Ruth Cameron

The Sand Castle

admin — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 09:00:00 +0000

Sometimes, you can judge a book by it’s cover. In this case, the front cover of the book in question depicts two women in bathing caps and red lipstick and resembles a scene from an Esther Williams movie. The opening paragraphs of Rita Mae Brown’s The Sand Castle establish a short story encompassing a memorable day at the beach, as recalled through the eyes of seven-year-old Nickel Smith, a child with a sharp eye and ear attuned to the events and conversations taking place in the adult world surrounding her.

Nickel, her cousin Leroy, her Aunt Louise and her mother have made a day trip to the beach to lift their spirits after the recent loss of Leroy’s mother (and Louise’s daughter), Ginny. Nickel is attentively listening to her mother and Aunt’s conversation as they navigate their way to the beach in the “new black Nash with the dull gray interior.”

In the tale, Brown relies heavily on period specific dialogue and detail to establish the setting and characters in her story. The Hunsenmeirs are glamorous, independent, bickering but loving Chesterfield-smoking sisters. Julia, Nickel’s mother, is the sassy younger sister, provocatively cursing, mocking and otherwise provoking Louise. Louise, the dour older sibling, has sought solace in religion since her daughter’s death, taking all opportunities to quote scripture to her family.

Throughout the story, the author relies on telling over showing, employing long passages of overdrawn script-like dialogue between the sisters to fill out the narrative. Observations about the main characters and the larger family dynamics are relayed to the reader from Nickel’s point of view, which is far too astute and complete for a young child, even a precocious one. Passages such as “Mother, sidestepping the bait for a fight dangled by her older sister-just how much older also a ripe subject for contention,” render the tale more trite than heartwarming.

Allow me to conclude by employing another well worn phrase or cliché: Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. Brown’s account of a family affected by grief made me ask “So what?” at the story’s end. I do not believe angst is more worthy of literary attention than happiness or humour. While the light tone itself makes this work distinctive, due to the pedestrian pace of the story, lack of revelation, or change in any of the characters, the work is only the sum of its parts. This brief read merits borrowing from the library for reading on your own beach holiday.

Written by: Ruth Cameron, December 19th 2009

Who's Your Daddy?

admin — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 17:07:00 +0000

Edited by Rachel Epstein

Sumach Press

Postmodern indeed. As a single Black lesbian mother, I assumed that a resource like this wouldn’t yet exist. On searching, I discovered a literary road map to queer parenting and family that is current, diverse and mini-encyclopedic in its breadth. Reading this work made me feel as though I had added to my family of choice. Who’s Your Daddy? documents the adventures and challenges of queer parents, including the parenting experiences of single, partnered, co-parenting and polyamorous parents. Essays from more than thirty contributors detail recent aspects of queer parenting history, including legal victories and challenges in the United States and Canada, the experiences of queer spawn (look it up) as well as the personal parenting experiences of single and partnered individuals including transgender women and men, lesbian, gay, bisexual and queer mothers, parents, and fathers.

Who’s Your Daddy? is not only broad in terms of the contributors and the subject matter covered in the book, but in tone as well. An accessible quality is maintained in the majority of the writing in the book. Sections on the various routes to parenthood, family composition, history and social change, parenting challenges and the legacy of queer families are made even more engaging due to the personal experiences candidly communicated by young queer parents, queer children from transracial adoptive families, one lesbian’s experience of infertility, and dispatches from queer-identified straight children, involved donors and blended families. Contributions in the form of email exchanges, interviews and letters tell stories that are laced with humor, highlight injustices, and relay grave personal loss.

One generation ago, some queer individuals would not have considered parenthood feasible. However, this book shows the many creative ways families have been built and children have been nurtured outside of the nuclear, heteronormative ideal. Open adoption, the experience of queer spawn in schools, the ways in which queer parents challenge gender stereotypes in raising their children and the experiences of involved donors are discussed alongside a transgender man’s experience of being treated at a fertility clinic. A letter to an unborn child lists a mother’s intentions to parent equitably, regardless of the child’s gender, while another piece discusses the importance placed upon biological ties within lesbian-led families.

As stated by Epstein, Who’s Your Daddy? does not attempt to prove that LGBTQ led families are the same or “as good as” straight or nuclear families. The joys, challenges and experiences captured in this anthology display the richness of queer cultures and relationships, values we should treasure, validate, analyze critically and pass on to our children.

Written by: Ruth Cameron, December 12th 2009

Stealing Nasreen

admin — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 16:53:00 +0000

By Farzana Doctor

Inanna Publications

Stealing Nasreen is the excellent first novel written by Farzana Doctor. Not fitting into any typical genre, the work showcases a slice of desi life, and incorporates elements of mild satire and romance in telling the story of three demoralized souls, Nasreen, Shaffiq, and Salma.

Nasreen is a grieving psychologist in need of personal counseling support, having recently lost both her mother to cancer and her lover to infidelity. Shaffiq is an accountant and a recent immigrant to Canada. Having left India to escape employment discrimination, he is still underemployed and now working as a janitor in the same office building as Nasreen. Shaffiq attempts to cope with the tensions of adjustment to life in a new country by bravely keeping up a front of false optimism, having passed the honeymoon period of his early immigration to Canada with his children and his wife, Salma. In his coping, Shaffiq has also developed a new and slightly odd habit of scavenging the office garbage for clues about the bad habits and secrets of the office-dwellers, the details of which he shares with his wife.

Salma is a teacher, who is dissatisfied working in a dry-cleaning business and as a tutor providing Gujarati lessons in her home to supplement both the family income and her children’s university fund. Practical on the surface, she hides significant passion behind her motherly, scholarly demeanor. All three characters are low on spirits, but high on self expectations as they come to meet in this original story which combines familiar themes of lost loves, obligations, expectations, and opportunities in an original tale which hinges on a chance meeting, one which stirs up long-buried feelings in Salma.

Triangles form much of the structure of Stealing Nasreen. Three stories of love and loss provide much of the back story to the principal relationship in the novel, which focuses on both Salma and Shaffiq’s individual obsessions with Nasreen upon meeting her. Both Shaffiq and Salma find themselves drawn to Nasreen for very different reasons. To Shaffiq, Salma represents both attractive and unappealing elements of the North American dream. She is a member of his ethnic and religious community who has achieved career success in North America, but embodies characteristics he does not desire for his two young daughters. For Salma, Nasreen is a reminder of a former lover, with whom she had a brief closeted relationship. Both Salma and Shaffiq keep aspects of their encounters with Nasreen secret from one another, culminating in a confrontation which alters the trajectory of events for each character from the course laid out at the novel’s beginning.

Rather than opt for the clichés of a neatly happy ending, Doctor has written a sophisticated story where multiple possibilities abound for each of the characters. Though the novel as a whole is rich in details, wry observations, and sophisticated parallel themes, the style of third person omniscient story telling does not relay the depths of emotion felt by any characters in their experiences of everyday tragedies and triumphs. The author’s style of storytelling emphasizes telling over showing, placing some distance between the reader and the characters. A lot happens in the story and none of the characters or the details, either minor or major are neglected in the story. Depicting the character’s experiences of first love, heartbreak, loss and passion from afar takes away from the emotional depth of an extremely accomplished first novel, one which is quite impressive in its scope.

Written by: Ruth Cameron, July 4th 2009

Feminist Art and the Maternal

admin — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 17:36:00 +0000

By Andrea Liss

University Of Minnesota Press

As a teen, I imagined I would someday grow up to be an artist. As an eager feminist and first year university student, I took an art history course taught by an incredibly self-important professor. In all of his slide shows, I only remember two images being attributed to women artists. This experience did not encourage me to embark upon an artistic career.

In a world where feminism is often assumed to be irrelevant and the Guerilla Girls have purportedly bequeathed their archives to the Getty Research Institute, a book which showcases any form of feminist work is a welcome standout. Andrea Liss’s Feminist Art and the Maternal places feminist artwork front and center using the creations of contemporary visual and performance artists. In doing so she displays the many ways in which women artists have challenged individual and institutional attempts to define the scope of femininity and families, as well as the limits of women’s gendered work and status in society.

Feminist Art and the Maternal is a fairly accessible text, even for the non-artist or art history student like me. Using the work of women artists spanning the last thirty years, Liss systematically demonstrates how these women have used their experiences of maternal parenting and motherhood as the subject of their work to created pieces that challenge past and current definitions of appropriate gender roles. This happens in many ways, such as breaking down assumptions about family structures or conflating accepted stereotypical images of racialized women with visual statements on sexual orientation, nurturing, and motherhood.

Sentimental ideas of motherhood are challenged by explorations of the maternal focusing on sensuality or experiences of trauma and loss. Key methods of articulating these concepts and experiences are laid out by the author in each chapter and accompanied by the work of one artist or groups of artists which exemplify each particular method. Highly conceptual artwork—still images, performance pieces, film—and theoretical terminology are explained in great detail, making the social and historical context in which the work was created clear for the reader.

Like the artists whose work is contained in the book, Liss attempts to make a connection between the personal and political by incorporating her own experiences of motherhood into the book. These sections of writing are less successful in that they do not blend seamlessly with the remainder of the detailed text, but stand out in competition to the parallel experiences articulated by the artists in their work, and interrupt the overall flow of the book. While the many black and white images help to illustrate the work of the artists, a larger format complete with color images would have more effectively conveyed details of some of the pieces included in the body of the work.

Regardless, I wish that Feminist Art and the Maternal had been available at the beginning of my short-lived venture into the world of art to give me a broader perspective on art, women, women artists, and motherhood. This book and its subject matter broadens the scope of contemporary art through giving voice to both neglected subject matter in art and its creators.

Written by: Ruth Cameron, June 6th 2009

Herizons Magazine (Spring 2008)

admin — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 17:27:00 +0000

Edited by Penni Mitchell

I am not a mainstream media fan, and I haven’t been one for a long time. I like to think that, as I have gotten older, my dynamic and sometimes contradictory critical feminist analysis (can you tell I was a sociology major?) has deepened from the angry polemics of a surly teenager to something a little bit more complex. But, I have to admit, politically speaking, I have been really lazy lately. As I withdrew my attention from celebrity news and headlines that held no interest for me, I wasn’t so conscientious about cultivating a batch of new, alternative news sources. As the office mate most likely to answer “No” to the question “Did you hear?” Herizons is a welcome addition to my reading list.

When engaged, I am very fast reader. I managed to make my way through nearly half of the Spring 2008 issue of Herizons in one sitting, even with the distraction of preschool music lessons in the background. With the tagline “Women’s News and Feminist Views,” the range of topics in the magazine seemed to be tailored to my interests, namely women—how we are affected by this world, and how we effect change in this world, from multiple perspectives. All of the articles were written in an accessible tone, whether they were focused on issues of global politics or music reviews.

In covering the content of the magazine, I found good reasons to shift my environmental focus to the boreal forest in my own (national) backyard, and got the scoop on what the young gals of today are reading. (It’s not Judy Blume.) I don’t listen to the radio very much, and got some great leads on women recording artists to add to my library. I also liked the fact that I was able to read the work of many Canadian women writers—including Maya Khankhoje, Susan G. Cole, and Tara-Michelle Ziniuk—within one issue.

Not that I ever entirely stopped, but reading Herizons has helped me to get excited about my politics again.

Written by: Ruth Cameron, July 12th 2008

Lake Bottom LP

admin — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 14:07:00 +0000

By The Chapin Sisters

Plain Recordings

The Chapin Sisters are a trio of gifted recordings artists who have managed to reinvent the love song by incorporating a touch of irony into their modern interpretation of folk- and roots-inspired pop. On their first full length album, Lake Bottom LP, the sisters have created songs that are defined by beautiful melodies and inventive take on the subject of love and all of its consequences, in the tradition of Patty Griffin, Lucinda Williams, and the Be Good Tanyas.

The trio is composed of singer-songwriters Abigail and Lily Chapin, as well as Jessica Craven, and the album has a deceptively simple musical style. The lead song, “Let Me Go,” lets the listener know just what kind of treat they are in for, and “Kill Me Now” and “Can’t We Please” are other particularly memorable tracks. It is refreshing to hear an album of recorded music sung by talented singers who are capable of performing both lead vocals and harmonizing without the intervention of heavy-handed production (and choreography and light shows). I found myself singing along at the first listening, and every subsequent time I turned on the album.

Talented musicians, these women create an interesting contrast by pairing sweet and sleepy acoustic guitar with occasionally blunt lyrics that echo your thoughts after that date, that really bad conversation, that phone call that didn’t happen, or that run-in at the neighborhood coffee shop... You know the one I’m talking about.

Written by: Ruth Cameron, April 16th 2008

Cheryl Ann Webster: Beautiful Women Project (3/20/2008)

admin — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 15:56:00 +0000

Downtown Arts Centre

Hamilton, Ontario

When I initially heard about the Beautiful Women Project, I was engaged by the apparently simple nature of its message. I thought of the work as conveying many feminist interpretations of the relationship between feminine constructions of body image and media. On speaking to the artist and viewing the collection, I was struck at the memories it brought up for me. Looking at the varied torsos of other women aged nineteen to ninety-one, I reflected on my girlhood and all of the physical changes I have experienced in my adulthood and realized that, like many women, I had been critical of every permutation of my appearance.

Cheryl Ann Webster is a visual artist. She works in a variety of media, including metal and clay. Though she initially saw this project (inspired by her daughter’s comment that a friend was saving for breast implants) as personally healing, she eventually came to see the growing collection as having the potential to create a provocative yet accessible body of work which could inspire dialogue—in the vein of Kathe Kollwitz, one of her favorite artists.

Initially, Cheryl Ann had thought to leave the torsos undecorated, but decided embellishment prevented the exhibit from being visually uniform. The varied clay surfaces on the torsos are evocative of real bodies and remind the viewer that the casts are molded on individual women’s bodies and depict varied life experiences. With it’s bright direct imagery and brief narratives about women who are either at odds or have made peace with their bodies, the Beautiful Women Project is an effective catalyst for generating discussion on body image, a topic which is relevant not only for women and girls, but increasingly for all of us.

Written by: Ruth Cameron, April 2nd 2008

24th Annual Hillside Music Festival (7/27-7/29/2007)

admin — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 22:09:00 +0000

Guelph Lake Conservation Area

Ontario, Canada

You have to love a folk festival that offers sweatshop-free clothing; gives away free, safe, non-bottled water; serves an ethnically diverse array of foods with many vegan options on reusable dinnerware; and uses a printing company powered by 100% green electricity to print concert programs. Currently in its 24th year, the Hillside Music Festival at the Guelph Lake Conservation Area in Ontario, Canada hosts performers of folk, gospel and many other traditional forms of music on four stages over three days, as well as more popular folk, rock and pop music options. Drumming, informational workshops and spoken word performances are also incorporated into the festival, which is easily accessible by car, bicycle and public transit. The Hillside non-profit organization even plants trees at the festival site annually. Oh, I almost forgot to mention that both Ani DiFranco and Melissa Ferrick performed there, too, on the same day.

For me, Sunday at the Hillside Music Festival was a great opportunity to see two great, feminist folkies, with two distinct styles. Melissa Ferrick’s brief but powerful, positive, introspective and critical set was delivered in the late afternoon. Rocking right from the start, she immediately connected with the crowd, performing songs from her latest album In the Eyes of Strangers _as well as “Moses,” a Patty Griffin cover, from _Valentine Heartache. Her playful banter between songs, the 30th wedding anniversary congratulations delivered to a couple in the audience and open invitation for children to accompany her on the stage for the last part of her set made me wish she had twice the time to perform. Her enthusiasm and energy left me smiling and pumped long after her songs were over.

Ani DiFranco’s set, though longer, was a more muted and intimate affair, with spoken word, older favorites like “Everest” and “32 Flavors” and some of the more accessible songs, such as “Half-Assed” from her most recent album, Reprieve. Though slow to start, her set was an appropriate close to the evening’s performances and the festival, with the sounds of her performance accompanied by fans' voices and excited discussions about the songs she had chosen for her set.

Both performers commented on the relaxed atmosphere and earth-friendly principles of the festival, as well as the great treatment they received at Hillside. Hopefully this means that they will be back regularly in the years to come.

Written by: Ruth Cameron, August 13th 2007