Sumach Press

Parachuting

mandy — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 20:00:00 +0000

Those who are avid readers often fondly remember the books that seemed to have changed our lives. Many of the books that have stuck with me, I read during my teenage years. Adolescence is a time in life when people struggle with identity and seek to be understood. The books we connect with at this time can be an extremely powerful influence—sometimes as powerful as a friend, a counselor, or a family member.

Not much time has passed since I was a teen, but young adult books seem a lot different to me now. More appear open and honest about the struggles actual kids go through, and Parachuting by Leora Freedman is this kind of book. It doesn't shy away from delving into the realistic challenges of the main character, sixteen-year-old Zoe Diamond. There is no sugarcoating in this book, thankfully!

Parachuting is Freedman's second novel, a follow up to Ivory Pomegranate, which won several awards in Israel. This book is a coming of age novel in which Zoe struggles with a suicidal best friend, a confusing crush on her Hebrew School teacher, and asking big questions about life and identity. She has sex, cuts class, and smokes pot—all things I imagine would make her more relatable to teenage readers.

Freedman is spot-on in writing a believably self-absorbed teenager. So, given that I was reading Parachuting as an adult, it was sometimes annoying to be immersed back in that phase of life. But the feelings explored throughout the book—confusion, anger, depression—are ones we can all understand.

It would have been interesting to delve deeper into some of the issues touched only on the surface in the book, like the state of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in 1973 or the race relations at Zoe's school. Hannah Senesh, the real-life Israeli parachuter whom Zoe admires, has a very fascinating biography, and it would have been neat to hear more about her in the story. A strong female role model in a YA book is always a good thing!

It was refreshing to read a young adult novel that deals with the important themes of queerness and trauma. Freedman treats her readers with respect, wrestling with the true challenges of being a teenager rather then pretending high school is the best time of our lives.

Written by: Lesley Kartali, April 2nd 2011

Who's Your Daddy?

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

Edited by Rachel Epstein

Sumach Press

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

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

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

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

Written by: Ruth Cameron, December 12th 2009

Remembering Women Murdered by Men: Memorials Across Canada

admin — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 13:48:00 +0000

By The Cultural Memory Group

Sumach Press

Every day, women are dying. We outnumber men nine to one as victims of violence, and it is affecting society socially and economically. A recent study by the government of Canada estimates the health-related cost of violence towards women costs the Canadian taxpayer $1.5 billion annually. If women are dying at such an alarming rate, why hasn’t our plight received more attention?

In the book Remembering Women Murdered by Men, The Cultural Memory Group attempts to provide a voice for the millions of victims of femicide. Over a period of five years they tour Canada, examining thirty monuments dedicated to brutalized women. Throughout we find common themes of resistance and bureaucratic foot-dragging; almost every memorial examined experiences some form of backlash. The resistance is patronizing, unwarranted, and found at all levels. Media takes issue with language that demonizes men, War veterans categorize femicide as an issue for “special interest groups,” and universities, keen to acknowledge that women are dying, are reluctant to recognize that women are dying at the hands of men.

The book illustrates the hard work and dedication involved in each monument. Despite public qualms, each memorial was brought into existence though a cooperation of grassroots political groups, local artisans, community volunteers and government officials. They are beautiful works of art that serve as a powerful reminder of gender inequalities. While the monuments turn public spaces into private places for reflection, the book acknowledges that monuments alone do not always inspire activism. Much work is needed in the form of public awareness and education.

If you are interested in women’s issues, read this book. It is informative and well written. While it does, at times, lose itself in academic diatribes, the book is on the whole an entertaining read. Pick it up, take a look, and then share it with a friend. In order to eliminate violence against women, we must first acknowledge it. Reading a book like this is a step in the right direction.

Written by: Cheryl Santa Maria, January 26th 2007

Trans/forming Feminisms: Trans-Feminist Voices Speak Out

admin — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 13:06:00 +0000

Edited by Krista Scott-Dixon

Sumach Press

Krista Scott-Dixon’s collection, Trans/forming Feminisms: Transfeminist Voices Speak Out blending gender theory and a remarkable range of personal narratives, provides a powerful, complex and deeply moving introduction to a relatively neglected and misunderstood area of feminist study: the experiences, gendered multiplicity, personal and social struggles, and the touching humanity of people identified—for lack of a better term—as trans.

The book thoroughly explodes the dualistic conception of gender, reviews research into the “constructedness” of our gendered identities and demonstrates dramatically some of the diverse ways in which gender is made manifest. Carefully produced and edited, Trans/forming Feminisms ought to be snatched up by women’s and gender studies instructors—it will be a terrific addition to introductory classes, but it should also resonate with all of those who are willing to entertain the idea that the human world is not divided tidily into female and male.

Like many scholars who see critical theory as a central part of their professional mission, the editor invokes bell hooks’ understanding of theory as a “location for healing.” To theorize trans identity and experience is to take steps towards challenging oppression, towards understanding and complicating a central part of our identities. She rejects a facile embrace of trans identity among non-trans sympathizers (“it’s hip to be trans; maybe I’m trans, too”), and the narratives are as painful as they are celebratory.

The legal and ethical issues the book raises such as events and organizations with “womyn-born womyn only” policies or “no penis” policies similarly resist easy answers or sloganeering, but reveal the complex and uncertain alliance between self-described feminists and trans people. Just how inclusive have feminist organizations been? Can exclusivity be a legitimate strategy?

The terms used to categorize different identities, different understandings of sexual selves, are messy, overlapping, ambiguous—an indication that the theory is new, and that exploration of trans experience is still in its formative stages. While metaphors such as gender-bending or a gendered continuum have been useful constructs, names for the wide variety of gendered expression can be baffling: genderqueers, birls, FTMs and MTFs—the categorical language seems inadequate. And yet labels, however damaging they can be in one sense, afford a kind of group identity and can have explanatory and healing power. Dixon’s book might be the most accessible and potentially influential treatment this subject has yet received.

Written by: Rick Taylor, January 19th 2007

The Book of Mary

admin — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 13:38:00 +0000

By Gail Sidonie Sobat

Sumach Press

Initially, this novel annoyed me. It begins with the story of Mary at the age of 14. She is of marriageable age, but she is a willful girl who is not only literate, but a teenager with ideas of her own. She sneaks out at night, and catches the eye of a young man named Jeremiah at a brothel, where she is allowed to dance. Joseph is there, too, and he has his eye on Mary, but she finds him to be dull. Mary and Jeremiah fall in love, and Mary gets pregnant. She then finds that Jeremiah is a rogue. Undaunted and ever resourceful, Mary saves both herself and the baby by concocting a wild lie about being visited by an angel who tells her that she is to give birth to Yahweh’s son. Joseph, who by now has already asked for her hand, is not fooled, but he is easily dominated, and so he goes along with the lie. Her parents, though devout Jews, do as well. And so Mary is married to Joseph, and he takes her to Bethlehem on a camel’s back. You may know rest.

Mary reminds me too much of a stereotype in the beginning. It is a story of a girl becoming a woman and coming into her own, refusing to buckle before authority, no matter how harsh and domineering that authority might be. Sobat repeatedly reminds us that in Mary’s day, women were stoned on a routine basis. This is, in theory, what kindles Mary’s crazy story about a virginal conception. What is so hard to believe, however, is that she actually gets away with it, or with the pseudo hospital and spiritual home for women that she supposedly builds, and which survives, despite the harsh patriarchal rule of law. However, the more I read, the more entranced I became. Sobat is a good story teller, and her Mary becomes a character that it is hard not to fall in love with. And the fact that Sobat comes up with her own version of the story told for 2,000 years becomes rather fascinating. We all know how this one is going to end. But it is the question of what happens to Mary, not to Jesus, that kept this reader turning the page.

Written by: Susan Melinda Dunlap, January 2nd 2007