family

Come Over

annette — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 08:00:00 +0000

By Patty Carpenter and Dysfunctional Family Jazz Band

Patty Carpenter and the Dysfunctional Family Jazz Band (PCATDFJB) are a troupe of musicians who are also family members. Singer Patty was married to saxophonist Scotty, and they had daughter (who is also the band’s other singer) Melissa. Patty and Scotty broke up, and Patty married the band’s manager, Charles, and together they had son Travis who plays bass. This album is essentially like being trapped on a couch in the living room of your new neighbors watching an endless slide-show of their family’s summer vacation.

Little did you know how creepy your new neighbors were. “My Baby” stomps in with snarling saxophone and electric guitar. The song’s lyrics are about a rebellious child growing up, “My baby’s going away. And I hope it will be okay/Such a young girl hurrying out the door.” Okay, fine so far. But then the song gets a little bit too, er, tactile? “I can hold her when she needs my touch... Someday I know that she’ll go away/But I will stay close to her heart.” Now I’m confused. I thought this was a song about mother/daughter relationships? Is this the kissing family from Saturday Night Live?

PCATDFJB waffle between Sonny Clark-esque jazz, zydeco, and reggae. “Love Bound” is a song about daughter Melissa and husband Alan getting married in Jamaica. I know this because it says so, under the lyrics to the song in the liner notes: “we cooked up this song to celebrate the first anniversary of Melissa and Alan. Their wedding in Jamaica required a reggae saga. You had to be there. Now you are.” It really is great that this family willingly shows so much affection for each other. Frankly, though, I don’t really want to be invited to their wedding. I just don’t know them well enough to be interested. I suppose you could argue that there are plenty of great songs out there written about people and events that most listeners have no personal connection to. Paul Simon wrote about wife Peggy Harper in songs like “Run That Body Down,” and it works. But then, Mr. Simon didn’t write in the liner notes to his album, “My wife and I were going through a very difficult time, which would eventually end in a bitter divorce. You had to be there. Now you are!” Speaking of Paul Simon, he also made reggae work for a white dude. Unfortunately, PCATDFJB are more reminiscent of Willie Nelson’s attempt at reggae, which (needles to say) was both bumbling and strange.

On the track “Summer Love,” PCATDFJB get creepy again, for along come the sultry sounds of what can only be a mom singing about making whoopie in a corn field: “The corn’s silky tassels are luring me in [...] come on, baby, roll me in the grass.” Ohmygodohmygodohmygod. The teenager in me just threw up a little in my mouth. This is a family band! What are you doing, hippie parents? This song feels a bit like Maeby Fünke and Michael Bluth singing “Afternoon Delight” together. That moment on Arrested Development was funny because it was unintentionally creepy. This is just creepy.

It’s great that these folks enjoy making music together and seem to love each other so much. I just think you may need to be a part of their family in order to really get it.

Written by: Emily S. Dunster, April 20th 2011

Last Train Home

mandy — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 17:00:00 +0000

Directed by Lixin Fan

Zeitgeist Films, Canada Council for the Arts

The establishing longshot of this documentary tilts down to show a few policemen in an open, paved space. Slowly the camera pans left, and the entire frame fills with thousands of people standing in a drizzle. Many hold bright, pastel-coloured umbrellas. It’s a beautiful image. The following shot, from ground level, shows that huge crowd rushing in pandemonium past the camera into a train station. These two shots are emblematic of the film: beauty and chaos inextricably interwoven.

Earth’s largest human migration occurs in China at their New Year. One hundred and thirty million people who work in cities scuffle for prized train tickets to return to villages where they were raised. Last Train Home fuses a macro view of this migration as a social and cultural phenomenon with a micro view of one family that makes this annual trek. In so doing, it underscores the high price in domestic turmoil many Chinese families pay for the country’s so-called economic miracle. It also vividly contrasts the lovely countryside with the polluted, teeming, ugliness of urban China.

Changhua Zang and Sugin Chen, husband and wife, work as sewing-machine operators in a factory in Guangzhou. They have two kids—Qin, a girl in her teens, and a boy, Yang, about ten—who live with their grandmother in Huilong Village where the parents were born. The film was shot over a couple of years, so we watch the kids grow up a bit. The parents labour at their dreary work to give their children a chance at prosperity. “You shouldn’t be like us,” they say. To this end, they constantly remind Qin and Yang to stay in school and get good grades. The parents also reveal decidedly mixed feelings about being wage slaves 2,000 kilometres away from their kids. They insist their destiny (etched in their faces) will be worth it if the kids acquire a higher education.

However, Qin, angry and bitter with her parents for their protracted absence, quits school and moves to a city, thus frustrating Changhua and Sugin’s hopes. She goes to work in a strobe-lit dance bar where the music is industrial technopop and employees’ training includes chanting capitalist slogans: “Customers are always right!” and “The boss is always right!” (Mao is turning over in his grave.) Yang, the son, stays in school and remains the light of his parents’ lives. If he quits, their sixteen-year devotion will have been for naught.

A great thing about Last Train Home is how it makes family a common human denominator: the daughter angry with her mother; the likable, hard-working, worried, exhausted, guilty, self-sacrificing parents; the wise grandmother; the young boy who is academically inclined and is his parents’ last, best hope. We know these people. They are us. When Changua finally breaks from his impossibly stoic reserve and slaps his daughter for disrespecting him by using fuck in his presence, we deeply empathize with them both.

A word about the production of this film. Lixin Fan, the director, is Chinese-Canadian. The film was produced mostly by government funds from Canada. It’s a tribute to the country and its art organizations that they have the acuity to fund a film that may seem at first to have nothing to do with Canada. But troubled families, Chinese, Canadian, or anywhere else are legion. And China itself is omnipresent. One need only look at the planet’s retail shelves to see that. This superb documentary allows us inside a Chinese phenomenon to see how similar and connected we all are now.

Finally: Be sure to stick around to hear the plaintive, chilling, gorgeous, acapella aria sung over the end credits.

Written by: Neil Flowers, April 15th 2011

In Good Time

tina — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 20:00:00 +0000

By Annie Fitzgerald

Pin Curl Productions

When I first popped it in, my iTunes player categorized Annie Fitzgerald’s album In Good Time as country. As I began listening, I found this to be wholly misleading. As a matter of fact, I was unable to categorize her music as any one genre. A little bit folk, a little bit pop, this thoughtfully produced album is a gem. Fitzgerald has managed to create new music with a message that is thoroughly original by today’s musical standards. The lyrics, all written by Fitzgerald in collaboration with her colleagues, are unpolluted with the synthetic and wholly superficial mess heard in most songs today. It was a joy to hear someone deviate from the norm.

In “Watching the World Go By,” the static accompaniment creates a tight but quickly oscillating pattern that results in an airy sound. The counter phrase in the piano and her sweet melodic line create a calm, sunny piece that evokes sitting on a grassy country hill near train tracks. Here, her theme is one of a yearning for wholeness, a theme that is also reflected in the song “How Long.” True, “How Long” is a bit too poppy for my tastes, but her hopeful lyrics are a breath of fresh air.

A second, very important theme in this album is one of family. Perhaps the most beautiful example of this is the track “Brother,” a loving, lilting ode to a little brother. The simple voice and guitar arrangement of this piece showcase Fitzgerald’s voice, which is heartfelt and light. She moves around a melody with fluidity and grace. The sweet “Old Souvenirs” tells the tale of a long-gone female relative who remains in her life through an old photograph. The simple piano intro, like many of the keyboard licks on this album, is succinct and catchy.

Perhaps my favorite piece on the album is “Kaleidoscope,” a reflective lyric about purpose and one’s sense of self. A dominant and haunting piano line along with ethereal electronic effects drew me in. This accompaniment was similar to “Watching the World Go By,” but the addition of the unexpected changes and almost totemic bass drum pick-ups left a question at the end of each phrase and kept me addicted. The highly visual lyrics, akin to Verlaine’s symbolist verse, create an image as fluid and lovely as the music.

In Good Time, Annie’s first full length album, is a creative accomplishment.

Written by: Cristin Colvin, April 10th 2011

Monica & David

barbara — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Directed by Alexandria Codina

HBO Films

One of the many things people take for granted—Americans especially—is free will. Basic human rights. When you are able-bodied, physically able to take care of yourself, the ways to access free will seem limitless—there are plenty of things you are able to participate in, such as having a job, living on your own, and preparing your own meals. In Monica & David, novice filmmaker Alexandra Codina documents the wedding and first year of marriage between Monica and David, two adults living with Down’s syndrome.

The titular Monica is Codina’s cousin and it is clear to see why the filmmaker was interested in filming the couple. The best moments celebrate the tenderness between the couple whose love for each other is more than apparent through constant physical affection, pet-name-calling and emotional support. They exude a genuine excitement about spending their lives together and take pride in calling each other husband and wife. In an especially touching moment, Monica shares a letter she’s written to her birth father, who left when she was very young, and David sits next to her holding her hand and offering soft words of encouragement.

Codina’s footage offers a personal glimpse into issues around independence, identity, and care-taking: how we construct who we are in relationship to who we are to others. The dependent relationship in the roles of parents and children is highlighted by Monica’s mother, Maria Elena, and step-father, Bob, who are sincerely trying to offer the couple autonomy but cannot quite loosen their grip. Having both lived in their parents’ homes, as a couple Monica and David move into a separate wing of Maria Elena and Bob’s house, the parents who appear to be more financially equipped to support the couple. A discussion of financial privilege and women’s work would have been effective here, but Codina fail to flush out these issues. There is a brief mention of Maria Elena’s experience as a single mother who worked her way up from an airline flight attendant to VP of the company so that she‘d be able to provide for her daughter.

Overall, had Codina given more attention to the experiences of Monica and David’s mothers raising their children, it may have made for a richer film. Both hardly twenty years old when their children were born, the women immediately faced resistance from their doctors. Maria Elena recalls the doctor walking in to her room at her first ultrasound and announcing “Your child is a mongoloid,” while David’s mother was persuaded to give her son up for adoption. Here Codina misses an opportunity to bring this experience into a larger dialogue surrounding reproductive rights and our nation’s pro-natal “family values” narrative. Perhaps this drawback points to the flaw in researching your family, but the lack of subtext is ultimately the flaw of the film.

Written by: Alicia Sowisdral, December 22nd 2010

The Girl Who Fell from the Sky

barbara — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Heidi W. Durrow

Algonquin Books

Heidi W. Durrow’s novel swirls out from and obsessively around the moment when a mother and her three children fall from the rooftop of a Chicago building. The narration crystalizes around this striking event, with multiple narrators adding their points of view to the interpretation of the mystery surrounding the plunge. Rachel, the sole survivor, struggles to adjust to the losses and changed that characterize her life after the fall. Brick witnesses the family tumbling from the rooftop, mistaking the plummeting bodies for birds. Laronne is the former employer of Nella, Rachel’s mother, and is charged with sorting through the aftermath of the tragedy, trying to make sense of the event through only what fragments of the family is left behind: their belongings and their story, with its embellishments and rumors.

Like Laronne, the reader has to piece together the fractured picture of that day. Many pivotal characters stay on the periphery, darting in and out of the narrative through memories or secondhand accounts: Rachel’s father makes his voice heard through one chapter and through his encounters with Jamie; Nella speaks through her diaries, chronicling her journey towards sobriety; Rachel’s siblings are muted, as is the man that convinced Nella to leave her husband behind and move to Chicago to pursue a new life. The true story of what happened on that roof is elusive and evolving.

With such a startling and intriguing premise, Durrow still manages to shift the focus and drama of the story to Rachel’s life after the fall. The young girl not only tries to come to terms with her mother’s motives, her father’s distance, and her brothers’ deaths, but also tries to fit into a new culture that is at best dubious about her blue eyes and mixed race. Rachel seeks to establish herself as a “new girl,” with a new start after her the deaths of her brothers and mother, but finds she cannot escape from who she was and can only try to shape who she will become.

Durrow is a talented and eloquent storyteller. The metaphor of flight, both as flying and fleeing, is satisfyingly woven throughout the novel as the thread that unites characters and revelations. Durrow creates a affecting and personal portrait of a girl growing up in a world that expects her to define herself as either black or white, a stark decision she’s never considered and that makes her feel she is betraying the memory of her mother or the culture of her father and grandmother. Durrow’s novel deftly explores the idea that there is no singularity of truth, self-identity, or survival.

Written by: Jo Ristow, December 20th 2010

Dream of Ding Village

caitlin — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Yan Lianke

Grove Press

Grandfather Ding is the patriarch of the family that founded Ding Village. He dreams of a world that sometimes comes true and sometimes should but doesn't. Both of his sons are ne’er-do-wells, one a crooked, arrogant man who becomes a high level Communist cadre with boatloads of money, the other a layabout who makes nothing of his life. The older son makes his money from being a “blood head," a man who buys and sells blood in the rural communities and ultimately infects an entire Chinese province with AIDS through contaminated blood. As the community dies, the son creates more and more abusive schemes to increase his wealth and moves to an opulent house in the city.

Villagers sell their blood to buy things like a particular brand of shampoo. In the end, all monies are invested in death—buying a casket—and the grandeur of death becomes far more enticing than the reality of living. The future is sold off for the past by blind followers of corrupt leaders.

The grandfather at first follows the directives of the party as much as his son, only he achieves its goals through more humane means: by convincing the citizens it is good for them. Is this better? Does it make his manipulation any less blameworthy? A benign dictator is still a dictator, and is perhaps even worse than an outright hostile one, because the victim doesn’t even know what he's lost and has no way to fight back against an unidentifiable enemy.

Grandfather Ding makes two unsuccessful attempts to convince his son to take responsibility. The more he tries to do good, the worse it gets for him. As the village descends into Lord of the Flies savagery, the one story of true love does nothing to soften the blow. It’s all about money. The grandfather is left with no options to combat evil but a final act of desperation.

While this is a critique of communism, it might as well also be of the U.S. since the “trickle-down” eighties, the “me” nineties, and the “never ending war” of the naughts. At the core of any concentration of power—call it communism or capitalism, patriarchy or religion—is corruption and greed.

The book alternates between the dream states of the grandfather, as told by his dead grandson, and the waking nightmare of a dying village and the shame of his own family. The family conflict illustrates the counterpoint of the extremes of wealth and poverty and the struggle between power and humanity, problems faced in the contemporary U.S. as well as China. The author uses repetition as a rhetorical tool to emphasize the cyclical nature of these problems, but sometimes he uses it too much. Overall, though, the writing is lyrical and often beautiful, with vivid descriptions of the living conditions of rural China.

The village dries up and dies as the people do, and the corrupt son continues to accumulate wealth off the misery of others—in his case blood, death, marriage in the afterlife (in the case of the U.S.—disease, wars, private prisons). The son convinces himself he’s a philanthropist. The father, a janitor, convinces himself he's a professor. What’s real? When is a dream true?

Written by: Dianne Post, December 5th 2010

Dear Pyongyang

mandy — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 16:00:00 +0000

Directed by Yonghi Yang

Typecast Releasing

Yonghi Yang and her parents are Zainichi, meaning a Korean who lives in Japan. During the division of Korea in 1948 and the war that followed, the Zainichi took sides just as those who dwelled on the peninsula did. Yang’s parents had never been to North Korea, but were so enamoured of communism and the country that in 1971 Yang's father sent his three teenage sons to live in Pyongyang, the capital, as part of the Zainichi “Return Project.” This emigration occurred between the 1950s and 1970s when “Returnees” hoped for a better life in the “fatherland.” This better life never materialized, yet Returnees were forbidden to go back to Japan.

What Yang’s father's decision regarding his sons meant and still means to the family, and how her father now feels about his decision, form the core of this remarkable documentary (much of it shot in first-person POV, a rare occurrence in cinema). Yang interviews her septuagenarian father several times in homey circumstances. He jokes, laughs, sings, banters with his daughter, and gracefully accepts being made fun of. Yang teases out superbly this non-ideological side of her father. His decision about his sons was appalling—frightening in its implications of how political ideals distort the mind. Yet he’s likable and so loves his wife, daughter, sons, and grandkids that it’s almost possible to forgive the tragic mistake he made that his sons live out to this day.

An important thread of the story is Yang’s fortune compared to her brothers’. She was the youngest child, and only daughter, and so remained in Japan where she listened to the Beatles, took up videography, and decided that she had the right to choose her own career. By contrast, the brothers and their families lived in the pinched, highly controlled, and stagnant environment of Pyongyang. Footage that Yang shot as a schoolgirl when she visited her brothers several times over the years is deftly incorporated into the present-day journey to Pyongyang of her and her parents, and plays a crucial role in this contrast.

I won’t reveal the outcome of the narrative, but suffice it to say that Yang’s father's love for his daughter doesn’t fail when she needs an important answer from him. Criticisms? Well, toward the end, Yang’s camera shoved in her father’s helpless face shades into a passive-aggressive assault.

The film is DIY to the max, so its technical aspects can be roughhewn. Yang apparently shot the present-day footage on a consumer-quality digicam. The limitations of this kind of equipment and shooting do crop up. Sometimes the image is overexposed or underexposed. Occasionally the camera work is deliriously shaky. Sometimes the dialogue is not synched properly, and sometimes it’s obscured, for example, by wrapping paper being scrunched because the mic isn’t well placed.

Yet Dear Pyongyang—a sad and ironic title—tells so compelling a family tale with so many political ramifications that its production flaws don’t matter a whit. This “little” film has a big mind and heart. Though it often seems as if it were made for six dollars—all right, make it ten—it’s worth a dozen megabuck Hollywood blockbusters.

Written by: Neil Flowers, November 26th 2010

World and Town

mandy — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Gish Jen

Knopf

It is really tough to review Gish Jen’s World and Town. The novel is, on the one hand, drawn through an interesting narrative focalizer who often takes on the “wordspeak” of the characters that the narrator observes the representational terrain through. So when the narrative is concentrating on the Cambodian American teenager Sophy, we have the narrator constantly employing words such as like and whatever. Typical teenspeak, we might say. On the other hand, the novel has an exceedingly complex and varied topography in terms of its character webs, where Hattie Kong, one of the ostensible protagonists, is looking after a new family that has moved to the area, a small town in the New England area known as Riverlake (somewhat reminiscent of the continuing movement of ethnic minority populations to such towns as Lowell, MA).

This family (of surname Chhung) is ethnically Chinese, but they had resided in Cambodia and thus survived the genocide perpetuated by Pol Pot’s reign under the Khmer Rouge. Hattie, having more free time as a woman near retirement age, takes it upon herself to help the family out as they adjust to the relatively austere weather conditions in the area. The family is made up of the aforementioned teenager daughter, Sophy, who Hattie particularly finds interesting, hopes to make a deep connection with, and even offers to tutor Sophy in Chinese. There is also Sarun, who is also a teenager, and struggles to move beyond the gang life he lived before.

The family patriarch, Ratanak Chhung, seeks to carve out a new start for his family, with his wife, Mum, and the youngest member of their family, an infant boy named Gift. Sophy’s two sisters, Sopheap and Sophan, are both in foster homes, due to various instabilities prior to the Chhung’s move to Riverlake; some of their desires for a new start appear in the form of Sophy’s attempt to make amends for mistakes she perceived that broke the family apart.

Hattie’s own family life is complicated as she is a widower and dealing with fragments of a relationship with a former colleague and scientist, Carter Hatch, who in part, as Hattie perceives it, led to her dismissal from academia. Hattie’s adult son Josh is relatively aloof and is only seen in the backgrounds of the narrative as he navigates a relationship with a younger woman named Serena. The plot’s tension takes shape when Sophy begins to get involved heavily in church, where Christian indoctrination serves to cool her connection to Hattie, who finds organized religion both odious and unproductive. Sarun, too, fails to completely cut ties with his gang past.

Perhaps, because I have been teaching Virginia Woolf this fall, I couldn’t help but think of some similar resonances. There’s quite a bit of interior monologue and free indirect discourse that grounds World and Town, which can slow down and obfuscate the actual plot progression, but the interiorities we are given access to are quite unique and engaging on their own. In this way, like Jen’s The Love Wife, the novel seems far more interested in characterization than on actual linear plot progression.

There is also a sense of Erdrich, too, in Jen’s work to explore the importance of a regional location and its connections to racial minorities. With the richness and familiarity of a small New England town, Jen makes us aware of the importance of land and community, especially in the remarkable section devoted to Everett, one of the old stalwarts and touchstones of Riverlake. This novel requires a patient reader and World and Town cannot be consumed at a quick pace. It seems perfect for the upcoming winter season where we’ll want to swaddle ourselves in blankets and stay in bed on Saturday evenings.

Cross-posted at Asian American Literature Fans

Written by: Stephen Hong Sohn, November 21st 2010

Going Away Shoes

priyanka — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Jill McCorkle

Algonquin Books

The protagonists of Jill McCorkle’s exciting collection of stories, Going Away Shoes, are middle-aged heterosexuals deep in the doldrums of life’s disappointments. Whether because of a stalled career, a divorce, a death, or simply the exhaustion born of juggling family, work and social obligations, these are women who’ve been battered by everyday tragedies and everyday pressures.

The title story introduces Debby Tyler. The oldest of three daughters, she has been left to care for her infirm mother. Since she has never been married, her two siblings assume that she has no life. Taut and spare, the story zeroes in on the role of memory in assuaging both guilt and desire; in addition, fantasy enters the mix as Debby imagines packing her bags and exiting the domestic hell she is mired in.

Marilyn, the protagonist of “Intervention,” is a retired woman who has become increasingly terrified of her husband’s escalated alcoholism. Her mistake, however, is mentioning this problem to her children, both of whom set out to plan a family intervention that will send their husband and dad into rehab. What ensues on the day of the expected confrontation is a fantastically moving reflection on long-term love that is both heartbreaking and filled with warmth and wisdom. The ways couples insulate themselves, and the ways the agendas of parents and children sometimes collide, makes this a particular stand-out in McCorkle’s eleven-story collection.

Other relationships also come in for scrutiny and sibling love meets sibling rivalry in “Another Dimension,” a tale that centers on the secrets and lies that both bind and divide us. Once kids no longer need to unite against parental forces, what purpose does maintaining long-maintained deception serve? McCorkle’s cudgel is sharp as she pierces the gut of duplicity and illuminates the limits of amends and apologies.

The anthology is heavy stuff told with wit, finesse, and abundant humor. In “Midnight Clear,” for example, the main character, a recently-divorced mother of two, is getting ready for a Christmas Eve bash when she suddenly notices a foul odor permeating her home. In short order the culprit is identified: Her septic tank is malfunctioning. This slice of what-can-go-wrong-will-go-wrong is made ever more horrific when we learn that the planned party will include the narrator’s ex and his new girlfriend. So what to do? A chance encounter with a guardian angel-cum-repairman—an elderly gent with stories to share—might have seemed contrived in less skilled hands. Here, however, it works and the magic of chance encounters is rendered with both grace and elegance.

McCorkle is a mature writer, someone who refuses to be lulled by blinders and palaver, a writer who notices every nuance and detail. Her woman are strong and capable, if sad. Yet at the same time, Going Away Shoes is a hopeful book in which the lure of untapped possibilities remains within reach. Like the golden ring on a carousel, her message suggests that if we keep our eye on the prize it just might find its way into our waiting hands.

Written by: Eleanor J. Bader, November 4th 2010

Cuba On My Mind

emily — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 16:00:00 +0000

By Katie Wainwright

Livingston Press

Cuba, in my mind: cigars, Fidel Castro’s beard, Elian Gonzalez, and a very murky high school level comprehension of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Let’s get more specific and, arguably, more self-incriminating. What comes to mind when I think of pre-Castro Cuba? The Godfather: Part II. That lavish New Year’s Eve party where Michael discovers Fredo’s betrayal. Oh yes, and the actual history: Fulgencio Batista stepping down (read: fleeing), leaving Cuba to Castro.

Clearly, I am not the most informed. But seriously, as an American who was born and educated well into Castro’s rule, how much objectivity, let alone compassion, has informed my understanding of Cuba’s people and culture? With this question, and the sincere hope of expanding my mental impression, I cracked the spine of Katie Wainwright’s first novel, Cuba on My Mind.

The novel begins as Gramma Catalina is waking up, her hand being held by her grandson, Wayne Olaf. In the present, Catalina is dying; receiving hospice care in her daughter’s mansion, paid for by her indifferent son-in-law. Feeling her body shut down, and uncomfortable with the medicines and contraptions unnaturally keeping her alive, Catalina longs for her final freedom. Unsure of how much time she has left, her grandson Wayne Olaf is there, wishing to record as much of her life story as he can. And of course, Wayne has issues of his own to overcome—a twenty-one-year-old Tulane law student, buckling under his parents’ pressuring control over his professional and romantic future. Turning to one another, grandmother and grandson forge a bond that bridges their fragmented family, and allows them both to grow.

Carried largely by Catalina’s narrative of her own life, Cuba on My Mind transitions between her childhood in Banes, Cuba and the present in New Orleans. Growing up, she is the only daughter of Scotsman McAuley, who is the Administrator for the U.S. Sugar Company, and Cuban mother, called Santa Caridad (Charity) by the people. From this position of privilege, Catalina’s memories allow the reader insight into the tensions between the gringos and the Cuban people. Divided by the Banes River Bridge, under which the most destitute and dying live, Catalina’s worldview is consistently influenced by the stark difference between the pueblo civil and the American company’s private land.

Given these juxtaposing realities, and the many anecdotes from her past, I wish Wainwright would have more forcibly commented on the clear economic and social inequalities within her Banes community. Almost all Catalina recounts alludes to these discrepancies, but I believe more evocative language could have made these instances more powerful to the reader. Further, I would have loved more about the strong Cuban women in her life. Loyally cared for and protected by her fierce Nanny Carmen, “an ornery creature…peasant from the hills, a square woman strong as any man,” and her mother, Santa Caridad, who has the compassion and courage to aid the rebels, even with Batista’s knowledge. To me, these women, and the other housemaids who gossip about and care for their colonizing employers are the novel’s backbone.

Although Castro’s revolution is the novel’s historical anchor, as I read, I realized the story is much more poignantly about family—from nuclear to national. In the present, the familial moments resonated. Having lost all but one of my grandparents in recent years, I have seen their deterioration and understood the tough decisions that come with properly caring for a dying loved one. It is taxing on any family, and again, although I wish she would have delved more, I commend Wainwright for taking this on as well.

The novel’s shortcomings stem from Wainwright's attempting to do too much. As much as I can quibble about the plot being too neat at times, and characters that are a bit underdeveloped, it is clear Cuba on My Mind is a work of love and nostalgia for the author's birthplace. And for a self-proclaimed hobby writer, Wainwright didn't do all that bad.

Written by: Alison Veith, November 3rd 2010

Crow Mercies

caitlin — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Penelope Scambly Schott

Calyx Books

When picking up a new poetry collection, I give it an initial read and then sit with it a while, thinking about whether any particular poems or lines stuck in my mind, or whether I had any specific feelings while reading. Sometimes I draw a big blank, which usually means that particular collection doesn't merit another read. Collections like Crow Mercies are different. Even during my first reading of this collection, I found myself stopping to reread poems again out of excitement. This is certainly the kind of book that ends up a permanent fixture on my bookshelf that I come back to again and again.

Penelope Scambly Schott is a former English literature professor living in Portland, Oregon, and Crow Mercies, her fifth poetry collection, won the Sarah Lantz Memorial Poetry Book Prize. Schott has also published three poetry narratives and five chapbooks. She identifies as a feminist poet, and this collection aims to create a forum for women writers who might not otherwise be heard.

Schott's poems seem to inhabit the realms of female roles and experiences: wife, mother, daughter. In my favorite poem in this collection, "The US Air Force Admits it May Have Bombed Civilians in Afghanistan," Schott uses the connection between mothers and their children to explore the contrast between people living in daily fear of being killed in Afghanistan and those in the United States who are relatively safe and secure. Never hitting you over the head with the points it makes, the poem left me choked up.

The poems in Crow Mercies often speak about relationships, running the gamut from grandparents to children to siblings. Family relationships and complexities are something most everyone can relate to, so I felt it brought a real accessibility to her work.

I am generally not moved by poets who write of the aesthetic of nature with no deeper meaning. Yet, Schott utilizes strong natural imagery and metaphor very heavily throughout the collection. She does so beautifully; her images, rich with meaning, carry the words along. Bears, orchids, roses, reeds, the wind, and the ocean all become crucial to the poems, evoking strong emotion.

One skill Schott has mastered is the zinger, the end line that packs a punch and leaves you thinking about a poem long after you've finished reading it. This is exactly how I would describe all of Crow Mercies. I was impressed and thrilled to find such a treasured zinger of a poetry collection.

Written by: Lesley Kartali, October 21st 2010

Daniel & Ana

admin — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 16:00:00 +0000

Directed by Michel Franco

Alameda Films

Daniel & Ana is an opinion piece, the film equivalent of an op-ed. While it is a forgone assumption that a film will represent the opinion of its authors and that every film necessarily adopts a particular point-of-view on its subjects, Daniel & Ana endorses a position.

Daniel & Ana assumes an expository stance, occupying the characters lives in an effort to discuss an issue bigger than they are. This film discusses underground pornography; the analysis is not on the macro level of an industry or the societal impact of the industry on Mexico, but rather on the micro level, this is a case study of this particular pair of siblings.

The course of the film follows the older sister Ana, as she prepares for her wedding, and trails the younger brother Daniel as he exists, for the most part, in his sister’s wake. For most of the film, their relationship is relatively normal. When the siblings begin behaving oddly, their parents suspect nothing, seeing the strains in the siblings’ relationship as a result of the wedding, and nothing more. Ana and Daniel are nothing if not predictable.

While Ana is the central character, the film revolving most directly around the events in her life (despite the parallel surveillance of Daniel), she is not fully formed as a character. Ana is object more than she is subject. Not only is Ana objectified as a sightly woman throughout: not only by the comments of Daniel’s friend saying that she is doable and of the cameraman for the porno saying she is hot; not only by her rape which is a sort of ultimate objectification; but, by the movie itself, by the shallow presentation of her character. In this film Ana is only ever acted upon. As dutiful sister, daughter, and girlfriend, she only causes concern when she temporarily cancels the wedding. The wedding sets the tone of the piece, it determines what is normal, what roles each character is to play, and what behaviors are acceptable. Ana reinstates the wedding in a search for refuge; the wedding is a return to normalcy and an escape from everything else. Everything will end with the wedding.

Written by: Elisheva Zakheim, August 27th 2010

The Switch

admin — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 12:31:00 +0000

Directed by Josh Gordon

Bona Fide Productions

The Switch is getting a lukewarm reception, unless of course you count Capone's review over at AintItCoolNews.com, which makes the film sound like the culprit behind most major World Wars. Others found it sweet but lacking depth, and as usual in the case of movies that don't land with mainstream audiences, I loved it.

I liked the fact that The Switch wasn't all about gross-out sperm humor, which is what the marketing campaign made it seem like it was going to be, focusing entirely on the moment in question of the actual titular switch. The marketing campaign made it seem like the movie was going to be a Farrelly Brothers movie or something more akin to, The Back-Up Plan. But it wasn't.

This is a movie about what happens after a wacky mishap, the human fallout. It's more about the resulting child and less about the night he was conceived. Maybe it's because of the age I'm at, 28, and my thinking about having a family of my own soon that made The Switch the kind of story I could really grasp onto.

The film operates under what Ebert calls, "an idiot plot," where the entire film hinges around one secret that, if revealed, would essentially fix everything or ruin it forever. But unlike the frustration that typically comes with movies like this, as an audience member, I was rooting for the secret keeper and not wanting to ring his neck like I so often do. What's the difference this time? It's not really a secret. The two main characters already love each other, and we know that early on. They are simply too afraid of messing up their friendship and too frustrated with each other to say anything about it. Sounds less and less like the movie that was advertised, doesn't it? That's because this felt like a small film, maybe even an independent. But it was marketed to mass audiences.

Usually, movies like this play relationships oh-so-very-coy, and the main character seems totally oblivious to the fact that her male best friend is in love with her. I hate that. So, Aniston's portrayal of a character with mixed emotions, in love with her best friend but believing she deserves someone who will actually speak up for her and behave in a mature way, is refreshingly different. It helped me keep my patience with Bateman, who plays quirky and verklempt very well—so well that if it weren't for Aniston's more down-to-Earth portrayal, he would've driven me crazy. It's as if we have a romantic comedy where the woman is unwilling to participate in the traditional structure, refusing to wait on the man to resolve his feelings before moving forward in her own life without him. The trouble is, there's still that pesky problem of being in love. Yes, every romantic comedy is the same.

If you've been on the fence and you like movies about what happens after the seemingly "happily ever after," then give The Switch a try, eventually. Yes, there's a happy ending. Yes, at it's core, it's a populist movie about family and how we have to overcome the mistakes of the families we were raised in to build our own. But every once in a while, and with a cast like this, what's so wrong with that?

Excerpted from Born for Geekdom

Written by: Audrey M. Brown, August 25th 2010

The Gerbil Farmer’s Daughter

admin — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Holly Robinson

Three Rivers Press

Holly Robinson begins this book by saying that, essentially, this is a story she has never told. That this is a story she didn’t want to talk about. I am so glad she did.

I am not much for holding back information about my own life and it is completely unfathomable to me how anyone could manage to grow up with a father who raised, became an expert on, and built an empire out of gerbils. I suppose if one was squeamish about having others think you were quirky or odd, you might hesitate, but the story of Robinson’s childhood growing up with a retired Navy captain-turned gerbil farmer is absolutely delightful in its implausibility. I, for one, would not only share the story, but wear it like a badge of honor. I hope she does now that the word is out!

Robinson’s writing is conversational and comfortable. It was like listening to an old friend roll her eyes as she recalled the things her ignorant, dorky parents used to do. We all had embarrassing parents growing up, and it is simply lovely to read about someone whose family was undoubtedly weirder than your own. For anyone who still has secrets locked away in her closet, frightened that her friends or her children or her children’s friends might someday discover, The Gerbil Farmer's Daughter is a huge sigh of relief.

Robinson, while no doubt mortified by her father’s obsession with gerbils, was also mystified by her mother’s tacit refusal to have anything to do with them. She was raised by two individuals who, for all their weaknesses, modeled the notion of following your dreams for their children. Those dreams didn’t necessarily coincide or even complement each other, but Robinson may have benefited heartily from her mother’s example that a wife need not blindly follow her husband’s ambitions, military leader or no.

This story is a lighthearted, entertaining read and Robinson does a lovely job of reminding us that there is no such thing as a “normal” childhood.

Written by: Kari O’Driscoll, August 19th 2010

The Things We Carry

admin — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 16:00:00 +0000

Directed by Ian McCrudden

Lono Entertainment

The Things We Carry tells the story of two sisters coping with the death of their drug-addicted mother Sunny (Alexis Rhee). After leaving her mother and sister Eve (Catherine Kresge) to travel the globe, Emmie (Alyssa Lobit) returns home upon news of her mother’s death. The sisters are forced to confront both Sunny’s drug-addicted friends and each other while searching for a mysterious package.

The film is loosely based on the real-life experiences of sisters Athena and Alyssa Lobit; Athena produced the film, while Alyssa wrote the script and stars as Emmie. As Eve and Emmie, Kresge and Lobit execute their roles with a muted intensity that speaks to the internal struggles of their characters. Lobit’s nuanced turn as the rebellious Emmie presents a woman whose antagonistic exterior hides a sensitive interior. The rest of the cast's performances are largely forgettable, as the other characters are merely meant to serve as catalysts to Emmie and Eve’s introspection and confrontation.

The Things We Carry alternates between scenes from Emmie’s memory and the sisters' present-day reunion, illustrating how they reached the point of estrangement. These vignettes are artfully articulated, as visual cues from the present (such as an image of a jacket or a yellow cab) serve as links to Emmie’s past. Flashback sequences on film tend to come off as confusing or campy, so it’s a testament to Ian McCrudden’s direction and Alyssa Lobit’s writing that the flashbacks are so effective at enhancing the storytelling and building narrative tension.

The film is saturated in yellows and browns, and features unnaturally bright lighting that emphasizes Emmie's discomfort in returning to her hometown. These blown-out images are placed in counterpoint to the beautiful violin and bass compositions of Timo Chen, whose score ebbs and flows, entering moments of reflection and heightened emotion and serving as an aural bridge between remembered past and lived present.

What is perhaps most impressive about the film is its complete lack of didacticism. Emmie may feel morally superior to her mother, but the film does not necessarily agree. The Things We Carry does not make moral judgments about any of the characters' actions; though the film centers on the detrimental effects of Sunny’s drug use, she is not presented as merely a drug addict—she is also a mother, a wife, and a friend. Ultimately the film is not without its flaws, but The Things We Carry survives on its earnestness and engrossing narrative structure.

Written by: Joanna Chlebus, August 19th 2010