discrimination

Patsy Mink: Ahead of the Majority

admin — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 23:13:00 +0000

As the title indicates, Patsy Mink is the story of a woman of the same name, the first Asian American woman and the first woman of color elected to the U.S. Congress. If her story began and ended there, Mink’s life would have been important enough to have made history. Fortunately for every woman who lives in the world she transformed, Patsy Mink’s story and her life were far greater than that.

Born in Maui, Hawaii in 1927, Mink faced a world where opportunities for people who shared her race and gender were all but nonexistent. During World War II, Mink, a third generation Japanese American, witnessed the internment of her fellow Japanese Americans, faced tremendous wartime discrimination, and watched in horror as her father burned his final connections to Japan and his father. While attending the University of Nebraska, Mink was assigned to the international dorm due to the university’s longstanding segregation policy, and Mink’s 1947 protest of that policy led to its abolition the next year. Denied entry to medical school due to her gender, Mink went on to law school only to be unable to find a job post-graduation, once again due to her race and gender.

Denied a job, Mink went into politics, where she would change the rules that had once prevented her and countless other women from entering medical school and finding a job in the legal profession. Amongst a long list of achievements, Mink's co-authorship of Title IX (now renamed as the Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act) and authorship of the Women's Educational Equity Act made it possible for generations of women to play sports, attend college and graduate school, work in traditionally male professions, and otherwise move beyond the traditional roles assigned our gender.

At a mere fifty-six minutes, the film named after Mink is filled with stories of accomplishments and obstacles, the former greatly outweighing the latter. Comprised of archival footage, interviews with both friends and foes, and the words of Mink herself, Patsy Mink is a fitting tribute to a woman who chose to be a participant in history, not merely a witness to it. It is well organized and interesting and carefully places Mink’s life within its personal and historic context. The only real problem is that it is far too short, and therefore, offers only cursory coverage of issues that surely deserved more detailed examination. But there are worse things to be said about a documentary than that it leaves you wanting more.

Written by: Melinda Barton, August 5th 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

Bombay Anna: The Real Story and Remarkable Adventures of the King and I Governess

admin — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 22:50:00 +0000

By Susan Morgan

University of California Press

Almost everyone in America has heard of Anna, the famous upper class English lady who held her own with the King of Siam. What most people haven’t heard is the real story behind the better-known, fictionalized character. Susan Morgan has devoted over a decade to fleshing out the life of Anna Leonowens in Bombay Anna. This was not an easy job given the lengths Anna went to alter her past, even writing a false biography for her grandchildren.

Contrary to Anna’s claims of an upper class English upbringing, she was actually a mixed-race child born in India to a mixed-race mother and a low-ranking English soldier. She grew up in tented barracks and among the local children. Her intellect and facility with language set her apart. When her husband, the love of her life, died, Anna faced limited prospects as a widow. For the sake of her children, she moved to Singapore, where no one knew her, and cleverly recreated her past.

Morgan shows the readers how successful Anna was at reinvention. Not only did her story hold, but her children moved freely among the upper classes, and her grandchildren attended prestigious universities. Morgan’s painstaking research is clear, and her devotion to this topic comes through in the book. She describes the stages of Anna’s life with precise detail, sometimes more than a general reader may need, but Bombay Anna serves the dual purpose of bringing the real Anna to life for pleasure readers and providing a treasure trove of facts for historians and scholars. Morgan even provides a brief biography of Margaret Landon, whose book (Anna and the King of Siam) catapulted Anna Leonowens to fame.

Often times, such fact-laden books can be cumbersome to read - not this one. Morgan writes skillfully, and Bombay Anna often reads like a novel. By the end, the reader holds an intimate knowledge of Anna and may even regret not having been able to meet her.

Anna was a woman ahead of her time. She refused to live her life subject to racial discrimination and social constraints, and adapted in order to overcome a system designed to hold her back. Anna rejected proselytizing in favor of respect for world religions, she had a strong social conscience, and she valued education more than anything else. She could make herself comfortable among a wide variety of people – from Russian peasants to residents of the king’s harem and Siamese nobility to American literary intellectuals.

See the movie with Jodie Foster. Enjoy the musical. But if you want to know the real story, pick up Bombay Anna and be prepared to find an inspiring story of an incredible woman.

Written by: Jessica Jacobson, October 10th 2008

New Orleans Noir

admin — Fri, 04 May 2007 20:10:00 +0000

Edited by Julie Smith

Akashic Books

Unlike every other volume of short stories I've read, none of the stories in this book disappointed me. Written by authors who live or have lived in the Big Easy, New Orleans Noir digs below the surface and into the social fabric of a city that had its troubles long before Hurricane Katrina. To say that it pushes the reader out of her comfort zone would be a major understatement.

The collection is divided into two parts: pre- and post- Katrina. Each of the 18 stories is set in a different neighborhood in the city. In Part I, "Before the Levees Broke," the reader travels from a modern day bar in Mid-City to a brothel in the Swamp in 1833, and back again. Characters range from a burnt-out police detective who helps a colleague get away with murder; to a former slave who is a doctor, but must support himself by playing piano in the pre-civil war South; to a seemingly innocent female co-ed who, with a friend, lures a man to his death during Mardi Gras.

Part II, "Life in Atlantis," is equally grim, with more looting, murder and death. The common theme in both parts is, essentially, violence; whether it's a shady real estate hound getting burned to death or a ten-year-old who bleeds to death in a cemetery after shooting at the police, the stories tear at your gut. Racial tension and discrimination, before and after the hurricane, is also a recurring and important theme. Significantly, it's not always easy to determine who is or isn't justified in their actions; I found myself sympathizing with both cops and thieves.

Despite the fact that this collection is gritty, often bloody and frequently depressing, it's a fascinating portrayal of a city that has always had social troubles ignored by the rest of the country. In that it is a call to action.

Another reason to get buy this book: a portion of the sales support the New Orleans Public Library and K.A.R.E.S., which awards grants to writers affected by Hurricane Katrina. Despite all that they had gone through, many of the writers waived their fees to make this possible.

Written by: M.L. Madison, May 4th 2007

Bento Box in the Heartland

admin — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 19:11:00 +0000

By Linda Furiya

Seal Press

Bento Box in the Heartland is a memoir that uniquely ties in the cultural experiences of protagonist and writer Linda Furiya with the foods of her Japanese heritage. Wedged between each chapter is a recipe of some of her favorite dishes, such as Chinese Home-Style Tofu and Japanese Pot Stickers. Heavily permeated throughout the book are perspicuous references to food and the passion she and her family has for their delicacies, which keep them grounded in their Japanese culture. Thus is the reason that her book is cutely labeled as a food memoir.

As Linda reflects upon the struggles and duality of being raised in a Japanese-American house in a small Indiana community – what she refers to as “Whitebread America” – a number of issues are raised. She challenges the idea of gender roles from an early age as her mother raises her to perform domestic tasks, such as washing dishes after dinner, a chore that her father and brothers are never directed to complete. The inevitable run-ins with racism are also written about, due to belonging to one of the only minority families in her community. Written about are events from people's intolerance and misunderstanding of her parents’ accents a to recounted story about a misogynistic war veteran with no shame in sharing his blatant objectification of Japanese women.

As the pages turn, they alternate from being charmingly sweet to serious with emotion; however, Linda’s voice is carried out fairly casual throughout the book. This memoir is purely to share individual experiences, rather than to tackle and attack systems of oppression and discrimination. The discrimination the author and those close to her encounter are due to subtle, socially permeated racism more so than direct attacks under institutionalized racism and sexism. Written safely and unprovocatively, it is an easy, light read that explores the challenges of being raised in a mélange of two cultures.

Written by: Yujean Park, April 9th 2007