City Lights Books

Who's to Say What's Obscene?: Politics, Culture, and Comedy in America Today

admin — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 22:30:00 +0000

I've long been a fan of Paul Krassner's more illustrious friends like Lenny Bruce and Abbie Hoffman, but until now I'd never gotten around to reading Krassner's own work. Who's to Say What's Obscene? appears to be a collection of random essays. I say "appears to be" because for most of the book, I had no idea what was going on.

The stories were interesting, but would just go from one to the next with seemingly no connection. I'd be reading about Don Imus, Michael Richards, and media censorship, and then the next thing I knew, I'd be reading about Walt Disney's death. Breaking the book down into chapters, as Krassner does here, is useless when each chapter is a random collection of essays that aren't even identified as separate pieces, and it left me scrambling. When I complained to my boyfriend, he replied, "That's what happens when you do a lot of drugs," which makes sense, as a lot of the book involves various scenarios where Krassner is about to go on a big interview, but then decides to do mushrooms beforehand to "enhance the experience."

By the middle of the book, I decided to just take each individual piece as it was and stop trying to make sense of everything. Eventually, I found the writing enjoyable. Krassner has lived a very rich life and raises good questions about what is actually obscene in our culture, based on his own opinions and experiences. As is to be expected, Krassner has a very liberal attitude towards most of the issues he raises in his book, like censorship in all its forms (he's against it) and legalizing drugs (he's for it). I do like reading viewpoints I agree with, but at times even I felt that Krassner took his opinions to the extreme.

Who's to Say What's Obscene? is a good book for people with short attention spans and far left-leaning views. Me personally, I'll keep it—but it'll lead a life doomed to the bathroom for short, mentally uninvolved reads, one to two times a day.

Written by: Jen Klee, October 9th 2009

American Romances: Essays

admin — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 23:14:00 +0000

By Rebecca Brown

City Lights Books

In this bountiful blend of writing, Rebecca Brown discusses the interpretation of words in the past and present. She mixes classic pieces of writing with contemporary history and combines her own coming-of-age anecdotes with other writings. Her commentary is sometimes shocking, sometimes eloquent, and overall, leaves you to wonder what she is thinking. Why does she choose to develop these essays this way? By reading more, you realize her point: for her entire life, she has tried tirelessly to figure out what is it to be “American.”

Brown's voice strongly suggests a quirky, laugh-out-loud approach to life. At times, her stream of consciousness takes hold, but you want to jump right in with her. Pleasant and insightful, this collection of essays illuminates thoughts many of us had beginning in high school and in current revisiting of classics. Every step of the way, Brown provides more substance to the confusing idea of "American."

Weaving in her own self-discovery, Brown humorously reflects on her own past. As a reader, you end up chuckling too, feeling like you can identify with her situations. Her references demonstrate a thorough study of Nathaniel Hawthorne as well as Gertrude Stein; both subjects recur throughout the compilation of essays. Elements of familiarity twist to define romance and Americanism.

Children's books provide a foundation of knowledge for us as we move into more developed interactions with our society. Brown incorporates this into her continued memoirish essays revealing her ongoing pursuit of the “American romance.”

With each unique chapter footnoted (and holding her opinion alongside the factual footnote), American Romances remains a fabulous point of reference not only for Rebecca Brown, but for all of us running with the same questions about the world around us.

Written by: Carolyn Espe, September 28th 2009

Smash the Church, Smash the State!: The Early Years of Gay Liberation

admin — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 16:51:00 +0000

Edited by Tommi Avicolli Mecca

City Lights Books

Like all good memoirs of the 1960s and early ‘70s, Smash the Church, Smash the State! takes readers back to a time when revolution seemed imminent. Change was in the air and the fifty-one essays comprising Tommi Avicolli Mecca’s important anthology vividly capture the heady exhilaration of queer activists on both U.S. coasts as the possibility of being out-and-proud became increasingly tangible.

The book is both a look back and a look forward. Its wide-range includes biographies of several unsung LGBTQ heroes as well as a retrospective of community rebellions—including Stonewall—that presaged the contemporary gay rights movement. Other entries run the gamut, from poetry to manifestoes. There’s an analysis of the persistent racism and sexism that dogged early organizing efforts and an incisive look at the mainstreaming of LGBTQ concerns that ultimately dampened the ardor of queer liberationists. Several essays also offer mournful reflections on the withering of pro-LGBTQ socialist and anarchist groups in favor of political organizations that are less challenging to the social order.

In the book’s first section, "Out of the Bars and Into the Streets," contributors conjure their anticipated liberation from racism, sexism, homophobia, classism and middle-class dreariness. It’s hard not to envy the energy, passion, and daring of thousands of queer activists who challenged authority and brought a constantly evolving understanding of sex and gender into everyday life.

So what happened? The post-Stonewall liberation movement, writes contributor Doug Ireland, was a celebration of otherness, an affirmation that it was okay for queer values and concerns to be different from those of straight society. That sensibility began to wane, he writes, when a swath of the community began arguing for marriage equity and the right to bear and raise children. Many LGBTQ folk also expressed a yearning for spiritual acceptance by the religious bodies they’d been reared in. Some opted to become preachers, lay pastors, or religious educators—and raised a ruckus when they were denied admission. Still others wanted simple domesticity, complete with home ownership, a new car every couple of years, and a family pet. Ireland calls this faction “the gay citizenship movement” and concedes that it edged out the radicals, as if the two poles could not possibly co-exist.

This unresolved tension continues to rankle, and Smash the Church, Smash the State! does a good job of laying out the conflict. At the same time, the essays do little to engage LGBTQ community members who see the American Dream as their birthright. Unconcerned with the issues that galvanized gay liberationists, they want to live conventional lives without being hassled for whom they love.

The activists writing in Smash the Church, Smash the State! are distressed by this, angry that so many LGBTQ people are politically unaware and/or disinterested. I understand their concern and agree that opposition to militarism, war, and the isms that restrict us needs to be disseminated to the widest possible audience. At the same time, when we say we favor non-conformity, it means we support people’s right to make decisions we hate, whether it’s joining the military, becoming a police officer, or moving to the suburbs. The existence of queer Republicans and soldiers may befuddle progressives, but we have no more right than Focus on the Family to dictate who can do what when.

Worse, it’s a losing battle since no one can stop this assimilation. Instead, it behooves those whose lives exemplify the culture of difference—lives beautifully heralded in Smash the Church, Smash the State!—to proudly strut their stuff. What better way to honor the rainbow that has come to symbolize diversity?

Written by: Eleanor J. Bader, September 28th 2009

I’jaam: An Iraqi Rhapsody

admin — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 13:18:00 +0000

By Sinan Antoon

City Lights Books

Sinan Antoon’s novel I’jaam: An Iraqi Rhapsody brilliantly portrays the complex impacts of political repression on humanity. It takes the form of a fictionalized compilation of interpreted handwritten prose of an Iraqi college student as he is held and tortured in a prison during the reign of the Ba’th regime in the 1980s. In the introduction of the novel, the reader is told that the Ministry of the Interior in Baghdad came across a handwritten “un-dotted” manuscript that an individual has "clarified" by dotting and inserting diacritics. Antoon points out that half of the twenty-eight letters in the Arabic alphabet are pairs or triplets with the same skeleton. They indicate different sounds by the varying number and location of “dots” above or below the letter. The word “I’jaam,” found in the title, literally means the “dotting” of Arabic script, but has come to signify something that produces a “clarifying” effect. And, thus, Antoon sets up the prose as "found text" written by a prisoner that government personnel have interpreted and made available to the public.

Antoon’s introduction is remarkable in its ability to blur fact and fiction and encourage the reader to become conscious of the politics of memory, story and interpretation. The reader wonders throughout: What meanings have disappeared or changed because of the “dotting” of the script and the political motivations of the interpreter? Which of these prisoner’s memories are true, and which are hallucinations of an under-fed and tortured captive? Most importantly, Antoon propels the reader to question their own need to distinguish between fact and fiction. He illustrates that life under a repressive political regime often means the inability to differentiate between reality, fiction, time and space.

Antoon writes with an illustrious and brash poetic style that moves the reader in profound ways. We not only understand, but feel the fear, frustration and helplessness that come to claim every inch of an oppressed person’s existence. “To live here means to piss away three quarters of your life waiting,” he writes, “Waiting for things that rarely come…waiting so long that you drown in time, because time itself is a fugitive citizen, trembling with fear and stumbling on the sidewalk, only to be pissed and spat upon by a merciless History.” It is not difficult to read passages like this, which were written in the context of the Ba’th regime, and apply them to the current U.S. occupation of Iraq. The passing of time has only increased the relevancy of this text to current political crises.

The real brilliance of this novel comes from Antoon’s ability to illustrate the tense relationship between culture, history and oppression with subtlety and potency. The narrator struggles to keep his passion for poetry and literature alive as the government attempts to regulate which forms of expression are acceptable and which are not. His obsession with the banned Iraqi poets al-Jawarihi and Muzaffar al-Nawwab illustrates oppressive regimes’ ability to deaden the humanity of the people. Ba’th party slogans and sayings of Saddam Hussein are interwoven with personal experiences and demonstrate the discrepancy between the rhetoric of the regime and the reality of life in Iraq. Ultimately, Antoon’s poetic expression of this dichotomy is his greatest strength as he powerfully unearths the deadening impact of oppression.

Written by: Arwa Ibrahim, June 8th 2007

Criminal of Poverty: Growing up Homeless in America

admin — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 12:59:00 +0000

By Tiny (a.k.a. Lisa Gray-Garcia)

City Lights Books

We never hear from the poor. They are simply not represented in public life. Perhaps it is because we don't think they deserve to have a say. After all, one of the strongest myths in American society is that any person can succeed as long as she is willing to work hard and never give up. What I like about Criminal of Poverty is that the writer, Tiny, a.k.a. Lisa Gray-Garcia, proves that is simply not the case.

In her gripping, although often awkwardly written, memoir, Tiny portrays her formative years growing up with her mother, Dee, as a very tumultuous time since they lived in grimy apartments, motels or in their car. She was unable to attend school because Dee was mentally ill – agoraphobia – and relied on her daughter to take care of the most basic tasks of survival, including securing housing, healthcare and community services. At certain points, Tiny even manages her mother's personal relationships with men because these boyfriends can help them survive by providing rent or food money.

Dee is an artist, and it is through this expression that she and her daughter cope with their struggles. She and Tiny come up with creative ways to make art and money by opening up a fashion clothing business, but, ultimately, it is Tiny who ends up doing most of the work, especially after Dee's avant-garde clothes are not selling, and they have to switch to cartoon-based designs for their covert t-shirt business. During this time, Dee's agoraphobia is worsening, and she is unable to fulfill many responsibilities required for the smooth running their operation. Because of Dee's utter dependence, Tiny has no time where she doesn't have to worry about money and having a place to sleep at night.

Throughout Criminal of Poverty, Tiny seems to carefully emphasize how much she respects her mother and does not blame Dee for loss of childhood; it is the system that puts women in such a powerless position that they are forced to make bad decisions. I believe Tiny wants to feel this way, and maybe even mostly does; yet in some places I could feel the tension in her writing between the pain she felt as a young woman and the carefully distanced writer of today. Assigning the blame of her living conditions to the system is deserved, but it doesn't always make for the best reading. Sometimes Tiny's careful protection of Dee got in the way of the narrative because this doesn't allow the reader to make one’s own judgments.

A dense book, Tiny writes with very little dialogue and scene, nor does she often refer to the settings, which are Los Angeles, Fresno and the San Francisco Bay Area. Instead, her writing style is very reflective and analytical; she describes what happens and what the consequences are, which doesn't make for a quick read. Although this book is not gracefully written overall, there are a few passages that stand out as exceptional and the story trumps any writing flaws because it is simply compelling. I was left with a few questions after the last chapter, not completely sure if the cycle of poverty was finally over, but I liked this open ending because it gives me space to think about how the term poor is defined and what wealth really means, not only for American society, but also for me.

Written by: Logan Perkes, April 17th 2007