My Sisters Made of Light

mandy — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 08:00:00 +0000

When I attended the book signing for Jacqueline St. Joan’s novel My Sisters Made of Light, I knew nothing about the book aside from its inspiration: a chance encounter between St. Joan, an American domestic violence activist, and Aisha, a Pakistani activist. St. Joan was moved by a shared sense of purpose to write Aisha’s story—the story of a teacher who has orchestrated secret efforts to rescue women condemned to death for so-called honor crimes in Pakistan for the past twenty-five years.

Due to the sensitivity of the issue, St. Joan ultimately chose to fictionalize Aisha’s story. She takes readers on an intimate journey into the lives of four emboldened sisters—the “mother” of the family, Uji, and her sisters Reshma, Faisah, and Meena—as they confront the beauties and betrayals of their culture. The resulting novel is a moving portrayal of the violence women in Pakistan experience, the widespread impact, and the courageous individuals who are fighting to eradicate these life-threatening human rights violations.

Traversing the diversity of Pakistan’s distinct cultures and classes, My Sisters Made of Light successfully weaves past and present, foreign and familiar, and personal and political to create a compelling account of the devastating suffering and extraordinary heroism that exists in ordinary lives. In addition to vividly illustrating the risks and successes of human rights activism in Pakistan, My Sisters Made of Light depicts the heart-wrenching complexities that rest at the core of familial allegiances and alienation.

Together with Uji, readers encounter woman after woman, injustice after injustice: Bilqis, burned to death by her uncle; Taslima, shot and killed by an assassin hired by her family; Chanda, a girl child whose nose was sliced off by her father. What seems like a never-ending compilation of injustices reads just as it should: overwhelming and deeply unnerving. Each incident is one woman’s story and one part of a larger narrative—that of the insidious and ubiquitous legacies of violence that extend far beyond boundaries of culture and country.

At the book signing, St. Joan emphasized that, although written for the women of Pakistan, My Sisters Made of Light is ultimately intended for a Western audience. Careful not to reinforce all-too-common stereotypes of victimized Muslim women, the book’s strength is the universal: what it means to be a mother, a daughter, and a sister. The tears I shed at several points while reading the book speak to its success.

To this day, Aisha is struggling to ensure women’s human rights are respected in Pakistan. Her most recent undertaking is a safe shelter for women and children escaping abuse. Aisha has the land for a shelter and the contractors are even lined up to build it; she just needs the cash to pay for it. St. Joan is dedicating half of the proceeds from the sale of My Sisters Made of Light to help Aisha. Although the book ends, the struggle for women’s human rights does not.

Written by: Alicia Simoni, January 26th 2011

Dear Sandy, Hello: Letters from Ted to Sandy Berrigan

brittany — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 16:00:00 +0000

By Ted Berrigan, Sandy Berrigan, Ron Padgett

Coffee House Press

With the post office on the verge of collapse and Facebook statuses eclipsing emails (which not so long ago eclipsed snail mail), I fret for the future of love letters. Decades from now, letters that would have been discovered in a forgotten old box will instead wither away into password-protected oblivion. We will no longer indulge our imagination in the real-life lust and longing of by-gone days, at least not in their raw, unadulterated letter form.

Dear Sandy, Hello is a relic of that (not-so-distant) past when lovers put pen to paper (or typewriter) to express their affections. In this case, it’s a book full of Ted Berrigan’s daily missives on love, life, and literature to his wife and muse, Sandy Berrigan.

Dear Sandy, Hello is also a testament to the (also not-so-distant) past when a woman’s sanity was regarded in direct proportion to her obedience. Just days after Sandy’s marriage to Ted, a struggling-artist-cum-gifted-poet, she is forced by her parents to enter a mental hospital on the basis that “on the date of the marriage she was deprived of reason and incapable of exercising rational judgment.”

It was the uncomfortable awareness that it was a mere thirty-something years ago when a woman could be institutionalized for marrying the man of her choosing, alongside my fascination with the dying art of letter writing, that drew me to Dear Sandy, Hello.

The book opens with a telegraph dated February 13, 1962 from Ted to his friend Joe Brainard: “I was married today at two o’clock in the afternoon to Sandy Alper of Miami Florida. She is nineteen. I am twenty-seven.” A letter addressed to “My darling Sandy” immediately follows—and there begins three months worth of “Letters from Ted.”

For those who do not know Ted Berrigan, as I didn’t before reading this book, he is a prominent figure in the New York School of Poets. That is, he is the poet equivalent of a Jackson Pollack. He is most widely known for a collection of poems called The Sonnets.

His letters document the emotional ups and downs of two lovers torn apart in the height of their lust. As days pass, Ted shifts from zen-like compassion, insisting “that even those who seem to be hurting you love you... that is why I can bear them no malice,” to unforgiving, cold fury. Although written in reference to the specific injustices of their separation, the letters persuasively and poetically articulate a more general struggle against the majority that is hostile to the unconventional. Ted likens himself to Henry Miller and others—artists who resist comfort to be more alive and who ultimately are the “true prophets of the future.”

“Sandy’s Letters to Ted”—amounting to forty pages as opposed to his 200—only appear, incongruously and as though an afterthought, at the end. I read Ted’s letters with a nagging sense that I was missing something, and in the end I wished it’d been left that way. The Sandy of my imagination was more nuanced and intriguing than the woman captured in a few scant letters.

Whether professing his undying love, railing against society, or recounting the most recent book/museum/poetry that he’d explored, Ted’s letters flow as poems do—a web of vivid imagery and thoughts, impressions superseding logic. Taken as I was by the writing, ultimately I couldn’t stomach his artistic hubris overshadowing her injustice.

Written by: Alicia Simoni, October 11th 2010