9/11

Gladdy’s Wake

mandy — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 08:00:00 +0000

It took me a while to really sink my teeth into Gladdy’s Wake. The book weaves in and out of three generations, each tying together through family, hints of religion, and the story of Nawal Habib, a devout Muslim. Nawal (once Janie Kelly) is suspected of terrorism, an act that reunites her with her estranged brother, Frank (now a priest) and hospitalized father, Daniel (a once devout Catholic); both of whom she left to eventually reinvent herself as Nawal Habib. The story runs through Nawal’s family tragedy, her rebellion, the birth of her son, and eventual religious transformation, all the while introducing the reader to her grandfather, James Kelly, a womanizing Irish immigrant interested in fast cash with no real ethical principles, lest it regard his passion: Gladdy Sage.

Though each story is captivating, the book is fractured and difficult to engage in. It seemed that each time I fell into the story, the author interfered with an abrupt switch from one narrator to the next. It was not until the near end of the novel that Anderson’s transitions became fluid and absorbing, the way a book should really grab your attention and not let go.

Nevertheless, the story is a unique twist on the post-9/11 novel and introduces the reader to the challenges of belief systems and the interconnectedness of the human race through the passion of moral conviction. While the protagonists devote their lives to different ideologies, from Islam to Catholicism, atheism and the idolization of romantic love, each struggle with the reality of their idols and the conflicts that exist within themselves and their systems of belief. In this way, Gladdy’s Wake takes a critical look into how we follow faith and why we accepts conceptions of the “moral life” that contradict our character.

Nawal struggles with jihad and the role of women in Islam; Frank with the Catholic vilification of his hidden sexual orientation; Michael Kaminsky (Gladdy’s object of affection and James Kelly’s match) struggles with his Jewish heritage in the Communist revolution; and James Kelly with the real Gladdy Sage – an alcoholic escapist, devoted to Michael Kaminsky and the drink. None of the characters in Anderson’s novel are able to see their deities for what they are. Each blinds himself or herself, excusing as a way of maintaining the pedestal upon which they have placed their flawed idea of morality.

In turn, the story employs a seemingly fractured start to reveal the connection between the disconnected by relating the characters on a moral level. In this way, the author recovers her initial shortcomings. Though this lends the question, what makes a book? Its ability to capture its audience upfront, or to engage its reader with a critical approach to a heavy issue?

Written by: Ani Colekessian, April 22nd 2011

Morning Haiku

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

By Sonia Sanchez

Beacon Press

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

My Name is Khan Soundtrack

admin — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Various Artists

Sony Music

My Name is Khan is a Bollywood movie that captures the post-9/11 journey of a Muslim immigrant who has been diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome. The movie and its soundtrack by Shankar Mahadevan, Ehsaan Noorani, Niranjan Iyengar, and Loy Mendonca has remained at the top of the charts since its release in January.

There are six original tracks on My Name is Khan. The first song, "Sajdaa," is sung by Richa Sharma Rahat Fateh Ali Khan and Shankar Mahadevan. "Sajdaa" is the hip, happy song of this album, and brings a spring to your feet. The tracks that follow are the melodius "Noor E-Khuda, sung by Adnan Sami, Shankar Mahadevan, and Shreya Ghoshal then "Tere Naina," whose lead vocals by Shaqat Amanat Ali are an absolute delight to ears. The song praises the “eyes of beloved” and transforms into more traditional qawwali toward the end.

“Allah Hi Reham” is a concoction of Sufism and spiritualism that includes a four-minute solo sung by Rashid Khan. It's lyrics are the best in that the song stays longest in your mind. The titular theme performed by The Bombay Film Orchestra is mildly pleasing, but it could have been better. The album ends with "Rang De," sung by Shankar Mahadevan with Suraj Jaggan on accompanying percussion, and is the perfect close for this wonderful musical experience, as it is an inspirational tune that conveys the virtue of goodness and honor.

The disc also has four bonus tracks that reference the filmic history the stars of this movie (Shahrukh Khan and Kajol) have together: “Kuch Kuch Hota Hai,” “Suraj Hua Maddham,” “Kal Ho Na Ho,” and “Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna.” The CD also features a video of the film's theatrical trailer. The album artwork is designed beautifully, like a manual. The pages have the storyline of the film, director’s notes, stills from movie, song lyrics translated into English, and a dedication to the people behind music.

All the songs on this soundtrack are a welcome change from your typical boisterous filmy pop. My Name is Khan takes a detour by embracing classical Hindustani music, and the elements from Sufism give the music a mystical touch. The lovely lyrics sung by soothing voices make these songs exemplary.

Written by: Sunitha Jayan, April 1st 2010

Amreeka

admin — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 17:01:00 +0000

Directed by Cherien Dabis

National Geographic Entertainment

There are a plethora of films which recount the arrival of distinct ethnic groups to America, ranging from the Eddie Murphy’s pathetic Coming to America to the Charlie Chaplin’s classic The Immigrant to the Patricia Riggen’s subtle Under The Same Moon or Jim Sheridan’s In America. However, no situation seems as tense as the arrival of visible minority immigrants to the United States post-9/11, where tense circumstances await them.

Amreeka is a the debut feature-length film by Cherien Dabis, named by Variety magazine as one of its “Ten Directors to Watch” this year, and we can indeed look forward to her next feature length film if her first is any measure of her talent. Dabis has worked in television, writing for Showtime’s The L Word and has also written and directed several award-winning short films. In Amreeka, Dabis’ writing underscores the subtleties of one who has bridged many cultures at once, a personal insight that she most likely gained during her childhood and adolescence in both the U.S. and Jordan, and as the daughter of Palestinian parents.

Dabis’ film questions the differences between the uneasy racial situation as it exists in the United States and the situation lived by the Palestinians in the Occupied territories. Nisreen Faour, a talented Palestinian theatre and television actress, is exceptional as the mother in this film; it is she who negotiates the departure for the United States with her son, the very promising young Melkar Muallem in his first movie role. Hiam Abbass, a famous international actress whom readers might recognize from such Hollywood blockbusters as Munich and Babel, is ever-talented in the role of the sister who has been living in the United States with her doctor husband and raising three girls.

Part of the film’s brilliance is that it is meant to unsettle viewers at various levels—Dabis often uses humour as her weapon. Whether it is in the encounters (at Israeli checkpoints, at the U.S. customs, during a job interview with a racist or in the visual of the Mom in her fast food uniform), in the stereotypes (the mom’s naivety, the fresh-off-the boat clothing debate, the terrorists) or in the general melodrama, there are many cringe-worthy moments. One circumstance that personally made me cower was the weight of gender in the mother-son relationship, especially in the film which has been touted as the story of an “indomitable” single mom who makes it on her own. There are a few condescending moments when the son patronizingly pats his mother’s shoulder during her hopelessness, saves the day by lending her money, and makes her believe in a paternalistic way that everything will be alright.

Sadly, the film does not seem to imply that the general condition of immigrants in the U.S. will evolve for the better. There are brief flashes of “openness” in the mom’s male friend, her dropout co-worker from the fast-food joint, and the lady at the bank who finally gets her a credit card (the American dream!). However, in the final scene, the family unit folds back into itself (with the male friend) and drives from the fast-food drive through to a Palestinian restaurant in Chicago to enjoy a blissful “traditional” meal, complete with hookah and dancing. In this turn of events, Dabis’ symbol is not lost; the errant Palestinians make their own mini-homelands wherever they may be, no matter how hostile their environment.

_Review by Sophie M. Lavoie_

Written by: Sophie M. Lavoie, December 26th 2009

Zombies of Mass Destruction: A Political Zomedy

admin — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 09:03:00 +0000

Directed by Kevin Hamedani

Typecast Pictures

Is there anything more delightful than a well-done zombie film? How about a well-done zombie film with an obvious 9/11 parallel and smart, witty female, minority, and gay protagonists? All this and more can be yours with Zombies of Mass Destruction, which is as much social satire and metaphor as a gory, jolly, bloody good undead time.

Zombies of Mass Destruction is set in idyllic Port Gamble, Washington, on the date of September 25th, 2003. The main characters are quickly introduced with few subtle nuances, since the film is as much about stereotypes as politics and zombies, and relies heavily on quick and dirty celluloid tropes. This isn't done to quickly get a point across in a white hat/black hat sense, but to poke gentle fun at the extremes of behavior in the age of the culture wars. The living dead take over Port Gamble as the apparent result of a terrorist attack; a swarthy, turbaned, Muslim man shown on a televised news broadcast claims credit for the zombie plague.

The town reverend hates everyone a stereotypically cinematic man of the church is expected to hate (“Unitarians, gays, and pro-choicers”) and has the town mayor on his side. There's an _au natural _quasi-hippie environmentalist who abhors violence (referred to as a “godless Jezebel” by the reverend), the jingoistic flag-waving Republican who is suspicious of and hateful to anyone perceived to be the Other, and the funny-accented, dark-skinned Iranian man who runs a restaurant in town. In between this stock character parade are the protagonists: Frida, the daughter of the Iranian restaurant owner, and Tom and Lance, a gay couple visiting Port Gamble to inform Tom's mother that he is homosexual.

Frida, Tom, and Lance are given more character shading than the other roles in the film. Frida, in particular, is smart, witty, and not the usual “last girl standing.” She shuts down her ignorant boyfriend when he, like most of the townspeople, mistakes her cultural identity as Iraqi rather than Iranian by cleverly telling him, “There's Norway you're getting into these panties.” (One particular detail that also struck me was the fact that she took off her high-heeled shoes to run once the zombies began swarming the town, hence avoiding any eye-rolling “watch the silly girl fall down and twist her ankle” moments.) Tom and Lance are also quick-witted and resourceful in fending off masses of attacking zombies (including Tom's own mother), and improvise well with available zombie-killing tools.

Meanwhile, the town reverend is ecstatic at the idea of Armageddon approaching, and is convinced the “war” will be won because “history's greatest zombie is on our side.” (As someone whose favorite exclamation of surprise is “Sweet Zombie Jesus!” this had me nearly in tears.) Taking sanctuary from the zombies in the town church, the reverend, the mayor, the hippie environmentalist, Tom, Lance, and various town churchgoers find themselves at odds politically and spiritually in a fine satire of the last eight years.

Without giving too much away, the film ends in a delightfully near-sacrilegious parody of the news footage Americans will recall seeing post-9/11: hand-drawn posters of memorials and missing loved ones and sales of tacky “I Remember” t-shirts. In a televised press conference, the remaining citizens of Port Gamble are admonished to remain “vigilant” and “report suspicious behavior.” Perhaps the over-the-top political parody combined with the stringy, graphic gore of the undead is not to everyone's taste. As a lifelong zombie fan, however, I was thrilled with the film's sympathetic, if somewhat humorous, portrayals of young minority women and gay couples.

Written by: Natalie Ballard, December 8th 2009

31 Hours

admin — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 01:02:00 +0000

By Masha Hamilton

Unbridled Books

Following the event, I promised myself I would never read "a 9/11 book," fiction or not. Having admitted that, I can't explain what exactly led me to almost eagerly pick up John Updike's Terrorist in the year it was published, save for the vague hope that this was a writer who could help make some sense out of a senseless situation. As long as I was breaking my vow, lifting the corner of Pandora's box long enough to peak in, I wanted assurance the hands of the author were skilled, strong hands - hands experienced enough to explain the unexplainable.

Ironically, it turned out Terrorist was abysmal, almost cartoonish in its depiction of the "kind of" person who willingly sacrifices his own life in an attempt to advance the cause of Muslim extremism. Instead of a moment of enlightenment, I received a disappointment so great it achieved the same effect I'd originally hoped for, failing to come anywhere near invoking the same degree of terror as 9/11 itself.

Having failed once makes it all the more surprising that, when offered dozens of choices, I actively chose to review Masha Hamilton's 31 Hours —a book with a very similar theme. Only this time, the premise hit much closer to home. Hamilton's novel is told through the lens of a close relationship between a mother and son, a relationship I know times two. The theoretical suddenly became personal.

The plot itself is simple. Thirty-one hours is both how long a mother has to reach her son—whom she knows to be in dire straits—and the length of time her son has to prepare himself to die. In this time frame each goes through eerily similar situations. First, the initial phase of realization: the mother (Carol) that something is terribly wrong and the son (Jonas) that what he'd worked for since training in Pakistan was imminent. Next, the preparation: the mother, in desperation, following all known leads and the son purifying himself, as he's been taught by his mentor. Finally, the act of magnetic repulsion, as the mother tries to reach her son in time, and the son she raised slips out of her hands.

Meanwhile, the other two major characters orbit, providing the context in which the rest of the story plays out. There is Vic, Jonas' neglected girlfriend, who is too caught up in her own ambition to become a dancer to be an effective deterrent, and Sonny, a homeless man with the preternatural ability to smell evil in a person, a character interesting in premise, though poorly executed through the author's inability to create believable dialogue.

The novel capitalizes on a post-9/11 world in which acts of brutality are a daily reality. It brings to the surface the terrifying realization some terrorists are homegrown, produced from the same soil as patriots, and hell-bent on bloodshed in order to right the balance of the world. Unfortunately for the reader, the book falters. A fast-paced thriller promising in its concept, in many ways it lacks in execution. 31 Hours hovers midway between mass market and literary fiction, unable to quite hit the literary mark due to its off-target attempts at a lyrical writing style, as well as passages of dialogue that clunk in the ear.

What Hamilton does achieve is edge-of-your-seat action in a book slim enough to be consumed in a day, taking the wait out of discovering the abrupt—and some would say breathtaking—denouement. Her premise is also a good one, coming at a now well-worn genre from a unique angle of the relationship between a mother and a child raised to know right, yet going terribly wrong.

31 Hours is not a great book. Nor is it the sort of book to perch near the top of the bestseller lists. Yet, it presents an original approach to a difficult subject and story threads that, though not always tied up satisfactorily, at least venture into new territory. And in these days of cookie-cutter bestsellers, sometimes that is enough.

Written by: Lisa Guidarini, November 30th 2009

Not That Kind of Girl

admin — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 09:00:00 +0000

By Carlene Bauer

Harper

Carlene Bauer was a seven-year-old child when her mother became a born-again Christian, catapulting the family into a regimen that put avoiding devilish distraction front and center. Fear of imminent doom led to a morass of rules governing the Bauer sisters’ every move, rules that touched on modesty, piety, and propriety.

Bauer was born in 1973 and Not That Kind of Girl takes the reader from her early childhood, to her coming of age in 1980s New Jersey, to the present. Along the way she describes the implicit and explicit messages she received about what type of girl she was not to become. As she does this she reveals profound confusion about womanhood, autonomy, and integrity, the unraveling of which forms the crux of this intellectually stimulating, and often funny, memoir.

Not surprisingly, there are many questions. Is premarital sex really sinful? What about drinking and smoking pot? Is doubt always destructive? Can someone love language, literature, and rock music alongside the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost? If so, how?

Four years at a Catholic college provide few answers, so not knowing what else to do, Bauer and a few friends move to Brooklyn, NY, post graduation. They’re hoping the city’s grit will help resolve these dilemmas, but distractions intrude—there’s the club scene, literary readings, parties, and a publishing job that gives Bauer a chance to hone her editing skills and wit, albeit for a pittance.

The years following the move are full of ups and downs, but it is Bauer’s continual search for meaning that keeps her from settling for less than she wants in relationships and employment. Still, confusion and guilt dominate.

“Christianity had taught me that reaching out your hand for what you wanted, since it might entail pushing someone else out of the way, was selfish and impolite,” she writes. “I could not reconcile my faith with my ambition—I could not stop thinking that one had to be suppressed for the other—and this left me too muddled to be shrewd.”

For a while, Bauer thinks that converting to Catholicism will provide clarity; it doesn’t. And then 9/11 happened. “I would be a fool if I opened my mouth to ask God to watch over us or give us peace after he had taken it away from thousands of people and might be preparing to end the happiness of everyone within the church and without. I could not seek consolation from him,” she admits.

Just like that, Bauer’s faith crumbles, at least temporarily; on the other hand, her quest for life’s purpose never waivers. It’s liberating, if hard, to shift gears into a more secular worldview, but the subtle change allows Bauer to find a satisfying job as a magazine fact checker, begin writing, and pursue a relationship that seems sustainable. As for God, who knows? Bauer’s odyssey is likely to be lifelong, and as her quest for divinity has broadened, she has begun to see, and write about, evidence of the spirit in music, poetry, nature, and city life.

Not That Kind of Girl is a revelatory and provocative work, a personal story that goes far beyond the boundaries of autobiography. Witty and deeply introspective, it shines a personal light on evangelism that proves 1960s feminists correct: The personal really is political.

Written by: Eleanor J. Bader, November 12th 2009

Statistical Panic: Cultural Politics and the Poetics of Emotions

admin — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 09:28:00 +0000

By Kathleen Woodward

Duke University Press

When I finished Statistical Panic I was left mulling over the ideas presented in the book for the next few days. A deeply theoretical exploration of the emotional landscape, Kathleen Woodward frames her book in American culture over the past fifty years, revealing the political, social, and cultural power that emotions have in our lives. She argues that emotions are largely undervalued in the social sciences, and that conveying emotional experiences can be a powerful form of communication, organizing and socializing.

An avid reader, Woodward allows personal narratives to help her navigate this exploration. Joan Didion, Toni Morrison, Virginia Woolf, and many other writers infuse Woodward’s theory with personal experience and literary sensibility that bring her text to life. Woodward also does an impeccable job of mapping out emotional outlets in the media from tabloids to politics and, in doing so, we begin to see why her incorporation of narratives allows for a more thorough conveyance of emotions in our media driven world.

Statistical Panic offers a thorough examination of the political aspects of emotions, something that contrasts with twenty-four-hour news cycles, Twitter, and other media outlets that rely on shock and the quick turnover of emotional response. From shame to compassion, Woodward’s analysis bridges the emotional with the social and political, critically assessing emotions in a way validates their importance. Using Freud and Virginia Woolf, Woodward scrutinizes anger. She ties this to the social implications of experiencing anger as a woman and moves into a discussion on the uses of anger in feminist writings. Jean-Paul Sartre and Toni Morrison help guide Woodward’s understanding of shame and how it operates in a society wrought with sexism and racism. Part of what makes _Statistical Panic _such a powerful read is Woodward’s insistence on including “experts” like Sartre and Freud, while at the same time refusing to examine emotions in the vacuum of white male privilege. As a result, the scope of Woodward’s work is immense, offering the reader an enormous wealth of theory, social analysis and of course, literature.

When Woodward’s analysis moves to the political realm we begin to understand the tangible consequences of what she calls “statistical panic,” and how this has legislative and bureaucratic repercussions. First Woodward discusses compassion, both analyzing liberal guilt and compassionate conservatism (something the George W. Bush familiarized the nation with) as tools of organizing. Woodward also covers bureaucratic rage, a growing phenomenon due to the horrendous state of health care and finally, statistical panic, a feeling that Americans have been inundated with over the past fifty years, and even more so since September 11th.

Statistical Panic offers a critical exploration of emotions, how they are used for political gain, how they normatively reinforce social inequality, and how their subversion can combat the same inequalities. Woodward offers emotions as a source of political and social mobility, and her writing challenges us to be critical of the way statistical panic is used. She urges us complicate our understanding of our own emotional responses to everything from personal relationships to Twitter feeds.

Written by: Lizzy Shramko, July 13th 2009

Walking the Precipice: Witness to the Rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan

admin — Sat, 02 May 2009 16:33:00 +0000

By Barbara Bick

The Feminist Press

A deluge of books on Islamic fundamentalism had swamped the world's bookshelves following the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Some 100 books and 5,600 articles were written on the subject, many focussing on the lives of Afghan women under Taliban rule. I chose to review Barbara Bick's Walking the Precipice: Witness to the Rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan despite knowing well that another book on Afghanistan and its peripheral issues would fill me with some apprehension. Would it be yet another sob story about those poor burqa-clad women and how much they need to unveil their faces, I wondered?

Thankfully, Bick's book is a little more than that. Walking the Precipice is a fascinating insight through the eyes of a long-time feminist activist in a country devastated by war and deprivation. Bick's keen observation and intrepid spirit for someone her age (she was sixty-five and arthritic on her first trip to Afghanistan in 1990, seventy-eight years old on her last) is inspiring and makes reading a well-trodden and tiresome topic easier. In her memoirs, readers will learn quite intimately of her arduous travels and passion for the local women's liberation groups that began as nothing more than her “one last, unforgettable journey before 'old age' kicked in.”

Once in Kabul, Bick, together with a small group of American women made their rounds in orphanages, schools, international health agencies, and support organisations for women widowed by the war. Not surprisingly, the burqa would immediately come to her attention – both a symbolic and physical form of repression she feels impassioned to lift.

In 2001, Bick returned to Afghanistan, this time to an even more dangerous terrain: a region dominated by the Northern Alliance, the anti-Taliban militia. Her journal entries at this stage become a gripping countdown of events preceding the 9/11 attacks, including the assassination of the Northern Alliance's leader, Ahmad Shah Massoud, by suspected Al-Qaeda terrorists. In the final section of the book, she witnesses during her return in 2003 the drafting of the Declaration of the Essential Rights of Afghan women and the post-9/11 reconstruction, marking a poignant cadence to her adventures in Afghanistan.

Bick and her cohorts, all foreign-based, are the dominant figures in this story. With little evidence of Afghan female agency throughout the book, Bick and Co. appear to do much of the "rescuing", reinforcing the idea that feminism is a privileged woman's preoccupation. The one major weakness in Walking the Precipice is the second-hand interpretation of events due to her inability to speak any of the local languages. She appears to be a sympathetic observer at best, but a helpless bystander of the injustice around her at worst.

Just as interesting is Bick's experience with the different strands of activists fighting for the Afghan women's cause. On her first trip, she travelled with a feminist with a strident pro-Soviet political agenda, while on her second she was in the company of an anti-communist member of the Kabul elite. These are all examples of how groups that are ideologically each other's polar opposites can come to agreement, for better or worse, on providing international aid to Afghan women and children.

All in all, Bick's slim memoir, although fascinating, recounts in the manner of adventurous Western holiday-makers and gap-year students in faraway, dangerous places. It is vivid, as many good travelogues are but it is hardly groundbreaking in the sea of post-9/11 books.

Written by: Alicia Izharuddin, May 2nd 2009

American Muslim Women: Negotiating Race, Class, and Gender Within the Ummah

admin — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 10:58:00 +0000

By Jamillah Karim

New York University Press

Jamillah Karim takes an extremely complex and contentious set of topics—race, class, gender and faith—and skillfully examines them within the framework of the ummah, or the Muslim community. American Muslim Women is an ethnographic account, but it is also a deeply personal look into the lives of a group of women whose voices are not typically heard in American society.

Karim interviews both African American and South Asian women in Atlanta and Chicago, and though her sample group is relatively small, she is astonished at the many layers of racial and ethnic hierarchies she finds. She is also surprised at the degree to which "women in particular move outside their ethnic Muslim spaces and interact with other Muslim ethnic groups." Karim explains that in many cases it is the inequality itself, both gender- and racially-based, that causes women to cross racial and ethnic lines and form a common American Muslim identity.

One of the strongest chapters of American Muslim Women focuses on second-generation Muslim women in Chicago after September 11, 2001. In the precarious and suspicious post-9/11 environment, American Muslims had to both defend their faith as peaceful and humane and to reinforce their identity as Americans. These two desires, though not necessarily conflicting, created a struggle among American Muslims to renegotiate their place within the global ummah. These complex and contradictory interplays form the compelling center of American Muslim Women. It is a finely crafted and contemplative work that challenges its readers to examine the assumptive lens through which they may view their neighbors, friends, and fellow citizens. It is not only the Muslim community that must deal with the racism, sexism, and discrimination in the United States, but all Americans.

Written by: Jennifer Wedemeier, April 7th 2009

The Terror Dream: Myth and Misogyny in an Insecure America

admin — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 17:39:00 +0000

By Susan Faludi

Picador

Many people are rightfully weary of discussing and analyzing 9/11. While it could be labeled insensitivity, it more likely has to do with a stifled national discourse, repugnant media spin, and a lack of in-depth processing. For the past several years, we’ve all been hibernating, trying to escape the aftermath of the terrorist attacks rather than actively deconstruct their meaning. The myth of American national security was shattered in 2001, and our belief that we—both as a nation and as individuals—could protect ourselves has evaporated.

Instead of productively handling this mass psychosis or treating the 9/11 terror attacks like another criminal act, its meaning has been buried under patriotic language, hyper-masculine war costumes, and false reports of our collective return to domesticity. In the face of our personal terrors, the media created a different account of our collective experience, marked by disturbing gender binaries and renewed focus on dismantling feminist achievement. Rather than following what should have been a thorough plan to prosecute the terrorists responsible, the news media pounced on feminism, blaming radical women for the attacks as supposed champions of the “soft” values that made the U.S. a vulnerable target.

The collective inability to make meaning of 9/11, to give the story a voice, is what Susan Faludi attempts to name in The Terror Dream. Mainstream media interpretations—from films like United 93 and Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center to television shows like Rescue Me and the off-Broadway play The Guys—have only served to regurgitate the timeline, replay the events of that day, celebrate the men—and only the men—who served their city and country. No major productions have attempted to dig deeper into what it has meant for American diplomacy, hero myths, or gender.

While the U.S. government temporarily showed an interest in “freeing” the veiled women in the Middle East, American women—specifically female fire fighters and policewomen—might as well have been wearing veils for all the attention they were given in the media. Female writers who called for a collective healing, for deconstruction, for a larger discussion about religion, terror, and diplomacy were silenced. Ignored or publicly belittled before being deemed irrelevant, some of the greatest women in modern journalism, social justice, and literature were thrown under the bus. Katha Pollit, Susan Sontag, Barbara Kingsolver, and Arundhati Roy were among the many once-prominent female commentators that quickly became the media’s proverbial whipping boys. Of course if they had been boys, they would have likely been handed a comic book, asked to show up on Fox News as a talking head, and told to fight like a man. Faludi devotes an entire chapter of The Terror Dream to the story of Jessica Lynch, a U.S. soldier in Iraq who made headlines when the story of her “rescue” was spun into yet another tale of the brave men saving a defenseless women (nevermind the implicit racism that the white soldiers saved Lynch from the Arab savages).

Explaining 9/11 to ourselves is perhaps even trickier when the Bush administration couldn't explain it either. Faludi points out that President Bush’s reaction that the attacks were “unimaginable” could explain his painful blundering and his inability to act with dignified transparency and reasoned authority. Trauma can cause extreme reactions, and many went into hiding, waiting for the nightmare to end. No one was able to rouse us to collectively meet our horror head on, to question what it meant so that we could move forward, because we had a president more focused on cowboy-themed catchphrases than leadership.

Faludi is perhaps the only person who could have written this book. Her thorough understanding of the way in which American culture, gender relations, and politics fuse together makes her one of the greatest living feminist journalists. She is able to tease out truths where the rest of us are still left scratching our heads. While other brilliant female journalists, like Naomi Klein, have dismantled terrorism myths to point to a hidden agenda—in Klein’s case, a disaster capitalist dismantling and rebirth of Iraq and Afghanistan, coupled with U.S. profits from the reconstruction plans—it has been difficult to name what has happened to the American psyche and specific gender ideals and relations. Deconstructing comic-book style firefighter hero myths, the return of the cowboy narrative, the Bush administration’s brief flirtation with Muslim women’s rights, and the almost complete vanishing of female voices of dissent (and reason) in the media in the aftermath of 9/11, Faludi explains the global inability to make sense of the media’s response to the trade center attacks, as well as our own inability to understand our personal reactions.

Written by: Brittany Shoot, January 3rd 2009

September 11, 2001: Feminist Perspectives

admin — Mon, 21 May 2007 13:25:00 +0000

Edited by Susan Hawthorne, Bronwyn Winter

Spinifex Press

As an antidote for all the disingenuous head-scratching over “what went wrong” in Iraq—how the United States transmuted the world’s sympathy and support into global revulsion in the wake of September 11, this painful retrospective on what might have been—or rather what should have been—is a powerful tonic. The writings gathered here, a pastiche of genres and a powerfully diverse set of feminist voices, were written in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks and published by an Australian press. Collectively, they urge restraint, appreciation of context and cultural history, acknowledgment of American complicity in terror, resistance to stereotyping and a simplistic Manichean perspective on those involved. Collectively, they imagine a nation that might have emerged from this trauma sadder but wiser, with a renewed place of leadership in the world.

This book reminds us that not everyone succumbed to fear mongering and the atavistic desire for revenge as the toxic dust settled over Manhattan. As we listen now to campaign-inspired and half-hearted mea culpa from politicians complaining they were misled, this collection proves that there were thinkers of real courage speaking out for peace and caution even in the weeks immediately after 9/11.

Barbara Lee, for example, in a piece written on 24 September 2001, explains why she stood alone in the House of Representatives in voting against war authorization: “I could not support such a grant of war-making authority to the president; I believe it would put more innocent lives at risk.” Candlelight vigils, held throughout the world, pleaded that “war and retaliatory violence are not the answer to terrorism, as they have never resolved any conflict”—to use the language of the Delhi Women’s Petition. In poems, letters, editorials and essays, feminist writers around the world stood up in the midst of the anger and asked for compassion, for a renewed commitment to global justice.

There are also ominous warnings throughout the book about the consequences of war for women that, six years later, have still not fully come to public notice. A poem by Evelyne Accad reminds us that “war conceives only war.” What we must now remember, even if catastrophically late, is that there was another way.

Written by: Rick Taylor, May 21st 2007

Targeted: Homeland Security and the Business of Immigration

admin — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 05:17:00 +0000

By Deepa Fernandes

Seven Stories Press

In Targeted: Homeland Security and the Business of Immigration, Deepa Fernandes dispels the myths that immigration issues are primarily about post-9/11 homeland security by revealing their roots as economic, labor, environmental, and race issues.

Through historical analysis, interviews, and good old muckraking, Fernandes discusses how illegal immigrants do not often view themselves as lawbreakers coming to establish U.S. citizenship—though many falsely hope that hard work will result in the achievement of the American Dream—but are illegal workers crossing to serve as members of a legalized underclass of wage-earners who perform tasks critical to both the U.S. economy and the American way of life. To complicate matters, Fernandes also examines how legal immigrants to the U.S., including valid green card holders, students, contracted workers, asylum seekers, permanent residents, and military personnel are increasingly affected.

The parts of Fernandes’s book that stand out are the personal stories of various people trapped by a system the U.S. government and media claim is “protecting the homeland” and “securing the border” when the reality is quite different. For many immigrants finding work and establishing a life in the U.S. is an imperative only because of the destruction of their home-state economies by U.S. economic policy and legislation, such as NAFTA, which is inflicted upon other countries through globalization and global finance firms like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (both of which are U.S. based).

Fernandes’s rake does get bogged down in the muck towards the end, especially in her extensive and often repetitious chapter on the effect the white supremacy movement has on immigration reform. However, she does receive kudos for refusing to let the Democrats off the hook. Nor does she let individual Americans escape culpability, as it is the American lifestyle - dependent on cheap goods, foods, and services - that fuels government and corporate exploitation of immigrant wage-labor. For the individuals caught by an unjust and racist system whose tales form the core of the book, the treatment of immigrants is not just a frustrating dance with bureaucracy, but is inhumane, a reality Fernandes targets with solid investigative journalism and sensitivity.

Written by: Lacey Dunham, January 9th 2007