Penguin Books

The Danish Girl

admin — Tue, 25 May 2010 08:00:00 +0000

The Danish Girl is like a multilayered Flemish painting or tapestry. On the surface, it’s the story of the marriage of two painters, Clara and Einar. However, Einar Wegener was the first male to undergo successful gender affirming surgery. And The Danish Girl is also the story of a search for one’s true identity, and how one navigates that struggle within the boundaries of a relationship.

The novel opens in Copenhagen in the 1920s and the author has painted a rich landscape of the country and culture at the time, which I found almost as interesting as the storyline. We meet Clara and Einar after they have settled into a domestic routine, of sorts: two painters living in Copenhagen trying to make a living through their art. Known for his landscapes, Einar is the more acclaimed and successful of the two, while Clara finds herself painting portraits of well-known businessmen and society types. Clara is a young, willful, and wealthy California heiress who fell in love with Einar while enrolled in art classes at the Royal Academy, where he is a teacher. Despite being six years her senior, Einer was shy and awkward, and Clara pursued him somewhat relentlessly.

As the novel progresses, we discover that Einar has been encouraged by Clara to occasionally dress in women’s clothes when her female subjects are delayed or unable to make their sitting appointments. Einar is a slender, pretty man who is described as "beautiful" in the novel. Clara senses that Einar has a love of all things feminine, and starts to encourage him to dress as a woman, who they start introducing as Einar's distant cousin Lili to their friends. At first, this is a secret game between the pair, but as Einar needs to dress as Lili more and more, the dynamic in the marriage changes, making Clara increasingly uncomfortable. Clara believes that part of loving someone is doing whatever you can do to make them happy, and although she is ambivalent about Einar’s need to dress as Lili, her paintings of Lili start to garner her praise and acclaim in the art world.

The subject matter of The Danish Girl could have been treated as a spectacle, or voyeuristic experience, but it is treated sensitively by the author. The author sensitively renders Einar’s sometimes painful experiences with his changing identity, and we experience the distinct worlds of these two separate individuals. I was surprised to discover that this novel was first published in 2000. The story is especially topical given that transgender experiences are now being discussed on shows like Oprah, which signifies that the issue has become mainstream, or at least an acknowledged part of our cultural dialogue.

The Danish Girl is being made into a movie that is scheduled for release in the United States in 2011. Nicole Kidman will star as Lili. If reading is supposed to take you on a journey of the mind and expand your understanding of the world, The Danish Girl is certainly deserving of high praise.

Written by: Gita Tewari, May 25th 2010

Becoming Indian: The Unfinished Revolution of Culture and Identity

admin — Sat, 22 May 2010 16:01:00 +0000

By Pavan K. Varma

Penguin Books

Pavan K. Varma’s most recent book, Becoming Indian, argues that cultural freedom has eluded formerly colonized nations, specifically India. He sees a need for a cultural revolution in India. Although it reads at times like an extended opinion piece, Varma makes convincing arguments highlighting the importance of reclaiming language, architecture, and art in a way that empowers indigenous knowledge rather than oppressing it. He examines concepts and examples related to language, architecture, and art with regard to modern Indian history, contemporary events, and personal experiences.

Varma believes that the real strength of empires lay in the colonization of minds, and he views modern history as one that has resulted in cultural and ideological consequences. He explores how English has become a tool for upward mobility and questions the cost, as the loss of one’s own language is seen as a gain in India. He uses the example of young people performing Shakespeare in English with no knowledge of theatre in their own languages to illustrate this pervasive ignorance. He also compares the success of writing in English to the sure failure of writing in Indian mother tongues to illustrate a flaw in today’s Indian value systems. Convincingly, he critiques the concept of providing important information, such as health and traffic signs on the highways, in English.

Although India has been independent since 1947, Varma argues that colonialism persists in the realms of language, politics, and self-image. Varma believes that globalization is leading to the desire for a homogeneous identity. To counteract this, he believes it is important to know one’s cultural roots in order to move forward into the future.

From a feminist perspective, it is interesting to note the ways in which the British have historically seen Indians as effeminate, and thus treated them with less respect. The power dynamics within post-colonial societies are especially tricky as colonization has already permeated people’s minds. According to Varma’s arguments, what may be necessary is not only a contemporary Indian cultural revolution but also one that involves all sectors of society, from the lowest to the highest castes and socioeconomic backgrounds.

Written by: Lakshmi Saracino, May 22nd 2010

The Piano Teacher

admin — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 01:00:00 +0000

By Janice Y. K. Lee

Penguin Books

Janice Y. K. Lee's debut novel, The Piano Teacher, takes the reader inside the upper social circles of Hong Kong during and ten years after World War II. The book opens in 1950s Hong Kong with Claire Pendleton, a young British wife who is bored and takes a job teaching piano to the daughter of a wealthy Hong Kong couple. “It started as an accident. The small Herend rabbit had fallen into Claire's purse.” In these first two lines of the novel, Claire is stealing an expensive figurine from her employer. This act of theft is a crucial revelation of character. Claire will also soon begin an affair with an Englishman who is her employers' chauffeur. The affair is a kind of emotional theft that seems devoid of passion or purpose, as does the physical theft of the figurine.

In the second section of the novel, Lee moves back in time to war-time Hong Kong. It's here that we meet Will Truesdale, Claire's soon-to-be lover. He is new in Hong Kong, and falling in love with Trudy Liang, a young woman he meets at a party. “She is famous, born of a well-known couple, the mother a Portuguese beauty, the father a Shanghai millionaire with fortunes in trading and money lending.” Trudy is spoiled and self-absorbed, and Will seems to be long suffering in his loyal pursuit of her. But the thing we come to learn about Hong Kong and the people who live there is that nothing is quite as it seems.

I was reminded a bit of The Great Gatsby as I read the war-time sections. Lee has created a group of privileged people who live a life of decadence, partying and dining out and lounging about, while their servants feed and groom them and they grow ever more bored with the routine of their privilege. The post-war sections, on the other hand, are redolent with a sense of the decay that has settled over the leisure class. The war seems to have affected everyone, but no one wants to talk about it. Both representations of Hong Kong are vivid and evocative.

Lee builds tension as she progresses through her story, unfolding the layers that will eventually reveal why it is that, ten years after the war and the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong, Will is a chauffeur and Trudy is no longer with him. There is an act of betrayal at the heart of the life Will is leading when Claire meets him. I couldn't put this book down while I was moving through the clues, the bits of character revelation that eventually lead to the story of that betrayal.

Unfortunately, once the act is exposed, the tension seems to vanish. The plot gets mired down in some extraneous intrigue regarding the Crown Collection, a group of Chinese artifacts that disappeared during the war, and the reason behind Will's current employment. The enthralling parts of the novel–the triangle of Will and his current and past lovers, and the ways in which the war and its aftermath affect these lovers–become murky in order to make room for tying up the ends of this intrigue. I much prefer the shadowy struggle between Will's lovers: “She came unbidden to his dreams too, battling with the other woman, the one who haunted him day and night. Claire, with her blond and familiar femininity, English rose to Trudy's scorpion.” The two women, perhaps representative of the battle between cultures that Will finds himself unable to avoid, are beautifully drawn and deserving of holding the stage through to the end of the novel, without the intrusion of this unnecessary Crown Collection detour.

Written by: Natasha Bauman, January 27th 2010

Dispatches from Juvenile Hall: Fixing a Failing System

admin — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 01:01:00 +0000

By John Aarons, Lisa Smith, Linda Wagner

Penguin Books

As depressing as they can often be, I’m generally interested in books on social justice issues. It’s essential to know the facts about issues before getting into a spirited debate about them. As an Urban Studies grad student, I’m especially interested in books on social justice as academic material, particularly ones on youth issues. Dispatches from Juvenile Hall engaged both the generally interest and the academically-minded parts of my brain—and it is a great read from either perspective.

Dispatches from Juvenile Hall gains most of its power from the narratives, which are told by their subjects in first person style with brief introductions and conclusions by the authors. We hear from the very people whose lives are most affected by the juvenile justice system: people who are still in the system and those who have been released who are willing to share their stories, as well as those who have spent their lives trying to help those on the inside. The authors, who have decades of experience in youth services work, present the narratives with little embellishment, which works well and are very effective. For someone who has never had firsthand experience with juvenile detention, their words are often brutal and shocking.

Jasmine, the subject of the book’s opening narrative, began using meth when she was eleven years old. A pattern of drug use, incarceration, and running away from home began from there. Michael, now a tattoo artist in South Carolina, was kicked out of his home at sixteen because his mother felt he was old enough to be a man. As a homeless teen, police generally ignored him, until he was apprehended for felony stealing. Stephanie, a high school guidance counselor and former juvenile probation officer, tells stories about the at-risk youth she worked with in both jobs, and stresses the importance of early detection of warning signs that a teen is in trouble.

Dispatches from Juvenile Hall isn’t just a collection of personal stories; there is also a section on how the system can be fixed. It includes a fascinating (if brief) history of juvenile justice in the United States and an analysis of what the authors believe does and does not work when working with juvenile offenders. Clearly, given the rates of juvenile incarceration, the hard-on-crime position currently taken by the juvenile justice system doesn’t deter crime. This is not to say the authors suggest being “soft” on crime; in fact, they argue it’s better to be “smart on crime.”

The authors suggest a blend of corrections reforms—like separating low-, medium-, and high-risk offenders and using cognitive behavioral strategies and gender-specific services—and rehabilitative treatments, and suggest that there can (and should) be a lively, fact-based debate about the United States’ attitude toward juvenile justice. Dispatches from Juvenile Hall is a thoughtful, intelligent, affecting piece of that debate.

Written by: Dana Reinoos, November 29th 2009