Blame

admin — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 16:00:00 +0000

Michelle Huneven’s Blame spans twenty years in fewer than 300 pages but avoids any frantic pacing or strange leaps. Patsy MacLemoore, the main character, is an alcoholic. A young academic, her scholarly accomplishments initially help to balance negative effects of her alcoholism. Huneven’s protagonist has a professorship at a at a small liberal arts college. She had a small but sunny house, friends, family nearby, and was pretty, with long blonde hair, long tanned legs and a dazzling smile. At the county jail, the regular inmates call her “Professor” when she wakes up there after having had too much to drink.

When Patsy wakes up in jail—again—she assumes she’d simply had too much to drink; perhaps she’d driven even though her license had been revoked. She tries joking with the officers, the lawyers. She’d blacked out—again—and doesn’t know what she’d done to land in jail. “What is it?” she asks, “I really don’t remember. Did I kill someone?” She’s joking. Then they read her the police report. A mother and daughter, killed in her driveway, hit by a car.

Patsy pleads guilty and goes to prison. Huneven’s depiction of prison is sobering and not heavy-handed. She doesn’t romanticize Patsy’s prison experience, but neither does she withhold from her readers the moments of grace Patsy does experience there. In prison, Patsy sobers up, leaves prison and returns to town.

Patsy loses many friends, but miraculously (isn’t friendship and forgiveness always a miracle?), she is not left completely alone. Her ex-boyfriend visits her every week, becoming one of her most faithful and loyal friends. Her parents are gentle with her. Her brother looks out for her. When she leaves prison, she comes home to an apartment lovingly appointed by her best friend and his boyfriend. She meets an older man in AA and remains sober, gets married. Many years later, Patsy learns what happened when she blacked out in the car that night. That new information changes Patsy’s new and hard-won self-perception.

I didn’t want this book to end. The story isn’t incomplete, not by any means. Huneven’s feel for just the right bit of detail was wonderfully effective. I felt attached to these characters, their lives and stories, their back-stories, and their private moments very early on and simply wanted even more by the time the book ended. I loved them. I loved the depth with which Huneven wrote them. I am a sucker for stories depicting people who are deeply flawed but who are nevertheless very much loved. This was one of those stories and I hope to find another one like it again.

Written by: kristina grob, August 8th 2010

Forgiveness from a Feminist Perspective

admin — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 08:44:00 +0000

By Kathryn Norlock

Lexington Books

Forgiveness is everywhere. Oprah is extolling its necessity when not engaged directly in seeking it for herself. Female celebrities seem to be forever forgiving (or not) someone, though among the most talked about are unresolved differences between mothers and daughters (a la Jennifer Aniston and Tori Spelling). Adulterous and embezzling politicians regularly ask for forgiveness in public—a request of their families as much as their constituents. Self-forgiveness is a frequent topic among the most high-minded and thoughtful among us. Spiritual leaders and renowned writers like Desmond Tutu and Hannah Arendt have said that forgiveness is an essential aspect of everyday life.

In Forgiveness from a Feminist Perspective, feminist philosopher Kathryn Norlock attempts to reframe the conversation about forgiveness and fill the existing gaps in psychology, philosophy, and gender studies. Norlock argues that despite what many philosophers have ignored in the relationship between gender and forgiveness, the act of forgiving is very much a gendered act. Women are overwhelmingly expected to forgive—not necessarily because they are more wronged, though that argument could certainly be made—and often, forgiveness is associated with a particular type of femininity, though Norlock is clear to separate “femininity,” “forgiveness,” and “weakness.” To deal with the blatant sex bias in forgiveness studies, Norlock debunks the historically gender-neutral approach to understanding the moral power, compassionate communication, and radical activism of forgiving.

Norlock’s work is highly academic and departs from a specific self-identified perspective—that of a white, heterosexual, middle-class, Western feminist academic. While her point of view may therefore be limited and lack engagement with certain texts and cultural scripts, it wouldn’t be fair to assume Norlock should begin her investigation from an impersonal point of departure. As feminists of varied persuasions, backgrounds, and vantage points, we understand too well the necessity of searching for answers from your own experience.

Norlock’s search for truth is dense and compelling, drawing necessary attention to relational power imbalances. It isn’t light, everyday reading, but maybe understanding forgiveness should be a bit heavier than that.

Written by: Brittany Shoot, June 1st 2009