Gemma Cooper-Novack

Gay Fatherhood: Narratives of Family and Citizenship in America

admin — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 09:00:00 +0000

In this well-written ethnography, Gay Fatherhood, Ellen Lewin examines the choices and the decisions of gay fathers in America, focusing particularly on men who choose to become fathers as gay men, rather than coming out after having had children in a different-sex marriage. Lewin, also the author of the 1993 ethnography Lesbian Mothers, works centrally from Chicago but has found research participants of impressive diversity with respect to race, religion, socioeconomic background, profession, number of children, and relationship to community. All of these elements make for a fascinating read.

The central question in Lewin’s book is one that has become increasingly pertinent and visible, particularly in queer communities, as the gay marriage debate advances in the United States. Does “being gay” simply mean being a man who loves and is sexually attracted to men, or does it imply another separateness, an inherent incompatibility, with a world that is and will always be predominantly straight? And does asserting the latter negate the identity of gay fathers, assuming "father," even "parent," to be the province of the straight world alone? Or does a gay man who chooses to be a father give up his right to identify as "gay?" Or does "parent" come to overshadow, to render irrelevant, the identity “gay”? And if none of the above are true, are there factors beyond the sexual orientation and gender of the parents that would specifically identify a family as a "gay family?"

As is often the case in anthropological research, Lewin explores these questions without ever fully answering them. Given the scope and depth of Lewin’s writing, however, no answer seems to be demanded. By simply displaying the complexity of the lives and relationships of gay fathers—relationships with partners, relationships with children, relationships with other parents, extended families, communities of friends, religious communities, communities of residence—she demonstrates that this is not an issue to be bullet-pointed or oversimplified. Lewin uses her ethnography to delve into the lives of gay families, and to show the complex nexus of identity at which they reside, and at which they must, in contemporary America, continue to reside. A true writer and a true anthropologist, she leaves the prescription of actions to her readers; there is no doubt that engagement with her writing will lead to more considered, and therefore better, action.

Written by: Gemma Cooper-Novack, March 1st 2010

Abby and Jules

admin — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 09:00:00 +0000

By Lia Quince

Finial Press

Early in Lia Quince’s novel Abby and Jules, adolescent protagonist Abby steps onto a street in Beijing on her own for the first time. She is conflicted, carrying both the naïve adolescent confidence that she can survive alone in any city and the awareness that she is a white woman in China. The swirl of teenage emotions is thoughtfully captured.

Unfortunately, this one moment is the high point of the novel. Abby and Jules is a poorly conceived and poorly executed work. Some of the difficulties lie in the prose, such as when a masturbation scene refers to “the spot of exquisite pleasure.” Some problems lie in poor narrative pacing; some lie in character inconsistencies, as when Abby, described as an “eco-chick” on every other page, is driven into an environmentalist tailspin when asked what to order at a coffee bar (pesticides in the rainforest, disposable cups, processed and sugary syrup), but fears receiving a “recycled” engagement ring without even a cursory nod to the politics of the diamond trade. Literary and cultural references are shoehorned awkwardly into the prose, which leads to forced comparisons between Quince’s characters and more established historical or literary figures that make little sense and do nothing to enhance the plot.

Some of the worst aspects of the novel lie in the skewed reasoning on which the plot turns: when Abby learns about her father's involvement in an illicit sexual relationship, she endeavors to understand her father. Even as her understanding ostensibly becomes more nuanced, she holds onto the view that he is not to blame. Still other challenges lie in the blatant lack of editing of the manuscript. The problem reveals itself most hilariously when, in a novel about Chinese-American relations with no sense of irony, Abby considers a recent one night stand and wonders: “Was she too much out of character as the wonton [sic] whore last night as the she [sic] emulated the bad girl Julie Yang?” This is only the most humorous example, but several blatant typos appear on nearly every page, giving the piece an air of rushed neglect.

Written by: Gemma Cooper-Novack, February 18th 2010

Unsafe for Democracy: World War I and the U.S. Justice Department’s Covert Campaign to Suppress Dissent

admin — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 01:18:00 +0000

By William H. Thomas Jr.

University of Wisconsin Press

Even the preface to Unsafe for Democracy makes William H. Thomas Jr.’s political stances abundantly clear, but impressively, his political leanings have no negative effect on either his literary voice or his scholarship. Unsafe for Democracy is a straightforward historical tract, delineating the disturbing specifics of a very specific time in history. Thomas uses only the preface to tie the events of the early twentieth century to the problems America faced in subsequent eras, from the actions of COINTELPRO, the FBI’s secretive, legally questionable “counterintelligence program” to spy on, disrupt and often destroy dissident political organizations in the mid-twentieth century, to those of the Bush Administration; the body of the book allows the reader to draw her own conclusions, a model of thorough research and admirable self-restraint.

Using the Espionage Act of 1917 as its legal base and the general paranoid wartime climate as its ethical base, the United States Justice Department committed innumerable violations of the civil rights of German-Americans, members of the Socialist Party, and many other American citizens under the umbrella of protecting American safety and security during World War I. Thomas skillfully depicts the anger and frustration present in the social climate at that time, and uses it to draw us into stories of the Justice Department’s behavior, each more shocking than the last, and the behavior it inspired in ordinary American citizens. The book ends with the startling chapter “Vigilantism,” describing many shocking incidents not commonly known and the Justice Department’s notable lack of focused response. The details of the book are fascinating and often terrifying.

More than many historical tracts, Unsafe for Democracy demonstrates the value of straightforward storytelling. Thomas makes no attempt to shock his readers or to beat them over the head with parallels to other periods of history or contemporary government. Rather, he tells us what happened, offers his compelling evidence that this was, indeed, the way it happened, and leaves us to frame the value of the story as we see fit. Even if the stories in Unsafe for Democracy were not so chilling, this skill would make the book worthwhile, and the stories themselves are stories that every American should understand in as much depth as possible.

Written by: Gemma Cooper-Novack, November 2nd 2009

All Fall Down

admin — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 23:14:00 +0000

By Mary Caponegro

Coffee House Press

The topical variety of the stories contained in Mary Caponegro’s All Fall Down is close to astounding. Her protagonists are women, men, and children. Her stories consider poesy, abortion, marriage, chronic illness, terrorism, pregnancy, lesbianism, and international travel—all with grace and interest and without a hitch. The sheer unpredictability of her subject matter adds excitement to the reading of her new collection: the previous story has no bearing on the next and tends, in fact, to make its plot even more startling than they would already be. Occasionally, though, the plotlines are so bizarre that they would stand out in any collection. This is the case with the extraordinarily intriguing, though not entirely successful, “Junior Achievement,” in which the young children of murdered abortionists attempt to take over their parents’ practice. In All Fall Down, very few practical links exist between a character in one story and in another, which is a substantive asset in a writer of short stories.

In tone, however, the stories in All Fall Down are almost infuriatingly uniform. Caponegro’s voice as a writer is intensely verbose, dramatic, and literary, and she varies little from tale to tale or character to character, with the notable exception of “Junior Achievement,” a surreal story told almost entirely in dialogue. The uniformity is particularly noticeable in “Ill-Timed,” in which both over-educated athlete Alex and her wry, awkward lover Paula speak and think in a manner exaggeratedly articulate, stylized, and uniform. Ultimately, it does Caponegro’s final story, “The Translator,” a great disservice, as its narrator’s high-minded, poetic turns of phrase would likely stand out more for their artistry in a collection not so steeped in overly dramatic prose.

Caponegro is clearly an original and fascinating thinker. In several of the stories, the specificity of her characterizations overrides the annoyance one often feels at a piece attempting to cover too many issues. This feat is particularly notable in the stories “Ashes Ashes We All Fall Down” and “Ill-Timed.” However, Caponegro has not yet made the final link between her prose style and her style of thought. Unable to vary the one according to the fluctuations in the other, this oversight often made it difficult to focus on the emotional content—and power—of her work.

Written by: Gemma Cooper-Novack, October 22nd 2009

Miss Conduct’s Mind Over Manners: Master the Slippery Rules of Modern Ethics and Etiquette

admin — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 17:08:00 +0000

By Robin Abrahams

Times Books

Miss Conduct is an exemplary advice columnist: quirky, direct, and practical. Her quirkiness throws her biases into the forefront, preventing any false pretense of neutrality, and allows her to emphasize a pleasant sense of humor. Her directness allows her to tackle thorny social issues with grace, and her pragmatism—born in part of her doctoral studies in human development and her conclusion that no one theory of human happiness is or could ever be definitive—makes her easy to trust, that last an essential yet often-overlooked quality in advice columnists.

These elements, in addition to Robin Abrahams’s wry sense of humor, make Miss Conduct’s Mind Over Manners an excellent read. I found myself laughing out loud at several portions of the book, notably when Abrahams claims early in her chapter on holidays that “asking an advice columnist her opinion of Christmas is kind of like asking an ER nurse her opinion of motorcycles. We never see the stories with a happy ending” and advises determined non-breeders that “[i]f you’re accused of selfishness for not wanting children, you can always ask why the accuser thinks it would be a good thing for selfish people to have children.” Her prose is straightforward without being stiff, conversational and well-crafted, and as a result the book goes down quickly and smoothly.

Naturally, Miss Conduct’s Mind Over Manners contains a few serious oversights, bothersome even when Abrahams seems aware of them. She demonstrates a live-and-let-live, pluralistic philosophy inherent to thought more left- than right-wing, but claims herself to be apolitical. She includes, for an advice columnist compiling a book, a startlingly small number of actual letters. She acknowledges that she “barely touched on homosexuality and transsexuals in the sex and gender chapter,” itself rather problematic, and fails even to mention bisexuality, one of the thornier issues of the contemporary dating scene (the treatment of which is my personal bugbear).

But to harp on such details is to miss the point of Miss Conduct’s book and philosophy. Abrahams encourages conversational partners to ‘take whatever topic you find boring up one level of abstractness,” and thus she defines her role as an advice columnist and author. Ours is to offer concrete examples of our specialized interests and situations; hers is to define generalized codes of conduct to be applied not only to our personal circumstances but also to those of other such demanding individuals. In this, Abrahams’s book succeeds in spades.

Written by: Gemma Cooper-Novack, October 21st 2009

The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey through Madness

admin — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 23:39:00 +0000

By Elyn R. Saks

Hyperion

We rarely have the opportunity to hear from people diagnosed with schizophrenia. As a result, the disease remains misunderstood and maligned, confused with multiple personality disorder, and the butt of several jokes. In writing The Center Cannot Hold, Elyn Saks has, in part, set out to remedy this, and she has acquitted herself most admirably.

Saks’s life is an interesting one. Raised in Miami, Florida, she exhibited, as she can recall, a few early signs of the disorder in high school and in college, but her first serious break arrived while she was getting her Master’s degree at Oxford University. That year, Saks experienced both a stay in a mental hospital and her first relationship with a talk therapist. (The latter is a treatment she strongly advocates, although it is relatively rare to see it used to treat schizophrenia.) The stark detail in which Saks limns her schizophrenic breaks brings the reader immediately into her mind, yet the tone of the writing is so matter-of-fact that Saks’s mind, the mind of a woman both brilliant and deeply mentally ill, does not seem at all unusual. This is her gift as a writer: emotions, mental disorders, therapeutic relationships, and love are all treated as facts, not as things to fight or justify, but simply as the truths of a life. Saks makes schizophrenia real to her readers, as it has always been to her.

The pillars, and the beauty, of Saks’ story are the relationships she has created in her life and shows to her readers: relationships with therapists are portrayed as clearly, and with as much significance, as those with her close friends, her family, and later her husband. Love, Saks demonstrates, is a powerful stabilizing force, even in the face of the inevitable devastation that mental illness brings. In addition, Saks has used her academic work and interests to center herself since her youth, and as readers watch, Saks become what she is today: a professor of legal philosophy tremendously respected in her field, specializing in the legal rights of the mentally ill. We see that her work, the academic niche she has created for herself over time, has come to a graceful symbiosis with her acceptance of her illness. As she advocates, as a passionate writer and thinker, for others like her who have fewer resources, she comes to accept the role that her schizophrenia has played, and will always play, in her life, and also clarifies for herself that it is not the only defining factor.

The Center Cannot Hold is a bold, disturbing, compelling, original book. Elyn Saks is telling a story rarely heard, and she does so with uncommon skill and style.

Written by: Gemma Cooper-Novack, October 17th 2008

How the Religious Right Shaped Lesbian and Gay Activism

admin — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 23:17:00 +0000

By Tina Fetner

University Of Minnesota Press

While leftists and gay rights activists occasionally discuss the notion that left wing battles, and particularly GLBTQ struggles, are too influenced by the religious right, the complaint is always frustrated and dismissive, never a serious consideration. Tina Fetner approaches the notion differently, addressing how the influence of religious right was, in fact, invaluable in shaping, and in rendering more powerful, the lesbian and gay movement. (Both “religious right” and “lesbian and gay movement” are often used casually and defined vaguely, a notion that would normally bother me as a reader, but in the introduction Fetner skillfully clarifies the definitions she is using.)

How the Religious Right Shaped Lesbian and Gay Activism is an intriguing piece of research, full of facts to which I would otherwise have had no access. Though a self-proclaimed liberal, Fetner has done impressive work on all sides of the problem. She tracks the rise of the religious right even before it took on a formal anti-gay stance, discusses the state of the lesbian and gay movements before the identification of one clear antagonist, and takes us through Stonewall and the rise of Anita Bryant up to the contemporary gay marriage debates. Each chapter chronicles about a decade of the activist conflict, concluding with the notion that “[t]he religious right brought both new challenges and new opportunities to the lesbian and gay movement.”

Fascinating though the concept is, Fetner’s book—a clear doctoral dissertation—is bloodless, the prose dry and uncompelling, the powerful stories rendered inaccessible. The book demonstrates the need for good prose style; the ideas in How the Religious Right Shaped Lesbian and Gay Activism are notions that all self-styled activists, left and right, should consider, but Fetner’s dry writing makes it tremendously difficult to get through the book.

Nevertheless, the relationship Fetner is examining makes her book worth the effort. Though her book itself may not be a substantive addition to the non-fiction canon, her ideas make a substantial and interesting contribution to queer thought and to social movement theory, whether its consumers be academics or lay readers.

Written by: Gemma Cooper-Novack, October 13th 2008

When She Was White: The True Story of a Family Divided By Race

admin — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 16:27:00 +0000

By Judith Stone

Hyperion

It would be hard to find a story more inherently dramatic than that of Sandra Laing, one that can show in a more complete and complex manner the ramifications of South Africa’s apartheid regime. With coloring distinctly different from that of her white family, Sandra Laing was expelled from her white school in 1965 and reclassified as “coloured” (of mixed-race descent), then, after her family engaged in legal battle, was made ‘white” once again; in the throes of this conflict, at the age of fifteen, Laing fell in love and ran away with a black man, with whom she had several children. Finding herself more comfortable with her lover’s family, she applied, once more, for racial reclassification. In the meantime, she lived with the inevitable hardships that came with being classified as “black” in South Africa while remaining the object of international journalism, gained and lost contact with members of her white family, and tried, as best she could, to ignore larger political structures and the pain they had caused her.

In the delicately titled When She Was White, Judith Stone skillfully limns the high drama of Sandra Laing’s story. Stone spent several years working in South Africa, interviewing Laing and many other individuals connected to the story, as well as researching the alarming intricacies of the apartheid government. The result is a thoughtful, moving book. Although Stone occasionally veers into the sanctimonious when describing the plight of black people under apartheid, she portrays the character of Sandra Laing, and the drastic psychological ramifications of her early life, with a delicate, skillful eye. As is often the case in a far-reaching biography, the events of Laing’s later life cannot quite match the drama of her childhood and adolescence, but by including occasional interludes into her own analysis of Laing’s current character Stone successfully keeps the book compelling.

Particularly for readers not well-versed in modern South African history, Judith Stone’s thoughtful biography is valuable. It tells an intense story without overwhelming readers with intensity, delves into interesting aspects of both South African apartheid and racism itself, explores the complex nature of memory, and introduces its audience to a woman, a character, more complex than the news bite drama of her tale appears.

Written by: Gemma Cooper-Novack, June 10th 2008

Beyond the Icarus Factor: Releasing the Free Spirit of Boys

admin — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 20:21:00 +0000

By Richard Hawley

Park Street Press

It seems that every year for the last fifteen or so, children of one gender or another are considered neglected, voiceless, constrained by social mores. In neither case is the notion wrong, but rarely are all the social implications put together. Richard Hawley, for many years the headmaster of a boys’ school in Ohio, attempts to create - through his precious book, Beyond the Icarus Factor - a wider social theory using the myth of Icarus - that all men who have moved away from their “puer spirit” (“puer” meaning “boy” in Latin), whether by choice or by social pressure, are dissatisfied and live a life mired in, if not self-disgust, certainly self-distaste.

Richard Hawley’s book is poetic without being purposeful, idealistic without actually becoming interesting. The thesis he attempts to construct around the tragic myth of Icarus and Daedalus (and Daedalus’s oft-forgotten foster son, Perdix, whom Daedalus had killed before Icarus’s birth, lest Perdix’s talent threaten Daedalus’s established reputation) is vague and uncompelling. Hawley muses on Antoine de Saint-Exupéry as the ideal balance of “puer spirit” and adulthood, trashes psychoanalysis for destroying transcendence, but at no point does he move his (admittedly well-researched) work from the realm of the fluffy to the realm his students actually inhabit on a daily basis. His final chapter exudes us to appreciate the “ecstatic spirit afoot and aloft in the world,” but aside from keeping boys safe and loved he offers us little guidance on how this change, which he seems to view as a social revolution, is to be achieved.

Hawley’s social application of the myth of Icarus does have a strange poetic appeal to it, and my mistake may have been to come to the book with the expectation of rigorous social critique or social science. Instead of thoroughly addressing what he seems to consider a pressing social concern, Hawley explains how various works of literature (from Peter Pan _to _The Little Prince) are fantasies of boyhood, without delving into that fantasy’s relationship to reality. Hawley clearly has the knowledge for and interest in that relationship, but the connection sadly makes minimal appearance in his book.

Written by: Gemma Cooper-Novack, June 9th 2008

The Lesbian and Gay Movements: Assimilation or Liberation?

admin — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 14:12:00 +0000

By Craig A. Rimmerman

Westview Press

The Lesbian and Gay Movements: Assimilation or Liberation? is a history of post-Stonewall GLBTQ activism as seen through three focused battles: the AIDS crisis, the ban on gays in the military, and the conflict over gay marriage. Craig Rimmerman presents a detailed breakdown of each, assembling them into a supposed study of the differences and relative importance of assimilationist and liberationist strategies. The result of his work here is a book deeply limited as a piece of writing and as an argument, but deeply compelling as a piece of history.

In aesthetic terms, Rimmerman is not much of a writer. His sentence structure is clunky, his rigid adherence to the classic “tell them what you’re going to tell them; tell them; tell them what you told them” structure almost laughable. In terms of structure and argument, his insistence on a thesis overly simplistic and overly focused—that both assimilationist and liberationist movements are needed for political progress—limits the energy and momentum of his book, and the book’s surveying take on its subjects makes many of the chapters and segments feel rushed. He fails to define terms key to making a leftist book accessible to a broader public, such as “the Christian Right,” while defining basic terms about the lesbian and gay movements that any leftist audience would understand. As such, _The Lesbian and Gay Movements _can be a frustrating book to read.

However, the facts in the book are indubitably fascinating and well-assembled. Rimmerman is a professor of political science and public policy at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, and his skill as a teacher is clear in his work here. He presents shocking facts as part of a collection. He casually and gracefully introduces elements of the pre-Stonewall gay liberation (“homophile”) movements that are rarely seen in mainstream press or history. He breaks down the historical steps of each of his topics in a clear and accessible manner. A few days after reading The Lesbian and Gay Movements, I found myself using information I had gained directly from the book in a discussion with my students about Ronald Reagan, and the details of Bill Clinton’s disappointing performance with regard to gay and lesbian rights—particularly with the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy—were new and deeply informative.

The Lesbian and Gay Movements is not, in the end, a very good book. It is, however, a marvelous teaching tool. I’ve been privileged to use it as such already and hope that many other educators will find the same use for it. I also hope that students at Hobart and William Smith Colleges will take any opportunity available to take a class with Craig Rimmerman. His skills as a teacher shine through every part of this book.

Written by: Gemma Cooper-Novack, April 17th 2008

Sing a Battle Song: The Revolutionary Poetry, Statements, and Communiqués of the Weather Underground, 1970-1974

admin — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 03:45:00 +0000

Edited by Bernadine Dohrn, Bill Ayers, Jeff Jones

Seven Stories Press

Between 2002’s documentary The Weather Underground and such novels as Russell Banks’s The Darling, the radical revolutionary group ironically returned to the public eye in recent years. Thirty years after their underground activities ended, now that all the charges have been dropped and all of the living members of the organization have joined the establishment, albeit on the fringes (Dohrn, Ayers and Jones have become a legal scholar, an educational philosopher and an environmental activist respectively), Sing a Battle Song offers a complex, bittersweet perspective on The Weather Underground’s life and revolutionary work.

Sing a Battle Song is an anthology containing three volumes of work by the Weather Underground: the original Sing a Battle Song, an anthology of poetry by Weatherwomen; The Weather Eye, a collection of communiqués published by the organization to explain individual bombings or denounce government actions; and Prairie Fire, a comprehensive explanation of the organization’s politics. The volume opens with three essays by Dohrn, Ayers and Jones, reach reflecting from his or her own perspective on the accomplishments and failings of the group in its time. Dohrn’s mea culpa are particularly moving—she seems, among the three, to see the precise workings of the organization most clearly.

The poetry in Sing a Battle Song has lost, from this standpoint, most of its power. The poems are published without individual author credit, simply as the work of Weatherwomen. While this makes a powerful statement about organizational solidarity, the poems themselves, without the immediacy of their political context, seem tame. However, The Weather Eye, the communiqués themselves, presents the era in a vivid, visceral fashion. This middle section is the most powerful in the book; it’s harsh, honest, and powerfully written, expressing the goals and thoughts of the movement neither bogged down by theory nor by unnecessary flourish.

The anthology, in the end, is most compelling and disturbing as a historical document, an observation of what the countercultural and revolutionary movements of the 1960s and 1970s did or did not accomplish. Some aspects of the work, like the unflagging support of Fidel Castro in Prairie Fire, seem downright naïve and misguided from this perspective; most of their observations about corporate culture and control, however, remain depressingly resonant today.

Written by: Gemma Cooper-Novack, March 19th 2007

Domain of Perfect Affection

admin — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 12:38:00 +0000

By Robin Becker

University of Pittsburgh Press

The title of Robin Becker’s new book is contained in the last line of “Salon,” where the speaker’s mother goes for her weekly respite. In this “domain of perfect affection,” _ … my mother attends to the lifelong business of revealing and withholding, careful to frame each story while Vivienne lacquers each nail and then inspects each slender finger …

Such delicate observations permeate the straightforward observations throughout the collection. Few poets achieve this mastery: Becker makes everyday observations, everyday knowledge, extraordinary. This well-crafted collection shows a hard-earned perspective on contentment, containing numerous examples of what Stephen Dunn calls “credible poetry of affirmation,” and yet, almost as if to combat to that contentment, Becker throws in a number of poems that challenge what peace we have found. Among these poems are the two powerful found poems “Manifest Destinies” (taken from the journals of Lewis and Clark) and “Qualities Boys Like Best in Girls” (taken from a 1960s “home living” guide) and the bizarre, aggressive “Against Pleasure” (“Worry beats me to the kitchen/and all the food is sorry.”).

“The Drawer” perhaps exemplifies this conflict best—it is, fundamentally, a conflict of memory, being content and knowing that it was not always so, and therefore may not always be. In the poem, the speaker sorts through the contents of the drawer and the past, finding finally “photos of the woman/you love and a vial of sacred dirt from the church in Chimayo—/collected the summer you traveled with nothing but a backpack.” From this point, burdened and united with beloved objects, the speaker can see into the complex, often traumatic incidents that pepper the rest of the book.

Domain of Perfect Affection, as a collection, perhaps lacks some of the punch of Becker’s previous books, like Giacometti’s Dog and The Horse Fair, but, at the same time, seems more firmly about the business of living, about the information one must collect and process both to live from day to day and to instigate change. She creates calm and then upsets it, a stunning achievement for any poet.

Written by: Gemma Cooper-Novack, February 23rd 2007