Liz Simmons

The Fat Studies Reader

admin — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 16:01:00 +0000

Edited by Esther Rothblum, Sondra Solovay

The Fat Studies Reader is a collection of groundbreaking essays in this interdisciplinary field. The book is divided into six sections that include a historical overview of fatness, fat studies in health and medicine, social inequality, discrimination in popular culture, and embracing fatness.

The Fat Studies Reader argues that size-ism is unacceptable and that fat phobia exists both in popular culture and in the medical industry. The writers assert that instead of “combating obesity” and medicalizing fatness, our culture should recognize that people can be healthy or unhealthy at all weights. Being fat should not be seen as a personal failing, and oppression and ridicule of fat people should not be acceptable in popular culture.

As a graduate student who has done quite a bit of reading in the field of public health and diet-related chronic disease, I admit to being somewhat skeptical about the nonchalant attitude some of the writers have toward the relationship between obesity and health, particularly in Paul Ernsberger's essay “Does Social Class Explain the Connection Between Weight and Health?” Ernsberger argues that the widespread belief that being poor puts one at risk for obesity is wrong, and makes a somewhat astonishing claim that “a stronger case can be made for converse: fatness is impoverishing.” Ernsberger’s argument counters abundant research that has shown the relationship between low socioeconomic status, obesity, and diet-related diseases.

Even though I disagreed with many of the essays in the “Fat Studies in Health and Medicine” section, I found much of interest in this volume. The essays about portrayals of fatness and race in popular culture were particularly instructive. The Fat Studies Reader is very likely to challenge readers’ preconceptions, regardless of the open mindedness they may bring to the book. Exploring unexamined assumptions is a very important accomplishment of this collection.

Written by: Liz Simmons, March 19th 2010

Dowaha (Buried Secrets)

admin — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 09:00:00 +0000

Directed by Raja Amari

Nomadis Images

Dowaha (Buried Secrets) is the second feature film by Tunisian director Raja Amari. The film follows the story of Aicha, a teenage girl who lives with her spinster sister and older mother in the basement of a crumbling, abandoned mansion in a remote area. The women are hiding from something unknown and live in a different reality of total seclusion, other than the occasional trip into town to sell piecework at a fabric shop. One day, the family's secluded existence is disrupted when a young couple moves into the main part of the mansion. The women remain in their hiding spot and continue living the way they had been without revealing themselves to the couple, but Aicha becomes hopelessly fascinated with them.

The film is a coming of age, feminist thriller that kept me interested the entire way through. It is also a story of the contradictions between tradition and the modern world, and what it means to be a girl and to become a woman. Aicha is desperate for the world of high heels and lipstick, while her mother and sister do everything in their power to keep her from it.

The plot of Dowaha is evocative of classic fairytales, but without the happy ending. Interestingly, it is not the outside world that Aicha must fear, but her mother and sister who are wicked and intent on keeping her (and themselves) prisoner. The film's crumbling palatial setting and its rich, vibrant colors are aesthetically pleasing and give it a feeling of being set in another world during another time.

Written by: Liz Simmons, March 13th 2010

2010 Slingshot Organizer

admin — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 09:00:00 +0000

By Slingshot Collective

AK Press

It warms my heart that the Slingshot Collective is still producing this legendary anarchistic day planner. Although this is the sixteenth year that the Slingshot organizer is in print, I am pretty sure that the first time I ever saw one was after the 1999 anti-WTO protests in Seattle. Unfortunately I didn’t go to the protests (because I was in high school and my parents wouldn’t let me). Luckily, my boyfriend at the time brought one back for me as a protest souvenir. While I would have preferred to have been in Seattle getting tear-gassed with the White Overalls and Sea Turtle Defenders, it made me feel a little less left out. I am pretty sure that I had a Slingshot Organizer every year after that until the last couple of years.

There is something comforting to once again hold the classic pocket-sized Slingshot in my hands again. I love how almost everything is written and illustrated by hand. I also love that there are reminders of radical activist history, a menstrual calendar, a list of info-shops across the world, and an address book in the back.

The cover this year features a giant mushroom in a forest with a group of people overturning and destroying a car in the background. One improvement from past years is that the cover now comes slightly laminated. I remember in the early years when we would all laminate them ourselves using clear packing tape in order to preserve their utility. 2010 Slingshot Organizers come in about a dozen colors ranging from Smash the Pumpkin State (orange) to Food Not Lawns (light green). Proceeds from the sale of the organizers all go towards making sure that the Slingshot newspaper stays in production. I highly recommend the slingshot organizer, whether this is your first or your sixteenth.

Written by: Liz Simmons, January 28th 2010

Passages

admin — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 09:00:00 +0000

By Maserati

Temporary Residence

Hailing from Athens, Georgia, Maserati play methodical, well thought out, and percussion-driven instrumental music, described by some as post-rock. I saw Maserati play in Portland earlier this year when they opened for the majestic MONO, one of my favorite bands of all time, also on the Temporary Residence label. I remember being impressed with Maserati’s tight and together live performance, and in particular, was impressed with the talented drummer, who seemed to drive the performance.

Out of eight songs on Maserati’s new Passages album, only two are new tracks. The others are remixes or songs from a split LP with the band Zombi that is now out of print. I know that some people probably don’t see much of a point in putting out a new album for what are mostly old songs and I would usually tend to agree. Not having the other albums from which most of these songs were gleaned however, everything was new to my ears and I am enjoying this album. The song “Monoliths,” one of the previously unreleased tracks, is particularly intriguing and ear-catching.

The structure of the songs is so steady and intentional that it can feel as if there are no climaxes and that the songs never really end, leaving the listener slightly unsatisfied. At points, the tracks can seem repetitive, particularly rhythmically, leaving the songs to blur together. Listening to Maserati makes me feel kind of frantic in a very logical way. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I do feel like the album is missing something I can’t quite put my finger on.

Written by: Liz Simmons, January 7th 2010

Earth in Our Care: Ecology, Economy, and Sustainability

admin — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 01:00:00 +0000

By Chris Maser

Rutgers University Press

In Earth in Our Care: Ecology, Economy, and Sustainability, Chris Maser sets out to explain the interconnectedness of life on this planet and the importance of promoting the functioning of healthy ecosystems. Rather than being a dry treatise on biological systems, the text is engaging and draws on all kinds of disciplines.

I consider myself to be an advocate for sustainability, but am not overly familiar with the technical aspects of environmentalism or ecology. Reading this from the perspective of someone who is not a scientist, Maser does a good job of writing in an approachable way that is easy to understand most of the time. He doesn’t assume that the reader is already familiar with concepts like feedback loops, the commons, or trade-offs, and takes the time to briefly describe some of these key concepts of ecology. That being said, there are definitely some very theoretical and philosophical concepts discussed in this book that can be difficult to follow. The author draws on history, philosophy, linguistics, biology, and other disciplines in order to make his points, which makes his arguments more nuanced and interesting but can also be a little distracting at times.

Maser insists that we as human beings are obligated to care about and understand ecology. The last chapter of the book, “Where do we go from Here?,” gives some recommendations about how to go about changing human culture and society so that we can support the healthy functioning of the Earth’s ecosystems. Maser’s two main recommendations are that we "critically examine our situation today” and "determine where society needs to be at the end of this century if people are to have any kind of dignified life with an overall sense of well-being.” Earth in Our Care makes an important contribution to both of these goals and will likely inspire readers to begin thinking about sustainability in a new way.

Written by: Liz Simmons, November 20th 2009

"What is an Apparatus?" and Other Essays

admin — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:44:00 +0000

By Giorgio Agamben

Stanford University Press

"What Is an Apparatus?" and Other Essays, is a collection of three essays by the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben. Although only fifty pages, this collection is quite difficult for the reader unfamiliar with Agamben's work.

In the first essay, “What is an Apparatus,” the author engages with Foucault’s concept of the apparatus (_dispositif _in French). Defining the meaning of apparatus is one of the main points of the essay and difficult to convey here, but to give a brief definition, it is what Foucault conceptualized as a network established between various forms of power, institutions, and ideologies. Agamben outlines a genealogy of the evolution of Foucault’s interest and utilization of this concept, arguing that it is one of his most essential. He also expands the definition of an apparatus to include “anything that has in some way the capacity to capture, orient, determine, intercept, model, control, or secure the gestures, behaviors, opinions, or discourses of living beings.” Agamben then briefly provides suggestions as to how we should attempt to combat apparatuses, given the fact that they are so ubiquitous at this stage of history.

The second essay, “The Friend,” is about the philosophy of friendship and the way that philosophers have tended to theorize friendship. “What is the Contemporary?” is the third and final essay, and ultimately deals with the task of trying to understand the meaning of time.

Agamben has written on a variety of issues, and has been an especially harsh critic of the U.S. response to 9/11, particularly speaking out against the U.S. treatment of prisoners. He also provides an interesting critique of modern society as a whole, continuing in the Foucauldian tradition. Although this collection of essays isn’t necessarily suitable as an introductory text, the reader who is unfamiliar with Agamben is likely to appreciate some of his insights, particularly those who have read Foucault and are familiar with other classic philosophers.

Written by: Liz Simmons, November 13th 2009

The House at Sugar Beach: In Search of a Lost African Childhood

admin — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 01:09:00 +0000

By Helene Cooper

Simon & Schuster

Helene Cooper’s memoir about growing up in Liberia and moving to the United States paints a portrait of a girl trapped between two cultures and countries worlds apart from one another. Cooper is the descendant of freed African American slaves who returned to Africa to found Liberia in the early 1800s. Her upbringing was a privileged one, as a member of the small Liberian upper class composed almost entirely of the descendants of Black American settlers. Sheltered by her family’s wealth and privilege, Cooper grows up relatively oblivious to the growing tensions and inequities in Liberian society. She doesn’t seem to understand how unequal and unfair the distribution of wealth and power was in Liberia.

The contradictions of a small and wealthy elite living within a very poor country are glaringly apparent, especially when her parents decide to “get” a sister for her after she complains of being afraid to sleep alone at night. The “sister” they obtain, Eunice, comes from the poor class of Liberians. A relatively common practice in Liberian society was for poor children to come live as sons and daughters of the upper class. Eunice’s mother sent her to live with another family, as this would give Eunice a better opportunity to succeed in life. Eunice becomes a part of the family, but is never completely embraced as a true daughter. This is particularly the case when they end up leaving her behind when a bloody coup in 1980 forced Helene’s family to flee the country and immigrate to America. Once in the U.S., Cooper avoids talking about her homeland, embarrassed of being associated with a country that the rest of the world saw on the nightly news as being riddled by uncontrolled violence and grisly civil war.

The House at Sugar Beach alternates between tender childhood memories at an idyllic beach house in Liberia to Cooper's life after the coup as she struggles to find her own identity and "make it" in the United States.

Written by: Liz Simmons, November 5th 2009

Le Papier ne Peut pas Envelopper la Braise (Paper Cannot Wrap Up Embers)

admin — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 07:54:00 +0000

Directed by Rithy Panh

[Paper Cannot Wrap up Embers] provides a numbing portrait of the everyday lives of young Cambodian women who have been forced into prostitution in the aftermath of decades of war and genocide. Their lives are characterized by drug abuse, chronic health problems, and violence and brutality experienced at the hands of their “clients.” The film opens with scenes of a girl crying and shows the women sleeping and eating lunch with their babies at their sides.

As is common for documentaries these days, the film is not narrated and consists entirely of interviews and scenes of women going about their daily lives: eating, sleeping, putting on make up, and taking “ma” (methamphetamine) in order to anesthetize themselves enough to go to work. In the absence of contextualizing narration, and lacking an understanding of the recent history of Cambodia, it was difficult for me as a viewer to feel I had more than a very superficial understanding of the socio-political situation that has prompted such poverty and misery to become part of daily life. Instead I was simply struck by the overwhelming resignation felt by most of the women.

The women understand the reason this has happened to them is because they were born poor and they don’t see any way out of it. This is the most striking and disturbing aspect of [Paper Cannot Wrap up Embers]. Even as the women describe enduring horrific situations (and there are many in this film), they tend to do so with either an air of detachment or else with raw physical pain, as in the scene when one of the women comes back from a painful abortion and can’t stop crying, saying “It feels like my uterus has been ripped to shreds.”

In one of the few mentions of the Khmer Rouge, one woman’s mother stops by the brothel and describes how much worse poverty was during that time: “You think your life is tough? You have to put up with it! If you’d been born under the Khmer Rouge, you’d have starved to death or been executed. Today you sell yourself to buy rice by the kilo. When will all this end? I feel helpless.”

This documentary is difficult to watch because it leaves the viewer feeling helpless as well. Part of me wishes they would have ended on a more hopeful note, or suggested ways for the viewer to get involved to better the lives of these women. Films like this can be overwhelming to some people and make them prefer ignorance because of the feeling of powerlessness over the situation.

On the other hand, I think the filmmaker portrayed the situation honestly and realistically, and sometimes reality is very painful to watch. I hope [Paper Cannot Wrap up Embers] inspires some viewers to learn more about life in Cambodia and about the global problems of prostitution and sex slavery. If nothing else, perhaps it offers a shred of dignity to these women by giving them a medium through which they can speak for themselves.

Written by: Liz Simmons, September 21st 2009

Mean Little Deaf Queer: A Memoir

admin — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 16:42:00 +0000

By Terry Galloway

Beacon Press

If I had to choose only one genre of book to read for the rest of my life, I would choose memoirs. When I think of the books that have most changed my outlook on life and expanded my understandings of the world, I would think of classic and contemporary works like Black Boy by Richard Wright, Living My Life by Emma Goldman, and Naked by David Sedaris. Terry Galloway’s Mean Little Deaf Queer was such an enjoyable and enlightening read I found difficult to put down.

Galloway reflects on her life and the two of the defining characteristics of her identity that she has struggled with: growing up queer and losing most of her hearing at the age of twelve. Her mother was given a drug during pregnancy that was later revealed to cause neurological damage in fetuses, including loss of hearing.

Describing her childhood, which begins in Western Germany where her family lived while her father worked as a spy for the CIA, Galloway remembers when she was “normal,” like everybody else. But she slowly slipped into a different reality without her family even realizing it. Galloway goes to great lengths to hide her hearing loss from everyone around her, until it is discovered by a teacher at school one day. She describes her feelings of frustration and anger, and how she managed to become an accomplished figure in the world of theater acting, in spite of the many people who tried to stand in her way (including a high school advisor who told her factory work is a good choice for the deaf).

At times hilarious and others heartbreaking, Mean Little Deaf Queer manages to educate the reader about what it feels like to grow up always feeling like an outsider. In the tradition of writers like Sedaris, Galloway manages to find humor and absurdity in even the saddest moments. Whether faking her own drowning at a summer camp for disabled children,or taking an acting job in the role of an “alternative Santa Claus” at an “alternative mall,” Galloway’s stories are intriguing. If anything, I wish the book had been longer.

Written by: Liz Simmons, August 31st 2009

Race, Place, and Environmental Justice After Hurricane Katrina: Struggles to Reclaim, Rebuilt and Revitalize New Orleans and the Gulf Coast

admin — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 09:09:00 +0000

By Robert D. Bullard, Beverly Wright

Westview Press

Hurricane Katrina was one of those events that it was impossible not to be affected by because the images we all watched on our televisions and in the newspapers were so horrible. There was a sense of shock that U.S. citizens could be treated so poorly in their own country. Yet this outrage seems to have faded along with the general public’s memory of the storm.

Hurricane Katrina will forever alter the course of history in New Orleans and the life paths of thousands of families from the region. Bullard and Wright’s set of essays, Race, Place, and Environmental Justice After Hurricane Katrina, begins to make sense of the government policies that allowed New Orleans to flood, as well as post-Katrina efforts to rebuild the city and region. This collection is a reminder that there is a lot of work that still needs to be done in New Orleans, particularly in poor and African American communities, which have suffered disproportionately.

The twelve essays that make up the book are broken into four sections, encompassing the challenges of racialized place, health and environment post-Katrina, equitable rebuilding and recovery and policy choices for social change. Essay topics range from disparities in access to transportation to environmental contaminants after the hurricane. The most powerful aspect of the book is that it sheds light on the fact that Hurricane Katrina was only partly a natural disaster, which was substantially exacerbated by the way that government and society as a whole chose to (not) respond.

The authors argue that the lack of preparedness and dismal response to victims of Hurricane Katrina are profoundly impacted by race and class. The essays force the reader to ask themselves again and again, “What would have happened if New Orleans was full of predominantly wealthy white people?”

Race, Place, and Environmental Justice After Hurricane Katrina isn’t exactly an easy or light-hearted read, but it is full of important information that will be of particular interest to people interested in the theoretical importance of the concept of place, as well as anyone interested in better understanding environmental justice and racial disparities.

Written by: Liz Simmons, July 20th 2009

Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery

admin — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 10:39:00 +0000

By Siddharth Kara

Columbia University Press

Besides weapons and drugs, sex trafficking is the most profitable type of illegal trafficking in the world. In Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery, Siddharth Kara takes the reader on a disturbing global tour of Coalition Against Trafficking in Womensex slavery, traveling to India, Italy, Thailand, and several other countries.

An overarching theme that Kara mentions repeatedly is the deep-rooted cultural misogyny in so many of the countries he visited. Although poverty, war and social turmoil create a fertile ground for sex trafficking, the author identifies cultural attitudes toward women as the primary reason that sex trafficking occurs. In his words: “Millions of women lived in a world that overwhelmingly disdained them."

One of the most interesting aspects of Sex Trafficking is the circumstances that led the author to write it. He first became interested in trafficking as a college student, when he spent the summer of 1994 in a Bosnian refugee camp in Slovenia and learned about the trafficking of Bosnian Muslim women. Although he has been interested in sex slavery for many years, he is not an academic, nor does he advocate for anti-trafficking work professionally. Kara is a businessman, and funded his trafficking research trips around the world using personal savings. During his research trips, Kara conducted hundreds of interviews with slaves. In order to find sex for sale, he usually talked to cab drivers, posing as an interested client. In most countries, finding cheap sex was easy, and Kara usually found conditions indicative of sex slavery where he found cheap sex. The book's revelation that legalized prostitution often acts as a cover for sex slavery was very disturbing, especially in the chapter about slavery in Amsterdam.

In one of the most devastating passages of the book, Kara locates sex slavery at a “massage parlor” in Los Angeles. The young woman he meets was trafficked from Thailand with promises of a job as a waitress. Once in the U.S., she was told that she owed $20,000 to the “massage parlor” owner she was sold to, which she would earn by having sex with several men a day. At first she refused, but was beaten and raped into submission. Most of the money she makes goes to the owner, except for a small portion that is sent to her parents. Kara offers to help the woman by calling the police, but she refuses his help because she is afraid the trafficker will hurt her parents in Thailand. The author talks about the anguish he felt about whether or not to contact the police. He ended up not doing so, but still isn’t sure if this was the right choice.

The reader might wonder if the author handles these situations in the most appropriate manner, or whether his presence makes matters worse. Although I am sure that Kara had the best intentions, I have to wonder about the ethical limits of this type of research. At times he puts himself, and possibly the women he interacts with, in dangerous situations. He is essentially powerless to help the women that he comes into contact with, other than giving them educational pamphlets or phone numbers for shelters.

Kara describes the way that the industry operates, explaining that money is the prime motivator for sex trafficking, which is dominated more and more by organized crime rings and networks of corrupt public officials who can be bought off. Using economic theory, he argues that the best way to shut down the industry is to make sex trafficking less profitable.

Sex Trafficking paints a very bleak picture of the status of women globally, particularly for women from poor countries. Urgent action is required to end sex slavery, and my hope is that people who read this book will be moved to action.

Written by: Liz Simmons, April 21st 2009

Handmade Nation: The Rise of DIY, Art, Craft, and Design

admin — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 17:14:00 +0000

By Faythe Levine, Cortney Heimerl

Princeton Architectural Press

I don’t usually have high hopes for books based on films. Luckily, Handmade Nation: The Rise of DIY, Art, Craft, and Design, which is based on the documentary by the same name, rises above what one would typically expect from this genre. Chock full of large color photos and interviews with crafters from fifteen cities around the country, this book provides a window into the modern craft movement in America. The book itself is something of a work of art, as anyone familiar with Princeton Architectural Press should expect.

As a crafty person myself (I hand-silkscreen garments and sell them on etsy.com), living in Portland, Oregon (a DIY craft epicenter), it was interesting to read profiles of fellow contemporary craft artisans, see some of the amazing work they are doing, and to hear their thoughts on craft. The embroideries of Jenny Hart are particularly breathtaking, as are the garments of Shannon Mulkey. The most fascinating profile of the collection describes Knitta, a knitting collective who “tag” using their knitting, wrapping it around street poles. When asked about their intentions with this project, members of Knitta said that by doing this they are “adding a human element so you are not so disconnected from your everyday environment” and “there is a lot of cement and steel that we are not very comfortable seeing on a daily basis.”

Levine gives a brief introduction and makes some intriguing statements that piqued my curiosity about the history of this movement and the idea of thinking about craft as a politicized feminist phenomenon. From a feminist perspective it was interesting to read that ninety-five percent of the crafters Levine interviewed were women. As Levine says in the introduction, “Our handmade goods were influenced by traditional handiwork, modern aesthetics, politics, feminism, and art. We were redefining what craft was and making it our own.” Unfortunately Levine doesn’t go into greater depth or offer perspective other than the three page preface. She lets the crafters speak for themselves, which is great, but it would have been nice to have an overarching essay to tie together these sketches, particularly given the abbreviated length of most of the profiles.

Handmade Nation reads like a good coffee book table and definitely inspires me to go to the screening of the documentary film when it makes its Northwest premier this month.

Written by: Liz Simmons, April 20th 2009

Water First: Reaching the Millennium Development Goals

admin — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 23:25:00 +0000

Directed by Amy Hart

Bullfrog Films

Four thousand children die every day as a result of the lack of access to clean water. Water First opens with this unbelievable figure, along with a montage of poverty-stricken African children. Luckily, the film moves beyond voyeuristic sentimentalism and goes on to make the case that access to clean water should be recognized as one of the most important global issues.

The country of Malawi is used as a case study, along with the nonprofit organization Fresh Water Malawi, run by retired firefighter Charles Banda. Fresh Water Malawi drills wells for communities throughout Malawi, usually with little support from the government or outside donors. Banda argues that the success of the eight official United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is dependent on whether or not people have access to clean water. The MDGs are goals to reduce poverty that the UN members adopted in the year 2000, with the target of having made progress toward them by 2015. The goals include eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, promoting gender equality, and achieving universal primary education.

The film successfully argues that water is intimately tied to all of these goals. For example, women and girls are the ones who bear the burden of fetching water, oftentimes miles away from their homes, and usually from unclean sources. Girls often drop out of school once they hit puberty because of lack of sanitation. Drinking water from unprotected sources causes cholera, malaria, dysentery and other diseases, which are especially devastating to young children and women who have recently given birth.

Water First lets the people of Malawi speak for themselves as viewers are invited to watch the daily struggle of life without access to clean water. The viewer can choose to watch a twenty-eight minute or a forty-five minute version of the film, which is helpful for teachers who want to screen Water First during class. Overall, the film is informative and cogently makes the case that water is a fundamentally important issue in advancing human rights and community development in impoverished countries around the world.

Written by: Liz Simmons, March 4th 2009