Beacon Press

Morning Haiku

beth — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 20:00:00 +0000

In her introduction, Sanchez—a member of the “Broadside Quartet” who published her first volume of poetry in 1969 and is most often associated with the Black Arts Movement—recalls her discovery of haiku at the 8th Street Bookshop in New York at the age of twenty-one. “I slid down onto the floor and cried and was changed. I had found me.” It may seem hard to sum up a person in three lines and seventeen syllables; Sanchez solves the problem by writing poems composed of groups of haiku.

These poems certainly feel like personal reflections on people and places that have impacted the poet. We hear the joy she experiences when listening to Max Roach and the deep respect and reverence for female African American politicians and reformers in “9 haiku (for Freedom’s Sisters).” One of the hardest-hitting pieces is “sister haiku (for Pat),” a bare bones account of her sister’s rape and subsequent pregnancy:

his touch wore
you down to a
fugitive eye.

Her language can evoke sorrow and reflection, or playfulness and fierceness, as in this excerpt from “4 haiku (for Eugene Redmond)”:

your quicksilver
words waterfalling in
sweet confession

you have taken down
the morning turned it into
a roar of blackness

Of the thirty poetry groupings in this slender volume, twenty-two are dedicated to people or things. Among the notable dedicatees are jazz drummer Max Roach, murdered black teenager Emmett Louis Till, jazz singer Sarah Vaughan, philosopher and Christian saint St. Augustine, and the murals of Philadelphia. Luckily for the curious reader, a brief description of these and lesser-known dedicatees is included at the end of the volume.

The collection ends with “haiku poem: 1 year after 9/11,” which is not a haiku but twenty-eight couplets using the spare images and syntax of haiku. Sanchez channels her grief and confusion over the cataclysmic attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon and wonders how the world will change. It’s a somber note but somehow fits it with her short reflections on forces that have impacted her life. Like the best haiku, these poems will also impact the reader in subtle, often untraceable ways.

Written by: Karen Duda, March 5th 2011

Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States

brittany — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 20:00:00 +0000

By Kay Whitlock, Joey L. Mogul, Andrea J. Ritchie

Beacon Press

In their near-exhaustive catalogue of violence, discrimination, and systematic abuse of LGBT people in the United States, Joey Mogul, Andrea Ritchie, and Kay Whitlock outline the specific ways that the criminalization of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgendered people has perpetuated inequalities not only based on sexual identity but also within the complex interplay of race, class, and gender. While many leading texts in LGBT studies have argued that the policing of gender leads to toxic consequences for all members of society, this book reveals just how pervasive such policing of gender is and just how complicit we are in maintaining these systems of inequality. Most centrally, Mogul, Ritchie, and Whitlock argue that decriminalizing queerness has been sidelined by efforts to merely remove legal sanctions—a problem that fails to address the basic assumptions of queer deviance at play in our legal system.

Queer (In)Justice dispenses a legal history of LGBT oppression that spans hundreds of years, beginning with a sweeping review of the history of gender policing—indigenous abuse, constructions of African people as hypersexual, “contaminating” immigrant bodies, and even Biblical ideas about sodomy—and moving through a range of topics that collectively provide the most complete picture of LGBT criminalization I have ever encountered. Addressing queer criminal archetypes (e.g., the queer killer, sexually degraded predator, disease spreader, and queer security threat) early in the book, the authors then move to three stellar chapters on legal policing of gender in clubs and public spaces, courtroom battles about queer identity (where gender bending and violence are discursively linked), and, finally, the queering of prisons. This last chapter on prisons provides a haunting account of prison guards ignoring sexual identity-based violence, refusing care for HIV/AIDS prisoners, and constructing queer inmates as perverse. The authors conclude (in one of only a few hopeful moments of the book) that anti-police-brutality, the building of safe communities, prison solidarity, and community organizing must occur in order to tease apart the conflation of queerness and criminality.

At times devastating, provocative, explicit, and horrifying, this book will make you deeply sad, deeply angry, and more fully aware of how far we really are from full equality for sexual minorities. The authors argue, essentially, that cases like Matthew Shepard and Brandon Teena are not isolated incidents of violent, hateful oppression, but rather, engendered by the very system that supposedly protects queer subjects. From senseless police brutality to justifying death penalty sentences based on sexual identity, from the fetishization of “lesbian killer” Aileen Wuornos to prison guards who allow continued sexual assault against “willing” gay men in prison, hatred of queerness exists at the heart of our criminal justice system. The question becomes: What legal, discursive, social, and institutional changes can we enact that more radically and permanently divides queerness from criminality? What stories must we tell (or learn) to communicate and understand the histories of violence lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered people have endured? And, finally, what kind of queer justice should we seek?

Written by: Breanne Fahs, February 12th 2011

Morning Haiku

gita — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 20:00:00 +0000

By Sonia Sanchez

Beacon Press

From my first taste of Byron at age twelve, I was hooked on poetry. As a teen, my reading went from the Romantics to Sylvia Plath to the Beats. By the time I belatedly discovered Sonia Sanchez, who has been publishing astonishing poetry since 1969, I was ready. This, I thought, this is poetry: not a word wasted, and all of them well-chosen; inspirational, revolutionary, and speaking straight to the heart. With her latest volume, Morning Haiku, Sanchez takes her work to a new place of innovation and tenderness.

Poet, scholar, and civil rights activist, Sonia Sanchez has amassed an impressive body of work, including over sixteen books. In her latest, she shares with the reader her discovery of the haiku form, and how it spoke directly to her heart. With skill and artistry, she crafts haiku that are dedicated to many great leaders of the civil rights movement. When I read “9 haiku (for Freedom’s Sisters),” it was impossible not to cry and to feel awed and thankful. These poems are written for Kathleen Cleaver, Betty Shabazz, Barbara Jordan, and other strong women leaders. Each haiku is, by definition, brief; but Sanchez layers the poems together, and the effect makes an intense song of praise.

There are helpful yet unobtrusive explanatory notes at the end of the book, marked only with page numbers, to help the reader unfamiliar with a person mentioned in a given poem.

I have lived in Philadelphia, and the abundant murals (over a hundred) are one of the most glorious things about the city. They are a technicolor reflection of the city’s neighborhoods, of the people that give the city life. Perhaps because of this personal connection, my favorite poem in this book is “10 haiku (for Philadelphia Murals).” Each small poem adds another layer of descriptive love that I think any city resident, seeking beauty in small and sometimes chaotic places, will appreciate. The poem peaks for me at number eight, where Sanchez writes, “common ground/is we, forever/breathing this earth.”

On the dedication page for Morning Haiku, Sanchez writes: “Let me wear the day/Well so when it reaches you/You will enjoy it.” I hope this one not only takes residence in my memory, but becomes manifest in my actions.

Written by: Lisa Rand, February 6th 2011

Do It Anyway: The New Generation of Activists

farhana — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 16:00:00 +0000

By Courtney E. Martin

Beacon Press

Though editor Courtney E. Martin’s new book means to school baby boomer types who mock the millennial generation for their perceived apathy, Do it Anyway: The New Generation of Activists is a balm for burned out justice advocates of any age. Even its title acknowledges the enormous gap that lies between the fervent desires for “that hopey-changey thing” (as Sarah Palin joked) and the hard work needed to make it happen.

Do it Anyway shares the stories of eight young American activists, beginning with Rachel Corrie, the twenty-year-old crushed to death in 2003 by Israeli tanks when she attempted to defend Palestinian homes on the Gaza Strip. While Martin sympathizes with Corrie's idealism, she is blunt in her appraisal: “I am reminded,” Martin writes, “of how irresistible and yet how deeply false the romance of young death really is.” Corrie's death ought to be seen as a waste of unrealized talent, not as a paragon of youthful heroism. Martin implores her readers to consider, as she puts it, “'live people' for our inspiration.”

And what “live people” they are. The rose-colored outlook of a middle-class white girl like Corrie contrasts sharply with that of Maricela Guzman, a daughter of illegal immigrants who joined the military to climb out of poverty. Instead, her brutal rape at the hands of a superior officer sparked a new mission: advocating for survivors of sexual violence as co-founder of the Service Women's Action Network. Philanthropist Tyrone Boucher and filmmaker Emily Abt both renounce material privilege in their justice work; actress Rosario Dawson leverages her celebrity to draw attention to little-served causes.

All seven “live people” in the book open their mouths, hearts, and lives to Martin, granting her access to public schools in the Bronx and gang-riddled streets in Los Angeles (Martin, as learned as any Third Waver on the messiness of identity politics, is careful to balance her subjects’ races, genders, social classes, and areas of activist expertise).

Martin's concluding chapter is her masterstroke: called “Good Failure,” it offers practical lessons learned in the field and on the ground that, while not claiming to be lifesaving (Martin is uncertain that Rachel Corrie was interested in anyone's advice), will go a long way towards avoiding the burnout that can derail any activist's career. “I was repeatedly shattered,” Martin writes, “at how much emotional pain all of these people have had to endure in order to do their work.” Ultimately, a greater truth was revealed: “our charge is not to 'save the world' after all; it is to live in it, flawed and fierce, loving and humble.”

For anyone already committed to or just beginning to enter the world of social justice, Do it Anyway is a must-read.

Written by: Shannon Drury, November 29th 2010

Dispatches from the Abortion Wars: The Cost of Fanaticism to Doctors, Patients, and the Rest of Us

admin — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 17:01:00 +0000

By Carole Joffe

Beacon Press

Maybe I’m wrong, but in my understanding of war, combatants will do whatever it takes to destroy the opposing side. And that’s not what has happened in the conflict over abortion. Instead, one side, the anti-abortionists—from the Army of God to the Lambs of Christ, from Operation Save America to The National Right to Life Committee—have organized a multitude of campaigns to stop what they call “the murder of innocents.” Diverse tactics, from the ballot box to the bullet, have been used.

The damage has been horrific: Eight people (half of them doctors) have been killed since 1993 and there have been 17 attempted murders, 175 arsons, and 41 bombings since 1977. In the first four months of 2009—before the assassination of Dr. George Tiller in Wichita, Kansas—the National Abortion Federation logged in 1411 harassing emails, phone calls, and letters; three bomb threats; five suspicious packages; 40 instances of trespassing; and 11 attacks by vandals.

Then there’s the legal stuff. Legislation has been passed in virtually every state to limit when abortion is permissible and require clinics to jump through a multitude of hoops to offer services. This has made the procedure hard to access, especially for women not living in or near major cities. Add in a constant barrage of ballot measures to outlaw the procedure or give personhood status to the fetus, and it’s not surprising that the antis have made inroads in getting people to question the efficacy of the procedure.

And providers? For their part clinicians have defended their turf, obtaining court orders to bar protesters from screaming in patient’s faces, installing state-of-the-art security devices, and working to pass legislation to protect reproductive freedom from further incursions. But war? Not even a skirmish. Instead, the lion’s share of clinicians have dedicated themselves to offering high quality medical care to women, not on retaliating against the anti’s for their belligerence and menace.

Indeed, not a single anti has been assassinated (yes, anti-abortion protester James Pouillion was killed in Michigan last September, but his murder was part of a shooting spree by a deranged gunman) or harmed by pro-choice forces. Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPC) have not had their locks glued shut or been attacked with butyric acid. They have not received letters filled with white powder claiming to be Anthrax. CPC staff have not been followed and berated as “murderers” while buying milk. Their children have not been taunted in the schoolyard because of their parent’s vocation. So I take issue with Carole Joffe’s conception of the “abortion wars.” What we have, instead, is mono-dimensional, a one-way fight aided by religious dogmatists hellbent on imposing their worldview on women and families.

Despite this fundamental disagreement, Dispatches from the Abortion Wars is often riveting. Joffe’s insights into popular culture, alongside her analysis of the recent barrage of ballot initiatives, are spot on in explaining the growth of negative attitudes about abortion. As she notes, the continuous introduction of restrictive legislation reinforces the idea that the surgery is contentious. What’s more, when something is seen as controversial, people tend to back off, fearing schisms they’d rather avoid. “It is a fear of controversy, more than actual moral opposition, that mainly accounts for the stigmatizing situation of abortion today,” she concludes.

If that’s true, it’s time for pro-choice forces to take the offensive, not in war—we can’t descend to the anti’s level—but by defending abortion as the sound moral choice of more than one-third of U.S. women of reproductive age.

Written by: Eleanor J. Bader, February 17th 2010

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

The House of Secrets: The Hidden World of the Mikveh

admin — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 16:46:00 +0000

By Varda Polak-Sahm

Beacon Press

I felt very divided when reading The House of Secrets. On one end of my ever-teetering religious spectrum, I find joy in the empowerment a woman gains while embracing her belief system. On the other end, even though I am a non-Jewish woman, I found the commonalities in my childhood religion and the mikveh to be somewhat disheartening. There is much beauty in the reasons for immersion in the mikveh, such as, the closeness a woman feels to her god, her husband, and the continued spiritual transformation she receives from it. However, what was difficult to digest was the mindset of some of the women in the praxis and the praxis itself. Even still, none of my opinions discount the informative and fascinating job Varda Polak-Sahm does in detailing a world many of us have no clue exists.

A mikveh is an obligatory cleansing from head to foot that is firmly entrenched in Jewish law, from the knowledge needed to enter the mikveh to the items used to cleanse the menstrual impurities that preclude entrance. The women who perform the immersion have the power to turn away those they feel have not obeyed the rules associated with cleanliness and those who are non-Jewish. It is believed that the flesh of a non-Jew will contaminate that of a Jewish bride who must immerse in the mikveh on the eve of her wedding.

Polak-Sahm tells of the relationship between the Jewish woman and the mikveh through her own personal experience and the experiences of the Balaniyot (the woman performing the immersion), as well as the many women who habit the mikveh. For Jewish women who choose to make the mikveh a part of their lives, it provides a spiritual connection that goes beyond religious doctrine.

There are many aspects concerning the mikveh that both trouble and fascinate me. The same menstrual blood that is considered a manifestation of and justification for Eve’s mental promiscuity and corruption of Adam is the same blood that is considered to be a blessing of sorts. This blessing is what allows the Jewish woman to propagate the Jewish population, thus fulfilling her obligation to God, and distinguishes true femininity from the stigma of barrenness. The rules of the mikveh fall under Jewish law—law that was and is set by men.

Of course, it is easy for me to be opinionated about a religion I was neither born into nor chose to adopt. I realize how easy it also is for me to rain down spiritual condescension with claims of backward, patriarchal, and misogynistic belief systems placed on women who choose to remain complacently ignorant. What stands out, however, is the conviction with which these traditions are upheld and Polak-Sahm’s ability to capture the innocence and dedication that these women give in upholding this aspect of Jewish tradition. No matter what we may think of this aspect of Judaism and those who implement it, Polak-Sahm seems to invoke the question of how firmly we are convicted to our own spiritual advancement. Perhaps the balancing act we undergo on a daily basis, to solidify our own connection to the Creator, should leave us with less time to judge those who remain solidly grounded in theirs.

Written by: Olupero R. Aiyenimelo, August 14th 2009

The Blue Cotton Gown: A Midwife’s Memoir

admin — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 09:10:00 +0000

By Patricia Harman

Beacon Press

By the time Patricia Harman finished writing The Blue Cotton Gown, she was no longer working as a midwife. Instead, soaring malpractice fees had caused The Women’s Health Clinic of Torrington, West Virginia, a practice Harman runs with her husband, Dr. Tom Harman, to provide only general obstetrical and gynecological care to the patients it serves.

Harman is a nurse-practitioner and her memoir tracks a handful of women for approximately a year, zeroing in on the many variables that impact their health and well being: rampant drug and alcohol abuse, poverty, violence, mental illness, and inadequate information about staying healthy, among them. It’s a gripping account. At the same time, the book is as much a meditation on aging, marriage, and parenthood as it is a look at the obstacles and challenges endemic to the provision of healthcare in the U.S. This makes it both intensely moving and intensely, if obliquely, political.

Harman describes herself and her spouse as former hippies, people who found their professional calling in their thirties, after years of organic farming and communal living. Their countercultural impulses have made them compassionate, and their work is motivated by love of medicine, not love of the dollar. Not surprisingly, these tendencies have led to managerial problems. To whit, an inattention to finances—and way too much trust in accountants who could care less about the Harman’s ethos of providing the best care for the best price—led to monetary miscalculations that threatened to shutter the practice. When the IRS came calling, tensions built and the Harmans and their ten-person staff had to work tirelessly to forge a survival strategy. They did—the practice was saved—but not without both dents and dings to numerous personal relationships.

Meanwhile, they had patients to deal with and their own personal crises to address. Harman calls it “running in front of a plague of locusts.” There is Nila, pregnant for the eighth time, who fears that her ex-husband is molesting her four-year-old. There is Heather, a teenager pregnant by a nineteen-year-old drug addict, and Holly, a forty-five-year-old menopausal realtor whose bulimic daughter is perched on death’s window ledge. And there’s Rebba, worried because she has never had an orgasm, and Shiana, a college student who needs to have a condom extracted from behind her cervix.

Closer to home, the elderly parents of staff get sick and Harman, herself, becomes ill. Within the span of a few months she needs to have a gangrenous gall bladder removed and has a complete hysterectomy.

Throughout, there are constant money troubles—big ones—and the tension and stress are palpably presented. To her credit, Harman is not looking for either sympathy or accolades but her matter-of-fact descriptions of how difficult it is to provide high quality, patient-centered care is simultaneously enraging and shocking. While she never discusses the need for a national health plan—she also barely mentions abortion as an option for her oft-pregnant patients—her chronicle of the trials and tribulations of one nurse practitioner is riveting.

Yes, The Blue Cotton Gown could have been more politically prescriptive. Nonetheless, readers will find their immersion in the daily affairs of this off-the-beaten-track health center emotionally engaging, engrossing, and inspiring. Indeed, in an era of rampant medical discontent, the determination and persistence of Harman and her Torrington colleagues seems almost miraculous.

Written by: Eleanor J. Bader, June 17th 2009

Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement

admin — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 16:58:00 +0000

By Kathryn Joyce

Beacon Press

When I attended a production of Jesus Christ Superstar as a wee lad of fifteen, I marveled at the song-writing, vocal skills, and daunting cross that loomed amidst a gloomy set design. Being then (and now) agnostic, I was appalled by the religious persecution depicted. I have always been puzzled by the penultimate utterance of Jesus. In the Book of Luke (King James version) 23:34, it is written, “Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”

I can’t forgive the Christian patriarchy movement subjects of this superbly crafted and deeply troubling new book, for their bad faith, cognitive dissonance, and behavioral misdeeds carry heavy consequences. Whether or not they know what they’re doing remains an open question. Kathryn Joyce’s gripping new account, Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement, is about Christians who want literally to take over and remake the world by outbreeding everyone else, warping the minds of school-children, justifying bigotry with transparent illogic, and systematically denying civil rights. That most of the violence is committed quietly and privately against women and girls, most of whom accede to it with joy and penitence, will give even the most devoutly and egalitarian Christian reader pause. “Forgive them for they know not what they do.” Christian patriarchy movement members who feel imperiled by Jews, lesbians, Muslims, atheists, gay males, feminists, foreigners, and the less fecund seem conveniently to have forgotten these words.

The book’s twenty chapters are divided into three gendered parts—“Wives,” “Mothers,” and “Daughters”—in each of which Joyce deftly explores the bizarre ideology and political-economy of feminine subservience. The resulting dystopian communities in real-time and on-line in cyber-space rival those depicted in novels such as Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid's Tale, George Orwell’s 1984, and Sinclair Lewis’s It Can't Happen Here. This ain’t fiction, however. As befitting their understanding and practice of “complementarian theology,” as opposed to the alleged unnaturalness and godlessness of egalitarian gender relations, men and women in the Christian patriarchy movement believe equally (but differently) in the inherent inferiority of Eve (the Original Sin), females (on biological and spiritual grounds), Jezebel (in terms of sex) and women (who have hearts and minds). Sisters are in the process brainwashed into becoming meek and quiet supporters of their brothers, wives are instructed to remain sexually available to their husbands 24/7 (and forego any contraception), and mothers who don’t home-school their children commit them to Satan. Insofar as submissive females require degradation—the more public, the better—virtually every page is painful to read.

Woe unto the woman who proclaims “domestic abuse” or reveals a less than godly husband. Quiverfull opens by recounting the attempted rehabilitation of the disgraced megachurch founder, Ted Haggard, whose initial denial and then avowal of his use of methamphetamine and male sex workers were ripe with possibility. “Complementarian” theology demands that it be not Haggard but Haggard’s wife, Gayle, who bears the brunt of Christian condemnation from low and high places.

Few books have so affected me. This is not the sledge-hammer account I might have written. With equal parts curiosity and compassion, Joyce explains how and why tens of thousands of American women have “chosen” forms of subservience that bankrupt and humiliate them, that crimp their mental development and that hurt them physically and lead sometimes to social leprosy. Each female interviewed firmly and confidently speaks her motivations and explains her anti-feminism while gleefully ignoring the Malthusian outcome of unfettered fertility.

My sole criticism is that Joyce praises the “openness, generosity, courage, and patience” of her key informants with whom she (sometimes, usually, inherently?) “sharply disagreed,” but without revealing any of those disagreements. Joyce’s secular feminist aesthetics and politics are “clear” enough in mind but not in body: how did she manage the flesh-crawling creepiness and awkward silences without every day saying “that’s obviously horseshit” or “I wouldn’t wish this lifestyle on the daughter of my worst enemy?”

That Quiverfull opens with Gayle Haggard’s exemplary case should rouse outside observers of this noxious fundamentalism not to sit on their hands. As she points out, “to follow these ideas to their conclusions can mean, in very real ways [as women], to disappear.”

Written by: Lawrence James Hammar, Ph.D., June 15th 2009

Dating Jesus: A Story of Fundamentalism, Feminism, and the American Girl

admin — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 16:02:00 +0000

By Susan Campbell

Beacon Press

As a feminist who was raised within the Christian fundamentalist paradigm, I was immediately drawn to this memoir. Though Susan Campbell and I come from different flavors of fundamentalism, all of the experiences she writes about ring true. I suspect they would ring true for all women who were raised within a patriarchal religion (fundamentalist or not), as well as women who may not have been raised with any religion at all, but recognized prejudice in American society just the same.

Campbell grew up in the South during the 1960s and '70s, where she struggled with what was expected of her as a female. In Dating Jesus, she describes countless scenarios of rebellion, which make the reader simultaneously laugh and pump her fist in the air in solidarity and support. One such incident took place when Campbell asked her Sunday school teacher why women could not be preachers. Her teacher gave her a pat answer, yet even at a young age, Campbell was skilled in rhetoric and debate. She continued to dialogue respectfully with her teacher until he stepped out and returned with her mother, who took her out of the Sunday school class to spend the rest of the time in the nursery. “The meaning is not lost on me,” Campbell writes. "For asking questions, I will be placed among babies who slobber and fill their pants. It is a public shaming."

Dating Jesus is not limited to describing faith-based injustices against women. It also paints a picture of America at a time before Title IX, through the eyes of a tomboy who desperately wants to be treated as her brothers are, but is constantly expected to behave like "a good Christian girl." This reprimand comes from all sides, including her school principal when Campbell flips off a fellow student athlete as he shows off his new school-bought sneakers. The female sports teams at the school had been forced to wear the same ratty uniforms while the boys were given new uniforms for each sport.

Yet the fact remains that Campbell's memoir is about her tumultuous relationship with Jesus, whom she views as her boyfriend from age eight on. And who can blame her? She is brought up in a culture of loving and adoring Jesus and living her life in order to make him happy. One of the best things about this memoir, however, is that it does not end with Campbell dismissing Christianity altogether. She is honest enough to say that while she is disappointed by the route the church has taken, where misogyny and strict legalism reign in place of Jesus' message of love and acceptance, she is still a Christian on some level. She refers to people like herself as "Christ-haunted," never being able to depart fully from the faith. When, as adults, her brother says to her, "Fundamentalism broke off in us, didn’t it?" the reader who has lived this type of life knows exactly what he means.

Campbell ends on a hopeful note. She talks about the way Jesus treated women in the Bible, which was very different from how the rest of the world treated them. They were seen as outcasts, unworthy of attention or respect, but Jesus spent time talking with them. He valued them in a way that was revolutionary at the time. Campbell's final realization is that the Jesus she "dated" throughout childhood was "someone’s idea of Jesus, but not the real one." She notes, "The real Jesus wouldn’t have loved me less because of my gender. The real Jesus wouldn’t have weighed me down with rules—a list of do's and don'ts that serve no real purpose. The real Jesus would have had a sense of humor about the whole thing, goddammit."

Written by: April D. Boland, April 10th 2009

Maria Mitchell and the Sexing of Science: An Astronomer Among the American Romantics

admin — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 11:33:00 +0000

By Renée Bergland

Beacon Press

Nineteenth century New England was a virtual breeding ground for progressive ideas. During the period, a host of feminist philosophers, jurists, and scholars emerged onto American society. Among the heroines associated with the era, you’ve probably examined those such as Dorthea Dix and Margaret Fuller in your high school U.S. History class. Many women, however, still remain relatively unacknowledged, despite their critical roles in scholarly debates of the era. Among them, mathematician and astronomer Maria Mitchell remains most prominent.

Renée Bergland’s Maria Mitchell and the Sexing of Science tells, in careful detail, the story of the glorious, if too little known, Maria Mitchell, and her triumph over what soon grew to become yet another division of the so-called masculine domain. Raised in isolated, but vibrant Nantucket, Mitchell’s interest in astronomy started at an early age.

Apprenticed by her father, as an amateur astronomer young Maria would climb, night after night, to her house’s crude rooftop observatory to diligently study the stars. In 1847, during one of her many nighttime sweeps, Mitchell discovered a comet, propelling her into international fame. Within subsequent years, she became America’s first professional astronomer and one of the founding professors of Vassar College.

Although Mitchell’s success as a feminist scholar was certainly rare for the day, she had not, contrary to what some might expect, triumphed over impossible odds. Barriers against feminist achievement in the twenty-first century are pretty intense, and upon starting the book, I that expected that conditions must have been much harsher nearly 200 years ago. The great surprise for me came when I found that Mitchell had faced, in actuality, relatively little bias. Young Nantucketeers, both male and female, were encouraged by their Quaker upbringings to rigorously pursue academic studies.

In Maria’s time, girls were thought of as naturally scientific, and were urged, rather than dissuaded, to pursue studies in the field. The discipline, given the age, was considered less politically threatening than the humanities. Sadly, in later years the scientific field began to close ranks against female students. In the later half of this biography, Bergland chronicles those changes in American society that led to original ‘sexing of science’ and its transformation into a "man’s" game.

Although the Mitchell’s story is certainly an interesting one, Bergland provides only a dull narration of facts from the astronomer’s life. What I expected was the compelling saga of one woman’s journey to achieve scientific greatness turned out to be a rather lackluster account. The author also tended to stray from the main idea, overwhelming her reader with a mass of unnecessary detail. Often, Bergland would present a pages-long description of events that had no apparent connection to the central plot. Nevertheless, Maria Mitchell and the Sexing of Science remains a satisfactory account of Maria Mitchell and her truly enormous contributions to astronomy, education, as well as the nineteenth-century feminist movement.

Written by: Sameeraa Pahwa, June 10th 2008

American Furies: Crime, Punishment, and Vengeance in the Age of Mass Imprisonment

admin — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 15:06:00 +0000

By Sasha Abramsky

Beacon Press

"When the annals of our era are written, the United States will… come to be defined as a prison state." Not to spoil the ending, but this is the last, haunting sentence of American Furies, Sasha Abramsky's scathing indictment of the U.S. prison system. If you still believe that America is a just democracy where everyone is treated equal, then you really have to read this book. I found myself laughing aloud in sour irony recently as President Bush commuted Scooter Libby's prison term because he felt that the thirty month sentence was "excessive." Tell that to Dan Johnson, an inmate that Abramsky profiles who is currently serving a twenty-eight years to life sentence for possession of a small amount of cocaine, his "third strike" drug offense in California.

I worked in womens' prisons and juvenile corrections institutions for six years and still found my jaw dropping at the absurdities and horrors described in this nightmare of a book. Whether describing female chain gangs in Arizona, the capitalistic rise of private prisons or the inhuman and torturous conditions in maximum security units, Abramsky conjures the human stories behind the headlines. He contextualizes the present prison crisis by outlining the history of incarceration in the U.S., beginning with the 18th century's silent prisons, through the rehabilitation movements of the 1960s and '70s and then the tough-on-crime backlash of the 1980s through today.

His statistics are damning: In some communities, more young men go to prison than go to college; the U.S. spends more money on criminal justice than on higher education; the U.S. incarcerates more people than any other industrialized nation; and on and on. He parallels political movements and social trends with the rise of the pro-prison "business," and tracks the "victim's rights" campaigns and their harsh effects on sentencing. Though a comprehensive whirlwind of stories, statistics and interviews, at under 200 pages, I felt that he left out some crucial feminist issues, such as the rise in female inmates, particularly girls, and the effects of parents' incarceration on children.

But don't dismiss this book as just another scathing rant about how screwed up the system is. Abramsky knows how to write a story and his imagery, intellect, passion and anger bleed through each chapter. I kept naively waiting, though, for that magic finale where he offers hope and solutions for our nation's violently oppressive present situation. Though it's no happy-ending fairy tale, _American Furies _serves as a fierce warning of the self-perpetuating cycle of violence we ascribe to if we continue to let prisons replace schools as the incubators for our future.

Written by: Dana Edell, July 31st 2007