death

So Much Wasted: Hunger, Performance, and the Morbidity of Resistance

brittany — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Traversing critical theory, body studies, psychoanalysis, philosophy, political theory, cultural studies, and performance studies, Patrick Anderson’s So Much Wasted captures the “politics of morbidity” embedded in the act of self-starvation. Anderson focuses on three settings—the hospital/clinic, a gallery, and a prison—to consider the way people who refuse food remain subject both to institutional means of force and control along with ideological constraints and mechanisms of discipline. What can these emaciated figures, hurling themselves toward death (or, as Heidegger calls it, “being-toward-death”), teach us about subjectivity, political resistance, and the production of power through everyday disciplinary practices?

Anderson’s central claim—that self-starvation both refuses and reproduces the power of the state, and as such produces bodies and subjects capable of radically unsettling the status quo—weaves itself through many seemingly disparate moments: the political resistance of Turkish prison hunger strikes, the state’s imposition that Terri Schiavo must live despite her husband’s wishes, the life-threatening starvation performance art of Chris Burden (who, after staging his own shooting, street death, and near electrocution, asked others to watch as he wasted away for twenty-two days in a Venice Beach, CA art gallery), and Adrian Piper, Ana Mendieta, and Marina Abromovic’s staging of self-starvation as provocative, artistic disappearance. Perhaps most compelling is Anderson’s reimagining of leading feminist theorizing about anorexia as the internalization of misogyny (e.g., Susan Bordo, Susie Orbach); instead, he argues that anorexics may cultivate a “taste for power” that subverts dominant ideas about women, gender, and queerness as they dramatically rebel against state intervention.

Playful and sharp, astute and extraordinarily sympathetic, Anderson captures the inherent tragedy, power, and radical potential in this seemingly “powerless” act of self-starvation. Not only does he write with breathtaking clarity, at times frolicking between mother-child psychoanalytic theories of feeding and sexuality only to later arrive in the world of masochistic performance art, but he also genuinely extends the leading critical theories of the body, performance, power, and subjectivity (e.g., Judith Butler, Michel Foucault, Sigmund Freud, Louis Althusser, and the like). Anderson insists that self-starvation is not simply perversion, but rather, a mechanism that produces troubled reactions from other bodies (individual or the state). Thus, he subtly asks whether psychological treatments, historiographies of starving bodies, force feeding, extensive monitoring, and even photographs might serve an even more perverse purpose: investing the state with the authority to say “who must live and who may die.”

Suitable for numerous audiences—graduate courses in psychology, sociology, gender studies, and performance; scholarly audiences interested in bioethics, fatness studies, prisons, and the philosophy of selfhood; and those practitioners who work with self-starving or self-mutilating clients—this book carefully outlines a politics of resistance through dying, near-death, and “wasting away.” Even if it sometimes floats above its subjects a bit—for example, I kept wanting more content directly from those who have survived their self-starvation attempts—Anderson has written a book worthy of attention and study. By imagining rebellion as a refusal to consume, he forges new and powerful links between gender, sexuality, the body, and the ideological apparatus of the state as it faces the many rebellions of its subjects.

Written by: Breanne Fahs, February 10th 2011

The Last Days of Emma Blank

admin — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 15:55:00 +0000

Directed by Alex van Warmerdam

Fortissimo Films

Emma Blank believes death is eminent. Surrounded by a sulky if compliant staff in her large home near the Dutch dunes, she shouts absurd orders in between bemoaning her fate. “Don’t worry,” she assures her impatient employees. “Before winter, I’ll be dead.”

Emma’s character is frustratingly distempered. Seemingly with no idea what is good for her, she demands an eel for breakfast, then violently vomits while her staff stands around shaking their heads with annoyance. It’s clear no one in the house has any sympathy for her condition, whatever mysterious ailment it may be. Meijer, the houseboy, expresses his hatred by mowing a swastika into the front yard. In cyclical fashion, Emma returns their collective disdain, at one point exclaiming, “It’s as if I’m surrounded by a bunch of toddlers with brain damage! Do your work with devotion, with a smile. Is that too much to ask?”

For much of the film, it is difficult to discern the relationship between Emma and her staff. Gonnie could be her daughter, or it could be a case of Emma’s misplaced affection. Meijer could be Gonnie’s cousin, or her boyfriend. In the beginning, Haneveld appears to be Emma’s husband, lying beside her in bed when she requests and adhering a fake moustache to his upper lip when she demands that he do so. Yet Bella, who appears to be the head of the waitstaff, also makes snide comments to Haneveld. “I’m not giving you another hand job for a while,” she threatens. Are they having an affair? What’s really going on here? How do these people know each other, and what the hell does it all mean?

Most alarming and the one truly humorous aspect of the film, Theo (played by director van Warmerdam), a fully-grown man, acts the part of the household dog, alternately bringing in dead peasants, humping Emma’s chair, and shitting in the yard. Does he think he’s a dog? Is this poor casting? Is it some sort of allegory about the plight of enslaved humans?

The central plot device—if, like me, you are unable to decipher what’s happening before it is actually revealed—happens roughly an hour into the film. With less than thirty minutes left to tie up loose ends, including Emma’s inevitable demise, the film rushes to an end and leaves several major storylines intentionally up in the air. Will the hired help inherit the house? Will their relationships survive in the wake of their time with their she-devil employer?

In Dutch with English subtitles, this truly bizarre, dark, situational comedy isn’t for everyone; frankly, I find it a stretch to label The Last Days of Emma Blank a comedy at all. But if you like feeling ill at ease, a bit discombobulated, or even thoroughly annoyed by what people will do for money, this bewilderingly strange film is for you.

Written by: Brittany Shoot, July 19th 2010

Beyond Living

admin — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Alicia Bay Laurel

Indigo With Stars

As the title of this album suggests, Beyond Living is a collection of folk songs about death, many of them written by musicians who have passed. Alicia Bay Laurel, known for her 1971 guide to sustainable living entitled Living On Earth, collected and recorded many of the songs on this album in response to a number of deaths she encountered in recent years, including, most notably, legendary Japanese singer-songwriter Takashi Donto Kudomi, who died in 2001 at a hula performance. Songs from artists from several countries round out this decidedly international album.

While the album's theme might suggest darkness, the album feels more like a celebration. As Laurel's liner notes suggest “lyrics about death contain valuable instructions for living,” and these songs are no exception. Their cheery melodies, vocals, and a fingerpicked guitar mix with deep sadness in the manner I associate with children's songs (Remember when you found out “Ring-Around-the-Rosie” was about The Plague?) The album invites the listener to engage with the certainty of death and to feel the relish that reality brings to living. Much like listening to the blues, listening to these songs provides a deep and pleasurable access to human emotion.

Beyond Living contains a few medleys that mix thematically related songs, including “Ruminations,” a twelve-minute instrumental track. It also often includes spoken word English translations within the song, a device I enjoyed the first time, but found tiring upon repetition. Repetition, in general, was my primary issue with the album. While I enjoyed individual songs, I found the experience draining as a whole. Perhaps that was the point; after all, what could be more predictable than death?

Written by: H. V. Cramond, March 28th 2010

Motherland

admin — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 17:00:00 +0000

Directed by Jennifer Steinman

Gigantic Digital

Director Jennifer Steinman’s debut, Motherland, is a poignant documentary about six American women who have lost their children (and a brother) and find themselves together on a quest of healing. Previously strangers to one another, these grieving women travel to South Africa to volunteer for seventeen days helping at-risk children.

Steinman developed the idea for this documentary while watching her friend Barbara, one of the six women in the film, mourn the the loss of her son. She simultaneously considered the burgeoning numbers of mothers in Africa mourning the deaths of their children due to HIV, AIDS, and other disasters. She decided to set up the Motherland project in December 2006 in the hopes that women going through the same pain could find healing through one of the greatest gifts: offering healing to others in need.

Thus, six women thus found themselves among South Africa’s poverty and desperation—right where they were needed most. They volunteered at an orphanage to help care for 230 children in need of hugs, food, nurturing, and any and all types of love. Some of these children had lost their mothers to HIV. Notably, the volunteers were also asked to help teach a grief workshop for the children.

The brokenhearted women and children hugged, danced, laughed, played, clapped and cried with each other. It is impossible not to smile at the love and joy they enjoyed together when they could, and not to tear up at the consolation they bestowed on one another in their sorrow. We get to know the story of each mother and her dead son or daughter as well as that of a woman grieving her dead brother through stories, memories, and photos. There is no glitz, no makeup, or emotionally manipulative music to distract us from the raw emotion running through these women’s veins.

One mother took the trip as a chance to honor her dead son. A twenty-something had lost her brother, and their mother was in such a pit of despair that she didn’t leave her apartment, so the daughter went on the trip instead. All of the women were unable to let go of their overwhelming pain at the beginning, but were able to start healing as they let go and gave love to the children who needed it. These women, it turns out, found that they needed those children in return.

The director’s sympathy for the mourning women is evident through the screenshots and their nuances: Steinman’s attention to detail, the close-ups of faces, silent gazes, and smartly chosen landscapes. The authentic nature of this narrative and film is undeniable. I got choked up more than I’d like to admit. Consider that a warning.

Written by: Natalia Real, January 10th 2010

Fatherless Daughters: Turning the Pain of Loss into the Power of Forgiveness

admin — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 01:00:00 +0000

By Pamela Thomas

Simon & Schuster

I recently saw an Oprah show on hoarding. At a certain point during the program, the two women featured on the show said they could trace this psychological condition back to losing their father. Both women were married when they lost their fathers (one is now divorced and the other is separated from her husband) and both have children. I mention this because in our society we treat grief as a luxury we can’t afford to dwell on rather than a necessary part of life we can’t avoid, and this lack of compassion and understanding for grief and loss seems to resurface in myriad ways in people’s lives.

When I lost my father three years ago to complications related to Alzheimer’s disease, even though his death was not entirely unexpected, I found myself thrown into a maelstrom of emotions. As a freelance writer and editor, I couldn’t have imagined returning to work after the typical one or two weeks of mourning that most companies typically allot to their employees. I also found that our culture exerts a certain amount of pressure on one to get back to life as quickly as possible and not dwell in your grief for too long. While I tried to get back on track both personally and professionally, my unfinished grief seemed to haunt me, and I found myself feeling unmoored and ungrounded in the world. In my grief journey, I have continued to seek out books and resources to help me understand how to navigate through this uncharted territory.

Reading Fatherless Daughters is another step in this process. In this book, Pamela Thomas explores the impact that the loss of a father has on women of all ages. Whether through death, abandonment or divorce, the loss of a father has a profound influence on a woman’s life. For this book, Thomas interviewed women ranging in age from nineteen to ninety-four. Most of the participants lived in the U.S., but she also spoke to women living in Canada, Mexico, and Japan.

Thomas explores our commonly held attitudes about fatherhood and provides a historical and cultural perspective. She references various works on the subject, including Luigi Zoja’s book, The Father: Historical, Psychological and Cultural Perspectives. As Zoja points out, the concept of fatherhood came late in our evolutionary process, and our notions of masculinity and fatherhood have traditionally been at odds with one another. The idealized version of fatherhood from 1950s television shows, like Ozzie and Harriet, has often contrasted sharply with the reality of fathers who viewed their primary role of that as breadwinners.

While one might assume that losing one’s father to death is easier than losing a father to divorce or abandonment, this isn’t always the case. Every woman’s journey of grief and loss is unique, but there are some common themes such as the primary roles that a father represents in a woman’s life: protector, guide to the world at large, breadwinner, alternative parent, second opinion, and male role model. The loss of this important figure in one’s life can have a devastating impact on one life. Allen also devotes a section of the book to the stages of child development and how losing a father at a young age can have a lasting impact on one’s life. When a woman loses her father at an early age, she tends to experience more insecurity and doubt in her life often manifesting in relationship related issues such as fear of abandonment, anger, low self-esteem, problems with assertiveness, and issues with commitment.

While I found this book to be a well researched and informative read, I found I could only read a few chapters at a time. However you choose to read this book, the fact remains that we will all experience loss and grief in our lives. The compassion we extend to ourselves and others during this time seems to be key to finding our way to the other side of grief. This book can be a helpful guide for that regard.

Written by: Gita Tewari, November 25th 2009

Life Is a Verb: 37 Days to Wake Up, Be Mindful, and Live Intentionally

admin — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 08:26:00 +0000

By Patti Digh

skirt!

Thirty-seven days after being diagnosed with cancer, author Patti Digh’s stepfather died. It is this moment that inspired the book Life Is a Verb: 37 Days to Wake Up, Be Mindful, and Live Intentionally. The book provides ways to think and ways to act that will help give meaning and intention to life because, as cliché as it may be, we really don’t know how much time we have left.

The book includes a number of writing exercises and journal entries that can help you come to terms with things from your past, as well as current roadblocks that are preventing you from living with purpose. We live our lives with certain patterns in place, and while certain patterns and habits can be helpful, negative thoughts and behaviors may have become unconscious. Digh’s book will help force awareness of the negativity and helps counter it.

Spread throughout the text are collages and images created by the author that add to the creative flavor of the book. Digh uses personal examples along with her own pictures to support her points. She is a woman who knows that life can be hard, and wants women to improve themselves, not for a man or to fit any societal image of how we "should" act, but a personal journey to enrich our own lives.

Chapters focus on a variety of topics that seem like common sense, but that can be hard to put into practice: giving back (to others as well yourself), trusting your intuition, loving yourself and others, and saying 'yes'. Working on being mindful and living intentionally can be challenging. Changing ingrained habits takes work, awareness, and time. It is easy to get lost, but Digh provides a road map.

For those without the money to buy the book (thank you recession!), check out Digh’s blog. She updates regularly and it’s full of inspiration and the acknowledgment of life’s challenges. The blog was an impetus for her first book, and she is currently working on a follow-up, specifically for the artists entitled Creative is a Verb: 37 Days to Unleash Your Inner Artist.

Written by: Kristin Conard, October 15th 2009

My Life in a Nutshell (10/10/2009)

admin — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 16:40:00 +0000

HERE Arts Center

New York, New York

Obie award winner Hanne Tierney’s latest work, My Life in a Nutshell, doesn’t shy away from big themes. Death, friendship, jealousy, love, lust, mourning, and carrying on in the face of life’s abundant whammies make appearances in this innovative, clever, and totally absorbing forty-five-minute puppet show for adults. Yes, you read correctly: Tierney’s play involves puppets—three males and two females—all of them life-size, and all of them able to convey the emotions you’d expect given the aforementioned topics.

The play opens on three black-clad manipulators standing on stage right. Their job is to move more than eighty strings attached to a vertical keyboard that controls Tierney’s creations. It’s an intriguing sight, but one can’t linger long on the manipulators’ fast-moving hands. Instead, the audience is immediately introduced to characters A, B, and C.

A is a French-speaking, Baudelaire-quoting intellectual who is in love with C. B is also smitten with the comely maiden. And the fair-haired C? She is an aspiring superstar who loves both men equally and sees herself as the third line in their open triangle.

Humor is abundant as the two men try to shimmy and shake their way into a more conventional dyad. But this outcome is not to be and in a somewhat ethereal scene, C is shot to death, leaving A and B bereft and seemingly alone. When the men eventually meet, a deep friendship develops.

All is well until they encounter D, a woman who, while “no longer young is fit as a fiddle.” At the same time, the middle-aged D has become despondent over the death of her lover, E. After A and B stop D from committing suicide, the three become inseparable.

As it turns out, D is an actor who has for years been channeling Gertrude Stein on stage. That is, she’d been doing this to consistently good reviews until the über-cool B points out that her performance is no longer “as edgy as it ought to be” and introduces her to hip-hop and live poetry. “What could have been a straight and boring life for everyone is not,” Tierney, the play’s narrator, announces. It’s a whole new world for D. Then, in a heartbeat it ends; A and B die.

It’s tragic, but despite her bereavement, D does not succumb to grief. “And D is left, and what is left is what she knows and what she knows is what she does. And what she does is Gertrude Stein,” Tierney tells the audience. This bittersweet conclusion affirms D’s fortitude while reminding us of the loss endemic to being human.

Produced by HERE’s Dream Music Puppetry Program and FiveMyles, a performance and exhibition space for under-represented artists in Brooklyn, New York, My Life in a Nutshell weaves vivid projected images and fantastic live music into the narrative. The end result is spellbinding and emotionally engaging.

See it and be charmed.

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

Invisible Sisters

admin — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 22:50:00 +0000

By Jessica Handler

Public Affairs

The loss of a loved one can wreak havoc on the closest of families. There doesn’t seem to be a formula that can predict which families will survive a tragedy and which families will break apart as a result. In her painfully honest and touching memoir, _Invisible Sisters, _Jessica Handler revisits the heartbreaking losses of not one, but two of her sisters: Susie (from leukemia at age eight) and Sarah (from a rare blood disorder in early adulthood).

Survivors’ guilt is a term that describes the feeling that arises when one pulls through an unimaginable situation while others do not. Whether it be victims of genocide, natural or man-made disasters, or plane crashes, the survivors are left to ponder “why them and not me?” Handler writes about the burden she carried of being the “well sibling” in a family that slowly foundered under the weight of sorrow and tragedy.

She describes her father, a union lawyer and activist who found it easier to help those less fortunate, but was helpless when it came to rescuing his own family. Her mother’s focus was to keep moving forward and hold the family together at any cost: chairing the PTA, saving newspapers for fundraising drives, and chauffeuring Jessica to piano, clarinet, and ballet lessons all the while navigating an endless round of doctor’s appointments. After Susie is hospitalized (again), she writes about the death of her parents’ marriage in spare but moving terms: “That night while I slept, my parents began the slow and terrible turning away from one another that erodes families facing the death of a child. My father became heart. My mother became mind.”

By the end of Invisible Sisters Handler has journeyed back into the past to revisit the journals she kept as a teenager and has also gained access to the voluminous medical records that charted the course of her sisters’ illnesses. Her bravery in revisiting her family’s story and her decision to choose life over the memories and images of the past that continue to haunt her to this day is inspiring.

Written by: Gita Tewari, September 25th 2009

Let Me Down Easy (4/28/2009)

admin — Thu, 21 May 2009 23:52:00 +0000

Zach Theatre

Austin, Texas

If you're squeamish, like I am, on the topics of death, dying, and illness, you shouldn't let that stop you from experiencing Anna Deavere Smith's Let Me Down Easy. However, you might not want to see it during a global health scare. On April 28, one of the first days of the swine flu panic, Smith's documentary production, in which she single-handedly portrays a slew of people who face death in some way, resonated a bit too robustly.

Austin's Zach Theatre is the show's last regional stop before Broadway, and, according dramaturg Gideon Lester, Smith has reshaped and refocused her masses of material—monologues gleaned from interviews she conducted with hundreds of people—since the play's 2008 opening in New Haven. In Austin, Smith began with energy and humor, portraying choreographer Elizabeth Streb as she re-enacted a flubbed dance effect in which she accidentally set herself on fire.

Next, Smith became cyclist Lance Armstrong, slouching on a sofa and discussing his bought with cancer and his competitive streak, as well as his lack of familiarity with her genre: "I gotta tell ya, I never seen a play, for starters." This kind of hilarious, self-conscious meta-commentary came up again in a couple of interludes in which Smith portrayed New Yorker theatre critic John Lahr grappling with the concept for the play.

After a series of characters whose claim to the "death" theme is that they willingly put themselves in danger of it—rodeo bull rider, boxer—Smith turned to the topics of illness, being a patient, and health care. It was at this point that Smith seemed to disappear, her physical presence taking a backseat to the language and manner of the material. A sixteen year-old girl with leukemia discussed her illness alongside her mother, who groped her memory in an attempt to pinpoint exactly when something went wrong. A monologue in the character of Philip Pizzo, the dean of the Stanford University School of Medicine, got a forceful round of applause after he identified the U.S. health care system as "broken" and in desperate need of a change from market-driven to government run.

The voice with the greatest clarity, for me, was Kiersta Kurtz-Burke, a physician at Charity Hospital in New Orleans, a public hospital where nurses and doctors cared for patients without electricity, relief, or adequate food for nearly a week post-Katrina, even after private hospitals had been evacuated. As Kurtz-Burke, Smith explained the realization, from the perspective of a "privileged" person, that the patients knew long before she did that their government would not make rescuing them a priority. "That was the first time in my life I've ever been abandoned by my government," she said. But for the low-income patients, those who have been given "the shit end of the stick" their whole lives, the neglect wasn't a surprise. Wham.

Smith ended the play with treatments of death itself. As a Brahmin-accented reverend, she discussed the important of closure for the living: "I insist that you see the box go down into the ground." As Trudy Howell, an orphanage director in Johannesburg, she explained the heart-wrenchingly practical process of helping children with AIDS accept their own deaths. To end the play, Smith became a Tibetan monk with a swift image: the just-dead as a cup of tea turned upside down. The liquid poured out. Silence ensued. The lights went out. Fin.

Written by: Jonelle Seitz, May 21st 2009

Tazewell’s Favorite Eccentric #4

admin — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 00:20:00 +0000

By Sarah Arr!

This zine, published in April of 2006, is tiny but powerfully personal. It has 30 pages, and, at only 5½ by 4¼ inches, it’s small enough to fit in a pocket for on-the-go reading.

On the very first page, zinester Sarah Arr! writes, “this issue is a lot more personal than things I’ve previously written,” and adds that she will not give copies to co-workers and casual friends. She observes that her life is not all misery and wretchedness, that she has fun every day and reminds us, “like most perzines, this is an outlet.”

Sarah’s first story, in which she pays homage to “bargaining with a real, live, flesh and blood human,” is about the flea markets in her hometown. The topics of the next few pages include the frustration of not having the right words, envy of thin women, drifting away from friends, being attracted to a guy while loving her girlfriend and a parent’s illness as a reminder of her own mortality.

In the middle of the zine the issues get even more intimate, and the label on page 15 reads, “This may be TRIGGERING.” She writes about her mom’s drug addiction, which led to Sarah being sexually abused as a little girl. After sharing what she calls “possibly the hardest thing that I’ve ever written,” she then tells of her younger brother’s death as a child.

While these issues are in no way happy or upbeat, Sarah tells her distressing stories with honesty and clarity. I appreciate that she is struggling to deal with her past and trying to heal by writing about the painful events. The insight Sarah has given into her harrowing experiences will help me behave more sympathetically towards people I know who have dealt with similar occurrences in their lives.

While this zine is not exactly entertaining, it is thought provoking and well-written. Words can be powerful weapons in the struggle for survival. As Sarah says about the sexual abuse that she experienced: “I write about it because that makes it real. Something that I can understand in words that happened. I can wrap my mind and my mouth around those words and arm myself like a soldier. I can wrap them up into ribbons to give other women so that they know that they’re not alone. That you’ve already lived through it once. We are stronger than the past.”

Written by: Chantel C. Guidry, July 16th 2007

Captain of the Sleepers

admin — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 23:12:00 +0000

By Marya Montero, Edith Grossman

Picador

Captain of the Sleepers is a tropical story of secrets and conflicts: familial, sexual, social, political, all intricately tangled up together in the Caribbean islands. It proceeds along parallel timelines, unfolding in the present day and in the 1940s and '50s, switching narrators at times, evoking disturbing events in which North American expatriates, tourists and Marines play key roles. It tells of love, death and a failed revolution.

The novel begins starkly: "I'm in the last place on earth I'd like to be. Waiting for the last person in this life I thought I'd ever see again." The narrator Andrés has come to St. Croix to meet a man he calls the "Captain of the Sleepers," an old friend and enemy from childhood. The two men are at odds over an incident that occurred some fifty years ago. There's a secret something that Andrés saw or did not see or seemed to see, that the Captain admits, but does not admit: "It never happened. . . . Not in the way you imagine.” The Captain, J.T. Bunker, is the son of a man who engineered the U.S. takeover of the Virgin Islands. His father later returned to Maine, but the Captain stayed, eking out a living by flying cargo and passengers around the region, including the small Puerto Rican island of Vieques where he got to know Andrés. Some of his passengers were actually corpses, being ferried home to be buried; bodies that the small boy's parents described to him as merely "sleepers."

The history of the islands will be unfamiliar, perhaps confusing, to many North American readers, but also fascinating. Montero's lyrical prose, full of colors, sounds and smells, brings the reader into close contact with the exotic setting. When the U.S. Navy begins to expropriate land on Vieques for a bombing range, the scene moves from the camp at Montesanto, where displaced women "who'd just given birth died like flies," to the hundreds of American paratroopers practicing their jumps on the beaches to the distressing waves of dead fish, mutilated sharks, even a smashed sea turtle, that wash up on the sands from naval maneuvers offshore.

Amid all the commotion, the novel centers on Andrés and his mother Estela, an enigmatic beauty who says little and never tells her own story in her own words. Readers must try to piece together the fragments other characters contribute, in order to understand Estela's complicated relationships with her son, her husband, her women friends and family, Bunker and Roberto, the doomed leader of a group of Puerto Rican nationalists. Montero’s use of male narrators preserves Estela’s mystery, which is perhaps the author’s goal, but, as a woman reading about a woman in a book by a woman, I felt more than a little cheated of a chance to know Estela from her own perspective. The book is nevertheless intriguing, whether you read it for pleasure on the beach this summer or as an introduction to postcolonial studies when you head back to school this fall.

Written by: Kittye Delle Robbins-Herring, June 26th 2007

You Live for the Fight When That’s All That You’ve Got #1

admin — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 23:07:00 +0000

By Ciara Xyerra

This zine is the latest from the woman who brought the world five issues of A Renegade’s Handbook to Love & Sabotage. After her dad’s unexpected death in 2002, she took a break from producing zines because “the words just didn’t come out in a way that felt right” to her. With You Live for the Fight…, she is “trying to let the words come out in a way that feels right to them.”

I’m really excited by the way the words came out. It’s been a long time since I’ve liked a zine as much as I like this one, and I highly recommend it to anyone even marginally interested in perzines.

I appreciate Ciara’s candid and honest writing on topics ranging from her dad’s death to her own depression and suicidal thoughts. Despite the serious subject matter, this zine is not a downer, since Ciara utilizes humor and wit when describing her life. She has a gift for telling entertaining and enlightening tales, as well as for sharing illuminating details from her adventures away from home. Best of all, her narratives always come across as sincere and genuine. From the linoleum print self-portrait on the cover of the zine to its eight pages of reviews of books and other zines, Ciara’s personality and individuality shine throughout this project.

Like the best zines I’ve ever encountered, this is one I want to hold on to so I can read it again and again. Even when I memorize what every one of its stories is all about, I’ll still take pleasure in how those stories are told.

Written by: Chantel C. Guidry, June 20th 2007

When I Met the Wolf Girls

admin — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 11:18:00 +0000

By Deborah Noyes, August Hall

Houghton Mifflin

The title of this children’s book caught my eye since my family supports Wolf Park, a local wolf education and research facility located in Battle Ground, Indiana. This delicate story of family and friendship, set in picture-book format, recants the ordeal of two feral sisters discovered in Midnapore, India in the 1920s. The story is told in the perspective of an orphan named Bulu, who meets Amala and Kamala when a Christian missionary brought them to an orphanage after discovering the pair in a termite mound raised by a she-wolf. The sad tale of orphan life is compounded by loss and death as the sisters struggle with their new lives and all that is expected by a civilized society.

This book is a great read aloud, quality time opportunity. I received expert advise on this work from an expert, my 8 year-old neighbor Audrey M., who has written several stories herself. Who better to know a good children’s book than an accomplished young writer? We explored the story together, admiring the illustrations, trying hard to pick just one favorite picture. August Hall’s illustrations treat the eye with bold colors and reveal the story in beautiful pictures as the tale winds through the 40-page book. His acrylic illustrations breathe life into the scenes as Bulu’s story shares the chaos, fear and sadness of the experience.

Audrey agreed the book was very good, and we ended up having our own favorite picture. We discussed the story line, ogled at the photograph of the two sisters taken in the 1920s that the author supplied and read the true story on how the girls were discovered by J.A.L. Singh. This is a great book that created the space for quality time, and Audrey and I enjoyed discussing a good book together.

The author (a.k.a. Deborah Wayshak, editor at Candlewick Press) has published seven books. August Hall is a California based illustrator and has done work for Industrial Light and Magic, Pixar Animation and Dreamworks. He has also written and illustrated another children’s book, Song and Jupiter.

Written by: Mary O'Hara, June 18th 2007

The Higher Power of Lucky

admin — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 18:04:00 +0000

By Susan Patron

Atheneum

Censorship advocates have a lot to dislike in Susan Patron’s Newbery Medal children’s book The Higher Power of Lucky. Aside from the “scrotum” controversy (the word appears on the first page and prompted a flurry of “how dare she put this is a children’s book!”), there are Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, a mother in jail for dealing marijuana, a delinquent father and surplus U.S. government cheese.

Fortunately, however, the American Library Association, the organization that awards the Newbery Medal, ignored critics’ complaints. The Higher Power of Lucky is a beautiful coming-of-age story about an orphaned girl, Lucky, living in the remote California desert town of Hard Pan, population 43, where everyone survives on government support and twelve-step meetings. Lucky is a budding scientist constantly on the prowl for specimens while searching for her higher power and is followed by her friend Lincoln, a compulsive knot tyer, a cookie-consuming fiend Miles and HMS Beagle, a dog named after Darwin’s exploration ship. After Lucky’s mother dies, her father’s first wife, a French woman named Brigitte, arrives in Hard Pan to take care of Lucky until she can be placed in a foster home. Like all good orphans, Lucky develops a scheme to run away and the resulting (mis)adventures bring her to terms with her mother’s death and her new life with Brigitte.

Unlike other tales of ragtag orphans who find themselves, Patron’s book is notable for how it infuses socio-economics into Lucky’s story. It’s clear that the townspeople of Hard Pan are not well-off, but Lucky loves her hometown and its oddball collection of interesting folk. She doesn’t pine for a bigger life or wish she owned more material goods. Lucky’s love for her life creates a space for the majority of children who do not grow up with $500 per week allowances and a dad’s credit card in their back pocket, and Patron does a marvelous job of indulging in a sometimes harsh reality through clever and whimsical prose.

The Higher Power of Lucky successfully creates a space for youth who are acting like youth to be who they are without judgment by reminding adults that children are also complex beings with self-doubts, fears and hopes, as Lucky and her friends experience, and that it’s all of these experiences collected that will shape an individual into a human being. Patron’s ability to build on themes that reach both young people and adult readers is what makes Lucky’s story such a treasure.

Written by: Lacey Dunham, June 12th 2007

Mind Beyond Death

admin — Wed, 16 May 2007 13:26:00 +0000

By Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche

Snow Lion Publications

"Hey, I'd like to read a book about death!" Perhaps this is not what comes to mind as you browse the "New Books" section at Borders, but if you are interested in Tibetan Buddhism and ideas about the cycle of life and death, I may have a book for you.

Somewhere between a conversation and a textbook, Mind Beyond Death, is an expansion upon a series of lectures given by author Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche in 2003 at the Treasury of Knowledge Retreat. The book focuses on Buddhism's six bardos, or stages of life. Of these, the text focuses most heavily on death and on preparing for death, not just in response to an impending crisis such as illness, but as a part of everyday life. The book also offers a fascinating, if sometimes challenging and intricately detailed, storehouse of Tibetan Buddhist thought. It provides some practical thought exercises, visualization techniques and yogic techniques on how to become focused on the present, along with more ambitious and esoteric goals such as "planning your last thought." If most of your knowledge about karma comes from what you've learned on episodes of My Name is Earl, the book may be a bit overwhelming.

Still, Mind Beyond Death retains the gentle, conversational tone of a lecture delivered by an accomplished teacher to an audience of eager students who may all be at different levels of interest. For those new to reading about Buddhism, the book may be intriguing at times and baffling verging on incomprehensible at others, with its incredibly specific appendix charts describing the Stages of Death or The Hundred Peaceful and Wrathful Deities. If you're game and up for a challenge, Mind Beyond Death is rigorous and demanding. It's worthwhile if you are curious about Tibetan Buddhism, in general, and willing to devote a large chunk of time to exploring a subject, death and our response to it, that most of us try to ignore.

Written by: Dominae Petrosini, May 16th 2007