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for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf

barbara — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 08:00:00 +0000

There is something quite redemptive about the 2010 edition of Ntozake Shange's experimental “choreo-poem,” For colored girls who have considered suicide/When the rainbow is enuf, which is published as a tie-in to Tyler Perry's underwhelming film adaptation, For Colored Girls. Shange's words restore the choreopoem's original libratory message without the gloss and A-list names in Tyler's bastardised version. Consisting of a series of twenty overlapping poems about rape, post-traumatic stress disorder, abortion, love, and liberation, among other topics, Shange brings to life and colour the unsung voices of Black American women that was once upon a time, in 1974, long overdue. The poems come with stage directions that guide the reader in an imaginary theatre bold with exuberance and pathos, or at least that was something I was persuaded to imagine.

Shange is clear in her preface of the latest edition that For colored girls is a battle hymn for all women of colour, one that was inspired by the pain that reverberated her apartment walls in Harlem, New York, and one that should resonate powerfully with women of colour today and presumably the world over. But as a woman of colour who isn't black, American, or born into a long heritage of effacement and eventual self-discovery—a heritage that goes back to the brutal history of imperialist expansion and culminates in a present struggle for identity—I sometimes felt distanced from these verses. Despite my desire to connect to the ostensible potency of Shange’s poems, at times they were challenging, unfamiliar, and remote.

But this is not to say that Shange has failed completely in reaching out to all women and girls of colour on her work's core issues, as For colored girls urges me to read beyond its contextual trajectories and instead traverse the annals of my girlhood and young adulthood to find the common threads of insecurity, racism, and uneasiness in my own skin that binds all women of colour. But with that said, one's own way of finding the striking chord in Shange's work should not be so imaginatively contrived or elusive, particularly as each poem is guided in detail how it should be experienced and appreciated. To read out loud with the same joy and pain requires the intertextual quality that lies outside Shange's poems—out there in Black American communities, tangible and alive—that is absent in my world.

Nonetheless, there are stand-outs in Shange's work. In her poem on abortion, Shange captures the inner horror and absurdity of undergoing a termination procedure for the first time alone: “eyes crawling up on me/eye rollin in my thighs/metal horses gnawin my womb/dead mice fall from my mouth.” Others are obvious demystification of rape: “a friend is hard press charges against/if you know him/you must have wanted it.” Perhaps the most powerful of all is “somebody almost walked off wid alla my stuff,” a defiant speech of reclaimed independence from lovers who leave and take with them a woman's dignity, self-esteem, and faith in love itself.

The simplicity of Shange's language and the mimicry of colloquialisms invite readers to rethink the highbrow nature of poetry, interpretative dance, and theatre. There are more tears than laughters of joy, and despite the coloured girls who are “movin to the ends of their own rainbows,” rainstorms of anguish are long while rainbows are fleeting and sometimes elusive. In other words, there is still a battle ahead for women of colour and the fruits of the struggle are shared in small moments, often beautiful in verse.

Written by: Alicia Izharuddin, March 11th 2011

Curfewed Night: One Kashmiri Journalist's Frontline Account of Life, Love, and War in His Homeland

mandy — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 08:00:00 +0000

By Basharat Peer

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Basharat Peer sits calmly on the stage at The Hay Festival Kerala, giving his full attention to a question from a man standing beside me. Peer resembles a slimmed-down, younger James Gandolfini, but it’s impossible to imagine his passionate-but-measured speech exploding in a flurry of curses and pronouncements à la Tony Soprano—the kind of spraying invective, in fact, that he is being subjected to right now. As the questioner continues his diatribe on “the lies we are getting out of Srinagar,” and ultimately has the microphone forcibly taken away from him, Peer keeps his gaze on the man and, with hardly a flicker of anger, frustration, or sadness, diplomatically invites the man to fact-check his book and moves on to the next raised hand. He’s seen worse. After all, he grew up in Kashmir.

Peer was speaking about his book Curfewed Night, an account of his experiences growing up in Kashmir and then returning as a Delhi-educated reporter. His book was not written for Kashmiris; it came into being after Peer noticed that the bookshops of Delhi and New York (his current home) contained books about such troubled nations as Palestine, Sudan, and Bosnia, and while they all felt familiar to him, stories from Kashmir were absent from the shelves. Curfewed Night is Peer’s attempt to represent what he has seen and understood about Kashmir for a foreign audience, making it a book for Kashmiris only by proxy; indeed, to Kashmiris it is mundane, of interest only to see if they know any of the stories first-hand.

Nevertheless, Peer’s account of the everyday makes for compelling, sobering reading. In the beginning, he is a reckless teenager dreaming of Kalashnikovs and cross-border exploits. Aazadi (freedom, used as a byword for independence) is the first word on his and everybody’s lips. These were the times of greatest agitation and violence in Kashmir, shortly after hundreds of pro-independence protesters were gunned down by Indian soldiers in January 1990. After a weighty talk with Grandfather, who tells him, “You don’t live long in a war,” Peer’s family soon ships him off to study in Delhi, where his mind is broadened by university study at the same time as he deals with discrimination from Kashmiri-wary landlords.

After his parents miraculously survive a landmine explosion, he feels the pull of home grow stronger and decides to return; there, he finds that former militants—the people he wanted so desperately to join—are now nearly destitute and bear the physical and psychological scars of torture. “[The soldiers] cannot even imagine what torture is like,” repeats one man who spent time in Papa-2, Kashmir’s most infamous torture camp. No civilian has been left untainted by violence and loss. It isn’t all sadness and dark—intimate details, such as village in-jokes and the raucous Bollywood songs that have infiltrated traditional Kashmiri Muslim weddings, pepper the narrative—but these lighter moments serve to set the scars and violence deep into a very real, human face.

Through it all, Peer’s presence in the narrative is a constant. It is, after all, his story, though it is hard to consider it as such because he is particularly humble narrator. His evolution as the book unfolds is fascinating, beginning as he does as a gung-ho youth and progressing steadily to deep hurt and even powerlessness, demoralised by the weight of knowing so many troubling stories. He offers no solution; Curfewed Night isn’t a pro-aazadi polemic, or the report and recommendations of a government inquiry. It is Peer’s attempt to present the facts of what he has seen, heard and experienced, including but not limited to his own emotional response, and leaves all the room possible for the reader to form their own opinion.

Back on stage, the interviewer wants Peer to make a stand one way or another. Surely the youth of Kashmir are being left behind by the rest of India, who wear denim jeans and tweet from their mobile phones, she says. He smiles, says that “jeans and mobile phones are overrated,” and holds resolutely to a lack of conviction in any one solution or dialogue. Still, even if there isn’t yet a solution, there is hope, he says. Peer isn’t interested in grand pronouncements or easy answers. His contribution to the Kashmir question is a book as straightforward as it is powerful, and provides hope that those who read it will thereafter think not of rebellious uprising and anti-India sentiment when they hear the word Kashmir, but of the millions whose lives have been forever altered by bloodshed and conflict.

Cross-posted from The NRI

Written by: Haszard Morris, January 3rd 2011

Under the Dome

admin — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 09:00:00 +0000

By Stephen King

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Ever since I can remember, I’ve had an interest in things that go bump in the night–the unknown and the unexplainable. So, it was only natural that I would discover Stephen King. I’ve only read a quarter of the eighty or so books he has written, but I’ve always considered myself a King fan. One of my favorite books is The Stand, written in 1978 under the classification of what I consider to be “classic King” (pre-car accident and pre-Tommyknockers).

When I discovered Under the Dome was coming out, and that it was over 1,000 pages long, I looked forward to an epic with a good story and strong, interesting female characters. I wasn’t disappointed. Yet be forewarned: this isn’t classic King, but it’s one hell of a read.

King lives in Maine, so many of his stories center around a small town in the state with many “issues.” [Under the Dome[(http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1439148503?ie=UTF8&tag=feminrevie-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1439148503) begins when Chester Mills finds itself literally under a dome. (Imagine being trapped in one of those snow shakers, and you will understand the desperation that begins to implode within the town.) King is a pro at describing how people slowly become unglued in the midst of a crisis or disaster. Yes, you can sense the exaggeration, but you also feel a certain eeriness when you realize someone could act that way if pushed to his or her moral and emotional limits. King's work can be quite graphic, but that didn’t stop me from reading.

The basic story hearkens of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. I thought King’s inspiration must have been the hellish nightmare that was the Superdome where many residents of New Orleans tried to escape from the floods. I was surprised to learn King actually started writing this book back in the '70s. The actual dome is quite interesting, particularly when it begins to get dirty and the sky looks like something you's see through foggy glasses. The stars, weather, and the water are all affected by being trapped inside this insular shape.

King is a master at crafting evil characters, the slimiest and most disgusting people you would never care to meet. In this story, we get to spend many pages with Jim Rennie, the Second Selectman of Chester Mills whose every action is justified by being for the “good of the town.” The dome is probably the best thing to happen to the Selectman, and he uses every opportunity to move things in his morbid and sordid direction.

I was pleased that Under the Dome has several strong female leads. One is Julia Shumway, the editor of the town newspaper. The town is cut off from the rest of the world, but Shumway risks her life to ensure that the news gets out daily to the people of Chester Mills.

Although one wonders what the dome is, how it got there, and if it would ever disappear as magically as it appeared, the unrest of the townspeople is the real story in Under the Dome. The lengthy narrative takes place over a short period of time, starting off strong and not letting you come up for breath until the very end. If you dare take the risk, it’s a great read.

Written by: Su Lin Mangan, January 18th 2010

Dreams from the Monster Factory: A Tale of Prison, Redemption, and One Woman’s Fight to Restore Justice to All

admin — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 16:41:00 +0000

By Sunny Schwartz, David Boodell

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I have been in a fairly low-key battle with my landlord over him not fixing the gutter that fell of the house in a windstorm a month ago. Before that, I was engaged in a fight against the post office for delivering our mail to the apartment below us. I’ve realized that I have a hair trigger for injustice; though, up until now, my causes have been a bit, shall we say, unimportant. When I read Dreams from the Monster Factory: A Tale of Prison, Redemption, and One Woman's Fight to Restore Justice to All, by Sunny Schwartz with David Boodell, I discovered someone who had found a fight worth fighting.

Schwartz worked in the prison system as a legal intern in San Francisco in the 1980s. A man approached her, asking her to help him; he was in prison for child molestation and confessed that he was planning on doing it again after he was released in two weeks. He wanted her to stop him, but there was no legal way to keep him in custody. After his release, he molested a six-year old girl.

Fed up with the cycle of repeat offenders, Schwartz struggled with what to do. Not only was her professional life full of stress, her family life was tense. She grew up on the south side of Chicago in a Jewish family. She didn’t do well in school, and she was continually struggling with finding a place in the world as a woman, a lesbian, a lawyer, a sister, and a daughter.

Despite her struggles growing up, her brother’s suicide, a leak in an artery in her brain, and the bureaucracy and stress in the prison system, she begins developing a program called the Resolve to Stop the Violence Project (RSVP). This program was designed to stop the cycle of the “monster factories”—a jail system that kept releasing still violent individuals into the community.

RSVP teaches inmates compassion and holds them truly and emotionally accountable for their actions. The goal is to “reprogram” the inmates into healthier and non-violent additions to society. It also provides a voice to victims; an extraordinarily touching scene in the book is the story of Jean. Jean’s daughter, daughter’s boyfriend, and grandchild were all murdered in cold blood. She told this story, and the impacts that the event continued to have on her life, to an audience of violent criminals, many of whom were moved to tears.

Dreams from the Monster Factory is a direct and impassioned look at the prison systems and the possibilities for change. Schwartz is also at times brutally honest with herself and her actions. It is an intense look at a part of society many of us tend to overlook. It will put your life into perspective, and give you a new way to look at issues of justice and forgiveness.

Written by: Kristin Conard, April 19th 2009

The Clothes on Their Backs: A Novel

admin — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 11:48:00 +0000

By Linda Grant

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To be particularly honest, I am partial to any and all texts set in Britain, and The Clothes On Their Backs is set in London. So I was already loving the book before I started reading. My love only grew as I went on.

The story is of Vivien Kovacs, daughter of Jewish Hungarian immigrants. Vivien grew up in Benson Court, with parents who much preferred staying home than going out. Her quiet and sheltered childhood is spent reading and imagining, interrupted by a brief visit by her uncle Sándor Kovacs. Her parents slam the door in Sándor’s face—for he is a notorious slumlord, vilified in the media.

Sándor becomes an integral figure in the book. Niece and uncle meet in a park after Vivien has gone to university, married, become a widow, and moved back in with her parents. He hires her to help him write his memoirs. The two pretend to not know they are related, though each really knows the truth. Vivien digs for information about her past and her family, trying to come to an understanding of why her parents are the way they are. She is also looking for information about why she is the way she is.

The theme of clothing runs throughout the book in subtle ways. The most obvious connection is that Vivien’s family fled Hungary with just the clothes on their backs. The idea moves from there. As a teen and young adult, Vivien wears vintage clothing as a way to define herself: someone slightly alternative, bohemian yet educated. She briefly dates a young man who dresses in a roughed-up leather jacket, showing that he is not from the same class background as she is. Her most vivid memory of the first meeting with her uncle is clothing. Her uncle wore an “electric-blue mohair suit, black hand-stitched suede shoes... And the black girl on his arm, in a nylon leopardskin coat with matching pillbox hat, carrying a plastic crocodile handbag with a gilt clasp.” Much can be inferred from one’s clothing.

There are some moments that feel unresolved or unnecessary; Vivien’s abortion and her brief marriage to Alex don’t really seem to move the book forward. Other than that, the book reads quite well. Linda Grant writes artfully, and was deservedly on the shortlist for the Man Booker Prize.

The book evokes feelings of melancholy and raises questions. In telling the history of Hungary before World War II, and the history of London during the post-war era, questions of immorality and goodness are raised. Vivien’s question of knowing how to live is also left up to the reader to answer for oneself.

Written by: Kristin Conard, February 27th 2009

No One Belongs Here More Than You

admin — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 13:26:00 +0000

By Miranda July

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Full disclosure: I’m a longtime fan of and contributor to Miranda July’s collaborative website, Learning To Love You More. Last year’s Me and You and Everyone We Know is a film I regularly dream of making. So despite my anticipation of July’s premiere short story collection and real fascination and appreciation for her work as a writer, filmmaker and performer; I give this anthology a centrist’s recommendation. If you aren’t familiar with July’s media, suffice to say she’s one of the more brilliant working artists of her generation, and this collection wouldn’t be the worst place to get acquainted. I’d just probably recommend a smaller dose of her quirky formula.

One of July’s greatest strengths is her ability to tease out the strangeness of everyday life and the bizarre interactions we take for granted. While in this compendium she certainly includes the usual intense encounters – the return of a once-removed birthmark or tragedy involving the people with whom she is forced to share an apartment patio—most of the stories in No One Belongs Here More Than You are full of awkward sexual interactions or unrequited fantasies. Not bad or even or out of character, I still found myself yearning for more offbeat anecdotes and metaphors than lustful musings. However, what I do cherish are July’s introspective reflections on love: women who cry together in group romance therapy, informal childcare surrogacy, the couple who knew subconsciously they would sacrifice each other in the face of a killer, taking a sewing class to spy on your boss’s mysterious wife. My favorite story, "This Person," also drew to mind a 1999 Dismemberment Plan song, "You Are Invited." Random reference, I know, but the two are so comparable, if you like the story "This Person," you’ll love the song too. Both refer to unrestricted social access and how, ultimately, if given such a gift, many of us would opt out and head home anyway.

It’s important to note that several of these stories were previously published, so if you’ve been following July’s work in periodicals like the New Yorker, Bridge or the Paris Review, you may have seen some of this material before. Best method for intake: borrow this book from a more overzealous, Miranda-loving friend and read it in already awkward social spaces like crowded transportation.

Written by: Brittany Shoot, July 27th 2007

Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas

admin — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 19:23:00 +0000

By Chuck Klosterman

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Chuck Klosterman is a music journalist and pop culture critic known for his quirky theories and extensive knowledge of classic metal. Chuck Klosterman IV is a collection of his previously published work, including features, essays, and a short story.

The features that make up Part I of the book showcase Klosterman’s passion for talking to interesting artists (mostly musicians) and then explaining why they are interesting. Bono is interesting because he lets random fans ride in his car and preview the new U2 album during the interview. Billy Joel spends almost the whole time talking about his trouble meeting women, leading Klosterman to theorize about the downside of being able to write great songs while having relationship problems. In the standout piece, Britney Spears dismisses most of Klosterman’s questions and denies that her success is dependent on her sexuality. Some of Klosterman's other subjects are groups of non-famous but still interesting people, including Latino Morrissey fans in L.A., all-female hard rock cover bands, and goths taking over Disneyland for the day.

Part II includes an assortment of short, humorous musings and theories in the signature style made famous by Klosterman’s book Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs. He explains the difference between nemeses and archenemies, and how to recognize yours; lists the ten most "accurately rated" (as opposed to "overrated or "underrated") rock bands in history; and documents his quest to watch 24 straight hours of VH1 Classic (which, it turns out, unfortunately repeats material every eight hours). Before each essay, he places a marginally related hypothetical situation. For example, would you rather die without a legacy or be known forever for something "strange and neutral," like General Tso of Chinese chicken fame?

As can be expected of any large collection of works, Chuck Klosterman IV occasionally highlights Klosterman’s weaknesses. I am referring mostly to the forgettable short story that makes up Part III of the book, and to the essay “McDiculous,” a sloppy critique of the movie Super Size Me in which he blindly (and somewhat inexplicably) defends McDonalds and denies that there is any such thing as corporate responsibility. Generally, however, he sticks with what he’s good at – clever and insightful analysis of music and pop culture – and when he’s good, he’s the best at what he does.

Written by: Kiri Oliver, February 16th 2007