University of California Press

The Monster Within: The Hidden Side of Motherhood

mandy — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Psychiatrist, mother, and grandmother Barbara Almond's provocative new study makes a valuable contribution to the ongoing debate about what she terms “the dark side of motherhood.” The negative feelings a mother inevitably has toward her child, however loving she may be, and the painful conflicts these feelings can engender, is a topic still too often taboo in American culture.

In The Monster Within, Almond asserts, “Today's expectations for good mothering have become so hard to live with, the standards so draconian, that maternal ambivalence has increased and at the same time become more unacceptable to society as a whole.” This increasing idealization of mothering has provoked both a revolt by some contemporary mothers against these ideals and a shocked fascination on the part of the American public with the most spectacular cases of bad mothering, in which women abuse or even kill their children. Andrea Yates, the Texas woman who in 2001 drowned all five of her young children, is one of the murderous mothers whose situation Almond analyzes in her presentation of the wide spectrum of “maternal ambivalent feelings, thoughts, and behaviors,” from normal jitters to psychotic states.

In The Monster Within Almond uses two main kinds of evidence: clinical examples and case histories from her own and her colleagues' practices and discussions of selected literary works that she calls “case stories,” which range from the tragedy Medea by Euripides to Rosemary's Baby to Toni Morrison's Beloved. Those fictional accounts illustrate many of the same themes Almond finds in her therapeutic work, and they enable her to expand and deepen her examination of the mother-child bond. She also draws on articles in professional reviews, as well as newspapers and popular magazines, and on pioneering feminist critiques by Nancy Chodorov, Adrienne Rich, and others from the 1960s and '70s.

Almond's principal objective is to demonstrate the ubiquity and the multiple facets of maternal ambivalence and to suggest healthy ways for mothers and children to cope with their fraught relationship. Along the way, she takes on women's fears of producing monstrous offspring, tales of vampyric babies and mothers, various traumatic events that can disrupt mothering, and mothering across the life cycle, including becoming a grandmother and relating to adult children. The approach throughout is to relieve guilt and shame for negative experiences and to help mothers achieve happy motherhood and a good relation with their children, as well as helping the children themselves.

The Monster Within is a well-researched, well-written treatment of ambivalence, both its positive and its negative effects. I regret, however, that the text does not deal with the latest phenomenon of Mommy Bloggers, though I do not know how much new material Almond would have found there that is relevant to her concerns. Certainly many contemporary women are breaking their silence and dramatically confronting the issues she raises.

Mothers, prospective mothers, grown children, and anyone interested in the state of mothering at the present day will find much food for thought in this book. Interested readers would also be well advised to supplement The Monster Within with writings from the Journal of the Association for Research in Mothering, a publication devoted to exploring mothering from various radical perspectives through multidisciplinary approaches and creative writings. Almond's critique of the limiting expectations and flawed social constructions of mothering continues in a new journal from the same editors published by the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement.

Written by: Kittye Delle Robbins-Herring, January 2nd 2011

Nimo’s War, Emma’s War: Making Feminist Sense of the Iraq War

barbara — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Cynthia Enloe

University of California Press

The stories of eight women’s lives, four Iraqi and four American, establish the framework for an examination of the gendered phases of war. Nimo is a beauty salon owner in Baghdad who keeps her business open through blackouts and listens to what the women there really think. Emma is a mother in Texas, urged to let her second son join the military during wartime. Maha, Danielle, Safah, Kim, Shatha, and Charlene all have stories that in telling offer a deeper look into not only their circumstances, but into the state of the world and of the ravages of wartime.

I have chosen to review several books for Elevate Difference written about the war in Iraq and this has allowed me to study, through these scholarly texts, how this conflict is dividing not only the Iraqi people it was meant to “save,” but our own nation. As resources dwindle, more and more of our populations suffer the lifelong and devastating effects of war.

Statistically rich, and academically vital, this book offers a fresh look at how the Iraq war has changed through phases of occupation and what that means for the women on both sides. Alongside the uniformed soldiers trained and assigned to extremely difficult jobs: homes are destroyed, girls are kept from school for fear of violence, and widows turn to prostitution to support their children.

“As wartime strains the social order and more women from many walks of life decide to take unorthodox steps to sustain their own, and their families’ material survival, violence against women is adopted by some men as a means to restore the gendered order.”

As recruiters become more desperate for new troops, they infiltrate schools, and launch campaigns that involve psychological profiling of parents and teachers to assist them in finding the next soldier to sign. As soldiers are kept from home for longer periods of time, their families struggle to hold together, and when they return, they are often in need of serious medical and psychological assistance, that often falls to the loved ones they return to.

“The American military was loath to acknowledge the mental health consequences of war for its soldiers… these were the soldier’s everyday experiences in a combat zone. If they were treated as the cause of mental disabilities, how could any government wage a war?... Every soldier officially diagnosed with a mental disorder was a soldier whom the Defense Department could not redeploy.”

I am fascinated by war. I find it astounding. More than just an isolated incident of violence, war is entire populations of people agreeing to kill and maim. And war looks very different from a feminist perspective, much different than it does from the predominant masculine agenda.

Cynthia Enloe, Research Professor of Women’s Studies and International Development at Clark University, used only information available through the public domain to gather these stories and examine them. Interviews done by journalists gave her a close look into each woman’s experience. She did not conduct personal interviews, for fear of tilting her studies toward the American women with whom she would have better access. But even with this distance, Nimo’s War, Emma's War is revealing and riveting.

Written by: Jen Wilson Lloyd, October 9th 2010

Interrupted Life: Experiences of Incarcerated Women in the United States

admin — Sun, 02 May 2010 07:55:00 +0000

By Rickie Solinger, Paula C. Johnson, Martha L. Raimon, Tina Reynolds, Ruby C. Tapia

University of California Press

Surprise—it’s a real downer to read about prison. That glaringly obvious statement aside, Interrupted Life is quite an achievement. The book comprises eighty-seven pieces, which are written by scholars, activists, incarcerated women, and formerly incarcerated women and span breadth of generic types. There are poems, reflections, and essays; there are excerpts from research, a Bill of Rights, a United Nations Report; there are journal entries, excerpts from interviews, vocabulary lists, and letters to lovers. There are so many perspectives, experiences, reflections, assertions, and expressions that no one point of view is easily privileged, and the reader who may try to do so would have to try very hard to lump everything in this book into one picture of the "standard" incarcerated woman. This, of course, is one of the goals of this book: to resist readers' attempts to maintain a generalized view of who the incarcerated woman is or what she is like.

I admire the honesty of Ruby Tapia's introduction. She directly admits that any representation of incarcerated women—even of a single incarcerated woman—will necessarily fail to convey fully what her experience means to her and how it feels to her. Likewise, it will also fail to fully show how such a representation relates to the larger social, political, and economic problems of justice, the category of the "criminal," and the overwhelming homogeneity of economic class within prison populations. She insists that creating a representation of incarcerated women—even such a nuanced, heterogeneous representation as the book attempts—is still to reproduce the categorical violence done to incarcerated women by setting up a space in which "we" (non-incarcerated, non-criminal/criminalized readers) can take a leisurely look at "them"—"they" who exist outside of the laws that bind us into a group that can evaluate the criminalized other, who cannot evaluate us in ways that count.

Interrupted Life makes a provocative and accessible (if continually heartbreaking) book for the lay reader. The future professor in me can't help but imagine this book as a text for introductory level courses in philosophy, women's studies, multicultural studies, justice studies, political science, criminal justice, economics, or sociology. The readings are not too difficult for undergraduate students to understand and the many perspectives lend themselves to lessons in critical thinking. For advanced students, the readings in this book could challenge—or confirm—more highly theorized academic studies about justice, prisons, gender, and the experiences of incarceration.

Written by: kristina grob, May 2nd 2010

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

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

By Lynne A. Haney

University of California Press

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

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

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

Written by: Olivera Simic, April 18th 2010

Intimate Encounters: Filipina Women and the Remaking of Rural Japan

admin — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 09:00:00 +0000

By Lieba Faier

University of California Press

Intimate Encounters: Filipina Women and the Remaking of Rural Japan is a culmination of professor Lieba Faier's fieldwork in the late 1990s in the Nagano region of Japan, specifically Central Kiso. For a few years, Faier lived in the area, interviewing both the Japanese natives and the Filipina women who came to Japan under entertainment visas. The Central Kiso area had a particular phenomenon: a surprising number of foreign brides from the Philippines either met their husbands at the hostess bars where they worked or through mediated marriages.

Faier discusses the two mentalities surrounding these Filipina brides: first, many Japanese thought they came from a poor and inferior country, and were looking for rich husbands; on the other hand, others viewed these brides as ii oyomesan, Japanese for “good wife.” Filipina brides who were viewed as ii oyomesan possessed “Japanese” qualities, such as being dutiful towards their husbands and in-laws. When interviewed, these women revealed that they were following their Filipina values.

Even though many of these women came to Japan searching for a better life and a way to support their families back in the Philippines, many found obstacles. While their visas were for cultural performances, the majority worked in hostess clubs, where they were expected to please men and get them to drink. Many of the women performed sexual services, though it was a violation of their visas. If a Filipina woman did marry a Japanese man, she faced the disapproval of Japanese in-laws. Faier recounts stories of Filipina brides who ran away from their husbands, working underground when their visas expired.

Faier's fieldwork is incredibly extensive, covering both Japanese and Filipina points of view. She does an excellent job portraying the different reasons these women came to Japan, and the various difficulties they went through. Intimate Encounters is an enjoyable read, not only for students of anthropology, but also for those interested in either Japan or the Philippines.

Written by: Elizabeth Stannard Gromisch, December 28th 2009

Gay L.A.: A History of Sexual Outlaws, Power Politics, And Lipstick Lesbians

admin — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 17:00:00 +0000

By Lillian Faderman, Stuart Timmons

University of California Press

California: Land of the free, the brave, and the gay. This heart-lifting literary biopsy of gay rights’ progression in Southern California (Los Angeles, specifically) is a delight to read. For those of you who have ever stood in the face of adversity, protest poster in hand, Gay L.A. will remind you exactly why you did so. For the rest, it will open your eyes to the continuing need for civil rights activism on all planes.

The non-fiction novel is a chronological retelling of the way gay community has evolved in the past hundred years. Though both stories and people vary, the one element that does not change is each generation’s responsibility to push the envelope a little more than its predecessor. After all, where would Lindsey Lohan be today if Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo hadn’t been gender-bending wearers of pants? In the closet, of course!

From scintillating behind-the-scenes tales of Hollywood’s 1920s heyday, to the rigid role-playing of the 1950s, to the moving protests against the government’s indifference in the face of the AIDS epidemic, this historical work reads like a novel. All the work big Hollywood names of the '20s and '30s had to go to remain closeted is fascinating. Gay L.A. states that celebrities could be open and “out” in private circles, but they kept their flamboyancy far from public eye. Thanks to Twitter, paparazzi, and camera cell phones, celebs no longer have this luxury—which makes reading about the elaborate lengths famous gay people went to in those days all the more interesting. (Did you ever wonder where the term “beard” marriage came from? Even “lipstick lesbian” is an invention of a bygone era.)

As far as an accurate representation of the GLBT community, I’d have to say that these authors did a fairly evenhanded job. They are able to approximate the delicate balancing point between the telling of gay men’s and lesbian’s stories—although less attention is paid to transgender narratives. This gap in information might just be due to the lack of research and archived information on transgender identities, which is accurate for the time periods covered but still somewhat disappointing.

The amount of GLBT history that I gleaned from this book is astounding. For instance, I’d never heard the gay agenda addressed in a respectful and literal way. I’ve always wondered why conservatives fling the phrase around to depict gays as child-molesting monsters seeking world domination. The “gay agenda” always sounded so ludicrous to me, an offensive mischaracterization of a disenfranchised group’s fight for equality. Apparently such a thing actually existed at one point! Take, for example, the difference between L.A.’s early gay rights political activists fighting for domestic partnership benefits and a satiric website like The Homosexual Agenda. We have the ability to be flippant about the “gay agenda” in the 21st century because of the hard-won battles fought by those who went before us.

Gay L.A. is a two-fold motivational work: it is both a call to action and to remembrance. It ends on a hopeful note, reminding us that the battle has not been won but that much progress has been made. It also reminds modern-day civil rights proponents of just how much blood, sweat, and tears it took to get us where we are today.

Written by: Sam Williams, November 26th 2009

The Slave Next Door: Human Trafficking and Slavery in America Today

admin — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 09:03:00 +0000

By Kevin Bales, Ron Soodalter

University of California Press

Before starting this book, prepare yourself. Bales and Soodalter take an in depth look at slavery in America, and they reveal some dark stories that some people may find too disturbing. Slavery, unfortunately, did not end in the United States with the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment. It exists throughout the world through house, field, and sexual servitude. Many of the victims of slavery go unheard or receive little support; if they are afraid to report or do not have the proper paperwork, they face deportation and returning home in shame. Others do not get the necessary psychiatric help after the devastation they endure.

The treatment of the slaves described in this book is deplorable. One of the first stories given is about Maria, who was lured from Mexico with promises of an education, and then was enslaved. The young girl was ordered to do housework and was subject to physical and sexual abuse. When she was not working, she was chained outside and sometimes was forced to eat dog feces. If a neighbor had not seen Maria (the yard had an eight-foot concrete fence), she might have died. The sad part is Maria's story is not uncommon; what is rare is her being rescued.

Would you be able to identify someone held in captivity? Would you know what to do? Many people may say that it could never happen in their town, but it exists everywhere. You may be surprised. Bales and Soodalter referenced cases in Connecticut, which I've never heard of, even though I have lived in the state for fifteen years. However, besides describing the serious offenses of slavery, Bales and Soodalter offers stories of Good Samaritans who have made a difference. In addition, at the end of the book, resources are provided if you want to get involved in fighting human trafficking. The Slave Next Door provides an exceptional view of slavery in the world, and is a valuable tool for human trafficking activists.

Written by: Elizabeth Stannard Gromisch, July 19th 2009

A Garland of Feminist Reflections: Forty Years of Religious Exploration

admin — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 09:35:00 +0000

By Rita M. Gross

University of California Press

Preeminent feminist Buddhism scholar Rita M. Gross’ A Garland of Feminist Reflections is an indispensable collection of her best collected writing from the past forty years. Drawing together theory, philosophy, and religious exploration, Gross’ self-selected anthology is deeply thought provoking and can serve as an introduction to her vital scholarship, or a necessary refresher on important concepts and ideas. Among the pieces she chose, Gross included several groundbreaking essays on methodology and theory. The collection also includes large sections of Gross’ writing on feminist theology and Buddhist feminism.

Gross’ writing is strikingly beautiful, though it is also a dense read—and a complicated one—for anyone not already deeply engaged with comparative religious studies or knowledgeable about Buddhism and gender in an academic framework. This isn’t a criticism, but speaks to Gross’ passionate relationship with her work. Some essays, such as “What Went Wrong? Feminism and Freedom from the Prison of Gender Roles,” offer more accessible insight into how gender affects our very existence. Thirty years after the beginning of the second wave of feminism, Gross argues that in many ways, we are no better off than we were before. Still confined to the prison of gender roles, we’ve only become more appreciative of the male gender and increasingly more competitive and materialistic than before.

While Gross’ academic work is reason enough to pick up this collection, the personal essay, which begins the book, highlights the unique challenges she continues to face as the most renowned feminist Buddhist theologian of our time. An introspective woman from a conservative home in Wisconsin, who came of age in the 1950s, Gross is the unlikeliest of comparative religious scholars. Her deeply moving personal essay, “How Did This Ever Happen To Me?” is heart wrenching and inspiring in its detail of her battles against the male-dominated academy, small school academics uninterested in intellectual debate, and a world simply unable to understand a radically peaceful woman much more interested in cultivating her mind than anything that could grow in her womb.

Written by: Brittany Shoot, June 22nd 2009

What Kind of Liberation?: Women and the Occupation of Iraq

admin — Fri, 15 May 2009 17:29:00 +0000

By Nadje Al-Ali, Nicola Pratt

University of California Press

March 20, 2009 marked the six-year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. Although the half a dozen years of occupation must seem like an extended nightmare from which Iraqis are anxious to awake, for many young Americans an occupied Iraq is the only Iraq they have ever known. This is precisely why Nadje Al-Ali and Nicola Pratt’s research could not have come at a better time. What Kind of Liberation? offers a revolutionary perspective on the war that has come to define a generation, using a gendered analysis that factors in women’s historical participation in Iraqi society, attempting to separate it from the one-dimensional warzone it is known as to many Americans today.

In the tradition of colonialism, the U.S. initially engaged in the war under the guise of freedom, campaigning specifically for women’s liberation. Tragically the manipulation of women’s interests as a strategic element of the occupation transformed women’s bodies into the location of a cultural war between the growing number of Iraqi insurgents, politicians and citizens opposed to the war, and an American administration that pushed women’s liberation as a Western cause.

Al-Ali and Pratt largely based their research on women in the Iraqi diaspora who had lived through, or who had family that lived through Saddam Hussein’s rule and the subsequent occupation of Iraq by the U.S. military. Their interviews reveal that despite the violence and tyranny implemented under Hussein, many of the interviewees imagined pre-invasion Iraq as a safer space for women. Although they do not attempt to sympathize with Hussein’s regime, they show that it was not until after the invasion, and after the U.S. spearheaded the campaign of the “liberation” of Iraqi women that women became the site for the rejection of Western values, and a return to conservative values was made on a nation-wide level.

What Kind of Liberation? presents us with a messy, complicated and living Iraq, a society with a rich history that is not streamlined. Iraqi women speak about their histories in their own words, offering a snapshot that largely contradicts what we see unfolding in the American media. Despite the U.S.’s promises for the future of Iraqi women, no investment was made in women’s interests when creating the new Iraqi government. Their voices were largely excluded. But these broken promises have not stopped female activists and politicians from braving threats and harassment and the backlash of a war in which they were used as part of a fictitious cause.

In the foreword Cynthia Enloe explains why Al-Ali and Pratt’s book is so necessary, “It’s happening. The country, the complex, dynamic society that is Iraq, is becoming ‘Iraq,’ just as the complex, dynamic society that is Vietnam has become merely ‘Vietnam.’” Nadje Al-Ali and Nicola Pratt’s gendered analysis of the war and historical documentation of women’s activism will contribute to the growing pool of knowledge that separates the orientalist notions of “Iraq” from the diverse and complicated country that has room for a future for men and women alike.

Written by: Lizzy Shramko, May 15th 2009

Witnessing Suburbia: Conservatives and Christian Youth Culture

admin — Wed, 06 May 2009 16:51:00 +0000

By Eileen Luhr

University of California Press

The short disclaimer is this: I grew up in a family filled with the Holy Spirit. My grandfathers were, respectively, a theology professor and a youth and music minister. One of my uncles, after making his name founding a Phoenix-area megachurch in the '90s, currently works as a professional church-grower, teaching other pastors how to rapidly expand their soon-to-be behemoth congregations of believers. I have attended international youth conventions and camp meetings, and on family vacations, we used to visit landmarks like Robert Schuller’s Crystal Cathedral and the Christian DisneyLand, Knott’s Berry Farm. Now agnostic and estranged from most of my family, I nevertheless find that studying my roots is both personally enlightening and a crucial component of understanding modern cultural warfare in the United States.

In Witnessing Suburbia, Eileen Luhr traces the suburbanization of modern evangelism, exploring how evangelical Christians have become increasingly consumption-oriented and have expertly engaged in a “Christianization” of popular culture. With the 1980's Christian exoduses to the suburbs came a two-part evolution of identity. In addition to staking their exurb areas as heathen-free, family-centric zones, suburban Christians also became focused on the individualization of living space. Believing piety for the larger world must first be learned at home, evangelical Christians became some of the strongest defenders of “homeowner rights.” Many Christians were among the first to adopt doctrines of self-reliance and personal responsibility. Value of the physical home and the values that existed in those homes became inextricably linked.

As many suburban Christians staked their physical territory, large groups of those believers also became engaged in cultural activism to widely promote their home-grown ideals. In order to reclaim public space for sacred values, a number of Christian groups decided to take an anthropological missions-based approach: by investigating and becoming one with secular culture, it would be possible to infiltrate and influence. One aspect of this political campaigning took root in deconstructing rock and heavy metal music. Convinced of music’s duality—weapon of the devil or of Jesus, never neutral—a number of evangelical Christians believed they had found the ultimate battleground on which to wage war for the souls of the unsaved.

The most fascinating part of Luhr’s analysis—which is difficult to quantify, as there are many enthralling subsections within deeply researched chapters of multilayered histories—is the contradiction between how evangelical adults relate to their youthful counterparts. Seen both as needing protection and also as active leaders in religious reformation, an enormous spiritual burden has long been placed on young people. Perhaps this alone explains why religious teens have at times turned to heavy metal, albeit Christian in nature.

Throughout her deconstruction of religious heavy metal, Luhr details many Christian activist mainstream successes of the past three decades, including the rise of Focus on the Family and the anti-porn 7-Eleven boycotts of the mid-1980s. (Ever wonder why you can’t get Hustler at an American 7-Eleven? Thank an evangelical Christian.) Both positioning themselves as cultural saviors and persecuted martyrs, evangelicals were able to balance a number of contradictions in their public campaigns. Anything that served to set them further apart from the mainstream reinforced their outsider status; in reality, major Christian organizations and networks were growing rapidly and gaining immense cultural power. Yet within these larger contexts, alternative Christian culture warriors were also engaged in their own rebranding of their message. You can love Jesus and also love to rock.

From Christian zines of the '80s to the success of metal bands like Stryper, Luhr expertly explores this specific counterculture within the dominant Christian activism of the past twenty-five years. Academic in content and tone, Luhr’s writing is captivating in its intellectual scope and in the ways it ties together complex concepts. Particularly engaging for reformed believers, Witnessing Suburbia is a fascinating and informative page-turner.

Written by: Brittany Shoot, May 6th 2009

A Short Life of Trouble: Forty Years in the New York Art World

admin — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 19:19:00 +0000

By Marcia Tucker

University of California Press

Memoir can be a tricky genre, with nothing holding its premise together other than the author’s truth. In Marcia Tucker’s case, being an artist and curator also makes her one hell of a writer, a woman with a keen ability to spot details and covey her passion to a larger audience.

A Short Life of Trouble is a breezy, enjoyable read as it traces Tucker’s fortuitous rise through the New York art scene, parallel with the surge of second wave feminism in the 1960s. The first female curator at the Whitney Museum and the founder of the New Museum of Contemporary Art, Tucker keeps her complex narrative simple and constantly moving quickly forward. After surviving the death of both of her parents and a lover before the age of twenty, Tucker goes on to visit Germany as a Jew, take up (and forgo) painting, chat up Surrealist painter Marcel Duchamp (without recognizing him), live next door to The Band, marry, and divorce, all before the age of twenty-five.

Instead of hiding inside her art world privilege, Tucker explores the deficiencies of the mostly-white mainstream feminist agenda, attending consciousness-raising groups and rallies, while encouraging her fellow female curators to do the same. In one of the book’s most memorable moments, Tucker tells then-president of the Whitney board of trustees all of the stereotypical reasons why he clearly fears hiring a woman—then gets the job anyway. Despite her frustration with it at times, of the women’s movement, she said that in thirty-five years, it had “never once lied, stolen, or cheated on me.” Much like feminism, Tucker’s life only gets more interesting as it progresses.

Marcia Tucker sadly passed away in 2006, one of the rare women who managed to live an intense, captivating life while never taking herself too seriously, and finding a exemplary balance between art and politics. An example to underachievers and aimless twenty-somethings who can still go on pursue remarkable careers, she will hopefully be remembered not just as a groundbreaking curator, but also as a passionate, thoughtful feminist with a keen eye for the details in the busy world around her.

Written by: Brittany Shoot, January 25th 2009

Bombay Anna: The Real Story and Remarkable Adventures of the King and I Governess

admin — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 22:50:00 +0000

By Susan Morgan

University of California Press

Almost everyone in America has heard of Anna, the famous upper class English lady who held her own with the King of Siam. What most people haven’t heard is the real story behind the better-known, fictionalized character. Susan Morgan has devoted over a decade to fleshing out the life of Anna Leonowens in Bombay Anna. This was not an easy job given the lengths Anna went to alter her past, even writing a false biography for her grandchildren.

Contrary to Anna’s claims of an upper class English upbringing, she was actually a mixed-race child born in India to a mixed-race mother and a low-ranking English soldier. She grew up in tented barracks and among the local children. Her intellect and facility with language set her apart. When her husband, the love of her life, died, Anna faced limited prospects as a widow. For the sake of her children, she moved to Singapore, where no one knew her, and cleverly recreated her past.

Morgan shows the readers how successful Anna was at reinvention. Not only did her story hold, but her children moved freely among the upper classes, and her grandchildren attended prestigious universities. Morgan’s painstaking research is clear, and her devotion to this topic comes through in the book. She describes the stages of Anna’s life with precise detail, sometimes more than a general reader may need, but Bombay Anna serves the dual purpose of bringing the real Anna to life for pleasure readers and providing a treasure trove of facts for historians and scholars. Morgan even provides a brief biography of Margaret Landon, whose book (Anna and the King of Siam) catapulted Anna Leonowens to fame.

Often times, such fact-laden books can be cumbersome to read - not this one. Morgan writes skillfully, and Bombay Anna often reads like a novel. By the end, the reader holds an intimate knowledge of Anna and may even regret not having been able to meet her.

Anna was a woman ahead of her time. She refused to live her life subject to racial discrimination and social constraints, and adapted in order to overcome a system designed to hold her back. Anna rejected proselytizing in favor of respect for world religions, she had a strong social conscience, and she valued education more than anything else. She could make herself comfortable among a wide variety of people – from Russian peasants to residents of the king’s harem and Siamese nobility to American literary intellectuals.

See the movie with Jodie Foster. Enjoy the musical. But if you want to know the real story, pick up Bombay Anna and be prepared to find an inspiring story of an incredible woman.

Written by: Jessica Jacobson, October 10th 2008

Saving the Modern Soul: Therapy, Emotions, and the Culture of Self-Help

admin — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 17:45:00 +0000

By Eva Illouz

University of California Press

From Freud’s creation of psychoanalysis for curing psychopathology by means of talk therapy, to spilling one’s guts on Oprah’s couch or skyping into her soul series webcast, we all just really want to know (dammit!): who am I and why am I here? Saving the Modern Soul examines the language and practice of psychology, essentially, from an American cultural perspective. The author, Eva Illouz, a Professor of Sociology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, provides a feast of ideas concerning therapeutic values as she tackles the myriad contemporary methods we employ to figure ourselves out, feel better, and find higher meaning.

The demand is huge, considering an ever-surging market of self help books, workshops, advice columns, motivational experts, family life coaches, misery memoirs, corporate programs, and righteous gurus galore. Illouz even discusses our voyeuristic fascination with Tony Soprano’s sessions with Dr. Melfi and the ensuing lessons on narcissism and borderline personality issues. Illouz sharpens her focus on our collective American obsession with navel-gazing to posit that we may too actively romanticize our angst, and this actually serves to complicate our lives with an unbalanced and devotional focus on our pain.

Eva Illouz is a great scholar, and her book has been hailed by many as an important contribution to the field of therapeutic discourse. It is, of course, an inescapable fact that our self-help culture has transformed contemporary emotional life. Reading her book and trying to absorb it all at once is overwhelming The great gusto with which Americans are consuming therapy, pop psychology, new age theories, and every new book that comes down the pike to reveal the “secrets” of the soul is mind-boggling — if not a little bit cringe-inducing.

So I decide to get up and go take a look at my own library to see what a psychology book junky I have personally become. I see books on cult dynamics, narcissism, and sociopaths (the dark side is so scary, so intriguing!), past lives, grieving the loss of a pet, the I Ching, positive thinking, the workings of the creative mind, feelings and how they happen... even, OMG, I see I have The Secret! It’s nestled between Ship of Fools and Conversations of Goethe!

I am pretty much over hearing one more wrenching rehab tale of woe, especially coming from a celebrity, but delving into the twists and turns of what makes humans tick is ever fascinating. It’s like going on a fabulous archeological dig. The great inner journey. Illouz is fascinated, too, and that’s why her books on various facets of the subject keep coming (this is her fifth book).

All in all, I loved the subject matter, but, technically, I found the author’s prose tough-going. Her style is such a series of circuitous sentences jammed with densely clinical words that I frequently needed to take off my glasses and blink my eyes back to clear vision. The other issue I had was point of view. The majority of people seeking help, I believe, are not glamorizing their pain. The pain is real and begs for relief. Any other curiosity one has about the world of psychology - even if it is not one’s own particular problem - what’s so wrong with a little healthy intellectual curiosity? Hmmm?

Written by: Cheryl Reeves, June 16th 2008

The New Voices of Islam: Rethinking Politics and Modernity

admin — Thu, 17 May 2007 02:03:00 +0000

Edited by Mehran Kamrava

University of California Press

In The New Voices of Islam, Mehran Kamrava compiles a selection of writings from Muslim reformists whose voices have been silenced and marginalized for much too long. The reader introduces his audience to the intricate and complex concepts that revolve around religion, politics and public space in the Muslim world - revealing a rich yet limited ability to synchronize Islam and Modernity.

Through the compilation of works, the authors effectively answer the question on many post-9/11 minds: “Where are the reformist voices in Islam today?” From North Africa to Southeast Asia, Europe to America, The New Voices of Islam illustrates the gamut of sociopolitical thought brewing in our globally diverse world. The essays include a broad overviews of Islam's core principles; the complexities between Islam, democracy and civil rights; and three works by Muslim feminist intellectuals.

To much dismay, Westerners’ concern about Islamic fundamentalism is, for the most part, uninformed and remains uneducated about the Muslim intellectuals working toward positive change in the Middle East. This elite cohort lives both within the Islamic world and in Europe and America. Their struggle began before 9/11 and before The Constitutional Revolution in Iran (1907-1911). Due to many missed opportunities and marginalization, their collaboration has often gone unnoticed; their strength is in their message and endurance to continue the fight for democratic governance.

The words in Kamrava’s collection are not from Muslim governments or Islamist opposition. These are the dark horses, Muslim mavericks who are the voices that rise above the religious and political fray. Each of the authors in the reader is willing to critique, reassess and respond to the needs of their societies.

Written by: Mona Lisa Safai, May 16th 2007

Breaking the Silence: French Women’s Voices from the Ghetto

admin — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 16:01:00 +0000

By Fadela Amara

University of California Press

In her recently translated book Breaking the Silence, Fadela Amara attempts to rework and redefine feminism as it relates to her specific time and place. As a Muslim girl of Algerian immigrant parents growing up in the projects, Amara’s experience of feminism as the term is traditionally defined by western academics was non-existent. In fact, her book critiques the very term as it exists now, perceived by her to be owned by the white middle and upper-class women who coined it. Rather than clinging to old ways and means, Amara challenges herself and other women in the projects to find new meaning, "to regroup around essential issues such as the struggle against sexist violence, against conjugal violence, in favor of equal pay, for greater professional mobility."

Starting at zero, Muslim women in the French projects had their work cut out for them, and as this book reveals, rose to the challenge. The original march organizers far surpassed their original expectations. Mothers, once confined and cowed into submission, broke tradition and marched alongside their daughters. Grandmothers, even more entrenched in conventional ways, emerged from crowds along the marchers’ route to whisper blessings in the ears of that younger generation, inspired. Upon their arrival at their final destination in Paris, the marchers were met with astounding support and received a meeting with the Prime Minister to express their motivations for marching and their hopes for the future. These were things Amara never could have conceived of before.

By putting these stories on paper, Amara is able to convey the message that the impossible can become possible through solidarity. In this way, this book is inspirational. The stories collected here represent human will triumphing over oppression; in any context, that is an uplifting thing. The women presented in Breaking the Silence disregard the usual rhetoric and theory surrounding the concept of feminism in favor of pragmatic approaches to results-oriented activism. Their cross-country march earned them respect and visibility. A community once completely invisible within even within the confines of their own homes is now gaining the power to improve the quality of life for Muslim women in the projects. The writing isn’t ground-breaking, but the story is. This may not be the most finely crafted piece of writing, but here, the value lies in the work of raising awareness and spreading information about a social issue barely recognized by France, let alone the rest of the western world. This English translation is an extremely valuable tool in this process. On its own terms Breaking the Silence is a resounding success, a testimonial, a manifesto, and a call-to-arms.

Written by: Kelly Moritz, November 19th 2006