectionate, playful, and serious. I don’t know that a man would have been able to get that close.

Emeteria and Maria, two members of the community, discussed losing their daughters in the war. Hearing the details of how young women were victims in violent attacks in El Salvadorian towns effected me greatly. What were those moments like for you as directors?

Monona: With Emeteria, we had gone first to be with her in ’88 and lived in a repopulated community named Guarjila that we were going to use as a base camp. We had equipment, and it turned out that there was a huge military offensive, and we were stuck in a village. Emeteria was taking care of us; she was our mother during that time. It was the day of remembering the dead. She had come to San Jose Las Flores to be a part of that and knew us. We asked her, “How do you feel about this day?”

For Maria, it started in the bathing scene, and it came up spontaneously. We just wanted to get a scene. Every time Jose showed up, we turned the camera on because we didn’t know when they were going to be together again.

Pamela: But then we asked about it, and we knew we had to sit down with her to talk about it—that was separate. She was out of the country when Ceci was killed in ’87. That may be why she wouldn’t let go of Mijita (her youngest daughter) and made her a personal radio operator for the rest of the war.

How did your awareness about some of the issues raised in the film affect your work?

Pamela: It was six or eight months before we started editing. We thought, “After what we’ve been through… how can people not care?” We just felt like everyone had to know and were determined to finish it.

Cross-posted at Gender Across Borders

Written by: Maria Guzman, July 29th 2010

Voice of an Angel: Talking to Jill Andrews

admin — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 16:01:00 +0000

Interview with Jill Andrews

When I first spoke to singer Jill Andrews, I was quite shocked when she first answered the phone. Her voice was low, slow, and groggy, which wasn’t what I was expecting. You see, Andrews quite literally has the voice of an angel.

As it turned out, I was waking her up from a peaceful nap with her infant son, Nico. Nico was born around the time that Andrews’ critically acclaimed, Tennessee-based band, The Everybodyfields, broke up. She and her band were part of a growing wave of young musicians emerging from the south who are meshing the music of their region (country, bluegrass, and blues) with the music they grew up listening to (punk and indie rock) to create an interesting sound of their own. The Everybodyfields garnered a lot of attention early in their five-year career because of Andrews beautiful harmonizing with bandmate Sam Quinn and their constant touring with the increasingly popular Avett Brothers.

After the split, Andrews got to work creating music of her own, and recently released her first self-titled EP. No one can sing like Jill Andrews; no one can convey heartbreak and loneliness and aching pain like she can in just a single line. The EP is six songs of simple, pure, and heartfelt music, and though Andrews has a lot on her plate (a recent tour and her first child), she decided to release another six-track album recorded live at Eddie's Attic in Decatur, Georgia to benefit the International Rescue Committee and help the earthquake survivors in Haiti.

Who were your musical influences growing up?

My first tape was Diana Ross, and I wore that tape out when I was a kid. I have to say, though, that my first huge musical influence was Bette Midler. When I got to high school, I was really into folk music and started listening to things that weren’t on the radio, like The Jayhawks and Wilco. I was also really into Joni Mitchell.

A lot of what I started listening to in high school was influenced by my surroundings and where I came from. Living in the mountains of Tennessee influences the music we listened to, and the mountains were the perfect backdrop it. The music I like most now is the type of music I write and play. I like really emotional music. When I listen to songs, I want to feel something. I want to dirty dance or cry my eyes out.

When did you realize you wanted to be a musician?

I can remember always wanting to be famous, but my parents tell a different story. We always went to this donut shop together, and when I was a really little kid, my dad asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I said a donut waitress. In high school I was in youth choir, school choir, and church choir, and all of my instructors were really supportive and made sure that I knew my voice was going to be heard.

When did you meet Sam Quinn?

Around the same time I started playing guitar, I went to summer camp. Sam was a camp counselor, and he asked me to sing a song, so I put on a cheesy karaoke tape and sang to it. I’m sure he thought I was crazy. After the first week of camp, I realized I really needed a guitar because everyone who had a guitar sucked. I knew if I practiced I could be good at it. I’m sure I made a fool of myself at first, but I began writing songs immediately after getting my guitar.

What do you hope people take from your music?

I’ve always been into helping people. I was a psychology major in college, and I worked with kids who had behavioral issues, but I quit to pursue music full-time. For a long time I struggled with the decision because being a singer seemed too egocentric. Every night the spotlight was shining on me. I got all dressed up and it was kind of like, “Hey, look at me!” I’ve since made peace with it, though. Music helps the emotional state of the world. People need music, and I need to keep making music for the sake of my own well being, so it all works out in the end.

Written by: Tina Vasquez, March 22nd 2010

A Day in LA: A Conversation with Kevin McCollister

admin — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 17:01:00 +0000

Interview with Kevin McCollister

Kevin McCollister is a serious and shy man who spends his days working in a Los Angeles office and his nights walking around the city’s less stylish neighborhoods snapping photographs of churches, taco stands, mariachis, the homeless, and LA landmarks like the Fourth Street Bridge, Union Station, and Olvera Street. His photographs feature the LA that its natives know to be true, but fail to see after so many years of dodging street characters and fighting traffic on freeways just to get to their next location.

McCollister began his career as a poet, and in 2005, shortly after moving to Los Angeles, he decided to start a photography blog as a way of showing his friends the sights of his new surroundings. The mission was simple: explore the “easily misunderstood city” by foot, camera in hand, shooting the images that are counterintuitive to what people usually associate with the City of Angels. (Don’t believe that old Missing Persons song: people do walk in LA, and they’re not just photographers either.)

Nearly a year ago, McCollister’s beautiful, gritty images caught the attention of If Pub's founder Brooks Roddan, whose publishing company specializes in limited edition art and poetry books. After Roddan saw McCollister’s photographs, they decided to publish a collection of fifty-five photographs that would become East of West LA.

Tell me about your background. Where have you lived?

I grew up outside of Cleveland, Ohio. I think that's what gave me a taste for grime over glitz. Then for several years I was based in the French Quarter of New Orleans, and that was pretty wild. I was working and living on boats that went up and down the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers—pretty much a total retreat from modern life. I saw lots of small, mid-American towns and, of course, the rivers themselves were fascinating. After that I lived in a place that was the exact opposite of New Orleans: Cambridge, MA right in Harvard Square. I felt at home there, more than in LA actually, but the weather was horrible.

How did you transition from being a poet to a photographer?

I went to school at Ohio University and Harvard Extension, but I'm not a graduate of anywhere, and I never studied photography in school. Whatever it was that sparked my interest wasn’t conscious, but it certainly was natural. I began to see that you can convey a lot of emotion within a photograph, and that photography doesn't come with all the alienating artsy-ness of poetry. Plus, it got me out of the house. Walking can be very meditative, at least for me.

Who are your influences?

It all begins with Walt Whitman; He's very city-centric and acknowledges the whole spectrum of being alive. He and William Carlos Williams deal in very concrete images, and there's very little that's grandiose about either of them. Whitman can get carried away with himself, but it’s clear the claims he makes for himself are true for everyone. Frank O'Hara and James Schuyler are two other poets that have been a big influence.

If you settled in any other city, do you think you would have felt compelled to photograph it the way you’re photographing Los Angeles?

I honestly don't know. I'd certainly try. The idea of living in a smaller, less mixed-up city than LA gives me the creeps. Here, there's certainly a place for whatever mood you're in. I can go to Abbot Kinney where I'm just another blip or to Breed Street in Boyle Heights where, until the crackdown, they had all the outdoor food stalls. I don't speak Spanish at all, so it’s pleasantly disorienting.

What do you find yourself drawn to photographing?

Well photography is a compulsion; I admit to that. Every so often, I go to Inglesia Nuestra Senora Reina de Los Angeles, the Catholic mission next to Olvera Street. It attracts some extremely devout people. Outside the church there are street people who have absolutely nothing. It seems the church has a pretty tolerant policy about them. I also check in on some vendors and street people as I make the rounds. Some I see often, some seem to disappear.

**Who are your favorite photographers? **

I really respect Mexican photographers, specifically Manuel Alvarez Bravo and Tina Modotti. They're very elemental, uncluttered, and direct. I also like Helen Levitt and Lisette Model. Generally speaking, I'm much more in the Wegee world than the Ansel Adams one. My favorite photograph is "Main Street, Saratoga Springs" by Walker Evans.

What inspires you?

Knowing that someday all of this, especially me, won't be here anymore and that for all the jokes about being a city of wanna-be TV stars and models, there are a ton of people in this town who are doing great things.

Written by: Tina Vasquez, March 6th 2010

Ariel Gore on Women, Happiness, and Self-Determination

admin — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 08:59:00 +0000

Interview with Ariel Gore

Ariel Gore’s new book Bluebird: Women and the New Psychology of Happiness asks the question, “Can women be smart, empowered, and happy?” Here, Ariel Gore offers her ideas on happiness and advice for women seeking change in their lives.

In order to write this book, you kept a journal where you tracked the things in your life that made you happy, and you asked a lot of other women to do the same. How did these women respond to the request?

At first people were excited about it. Then a lot of them found some resistance to it. Women have a lot of resistance to focusing on their own happiness. We’ve been taught to make other people happy, after all. Most of the women started dealing with feelings of happiness being selfish, and wondering if the journal was hokey. But they had made a commitment to the project and soldiered on. Without fail, they broke through some of those resistances and found that the simple act of meditating on their own happiness allowed it to bloom a little bit. Allowing ourselves to say, “Hey, am I happy?” is powerful and emancipating, even if the process is a bit hokey.

What changes came from keeping the journal?

Some of the women who took part in the original project changed careers. Some increased the amount of time they were spending on whatever activities made them lose track of time: developing pictures in the dark room or surfing or having more sex. One woman made a huge change in her family structure. Other women didn’t make any outward life-changes, but those thirty days exploring happiness and seeing whether we can trace patterns from the scraps of our moods is a practice that’s designed to change us, even if those changes are subtle.

The pursuit of happiness is put forth as the ultimate purpose in life; however, there is also a belief that happy people are, well, sort of dumb. Why does this contradiction exists?

In American culture there has been a massive campaign to sell us all on cheerfulness. It has been an important part of capitalism and has been part of the oppression of women. Women have been endlessly told by others what we need in order to be happy. Maybe they say we need a husband or children or a fantastic career or a spotless kitchen or multiple orgasms. In any case, we are being told what is good for us. Of course we rebel against false cheerfulness and being told what to do when it's wrapped in the nonsense of it being “for our own good.” False happiness and denial-based cheeriness does feel dumb. We have the right to be grumpy! But that’s only fun for a while.

You mention some problems with the concept “you create your own reality,” but ultimately, suggest that is exactly what women must do to achieve happiness. How do you reconcile the contradiction?

Well, we don’t create reality. Women and poor people don’t create reality right now, but we have the freedom in every circumstance to decide how we’re going to react to our reality. As our personal power grows, we learn to influence reality so that we—and everyone—can be free, and happy.

Psychologist Martin Seligman is considered the father of contemporary positive psychology. He made a name for himself back in the late 1960s with a series of experiments on dogs that resulted in the theory of learned helplessness. These dogs were stuck in “shock boxes” and Seligman and his colleagues figured out that if the dogs were shocked at random, and given no control over their torture, they usually didn’t make a run for freedom when given the opportunity. Later, Seligman got to thinking about those rare dogs who, despite abuse and lack of control, kept resisting. There was a rare dog who was so resilient, so totally determined, that she couldn’t be broken. Positive psychology set out to find out, essentially, what that dog had.

If happiness is, in part, a choice based on freedom, what would you tell women who are enmeshed in situations they are powerless to change that cause them great unhappiness?

I think our choices are always limited to some extent. Canadian positive psychologist Dr. Paul T.P. Wong defines happiness as the ability to rejoice in the midst of suffering. Alice Walker has pointed out that resistance is the secret of joy. We make choices first to survive, to protect children and elders, and then to resist false power gained from fear and obedience. No matter what or how long it takes, we get them to open the shock box—or we get it open ourselves—and then we jump.

It is widely**** believed that something that makes you happy or fulfilled will make others happy as well. Why do we fall into this trap?

Because it has been relentlessly marketed to us! If you look at the history of advertising, you find this shift in the early part of the twentieth century—from warning ads that say you will have bad breath if you don’t use this mouthwash to the “product satisfaction ad” where advertisers try to convince us that their product will make us happy by making us more beautiful, more relaxed, richer, or whatever. Tolstoy famously said, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” But when I looked at women and happiness, I found the opposite to be true. While depression was fairly standardized, the things that made women happy in their lives were actually quite varied and unique.

As you studied happiness, you realized you wanted another baby and you wanted to make more money, so you made it happen. Did it make you happier?

Stepping out of the role of the martyr-mom by saying, "I want to do all of this, but I need reasonable funding," and then upping my rates for much of the work I do made me happy. Money by itself doesn’t affect my mood one way or the other, but the constant anxiety of not being able to pay the rent was really doing a number on me. I was raised by a Catholic priest who had taken a vow of poverty and in a counterculture community that taught me money was somehow bad, so it took a lot for me to be able to say, "All right, maybe this is the next level of empowerment. Maybe I need to be able to keep a roof over my head and have health insurance for my kids, and the thing is, I can do that without hurting my community."

What one thing do you suggest women do in order to find contentment?

Recording moments of happiness every day can be really powerful, even if—maybe especially if—really hard things are happening in your life. Keeping a happiness journal is about moving through the resistances, savoring moments of happiness even in the most difficult times, and prioritizing your own happiness. It’s not like our refusal to be happy makes us more loving and compassionate; it just makes us mean. Existential depression might seem cool and smart—like we’ve figured out what’s really going on—but in the long term, I don’t think it serves us.

Now that you aren’t experimenting with ways to bring yourself happiness, has your life returned to the status quo?

I have learned how to recognize when something is causing me anxiety, and I can switch gears pretty fast. I recently lost my maternal grandmother and my mother was diagnosed with stage-four cancer. In the span of one season, I went from feeling secure as a granddaughter and a daughter to facing the possibility of being the eldest generation in my family. I’ve had to take a deep breath and come to terms with not being a kid anymore. I cannot afford to waste the finite amount of time I have on this earth listening to anybody’s bullshit, and I can't afford to lock myself in the basement in existential depression.

Written by: Jessica Powers, January 19th 2010

Resistance Through Writing: An Interview with Victoria Law

admin — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 08:56:00 +0000

Interview with Victoria Law

Feminist Review recently interviewed writer and activist Victoria Law on her book Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women. Here Law shares her thoughts on making her book an activist tool, the culture’s blind spot about the prison industry, social justice movements’ responsibility to incarcerated women’s issues, and how motherhood radically altered her own work and informed her upcoming anthology, Don’t Leave Your Friends Behind.

Who did you write Resistance Behind Bars for?

I originally wrote the book, or the college paper that was the start of it, with no audience in mind. I had spent a semester researching post-Attica prisoner organizing and resistance in college. At the end of the semester, I looked back at what I had and realized that every instance, except for one, was about male prisoners. So the first paper was written to explore what women were doing and why their actions weren’t as well-documented, or remembered, as their male counterparts.

When I first had the idea to turn my paper into a book, I had a few audiences in mind: people who were already interested in prison and prisoner issues; those interested in women’s issues; people who aren’t particularly interested in prisons or prisoners’ issues, but are interested in tales of resistance, and incarcerated women themselves. In corresponding with over a dozen women incarcerated around the country, I also wanted to make sure that the book was accessible to them. None of the women I’d reached out to had any idea of organizing being done in other prisons or of the previous organizing, resistance, and riots that had happened in women’s prisons in the 1970s and 1980s. I kept in mind that I wanted my book—and the information in it—to be accessible to someone with an eighth-grade education. The book doesn’t work as a potential organizing tool if those most affected by these issues aren’t able to read and comprehend it.

What’s the response to Resistance Behind Bars been like—and how has it affected you personally and your work as an activist?

I think that because Resistance Behind Bars is a book specifically about incarcerated women—and even more specifically about their acts of resistance—it’s attracted attention and interest from people who normally think of prison issues as male issues and are excited and intrigued by incarcerated women’s resistance. Such an enthusiastic response means that I’ve been kept busy planning and doing events, not only the typical bookstore readings, but also workshops at various social justice conferences and at schools.

My daughter, who was a newborn when I first started researching incarcerated women’s resistance, is now eight years old and knows a lot about prisons, prison and gender, and abolition, probably more than most other eight-year-olds (except, perhaps, for any children whose parents are Critical Resistance organizers). She’s asked me very pointed questions about both realities inside prisons and ideas about abolition, which means that I had to clearly articulate my arguments, thoughts, and ideas.

What was the writing process like for this book?

When I first started researching, I did two things: I set aside all preconceived notions of what prisoner organizing might look like and started reading specifically about women in prison. I found a lot of material covered issues like motherhood and pregnancy. Issues of parenting—and, of course, pregnancy—do not come up in documentation about male prisoner organizing, and so people who are looking at instances of prisoner resistance aren’t going to necessarily look at how they organize around and challenge the realities of parents in prison. Battering and past abuse is another issue that comes up in a lot of the studies around incarcerated women, but again, that’s not an issue that we see impacting men going to prison and thus isn’t looked at as a “prison issue.”

I also scoured the news—and alternative media, mostly prison-related zines—for mentions of actions by incarcerated women. Once I found that someone had done something—filed a lawsuit, complained to the press, launched a hunger strike, etc.—I used the websites of either that state prison system or the Federal Bureau of Prisons to find the woman’s contact information and sent her a letter explaining who I was and what I was researching. I asked if she would be willing to share her stories and experiences with me.

Not wanting to take without giving back, I offered what I could: I offered to look up lawsuits for them and send them copies of court decisions; I offered to look up other resources for them; I offered to send them books via the Books Through Bars program that I helped start here in NYC; I sent stamps so that they could not only respond to me, but also write letters to other groups or people; in some cases, I offered to call their children if they were unable to get through themselves.

What were some of the most surprising realities about women in prison that you discovered in researching your book?

I remember receiving a letter from the Clear Creek County Jail in Colorado about the re-institution of the chain gang for the women held there. That wasn’t the huge surprise; the surprise was that the woman who wrote me was actually happy to be on the chain gang! She had recently given her newborn son up for adoption, and so I can’t help but wonder if keeping occupied, even if it’s on a chain gang, helps her process losing him. She’s not the only one: women at Clear Creek want to be on the chain gang. It’s tiring, backbreaking work in the hot sun, but it’s also the first chance they’ve been given to get out of their cells, be outdoors, and accrue “good time,” or time off their sentences. Keep in mind that the jail’s male inmates have had the chain gang for a while. They also have other chances to earn “good time.”

What are the most common misconceptions and assumptions circulating right now about women in prison that keep people from understanding what’s really going on inside prisons for women?

In May, I was invited to speak at a New York City high school about women and prison. Having done so many of these talks to people who are interested in prison issues and have some framework about the issue, I forget what the majority of people think or don’t know. I came in ready to talk about historical contexts and what is going on now and started with the question: “What do you think about when you think about prison? Who goes to prison and why?”

One girl raised her hand and said, “Criminals. People who do bad things.”

“Drug dealers.”

“Men.”

I realized that most of the students had no framework about incarceration other than what they had been fed by the mass media, so I had to mentally throw out my outline and start from scratch. I talked about poverty and racial profiling, the history of the prison as a means of social control, how Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon equated the civil rights movements and liberation movements with street crime and started their war(s) on crime to lock up poor people of color before they could mobilize to demand their rights. None of the students had ever heard of the Rockefeller Drug Laws or mandatory minimum sentencing. I hadn’t either when I was their age, and I grew up in New York City too!

I also talked about some of the conditions inside—the lack of health care treatment, the fact that staff members often encouraged prisoner-on-prisoner violence, because it’s easier for them if the prisoners aren’t uniting and fighting for basic human rights, lack of educational programs inside the prison. At the end of the hour, when we talked about what they, as high school students, could do about this issue, one boy raised his hand and suggested that we should lobby for medical treatment for people inside prison. “If I broke my leg in prison—or anywhere—I would want people to help me get it treated.”

Later one of the coordinators of that high school’s community day told me, “Students in your session were really struck by the experiences you shared with them, and there has been a lot of conversation in among students about issues concerning prison.” Some of the students were talking about forming a student club to do work around some of these issues, like the Rockefeller Drug Laws.

You write in the book that calls for reform have failed to adequately address the factors leading to women’s incarceration. How so?

Prisons fail to address the societal conditions that lead to incarceration, such as poverty and the increasing feminization of poverty, misogyny, violence, racism, and the issues that accompany women to prison. How does locking someone in a cage address any of these factors?

You have to remember that people have gone to prison face numerous obstacles in successfully reintegrating into the community when they are released from prison. Oftentimes, they are not only released with the same lack of resources and opportunities than they had before being arrested and incarcerated, but now have a criminal record which prevents them from getting certain jobs, qualifying for certain housing, or social safety nets. The 1996 welfare “reform” banned people with drug felonies for life. Similar legislation banned them from receiving governmental financial aid for college, etc.

We also need to keep in mind that prison issues affect all sorts of issues on the outside, shifting money and resources away from other public entities, such as education, housing, health care, drug treatment, and other societal supports that are needed.

Did motherhood change your own activism?

Before motherhood, I was super-involved in all sorts of political projects and organizing. New motherhood definitely made me sit still! Once my daughter was born, I realized that I had to pick a few issues and focus on them. I also couldn’t risk arrest or bringing my daughter to something where the police might attack the crowd.

I started researching resistance and organizing among incarcerated women shortly after my daughter was born. Being stuck inside during the winter with a newborn gave me a lot of time to read, respond to letters, contemplate ideas and issues—this, by the way, is something I did a lot while nursing—and work on draft after draft of this paper. I don’t know if I would have had this same opportunity if I had tried to do this as a childfree person rushing off from one political [event] to another at various hours of the day and night, or if my daughter had been older, more mobile, and needing more direct attention.

I want to stress that what’s made my continued involvement and even writing my book possible is the huge amount of support I get from my friends and the people with whom I organize. I realize that not all mothers get this type of support, although they should, and that I’m extremely fortunate to have such a wonderful support system.

What are you working on now?

My next book, Don’t Leave Your Friends Behind, will be an anthology co-edited with China Martens, a mother, writer, and publisher of the longest running subculture parenting zine, T_he Future Generation_. Originally, China and I wanted to share our experiences as radical mothers and advocate for community support of all families. We were meeting parents and their allies and hearing their stories and experiences. A few years ago, we realized that we wanted to extend the reach of our message of community support and decided to compile a handbook specifically geared towards allies, or potential allies, of radical parents.

With Don’t Leave Your Friends Behind, we’re addressing the need to support—and build support systems for—families in our own social justice movements. In so many of our so-called radical movements, we’re not providing support for people who decide to have children so that they can continue participating in political work. There’s an individualistic attitude that says, “Well, I didn’t choose to have kids. You did, so you deal with them.”

Even when there’s not an overt resistance to having children in our movements, we need to look at how ways that we organize and socialize exclude parents and caretakers. We lose valuable organizers—and organizing experience—when we don’t take these factors into consideration.

Unlike Resistance Behind Bars, this book will be an anthology of both caregivers and their allies of ways that their movements support children and their caretakers in your collectives, organizations, or communities. We are especially seeking experiences that take into account factors such as race, class, gender, single parenthood, and/or mental health issues, since these issues often aren’t talked about when we talk about building communities and support systems here on the outside. We’re still reaching out, meeting people and collecting submissions, so if anyone out there has stories and experiences to share, they should definitely get in touch!

Written by: Ellen Papazian, November 9th 2009

Starstruck

admin — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 10:23:00 +0000

Interview with Jane Campion

Over the past twenty years, director Jane Campion has created some of the most thrilling depictions of femininity on screen. From the Academy Award-winning The Piano to the dirty yet pretty _In the Cut_, Campion's sensually earthy films depict worlds seen through the eyes of women. The typical stargazing Campion femme is strong and deeply confident about the power of her creative mind.

When I was nine years old, Holly Hunter’s Ada McGrath was different from any other female character I’d seen. Though mute, Ada uses her passion for music to communicate her inner most feelings and desires. That performance profoundly effected my views of womanhood and since then I’ve followed Campion’s career closely. After seeing Bright Star, which is based on the love affair between the poet John Keats and his neighbor Fanny Brawne, I jumped for joy when the opportunity to talk with Campion about the film, her career, and a special feminist moment she experienced recently.

What attracted you to the relationship between John Keats and Fanny Brawne enough to make a film about it?

The love letters that existed and the impact their story had on me emotionally. It’s very moving, especially considering the restriction for young women during Brawne's time.

How do you feel about Fanny and the other heroines in your films?

I love them all. I see the world through women’s eyes. I wasn’t trying to make Fanny into a heroine. I just think she’s a young woman who was unusually strong.

You go to great lengths to make the relationship feel loving on both sides, though some people think Fanny was just with him for the fame. Why do you think Fanny kept Keats’ letters?

That’s the most foolish thing I’ve ever heard! Keats died completely unknown. The idea that she kept the letters because he might be famous is absurd. He had on his headstone: "Here lies one whose name was writ in water." Fanny totally loved the man. She never talked about their relationship. She felt that their love affair was misunderstood. She thought he was misunderstood, and that was painful for him. She kept the letters because she loved him. Her children selling the letters was not her doing.

And probably not very fair to her.

Well, I don’t know. I don’t believe identities hold once we’re gone. What they did on this earth belongs to all of us. We’re just human beings and it would be very sad to me if letters and other belongings didn’t exist. If they didn’t, we would never have known about this story. They were terribly private together, but that’s what makes it so interesting.

I saw the film about three weeks ago, and I just can’t stop thinking about it. It’s in my stomach, and I can’t get it over the feeling it left in me.

It’s a very visceral, tender experience. It’s just what Keats would have loved!

What are your thoughts about female filmmakers today?

One of the most beautiful moments for me on this tour was in New York. When at the premiere Sofia Coppola, Zoe Cassavetes, Mira Nair, and Julie Taymor all came up to me together, and I just went “Ooh, girls!”

That’s quite a crew!

Yes, it’s a fantastic crew! People often say that women don’t support each other and here was an example and feeling of extreme support.

What do you want audiences to walk away with after seeing Bright Star?

The right point of view! (Laughs.) I love the story. I’m very pleased I could do it some justice and that people are enjoying it too.

Written by: Sara Freeman, October 1st 2009

Personal Politics

admin — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 16:09:00 +0000

Interview with Rebecca Walker

The Feminism 101 dictum “the personal is political” has been writ large across third wave feminist founder Rebecca Walker’s work since she published her first book, the 1995 anthology To Be Real: Telling the Truth and Changing the Face of Feminism—her generation’s response to second wave feminism.

Since then, she has written memoirs and edited anthologies that explore her own biracial identity (Black, White, and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self), raising a son (What Makes a Man: 22 Writers Imagine the Future), and first-time motherhood (Baby Love: Choosing Motherhood After a Lifetime of Ambivalence).

Her latest book—the anthology One Big Happy Family: 18 Writers Talk About Polyamory, Open Adoption, Mixed Marriage, Househusbandry,Single Motherhood, and Other Realities of Truly Modern Love—is a re-envisioning of the American nuclear family, partly inspired by Walker’s memories of her own “fragmented” family (her parents are feminist icon Alice Walker and civil rights lawyer Mel Leventhal). The collection features essays by Dan Savage, Dawn Friedman, Min Jin Lee, and asha bandele, among others.

Walker’s recent work has ignited some debate, including discussions about whether there’s a difference between loving an adopted child and a biological one (Walker says there is) and whether a mother-daughter estrangement as dramatic as the one that played out between Walker and her mother signals a greater generational “rift” between the second and third wave feminist movements.

Feminist Review recently interviewed Walker about her new book on families off the “hetero-normative grid," the power of disclosure in her work, and why she never anticipates controversy.

You’ve written two memoirs and edited three anthologies, including your latest, One Big Happy Family. How are these processes different for you?

A collection is more like a prism than a magnifying glass. Anthologies are more democratic—everyone has their say. The form is radical in that it implicitly acknowledges many voices; the truth of multiplicity is built into its DNA.

In terms of process, I work with other writers the way I try to work with myself—to get to the heart of the story and support its birth. I try not to get too focused on craft. If I meet someone who can’t write a paragraph, but has a true, moving story, I’m there. I encourage that inside voice and coax it out. I do that for myself, and yes, I would say it is a joy, an honor even, to do that for others.

Who is the audience for One Big Happy Family?

One Big Happy Family is for you, your neighbors, the Supreme Court, and your uncle Robert. It’s for anyone doing family differently than the way it’s done on TV or at their grandmother’s house. It’s for people who are making up their version of family as they go along, following love and their own longing for connection. One Big Happy Family is for those who refuse to let love be defined by anything other than the truth of its existence. It’s a kind of Dr. Spock for the millions of people living life off the nuclear, hetero-normative grid.

You open the anthology with a piece by Jenny Block about her polyamorous marriage. Why that particular piece as the opener?

Polyamory has a PR problem—people think those who love more than one person at a time are part of a seamy scene, nymphomaniacs, or delusional, at best. Jenny Block, who wrote the essay, is so not any of those things. It’s one of my favorite pieces in the book because she is so honest and accessible, brave and tender. The essay does a great job smashing the stereotype, and I like that. Putting it front and center pushed the envelope.

You wrote in Newsweek about how President Obama has changed our concept of manhood. Do you feel he and Michelle Obama will shift national discourse on family values?

Modeling partnership between mutually adoring and respectful equals certainly feels like a step in the right direction. I’m encouraged by their apparent openness to families of all kinds, and by their insistence on putting the health and well-being of their children first. It seems so simple, and yet, so many do not do the work.

You’ve written memoirs that have raised the curtain on your childhood and, with Baby Love, your estrangement from your mother. Many writers choose to keep their private lives to themselves, while others make the so-called private, public. Why have you chosen disclosure for your work, and how do you feel it has served you as a writer and activist?

As a child of feminism, I think the real question would be why wouldn’t I choose disclosure? Feminism 101 teaches that the personal is always political—this does not stop being true because the personal may negatively impact the matriarchy.

My work has given voice and agency to many. Like the feminist writers whose work I’ve devoured for decades, I prefer to live my own life, and tell my own story, than have it presumed, projected, or in any other way defined by those who would benefit from my silence. I think my readers resonate with that and are encouraged and emboldened to do the same in their own lives. In this area, you could say I’m classically second wave.

You’re a feminist leader who produces work that sends ripples through some feminist communities. To Be Real shifted the focus of second wave feminists to include young women’s realities. Your statements about the difference between loving a biological child and an adopted child caused a bit of controversy, as did your writing about your estrangement from your mother. In a sense, your personal choices, beliefs, and experiences have become political for many. What do you think of your ability to provoke such a response—and is this a burden, a blessing, or neither?

It’s fascinating, surprising, frustrating, and revelatory. What’s odd is that I never anticipate controversy. I suppose that is to say that my point of view is not calculated in any way. I am nothing if not brutally honest, emotionally raw, and deeply hopeful. I tend to anticipate the best in people, to expect them to—no matter how challenging to their ego or ideas about who they are—rise to the occasion of simple listening and acknowledgment of different viewpoints. This expectation is a blessing, certainly. It sets a bar to which I, myself, aspire.

A burden? Not for me.

Written by: Ellen Papazian, July 8th 2009