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The Women’s Review of Books Vol. XXI, No. 6 March 2004 74035 $4.00

I In This Issue

I Orientalist fears and fantasies, spiritual devotion, cultural preservation, women’s oppression—the Muslim veil has incorporated these meanings and more, depending on who is wearing it, where, and when. Reviewer Nadine Khalil examines the ever-shifting imagery of the veil. Cover story D

I Seasons just aren’t the same as they used to be now that you can buy melons, strawberries, or tomatoes year-round. But consumers, cooks, and producers may want to consider whether this kind of “global eating” is ultimately healthy—or good tasting. p. 7.

I Women’s accounts of their incredible—some might say Iranian photographer Shadafarin Ghadirian posed her veiled insane—journeys in the Arctic and subjects with modern objects such as bicycles in Antarctic can inspire even armchair her 1998 series Qajar, from Veil. explorers, reports reviewer Judith Niemi (from next to a nice warm radiator, we hope). p. 10. The elusive veil by Nadine Khalil I Queer studies pioneer Eve Sedgwick, President Abraham Veil: Veiling, Representation and Contemporary Art edited by David A. Bailey and Lincoln—they have more in common Gilane Tawadros. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003, 187 pp., $25.00 paper. than you might have realized. p. 12. The Veil Unveiled: The Hijab in Modern Culture by Faegheh Shirazi. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2001, 221 pp., $24.95 paper. I Two new books highlight the I experiences and writings of women eil, edited by David A. Bailey and gious/spiritual emblem is still assigned who are seldom heard from—those Gilane Tawadros, and The Veil contradictory values, including those of in prison. p. 14. V Unveiled, by Faegheh Shirazi, are sensuality, freedom of movement in the provocative attempts to unravel the poly- public sphere, religiosity, and oppressive- valent layers of meaning embedded in the ness against women. As Reina Lewis says I and more... veils draped over women’s bodies. The veil in the preface to Veil, veiled women often 03> is associated with fluidity, something that have to counter patriarchal and Western, is difficult to grasp firmly, an impression denigrating attitudes. “It thus remains a of ambivalence. This symbolic ambiguity matter of political and cultural urgency to of the veil is related to the difficulty of reconceptualize the economy of multiple clearly discerning a woman’s contours and gazes that filter through, slide off and 74470 74035 03 features from her silhouette in loose, flow- remake the veil.” PRINTED IN THE USA ing garments. The Muslim veil as a reli- continued on page 3 The Women’s Review Contents of Books Center for Research on Women Wellesley College 1 Nadine Khalil I Veil: Veiling, Representation and Contemporary Art edited by David A. Bailey 106 Central Street and Gilane Tawadros; The Veil Unveiled: The Hijab in Modern Culture by Faegheh Shirazi Wellesley, MA 02481 (781) 283-2087/ (888) 283-8044 www.wellesley.edu/WomensReview 4 Letters Volume XXI, No. 6 March 2004 5 Karin Aguilar-San Juan I Dream Jungle by Jessica Hagedorn EDITOR IN CHIEF: Amy Hoffman 6 Karin Aguilar-San Juan I A conversation with Jessica Hagedorn [email protected] 7 Jan Zita Grover I Home Grown: The Case for Local Food in a Global Market by Brian Halweil; PRODUCTION EDITOR: Amanda Nash [email protected] Local Flavors by Deborah Madison; The Penguin Atlas of Food: Who Eats What, Where, and CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: Martha Nichols, Why by Erik Millstone and Tim Lang; Food Politics: How The Food Industry Influences Jan Zita Grover Nutrition and Health by Marion Nestle POETRY AND CONTRIBUTING EDITOR: 9 Mandira Sen I The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri Robin Becker ADVERTISING MANAGER: Anita D. McClellan 10 Judith Niemi I No Horizon is So Far: A Historic Journey Across Antarctica by Ann Bancroft [email protected] and Liv Arnesen; Ada Blackjack: A True Story of Survival in the Arctic by Jennifer Niven; OFFICE MANAGER: Nancy Wechsler The Woman Who Walked to Russia: A Writer’s Search for a Lost Legend by Cassandra Pybus [email protected] STUDENT WORKERS: Nissa Hiatt, Martha 12 Heather Love I Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick Ortiz, Bethany Towne EDITORIAL BOARD: Margaret Andersen I 12 Maud Lindsay I Two poems Robin Becker I Claudia M. Christie I Marsha Darling I Anne Fausto-Sterling I 13 Frieda Gardner I Two poems Carol Gilligan I Sandra Harding I Nancy Hartsock I Evelyn Fox Keller I Jean Baker 14 Patrice Clark Koelsch I Inner Lives: Voices of African American Women in Prison Miller I Ruth Perry I Peggy Phelan I by Paula C. Johnson; Couldn’t Keep It to Myself: Testimony from Our Imprisoned Sisters Helene Vivienne Wenzel by Wally Lamb and the Women of York Correctional Facility EDITORIAL POLICY: 15 Leslie Brokaw I There Must Be a Pony In Here Somewhere: the AOL Time Warner Debacle The Women’s Review of Books is feminist but not restricted to any one conception of feminism; all and the Quest for a Digital Future by Kara Swisher with Lisa Dickey writing that is neither sexist, racist, homophobic, nor otherwise discriminatory is welcome. We 16 Carol Bere I The Bookseller of Kabul by Asne Seierstad seek to represent the widest possible range of feminist perspectives both in the books 17 Andrea Hoag I Farewell, My Queen: A Novel by Chantal Thomas reviewed and in the content of the reviews. We believe that no one of us can speak for femi- 18 Enid Shomer I Open Slowly by Kate Light nism, or women, as such; all of our thinking and writing takes place in a specific political, 19 Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts I Drinking Coffee Elsewhere by ZZ Packer social, ethnic, and sexual context, and a responsible review periodical should reflect and fur- Amy Hoffman I A conversation with abortion rights activist Merle Hoffman ther that diversity. The Women’s Review takes no 20 editorial stance; all the views expressed in it represent the opinion of the individual authors. 21 Karen Malpede I Common Shock: Witnessing Violence Every Day by Kaethe Weingarten ADVERTISING POLICY: 22 Rebecca Tuch I Curled in the Bed of Love: Stories by Catherine Brady; Blind Love by Mary Woronov Visit www.wellesley.edu/WomensReview to book an ad online; preview the current issue 23 The Bookshelf and classified ads; and download a media kit including display, classified, and line rates, sizes and shapes, policies, and deadlines.

The Women’s Review of Books (ISSN #0738- Contributors 1433) is published monthly except August by KARIN AGUILAR-SAN JUAN is an assistant professor of volunteers as a meditation group leader at several Minnesota correc- The Women’s Review, Inc., 828 Washington American studies at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. Her tional facilities. Street, Wellesley, MA 02481. Annual subscrip- foray into the Dream Jungle has somewhat alleviated being stranded MAUD LINDSAY lives in Rockland County, NY, by the Hudson tions are $27.00 for individuals and $47.00 for in the Great White North. River, where she works as a gardener. institutions. Overseas postage fees are an additional $20.00 airmail or $5.00 surface mail CAROL BERE, a freelance writer in New Jersey, has published arti- HEATHER LOVE teaches 20th-century literature and gender stud- to all countries outside the US. Back issues are cles and reviews in The Washington Post, The Literary Review, Boston ies in the English department at the University of Pennsylvania. available for $4.00 per copy. Please allow 6-8 Review, Southern Humanities Review, Critical Essays on Ted Hughes, Sylvia KAREN MALPEDE is a writer of plays and fiction of witnessing. weeks for all subscription transactions. Plath: The Critical Heritage, and in several financial journals. “About Oil,” the first chapter of her new novel, is forthcoming in the Periodicals class postage paid at Boston, MA LESLIE BROKAW was a writer and editor at Inc. magazine from January issue of Confrontation. A filmscript about Emily Dickinson, “I and additional mailing offices. POSTMAS- 1987-1999 and editor in chief of Inc.’s first website, which partnered Emily,” will star Calista Flockhart. TER: send address corrections to The Women’s with AOL in the late 1990s. She is now a regular contributor to The JUDITH NIEMI, director of Women in the Wilderness, leads Review of Books, Wellesley College Center for Boston Globe and Boston Magazine, and teaches magazine publishing at women’s canoe trips in northern places. She’s editor of Rivers Running Research on Women, Wellesley, MA 02481. Emerson College. Free, an anthology of women’s canoe stories, author of Women FRIEDA GARDNER’s poems have been published in Water-Stone, Outdoors: Basic Essentials, and many essays. She teaches writing work- The Women’s Review of Books is a project of The Squaw Valley Review and the anthology Close to the Ground. Her man- shops in Iceland and Minnesota. the Wellesley College Center for Research uscript, The Play of Origins, is in circulation. SHARIFA RHODES-PITTS is a 2003-2004 fellow of the George on Women. JAN ZITA GROVER grows, cooks, and writes about food from Washington Williams Fellowship for Journalists of Color, a program The Women’s Review is distributed by Total Duluth, Minnesota. Her essay “Motherfood” appears in the spring sponsored by the Independent Press Association. She is a contribut- Circulation, New York City, NY, and Ingram, 2004 issue of Gastronomica. She teaches a course on food politics for ing editor at Transition magazine. Nashville, TN. All other distribution is han- University for Seniors at the University of Minnesota-Duluth. MANDIRA SEN lives in Calcutta and is a publisher of two dled directly by The Women’s Review. ANDREA HOAG is a freelance writer with degrees in Italian and imprints: Stree, which publishes women’s studies; and Samya, which The contents of The Women’s Review of Books art history living in Lawrence, Kansas. She also reviews for Publishers publishes on social change, dissent, and the construction of culture. are copyright © 2004. All rights reserved; Weekly, USA Today, and The San Francisco Chronicle. ENID SHOMER is the author of four collections of poetry, most reprint by permission only. AMY HOFFMAN is editor in chief of The Women’s Review of Books. recently Stars at Noon: Poems from the Life of Jacqueline Cochran, and of She is not related to Merle Hoffman (nor to the late Abbie). Imaginary Men, winner of both the Iowa Fiction Prize and the NADINE KHALIL is a visiting Fulbright graduate student from LSU/Southern Review Prize. She is the poetry series editor for the Lebanon. She is currently conducting research on issues of cultural University of Arkansas Press. production in the Lebanese diaspora and mediated expressions of REBECCA TUCH is a freelance copywriter, fiction writer, and book displacement. At the American University of Beirut she studied the and art reviewer who lives in Somerville, MA. Her work has appeared recent trend of veiling among Muslim women. in Artsmedia, Heeb Magazine, Ibbetson Street Press, and elsewhere. For PATRICE CLARK KOELSCH is a Minneapolis-based writer and inspiration she listens to loud music and walks along the Charles River. critic. She is member of the national Prison Dharma Network and She is currently at work on a collection of short stories. 2 The Women’s Review of Books / Vol. XXI, No. 6 / March 2004 The elusive veil The veil in Cola logo in the style of Islamic callig- continued from p.1 such publica- raphy. This is another example of pit- tions does not ting the West against Islam, each fearful The discourse of the veil is particu- only represent of being culturally and politically larly pertinent today, when religious sexual hypocrisy, usurped by the other. manifestations of Islam are increasingly however; it is While Shirazi examines what the veil viewed with suspicion and hostility. also eroticized has meant in Western media, Bailey and According to Bailey and Tawadros, and fetishized. It Tawadros explore how it has also been is often shown used to express resistance to the forces In the aftermath of 11 as made of of colonialism and cultural imperialism. September, the veil has become transparent For example, essayist Malek Alloula synonymous with cultural and material, lending describes postcards created by the religious differences that have force to “an French in Algeria during the beginning been presented to us repeatedly image of the of the 20th century. The Algerian as unbridgeable, alien and terrify- Middle East as a women demonstrated their denial of ing The fact that the veil and veil- world of virgin the photographer’s lens by draping ing have been a part of both pleasures and opaque veils around the full lengths of Western and Eastern cultures for unbridled pas- their bodies. Frantz Fanon explains that millennia, from the aristocratic sions,” evoking Algerian women veiled themselves in women of ancient Greece to sexual fantasies defiance of the French colonial rulers contemporary brides worldwide, of the Thousand precisely because “the occupier was bent has not diminished from their and One Nights. on unveiling Algeria,” as both a symbolic overwhelming association with This Orientalist and literal form of conquering them Islam and an abstract, exoticized imaginary [italics Fanon’s]. “Every veil that fell,” notion of the East. (p. 18) says Fanon, “was a negative expression Photo of label on a box of soup marketed accentuates in the US. From The Veil Unveiled. women’s volup- of the fact that Algeria was beginning to Shirazi also traces the historical tuousness in a deny herself and was accepting the rape moments that have shaped the practice world estranged of the colonizer.” When Algerian of veiling. Before it became a socially these descriptions seem far too from reality, “a world in which men are women became active participants in enforced religious custom with political dichotomized to me. She believes that permitted as many women as they can the revolution, they used their veils to connotations, the veil was considered a such images are used to represent what satisfy and veiled women revel in sub- conceal weapons. Fanon describes this status symbol and was worn by upper- she calls the “Western mind,” which mission to their master.” fascinating transformation: class women of the Assyrian, Greco- includes the ideals of rationality and Roman, and Byzantine empires. It dif- emancipation, as opposed to a certain he illustrations that Bailey and The Algerian woman’s body, ferentiated them from slaves, who could form of otherness, in this case, the con- Tawadros present display a dif- which in an initial phase was not don the veil because they had to tradictory sensuality and subjugation of T ferent kind of politics of image- pared down, now swelled. engage in strenuous labor. women in the East. making and consumption. After 9/11, Whereas in the previous period Unlike Bailey and Tawadros’ coedit- Shirazi shows how the veil “sells” the jarring image of a veiled Statue of the body had to be made slim ed anthology of articles, which exhibits both sex and politics in magazines such Liberty was forwarded widely online. and disciplined to make it attrac- the use of the veil in contemporary as Playboy, Penthouse, and Hustler, which Veil also includes photographs of tive and seductive, it now had to artistic practice, The Veil Unveiled uses have attracted an international reader- Majida Khattari’s provocative perform- be squashed, made shapeless and research materials that are drawn prima- ship. “On one hand, stereotypes about ance in which a woman is covered with even ridiculous. This is the phase rily from elements of popular culture. the veil are visually presented in order to a garment embroidered with the Coca- during which she undertook to Although Shirazi does not manage to sexually stimulate the reader; on the bridge the gulf between the public, other hand these stereotypes are pre- mass-mediated discourse of the veil and sented in cartoons to mock and ridicule more individual, creative interpreta- certain aspects of the social and sexual United Nations for a united world tions, as Bailey and Tawadros do, her behavior of Middle Easterners.” The argument is persuasive because it relies cartoons often depict obese sultans sur- on a diversity of images. Shirazi shows rounded by seductive odalisques in The Convention on the Elimination of all how the veil has become an object of translucent harem pants: The women Forms of Discrimination against Women and visual and literary interest, as well as of are prototypes of sexual slaves. A its Optional Protocol: Handbook for political manipulation. She demon- shocking instance of this is what Shirazi Parliamentarians strates that the veil has taken on mean- refers to as the “blatantly racist politics” This Handbook for Parliamentarians contains ings that are constructed and recon- of a cartoon showing a man and three the full text of the Convention on the structed according to context. It is used veiled women: “ Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination to do everything from sell sanitary nap- against Women and its Optional Protocol. It kins to Saudi Arabians to eroticize nude The women wear black veils with also provides information on the historical women in Playboy magazines. pieces of fabric cut out in differ- background of the two documents. However, there is always the danger ent places: one woman’s veil is cut E.03.IV.5 9211302269 122pp. $18.95 of overstating the power of the media to display her pubic area, anoth- to shape our perceptions. After all, the er’s is cut to show her breasts and The State of the World's Children 2004: aesthetic dimension of popular culture the other’s is cut to reveal her Girls, Education and Development is a façade that we are able to see eyes. This cartoon implies that the This year’s report documents the widespread through and look beyond. Therefore, I Arab needs three women in order gender disparities in education and the costs find unconvincing Shirazi’s claim that to have all the parts he desires in and consequences of excluding girls from school. It highlights strategies, programmes “once the veil is assigned a certain a woman. The veil reduces each and initiatives in countries around the world meaning… the garment becomes a woman to only a part of her that are advancing the cause of girls’ education force in and of itself and this force body. By fragmenting her body, and improving the lives of all children. must be deferred to by many people.” the veil becomes a symbol of her E.04.XX.1 9280637921 156pp. $12.95 The targets of mass media are not nec- victimization. (p. 57) essarily passive, as Shirazi seems to State of World Population 2003: Making assume, thereby propagating the very The scenarios vary in their degree of One Billion Count - Investing in forces she seeks to debunk. Certainly, offensiveness, depending upon the US Adolescents' Health and Rights the female body is often commodified government’s political relationship with The largest generation of adolescents in history, in advertising, where women have been the Middle East. For example, “in the 1.2 billion strong, is preparing to enter represented as “accessories,” who mar- April 1986 issue of Playboy, an ayatollah adulthood in a rapidly changing world. This ket the product in question, but does it stares excitedly at a three-page poster of State of World Population report examines the follow that the woman is portrayed as a figure who wears a shapeless full-body challenges and risks faced by this generation “seducing man into buying the adver- veil. Only the eyes and the two bare feet that impact their physical, emotional and tised product by promising that if he show. A bangle adorning one ankle mental well-being. It comes complete with buys the product he will buy her”? identifies the figure as a woman.” expert analysis and a wealth of statistics, Shirazi lists the kinds of images of Shirazi’s claim that this portrayal repre- graphs and indicators. veiled Middle Eastern women she says sents Ayatollah Khomeini is not far E.03.III.H.1 0897146700 88pp. $12.50 are presented by the American advertis- fetched; she says it illustrates Western ing industry—“the concubine in the misgivings about the Islamic Republic United Nations Publications, Department of Public Information harem at the mercy of her tyrannical of Iran’s practice of veiling. In another Sales and Marketing Section, Room DC2-0853, Dept.A503 master; the exotic but inaccessible veiled image in the 1991 issue of Hustler, the New York, N.Y. 10017; Tel. (212) 963-8302; Fax. (212) 963-3489. women; and the suppressed women veil covers the actions of a couple in E-Mail: [email protected] Internet: http://www.un.org/publications VISA, MC and AMEX accepted. who is treated like chattel”—although “flagrante delicto.”

The Women’s Review of Books / Vol. XXI, No. 6 / March 2004 3 he explains, “both women and men were desexualized and cinematic texts became androgynous… Love and the physical Letters expression of love (even between intimates) were... absent.” Furthermore, Dear Editor: about an incredible sister who has done so The death by suicide of Carolyn much for race relations, helped children all non-verbal intimacy was effaced Heilbrun impels me both to reread her over the world, made groundbreaking from the screen for quite some contribution to your July 2003 issue on movies, and promoted books and authors. time, as women veiled not only women aging, and to complete an unfin- She’s the prime example of a thoroughly their bodies but also their senti- ished letter to you that I began immediate- honest woman entrepreneur who puts her ments. This tended to present a ly after reading that issue. Along with mind, heart and soul (and hard earned formidable challenge to the many women now in the emerita and money) into everything she does, including actors who had to express their grandmotherly stage, I appreciated it being an excellent and caring employer. feelings to their intimate relatives immensely and wanted to thank you. She’s a foxy dresser too – perhaps another in psychologically realistic ways, I was struck at that time, however, by a Black veil worn by a Saudi woman bear- reason to be cavalier? Here’s hoping to see ing the Yves Saint-Laurent without gazing into their eyes or sense—strongly reinforced by Heilbrun’s no more Bill Buckley type dismissive com- logo. From Veil. touching them. Poetry became act—that the tone overall was entirely too ments about her in subsequent issues of a the only option for expressing negative. As a longtime academic adminis- feminist publication. intimacy. (p. 146) trator as well as teacher-scholar, I found Lyn Bailey Gumowski carry bombs, grenades, machine- nothing there to express the pleasure that Charleston, WV gun clips. (p. 85) Shirazi contrasts this denial of all I (and surely others) now take, after forms of sexuality in Iranian films with decades of working at the kind of job that Dear Editor: Shirazi, though, mentions her dis- romantic, melodramatic Indian films, controls one’s life and consumes one’s I was heartened to read “No more rap- comfort with the imposition of veiling which often use the veil to create a hours to the extent that it’s almost impos- ing,” Mary Zeiss Stange’s supportive piece in Iran as the proper dress code, in the mood of sexual tension. “The veil sible to fit in a trip to the dentist or shoe on wimmin owning guns. guise of cultural preservation. Here, removes the heroine’s face even further repair shop, in the freedom to structure— Her heart-breaking question, what women and their comportment have from the spectator’s reach and thus or not to structure—one’s own days to suit might have happened to Dru Sjodin if she become weapons of the state. “The intensifies the illusion of intruding into one’s personal needs and desires. had been able to defend herself, brings to moral defense of the Islamic Republic a private world.” Even though nudity is Many of the articles came from the mind two cases here in New Mexico. In of Iran seems to rest painfully on the forbidden, “Indian filmmakers fre- pens of women whose work as writers or one a womon threatened with robbery and shoulders of the properly veiled quently send a veiled heroine into a academics allows them wide discretion who knows what else in a supermarket woman. She has become Iran’s bulwark downpour in order to show a wet veil over when to work and when to fit in the parking lot took a gun out of her backpack against the cultural assault of Western clinging to her body and thereby accen- other things. They perform no less work, and shot her attacker in the knee. In anoth- nations,” Shirazi says. tuating its silhouette.” I’m sure; but do enjoy some control over er, a woman attacked in her bed at night by In Veil, Leila Ahmed complicates the It is fitting to end with literary expres- their schedules. This is no small thing. I a rapist took away his gun and killed him. discussion further by revealing the con- sions about veiling, which Shirazi quotes expect that many women who must punch Wimmin of all varieties, without excep- tradictory stance of British imperialism to show a profound discontent with the a time clock (as I did in my early work life) tion, hearing about either of these events, in Egypt. It “appropriated the language veil. The Iranian poet Mirzadeh ‘Eshqi or adapt their schedules all day every day grin proudly. of feminism in the service of its assault (1894-1924), for example, wrote pas- to someone else’s, join me in feeling, upon An experience of my own is relevant on the religions and cultures of Other sionately about her opinions: retirement, a sense of liberation and also. After I had moved alone to the coun- men, in particular Islam, in order to give expanding life opportunities, despite other try here, my car was vandalized twice by an aura of moral justification to that What are these unbecoming limitations that aging brings. Whether one young males who were also trespassing on assault at the very same time as it com- cloaks and veils? continues along familiar paths or, like my land. The last, and it was the last, time bated feminism within its own society.” They are shrouds for the dead, Heilbrun, makes a “U-turn,” this new free- I saw them, I told them if I saw them In an ironic twist, in resistance to this not for those alive dom can elicit joy, whatever one’s age. again I would shoot them. They laughed colonial narrative, nationalists promoted I say: “Death to those who bury As one of the multitude of feminists but they left. I went to my gun owning the sanctity of all the customs concern- women alive”… who found inspiration in Carolyn neighbors and practiced shooting so they ing women that were under attack by the They’ll throw off their cloak of Heilbrun’s work, I wish she had been able would hear me, and I got my never-used Europeans—especially the seclusion shame, be proud… to overcome despair by recalling words gun out of storage. It sits by my bed. A and veiling of Muslim women. “When Otherwise, as long as women are she wrote to me a decade ago. In response sense of victimization does not. item[s] of clothing—be [they] bloomers in shrouds to a query I had addressed to her, as well I said what I did because my neighbor, or bras—have briefly figured as focuses Half the nation is not alive. as to a number of my colleagues in a married woman with children from a of contention and symbols of feminist (pp. 159-160) women’s history, about the influence of family who has been here for generations, struggle in Western societies, it was at Mary Wollstonecraft on their lives, told me that is what she said to these same least Western feminist women who were Thus, Shirazi documents the trans- Heilbrun wrote: males when they trespassed on her land. responsible for identifying the item in position of the veil to a metaphysical Two things I would have liked in the question as significant and defining it as realm of existential angst. Male writers Wollstonecraft, a brave and won- article: a site of struggle and not, as has sadly such as the distinguished Urdu poet derful woman, is a rare gift to A source for the quoted passage from been the case with respect to the veil for Asadullah Khan Ghalib “represent their those who came after her.... I think D. A. Clarke. (Does WROB quote without Muslim women, colonial and patriarchal own literary anxiety, their struggle with almost all feminists know that they giving a source?) men,” says Ahmed. love and words, in terms of woman’s act for those who come after And a lot more real info about Black unveiling.” She cites Farzaneh Milani, them, and pay a price that will Diamond or at least a source to go to. nmasking the veil’s complexity who claims that “perhaps the anxieties probably not be fully appreciat- Foxx as a visual representation would- attached to the confrontation of love ed.... She, at least, persists to Ribera, NM Un’t be complete without an and reality are displaced onto a woman’s encourage us, and we remember appraisal of how Iranian filmmakers body and its nakedness. Perhaps the her name and her writings. Editor's Note: D. A. Clarke's essay, “A have navigated stringent government veil, because of its symbolic potency, Woman with a Sword: Some Thoughts on censorship, especially since the 1979 becomes a vessel in which to place both This is true no less of Carolyn Women, Feminism and Violence,” was Islamic revolution. Shirazi remarks that the anxieties and the exhilarations of Heilbrun. I hope that we and our succes- published in Transforming a Rape Culture, the imaginary line drawn between pri- love and creativity.” sors will continue to take courage from her Emilie Buchwald, Paula Fletcher, and vate and public situations is blurred In order to truly abandon the widely life and work, and not allow the manner of Martha Ross, eds. (New York: Milkweed when, onscreen, the woman must be held misconceptions about the veil, we her death, or the “constant defeat” of Editions, 1993). Information about Black shown veiled even in her sleep, in the must “unveil”’ and challenge these which she wrote in her July essay, to over- Diamond came from media sources as list- privacy of her home. The assumption is assumptions. As the above authors have come the satisfaction of knowing that we ed in Stange's article, including The that the female is the object only of the demonstrated, the veil is a shifting too “act for those who come after [us].” Guardian and The Wall Street Journal. male gaze, which is surely reductionist. In image. Its varied, obscure visual signifi- Marilyn J. Boxer Veil, Hamid Naficy alludes to this as the cance and the fiery public debate it has San Francisco, CA The Women’s Review of Books “culture of surveillance.” In such a cul- sparked attest to that. Even its physical- welcomes letters to the editor. ture, cinematic images of interactions ity is difficult to pin down; it moves Dear Editor: Mail your letters to Amy Hoffman, Editor in between men and women must be along with the bodies it envelops. As an As a faithful and generally pleased read- Chief, Women’s Review of Books, Center encrypted with a more delicate form of image, the veil has been constructed er, I’ve noticed over the years snide for Research on Women, Wellesley College, verbal and bodily language. Naficy both intellectually and socially in an elu- remarks about Oprah Winfrey in too many 106 Central Street, Wellesley, MA 02481; details with startling clarity the resultant sive manner. So, it may be best not to reviews, as if being well loved/popular fax them to the attention of Amy Hoffman at intricacy of ways of looking in Iranian take too a firm a hold on it by trying to diminishes your commitments, seriousness (781) 283-3645; e-mail them to ahoffman@ cinema. According to Naficy, the space define it. Rather, we must peer through and activism. The latest issue had an wellesley.edu; or visit our website at separating men from women arouses the layers of its visual and symbolic advertising notice for WRoB itself saying www.wellesley.edu/WomensReview and use desire and creates a variety of gazes complexity. Most importantly, let us not with condescension: “Go Beyond Oprah.” the handy form. Please make sure to include your mailing address and phone ranging from the averted, unfocused forget the personal, at times spiritual I think getting “up” to her standards is a number in your letter. We especially appre- look, to the fleeting glance, to the direct relevance the veil may hold for those challenge that is “beyond” most of us. ciate letters of 300 words or less. gaze. A few decades after the revolution, who wear it. I Shame on you all for being so snooty

4 The Women’s Review of Books / Vol. XXI, No. 6 / March 2004 The fact of the Philippines “standing shooting of her husband’s film. In in” for Vietnam is disturbing on many 1974, Hagedorn actually did meet with levels. But Hagedorn is (thankfully) less Manda Elizalde, the man who claimed Who’s discovering whom? interested in forcing a gloomy lesson to have discovered the Tasaday. In an about geopolitical history upon us than online article for Time Asia magazine by Karin Aguilar-San Juan she is in recreating the culture of excess (August 18-25, 2003), she describes and absurdity that surrounded the real their encounter as a brief surreal visit, Dream Jungle by Jessica Hagedorn. New York: Viking, filming of Apocalypse Now. In Napalm a near-hallucination during which she Sunset, Vincent Moody falls in love with might have seen a little boy clad in a 2003, 325 pp., $23.95 hardcover. Lina and ends up staying in the loincloth dancing across the lawn. Philippines after the shoot is completed. Elizalde never shared anything of sub- I The lead actor’s drug-addicted teenage stance with her so, like her fictional girlfriend mysteriously disappears from counterpart Paz Marlowe, she was ream Jungle is an intricate tale about Legazpi’s anthropological find. the set. The director’s wife, Janet Pierce, unable to publish a story about him. woven from two fictionalized One night Lina approaches Legazpi in makes her own documentary about the Until she read about his death in 1997, D events in the Philippines during his study to ask him about the little jun- film and the filmmaker, which allows Hagedorn did not think about him the 1970s. In real life, the events—the so- gle boy he keeps trapped in a shed her to deliver insightful criticisms of her again. In the late 1970s Hagedorn called discovery of a Stone Age tribe behind the house. When Legazpi husband and the film throughout the traveled frequently between San called the Tasaday and the filming of the explains that the boy is from a “lost novel. For a scene involving a near- Francisco and Manila (the capital city epic Vietnam War movie, Apocalypse Now tribe,” Lina reasonably asks, “How did death encounter in the jungle, a tiger not far from where the film was actu- (1979)—were dramatic, controversial, and the tribe lose its way?” Laughing, named Shiva is flown in by cargo plane ally shot). Although she never visited internationally significant. Hagedorn’s Legazpi responds: “The Taobo aren’t from California and kept in an iron cage the set during the filming of Apocalypse rendering of these events creates a fasci- ‘lost’ in the way you are thinking, Lina. near Mount Taobo. The locals, never Now, she told me she remembers the nating and surreal world propelled by What I mean is, they were unknown to having seen such a creature, climb into wild tsismis (gossip) about the US cast greed, lust, sorrow, deceit, hopes, and, of us until my recent … uh, discovery. And the coconut trees under cover of dark- and crew and the Filipino locals who course, dreams. In Dream Jungle, an indige- therefore[…] they are lost.” ness so that they can watch the animal. worked for them. nous tribe called the Taobo is found, but The drama of Legazpi’s discovery of For a scene requiring dead bodies as Since the actual events upon which the discoverer is more interested in build- the Taobo lies partly—but not entire- props, Pierce mistakenly ends up with this novel is based are so complex and ing his reputation than in helping tribal ly—in their primitive ways: Living in actual corpses stashed away in a ware- strange in and of themselves, what is peoples. During the filming of a movie caves, unaware of the advances of mod- house. Referring to the corpses as “our gained by fictionalizing them? In the called Napalm Sunset, the foreign cast and ern technology or the evils of war, these problem,” he simply orders his Filipina interview that follows this review (p. 6), crew show an utter disregard for their astonishingly innocent people subsist production manager, Menching, to Hagedorn discusses with me some of host country and the locals who serve off plants they harvest from the jungle “take care of it.” her motivations for writing the novel. them. As a result, powerful questions floor. When Legazpi, driven by an What is truth—and what is fiction? By making up an imaginary dream jun- emerge: Who can discover? Whose acts unabashed desire for power and glory, Readers who want to know more gle, she leads us into a period of determine history? What can we learn invites people to ogle them as if they about the actual events upon which Philippine history marked by a frighten- from history? were his children, they become an inter- this novel is based should consult ingly huge US footprint. But where a In the novel, a wealthy Spaniard national sensation. Legazpi, formerly Robin Hemley’s nonfiction book professional historian might be tempted named Zamora Lopez de Legazpi “dis- just a rich playboy, is suddenly trans- about the Tasaday controversy, Invented to bonk us over the head with a lesson covers” the Taobo in the southernmost formed into a humanitarian and a Eden (2003), and the documentary about imperialism and colonialism, this island of Mindanao. At the same time, defender of the tribal peoples of the Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s writer is content to invite us into her an American named Tony Pierce is Philippines. But before long, journalists Apocalypse (1991) based on footage wacky, made-up world—and let us directing Napalm Sunset in the same and anthropologists around the world taken by Eleanor Coppola during the judge it for ourselves. I region of the country. Rizalina, the strik- begin to question the authenticity of the ingly beautiful daughter of Legazpi’s tribe. They find out that Legazpi some- head cook, ties the two stories together. times coached the Taobo on how to Nicknamed Lina, she eventually escapes appear more primitive and isolated than The Heart of the Sound from the Legazpi estate in Manila and they actually were. Shortly after Legazpi An Alaskan Paradise Found and Nearly Lost returns to her home province in dies in 1997, a Filipino professor of Marybeth Holleman Mindanao as Jinx, the prostitute-turned- anthropology with a degree from the On the fifteenth anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil girlfriend of Vincent Moody, a two-bit Sorbonne delivers a speech denouncing spill comes one woman’s reflections on that devastation American actor in Napalm Sunset. The Legazpi’s discovery of the Taobo as and the parallel disintegration of her own marriage— stories are also connected through the “the hoax of the century.” character of Paz Marlowe, a journalist and the eventual healing that comes to both. who interviews Legazpi for a pop-cul- ot far from the Taobo caves, “This book has it all: an original, compelling story; ture magazine called Groove Rocket. When the Americans are filming a lyrical, evocative prose; a clear-eyed and passionate s her investigation of the Taobo fails to N movie about the Vietnam War. toryteller. It has true transformative power.” turn up enough substantiated material Hagedorn’s juxtaposition of Napalm —Annie Dillard, author of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek for an article, the magazine sends her Sunset with the Taobo hoax accentuates out to interview Pierce, the famous the perverse contradictions of a world Cloth $21.95 “An extraordinary book full of wonder and passion and a movie director. twisted by a drive to conquer and con- courageous story about the heart of Prince William Sound The novel is narrated through the trol others. The irony of the Philippines and about sounding the depths of our own hearts.” voices of several characters, but Lina’s as a substitute location for Vietnam may —David W. Orr, author of Earth in Mind voice is probably the most interesting be lost on some readers; some histori- and important; her character is the one ans argue that the bloody Philippine- most developed in the book. Early on, American War of 1899-1913 was the Grace Notes she describes herself to the reader: precursor to the US war in Vietnam. The Waking of a Woman’s Voice During the 1970s the increasing scale of Heidi Hart Me, Rizalina. Born into a life of US military and financial support for shit, but nevertheless voted best the Marcos dictatorship led many peo- From her place in a devout Mormon family to joining number one elementary student ple to draw parallels between US inter- the Quaker community of Salt Lake City, Hart shares in all of Sultan Ramayyah. vention in the two countries. the wisdom she has gained on her difficult journey. Champion speller, speed reader, Of course, Tony Pierce is oblivious to “The human voice, lifted in song and poetry, runs and secret keeper. Okeydokey flu- this irony. First of all, he is saving money. through this deeply engaging memoir in startling ent in English, as you can tell by In an interview, he tells Paz Marlowe, leitmotif.” now. Loves the word “neverthe- “The beauty of a location like this is that —Carol Muske-Dukes, author of Sparrow less.” Named after our beloved it offers you everything you need. Beach, national hero, poet and novelist ocean, jungle, lake, mountains, waterfalls, “Hart’s search to find her own voice is so deeply and so Dr. José Rizal. (p. 14) cheap labor…” Second, being on loca- elegantly rendered that it serves as both instruction and tion in the Philippines allows him to suc- Cloth $21.95 gift for the reader.” In this brief passage—as elsewhere cumb to a European fantasy of survival —Teresa Jordan, author of throughout the novel—Hagedorn revels among hordes of ugly and monstrous Riding the White Horse Home in the wacky hybridity of contemporary savages. Citing a famous passage from Filipino culture, a culture laden with Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (the vestiges of Spanish and US colonialism book upon which Apocalypse Now was The University of Utah Press and thus replete with bizarre contradic- actually based), Pierce muses: “We could (800) 773-6672 tions. For example, although Lina was not understand because we were too far www.upress.utah.edu born into generations of servitude, she and could not remember because we is “nevertheless” intelligent enough to were traveling in the night of first ages, sense that there is something shady of those ages that are gone...”

The Women’s Review of Books / Vol. XXI, No. 6 / March 2004 5 about it. Meanwhile, the Philippines was © Marion Ettlinger suffering under the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos. What a troubled set- A conversation with Jessica Hagedorn ting! Some said that the “discovery” of by Karin Aguilar-San Juan the Tasaday was used as a diversion by Marcos from the corruption and excess- es of his oppressive regime. So, you see, these really interesting events all come Karin Aguilar-San Juan: When you guage for the Taobo, which is also an together between 1971 and 1977. I just saw [Manda Elizalde’s] obituary in invented tribe. I looked at some of the really wanted to capture the decadence 1997, what made you think that the indigenous languages we have in the and turbulence of it, the scholarly back- two stories [the lost Tasaday and the Philippines, and I tried to approximate and-forth about it, the arguments, the filming of Apocalypse Now] belonged some of those words. Zamora [one of mysteries, and sheer excitement. It’s together? the lead characters] is a Spanish mestizo. messy and complicated. I’m not interest- So his thoughts and his speech are pep- ed in proving or disproving the authen- Jessica Hagedorn: I’ve always been pered with Spanish, Tagalog and of ticity of the Tasaday tribe; I’m not about fascinated by the idea of cultural myth- course, English. I think the mix and to judge any of it. making. And while I wasn’t sure how I clash of cultures add to the texture and could tie it together, I felt like both music of the novel. Dream Jungle is about KASJ: Was there something intrigu- Jessica Hagedorn events made great subjects for a novel. a hybrid world—the chaos, confusion, ing about the filming of Apocalypse Like, ding ding! Bells went off in my and excitement of many different kinds Now that people should know about? head. I got really, really excited. I of people living together, loving and hat- JH: You’d write badly. I can’t despise remembered that afternoon many years ing each other. JH: It was hilarious while they were film- any of my characters. I can despise their ago when I tried to interview Elizalde in ing, because people in Manila couldn’t acts, but I’m not here to judge them. his palatial home in Quezon City. It was KASJ: You bring in letters, and clip- stop gossiping, making tsismis about it. I’m here to tell their story. My task, I 1974. The world was desperate to pings… The gossip was about cultural clash with believe, is to show the reader a particu- believe in a tribe of innocent primitives the locals. The filming went on for two lar world peopled by flawed human and a “lost Eden.” And the Vietnam JH: …because of the epic nature of the long years. People were fired, people had beings. Let the readers make up their War was still raging. Ding! The Vietnam book. I was trying to capture moments nervous breakdowns… There was no own minds. War. Why did Apocalypse Now make me in time, not just with the narrative, but other movie like that, not in those days. uneasy? What was it about the movie even with how the words on a page were The myth goes that it completely burned KASJ: Could you have written this that intrigued me? I wasn’t sure I even laid out. For example, where an excerpt out Coppola. Yeah, they say making that book in any other place? The whole liked it the first time I saw it. Having of the script for the movie Napalm Sunset movie beat his ass. Of course, it turned thing is about the Philippines. been filmed in the Philippines made it all (my fictional version of Apocalypse Now) out to be a classic. But I take it another the more compelling, of course. I was appears, I asked the book designer to step: The Philippines will kick your ass, if JH: Maybe the question is really: Why also curious about the whole Heart of make it read like typewritten text. You you’re not ready for it! does a certain place have a pull on a Darkness mythology, the white man know, back in the prehistoric 1970s we writer? People probably do wonder that going into the interior of a place and still used typewriters. KASJ: What kinds of real-life events about me. I’ve lived in the US for over finding “darkness.” Why is it they always are useful for fiction? 30 years. Why do I keep writing stories find darkness? KASJ: What moment were you trying that are largely set in the Philippines? to capture? JH: All of it is useful. It’s very personal C’mon! The culture is just so rich and KASJ: In someone else’s country. what will move one artist and what will has so much happening in it. To me it’s JH: A particular moment in history move another. I think you can find [art] a treasure trove. Lush, stark, abundant, JH: Yeah. Darkness: literally, metaphori- where all these tumultuous events were in both the smallest thing and in the untainted, polluted. The whole world cally and all that. going on. Everything is a moment… most horrific catastrophe. It could be has gone through there: Arabs, Chinese, The hedonistic ’70s were a moment… something as simple as the mystery of Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Brits, KASJ: You use different languages a and this big American mythmaking seeing someone enter a room, down to Americans. The Philippines has every- lot in this book. What do you hope is machine came to the Philippines to make a major historical event like the Tasaday thing. The supernatural, the superreal, the effect? this big movie on the Vietnam War, controversy or the Vietnam War. and the surreal. It’s about grim reality, which had “technically” just ended. Everything is fodder. too. It’s about faith in a larger being, a JH: I hope to create a particular world, a People were not happy that a movie was deep, ingrained spiritual faith. It’s about specific world, a world in which all these being made about a war that was still KASJ: You have to have a lot of strength and courage, but also about languages co-exist. I feel this exists in the very fresh and painful in people’s minds. chutzpah to take a big event, as you corruption, humor and generosity. I Philippines. One of those languages in [Francis Ford] Coppola was considered do, or two big events, and turn them mean, God! You almost don’t have to the novel is invented, you know, the lan- bagsak, crazy to want to make a film into fiction. make anything up.

JH: You have to have chutzpah to be a KASJ: What do you mean? The cover photo from Dream Jungle. writer. Why be a writer if you have no balls? You can’t be afraid or you should JH: Everything there is rife with, you go do something else. know, dramatic conflict, tension, and romance. It’s an extravagant culture KASJ: How do you know when an bursting with extravagant emotions. It event is useful for fiction? also is the place where I grew up, so it will always have real and lasting mean- JH: You just know. As soon as I read ing for me. that obit of Elizalde’s, I knew. It was like, oooh. A chill went through me. Oh my KASJ: Did you have a hand in putting God, this is an amazing story. Boom. together the cover of the book?

KASJ: Are there specific things that JH: Yes. I went through all of my col- you want your readers to learn when lection of Philippine books and art, and they read your novel? then some friends loaned me more books. I found the image that was finally JH: No. I don’t write with “lessons” in used in a book edited by Jonathan mind. I just hope my readers are Best… a collection of photographs absorbed by the story, that they enjoy the taken during the early days of the read, and that the novel raises some American colonization of the provocative questions. Philippines. The one we chose is called “Anonymous Visayan Beauty,” a sepia KASJ: So if you’re telling the story portrait taken in 1904 by an American from all these different points of photographer… I thought the young girl view, does that mean you like all the in the picture was so haunting and beau- characters who are telling the story? tiful and could be Rizalina, but also not. She could also be the Philippines. She is JH: Well, I love ’em ’cause I create ’em. this beautiful, waiting, fierce presence… There’s a certain kind of pleasure in cre- when you think of a dream jungle, I ating compelling, complicated monsters. think seduction and danger have to be part of its allure. Now, what seduction KASJ: If you despised the monster means to you, there’s the interesting character, what would happen? challenge for an artist, right? I

6 The Women’s Review of Books / Vol. XXI, No. 6 / March 2004 What these writers agree on is this: see why supermarket chains and restau- Locally grown foods support more peo- rants import out-of-(local)-season ple than imported foods, use less energy California, then Latin American, then Eating locally to grow and distribute, produce far less Chinese produce. For customers, retail pollution, taste fresher, promote better has become a perpetual summer, even if by Jan Zita Grover health, and encourage biodiversity (farm- maintaining the illusion means shipping ers growing for local markets, unlike from 5,000 miles away. Home Grown: The Case for Local Food in a Global Market monocrop farmers, produce a variety of Occasionally a rent occurs in this fan- foods). Locally grown foods lessen the tasy, revealing its high costs, as it did last by Brian Halweil. Washington, DC: Worldwatch Institute, likelihood of food-born pathogens by November, when workers at a Chi-Chi’s keeping the path between grower and restaurant outside of Pittsburgh left scal- 2002, 83 pp., $9.00 paper. consumer short. They help to keep agri- lions shipped from Mexico in contami- cultural land in production—important nated ice sitting in their meltwater and Local Flavors by Deborah Madison. New York: Broadway Books, to anyone who has watched naturally fer- then served them. Three diners died and tile soils paved over for subdivisions and more than 600 contracted hepatitis A. 2002, 408 pp., $34.95, hardcover. office parks—and increase farmers’ According to a New York Times story fol- profits while keeping prices an average lowing the outbreak, “Illnesses have risen The Penguin Atlas of Food: Who Eats What, Where, and Why of 30-40 percent cheaper than what con- sharply because people are eating more by Erik Millstone and Tim Lang. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: glomerates charge for it. Finally—only fresh produce and want it year-round, Madison emphasizes this—locally grown leading to an increase in imports from Penguin Books, 2003, 128 pp., $20.00 paper. foods teach patience, a healthy sense of countries with weaker sanitary stan- limits, and a vivid awareness of seasons. dards.” Other tears in the fabric offer Food Politics: How The Food Industry Influences Nutrition Coming from the grow-almost-any- quick, jarring glimpses of the poverty of thing climate of Northern California, I commodity farmers in Latin America and and Health by Marion Nestle. Berkeley, CA: University of became curious how settlers in late 19th- Northern and Eastern Africa, where cof- century and early 20th-century Duluth, fee growers devote every hectare to cash California Press, 2002, 457 pp., $15.95 paper. Minnesota, where I now live, fed them- crops while their families go without selves. With little effort I discovered that food or have to buy it. I Duluth’s short (roughly 85-day) growing Halweil and Millstone and Lang pro- season is sufficient to grow fine crops of vide international perspectives on the ach winter of my childhood, a ers and farm workers can’t grow food for berries, corn, tomatoes, potatoes, greens, structural mechanics of growing food SunKist orange appeared in the their families. Famine often follows. In apples, plums, wild rice, celery, peppers, for local markets. Halweil describes E toe of my Christmas stocking. industrialized, Northern hemisphere crucifers, grapes, and herbs. All of these “farm shops” that connect growers/pro- This was a puzzling object: Outside in countries, a varied diet is available at less were grown for local markets until quite ducers and buyers in European Union our California garden, an immense navel than actual cost; government spreads the recently on family farms of 10 acres of countries, while Millstone and Lang’s orange tree grew fruit that put the store- actual cost of irrigation dams and canals less. Waiting for the height of summer to clever graphics describe trends in cus- bought SunKist to shame. and highways across all taxpayers, not buy such local fruits and vegetables in tomer spending on organic food world- It wasn’t until two decades later, just growers and shippers. If the actual northern Minnesota means accepting wide—for example, Danes spend the when I worked briefly as a photo costs of irrigation, transportation, and constraints—no tomatoes until July, say, most per capita, followed by Swiss; researcher for the California pollution were factored in, Northern and no peaches until August. Meanwhile, Americans spend less than a quarter of Department of Parks, that I understood hemisphere food costs would be much the cost of air freight steadily decreases what Danes do. The local food move- why my mother persisted in offering me higher. For example, air shipment of one by an average of three to four percent ment is gaining adherents and economic a commercial orange every year. kilogram of iceberg lettuce from each year (Penguin Atlas), so it’s easy to clout, they report. Halweil points to the SunKist, one of the California fruit California to London produces five kilo- industry’s earliest growers’ cooperatives, grams of carbon dioxide emissions began sending its navel oranges east in (Penguin Atlas); a head of iceberg shipped refrigerated boxcars at the turn of the from California to Washington, DC, uses 20th century, when my mother was a “about thirty-six times as much fossil The Checkbook and child. In her hometown of Gibbon, fuel energy in transport as it provides in Minnesota, these oranges, reverently food energy when it arrives.” (Home wrapped in red tissue paper, sold in Grown) Within the continental US, “if a the Cruise Missile December for the princely sum of one lettuce farmer outside Atlanta, Georgia, dollar apiece. wants to sell lettuce to a Safeway in Global trade has altered people’s Atlanta, it must first be shipped 1,000 sense of what is in season—or rather, of kilometers to Upper Marlboro [MD] for Conversations with Arundhati Roy nothing being out of season—so that inspection, then be shipped back down worldwide, few cities can be found today to Georgia” (Home Grown). According to Interviews by David Barsamian where oranges aren’t regarded as com- Gary Nabhan’s widely quoted figure, monplace year round. produce in the US travels an average of Foreword by Naomi Klein The California Fruit Growers’ refrig- 1,800 miles to reach your store. In a erated express trains have been supersed- wholesale and retail world so perverse, ed by refrigerated air cargo planes flying the idea of a local market has come to citrus from Haifa to London, asparagus seem almost archaic, if not oxymoronic. from Johannesberg to Paris, apples from peaking candidly and casually, Roy Beijing to Georgia. Iceberg lettuce flies epressing facts like these need S and Barsamian track U.S. imperialism daily from the Central Valley of the weight of specificity if peo- and global capitalism beginning California to Gatwick, prompting nutri- D ple are to lessen their depend- before September 11, 2001 and concluding tionist and food activist Joan Dye ence on supersized and supraseasonal Grussow to crack that global agribusi- food. How can activists convince eaters after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. ness is “burning lots of petroleum to that global factory food comes at unac- As Roy says,“When people have realized ship cold water around.” Thanks to con- ceptably high social, economic, and envi- that the project of corporate globalization is solidations in the food and transporta- ronmental costs? Four recent books doing them no good, then it has to be forced tion industries and to trade agreements, approach this challenge in different down people’s throats. If the checkbook global trade in agricultural products has ways. Home Grown and the splendid, increased from 200 million tons in 1961 graphics-filled Penguin Atlas of Food focus doesn’t work, it’s the cruise missile.” to 817 million in 2000. on overviews, statistics, and some telling 0-89608-710-7 | paper | $16.00 As always, most of the profits are not examples from the global food trade. going to those who grow produce but to You can feel the earnestness that drives wholesalers who buy food low and sell it their arguments, which are chiefly ethi- (comparatively) high. Heavily subsidized cal. There’s little evidence, however, that by national policies, global trade in fruits, their authors have any passion for food. Now Available at Independent Bookstores vegetables, dairy, and animals is touted as In contrast, Deborah Madison, a chef, bringing the cost of a varied diet within offers the sensual specifics of locally the reach of everyone. grown food, the farmers’ markets that South End Press It does not and cannot. In Southern sell it, and a succulent collection of hemisphere countries that are net recipes. In Food Politics, Marion Nestle, an Orders: 800.533.8478 exporters (such as Brazil, Central academic nutritionist at New York American, Southeast Asia, and East University, carefully documents US and Fax desk/exam/review requests: 617.547.1333 African states), land has been turned multinational food manufacturers’ influ- www.southendpress.org over so wholly to cash crops that farm- ence on diet and health.

The Women’s Review of Books / Vol. XXI, No. 6 / March 2004 7 increase in number of US farmers’ mar- globally as well as domestically. In the efforts to sell infant formula, first to year waiting list to get a permanent kets: fewer than 300 in the mid-1970s; US, children have become their primary mothers, then to physicians in develop- spot.” Madison visits farmers’ markets over 3,100 today. Only one US subscrip- targets. The great strength of Marion ing countries. Despite boycotts of across North America, from the largest tion/CSA (community-supported agri- Nestle’s Food Politics is her use of her Nestlé’s products worldwide, the corpo- (the Madison, Wisconsin, market draws culture) farm existed in 1985; over 1,000 position as a longtime expert witness, ration managed to co-opt legislators, 20,000 customers each Saturday) to operated in 2002. (Here in northern academic authority, “nutrition policy physicians, NGOs, UNICEF, and media some of the smallest (North Union Minnesota, CSAs have years-long wait- advisor,” and “member of federal com- outlets to tell its version of the infant- Farmers’ Market in Cleveland, Ohio), to ing lists of share buyers.) mittees dealing with food and nutritional formula story and to evade the promises some of the funkiest (XYZ Market Equally important, Millstone and policy” to document these abuses. Nestle it had made to WHO/UNICEF to stop mar- under I-80 in Sacramento, California, a Lang demonstrate the global shift in was a fly on the wall during many a cor- keting the formulas. After several studies market I remember fondly from the diets away from indigenous staple porate-regulatory agency and corporate- documenting transmission of HIV 1970s for its bounty of Sikh-, foods (mostly cereals) toward fat, meat, legislative meeting. She regularly through breast milk in African countries Cambodian-, Vietnamese-, and Laotian- and sugar. This “nutrition transition,” “receive[d] public relations handouts in the late 1990s, Nestlé shifted its mar- grown produce). they write, from food companies and trade associa- keting approach again: Now it touted This is retailing I can understand. Last tions.” Yet when she began writing this infant formula as a prophylactic in coun- summer, a friend, my daughter, and I is characterized by... a decline in book, she found no one in industry, gov- tries with a high incidence of HIV sold pies and tarts and breads and sticky the consumption of traditional ernment, or the academy “who would among women. buns at two farmers’ markets, and it was staple foods and other traditional speak to me ‘on the record’... they Nestle comments, satisfying work. The old stable where food crops, such as pulses and offered to tell me anything I wanted to one market was located lacked running oilseeds, an increase in intakes of know, but not for attribution.” The proportion of children who water and toilets—we had to drive home fat, sugar, salt and often animal Undeterred, Nestle pored over books, were infected as a result of for those—but it was filled with geniali- foods, an increase in alcohol con- journals, government documents, popu- breast-feeding, however, is a mat- ty and the sort of friendly yet reserved sumption in non-Islamic coun- lar and professional media, and other ter of considerable debate. conversations that seller and buyer had tries, an increase in the consump- sources. The conclusion she reached is Transmission through breast milk before selling in most places fell to min- tion of refined and processed not surprising: depends on such factors as viral imum-wage employees who knew and foods, and overall reduction in load, immune status, age, and the cared little about what they were selling. dietary diversity. food companies—just like com- length of time that breast-feeding (Brian Halweil reports that “sociologists Such changes in diet have an panies that sell cigarettes, phar- continues. It also depends on the estimate that people have ten times as impact on health, leading to an maceuticals, or any other com- exclusivity of breast-feeding; rates many conversations at farmers’ markets increase in diet-related diseases, modity—routinely place the needs of transmission are higher than at supermarkets.”) such as late-onset diabetes, some of stockholders over considera- [Nestle’s emphasis] among infants At farmers’ markets, buyers ask lots cancers and cardiovascular disease. tions of public health.... [They] of infected mothers who supple- of questions: They want to know how to (p. 80) will make and market any product ment breast milk with bottle-fed cook a particular vegetable or how you that sells, regardless of its nutri- water or formula.… Because got your crust so brown. Sometimes In Brazil, for example, meat has gone tional value or its effect on appropriate [Nestle’s emphasis] use they’re waiting for you before you arrive; from six percent of average daily intake health. (p. viii) of substitutes for breast milk can sometimes they’ll buy you out of food in 1961 to 13 percent in 1991; total fats, prevent nearly half of such infec- they liked last week. And sometimes from six percent in 1961 to 12 percent What is surprising, and disturbing, is that tions, a decision about whether to they’ll sniff and say, “I wouldn’t pay that in 1991. the food industry has managed to pro- breast-feed or bottle-feed for this” and stalk away. When someone tect these products from being removed becomes an agonizing dilemma. does that, you realize how used they’ve his is happening at the urging of from the marketplace even after they (p. 156) grown to viewing products as separate food corporations, which are have been proven dangerous. A case in from the people who sell them. Hey— T expanding into new markets point is the Swiss food giant Nestlé’s Nestle’s meticulous, nuanced account does the clerk at Wal-Mart get her feel- traces the connections between North ings hurt if a customer tells her that a America’s immense agricultural surplus- pair of shorts made in Bangladesh are “POWERFUL AND EMPOWERING, es, industrial foods like infant formula too expensive or shoddy? INSPIRED AND INSPIRING.”* and Hamburger Helper, the supersizing Local Flavors is filled with recipes for of fast foods, and declines in public seasonal foods made with the sometimes “Lesley Hazleton’s riveting biography will health. To the giant food corpora- highly perishable, impossible-to-ship or resonate deeply with contemporary women tions—Cargill, ConAgra, Nestlé, impossible-to-grow-in-commodity- worldwide...this is a book that will move you General Mills, Kraft, Unilever—soy quantity produce found at farmers’ mar- to tears”—*Naomi Wolf, author of The beans and cane sugar are elements to be kets: tiny purple artichokes that can be Beauty Myth molded into uniform, synthetic foods at eaten whole, nascent chokes and all; sor- immense profit: rel, which “fares miserably when pack- “At last! A real, flesh-and-blood Mary. This aged in plastic clamshells—it just falls grounding of Mary’s life...invites us deeper In a competitive food market- apart”; lovage (“harder to find, even at into the sheer, paradoxical mystery of faith.” place, food companies must satis- the farmers’ market”; nettle leaves; wild —Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead fy stockholders by encouraging mushrooms; sugar loaf chicory; chiogga Man Walking more people to eat more of their beets; heirloom tomatoes; Royal Ann “Readers who loved...Anita Diamant’s The products. They seek new audi- cherries; Sun Rose nectarines; Santa Red Tent will find this book about Mary, the ences among children, among Rosa plums—Local Flavors celebrates mother of Jesus, just as enthralling.” members of minority groups, or these tender, often region-specific foods. —Publishers Weekly internationally. They expand sales Madison, one of the driving forces to existing as well as new audi- behind the Santa Fe farmers’ market and “Drawing on a wide range of sources includ- ences through advertising but a Slow Food member, chooses to limit ing the sometimes suppressed history of the also by developing new products her focus to these old/new ways of feminine in ancient religions, Hazleton paints designed to respond to consumer growing, selling, and fixing food. a convincing picture of Mary,the mother of Jesus. Both scholars and nonspecialists are bound to enjoy this highly readable intellectual and spiritual treat.”—Harvey Cox, ‘demands.’ In recent years, they The food industry has served its Hollis Professor of Divinity, Harvard University have embraced a new strategy: stockholders at the expense of just increasing the size of food por- about everyone else—small farmers, “With all the biographies of Jesus, we finally have a study of the most important per- tions. Advertising, new products, children, and people who want to eat son in his life: his mother, Mary. Lesley Hazleton gives us a rich, provocative, sugges- and larger portions all contribute healthily and safely. Agribusiness corpo- tive, and enormously insightful exploration of one of the most influential yet neglect- to a food environment that pro- rations have manipulated the ed women in world history.”—Susannah Heschel, Eli Black Professor of Jewish motes eating more, not less. Department of Agriculture’s food pyra- Studies, Dartmouth College (p. 21) mid, bribed school districts to stock “By far the most exciting treatment of Mary I have ever encountered. Hazleton’s his- sweetened water in exchange for big torical and literary imagining is deeply grounded in thorough research...She summons eborah Madison’s Local Colors is bucks for electronic scoreboards, her most powerful prose for treatment of the most sensitive issues and brings [Mary’s] a very different sort of book: it patented genetically engineered seeds trauma and struggles to life like no other recent writer.”—Richard A. Horsley, D shines at telling small, quiet sto- that depend on vast intakes of commer- Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and the Study of Religion, University ries about North American communities cial fertilizers (manufactured by the of Massachusetts Boston that have carved out time and space for same corporations) and water to grow selling the old-fashioned way, at farm well, and promoted diets top-heavy in “Hazleton not only helps readers to see who this Mary might have been but also places stands, on the long platforms of aban- saturated fats and sugar. Food Politics her in a social and religious context, shows how she absorbed the goddess myths, and doned train stations, at town plazas and names names in a salty, unnerving narra- does it all in language that is thoughtful, evocative, and eminently improvised parks, under concrete inter- readable....Hazleton’s musings on the Resurrection and on the meaning of Mary’s vir- tive, while Home Grown and The Penguin ginity are dazzling to read and weighty to ponder.”—Booklist (starred review) states, and out of the backs of pickups Atlas of Food offer readers brief, easy-to- and the trunks of cars. Market stalls at digest bites of it. Sweeten the bitterness AVAILABLE WHEREVER BOOKS ARE SOLD some farmers’ markets can support of their stories with Deborah Madison’s www.bloomsburyusa.com entire families; the St. Paul, Minnesota, Local Flavors. Balance and pleasure are market, for example, now has “a nine- what we look for in food, after all. I

8 The Women’s Review of Books / Vol. XXI, No. 6 / March 2004 is the only person in his family to between Ninth and Tenth Avenues, per- have met Ruth... His parents have haps the only part of the novel that expressed no curiosity about his appears like a fairy tale. “Intrigued by his Names and nicknames girlfriend. His relationship with her background, by his years at Yale and is one accomplishment in his life Columbia, and his career as an architect, by Mandira Sen about which they are not in the his Mediterranean looks,” Maxine’s par- least bit proud or pleased. (p. 116) ents accept him readily as their daughter’s The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri. New York: Houghton Mifflin, live-in partner. Throughout this relation- Thus, as Nikhil, he becomes part of ship, Nikhil moves as far away as he can 2003, 298 pp., $24.00 hardcover. the mainstream, not just a hyphenated from his parents’ world, trying to avoid American. On the surface, he lives a life being grouped with the ABCDs I not at all different from those of his fel- (American Born Confused/Conflicted low American students, yet the name Desis [Indians]), an acronym coined in eflecting on the power of names © Marion Ettlinger Gogol still has a hold over him. Even his India for the US immigrants who hover as markers of identity, Jhumpa younger sister, Sonia, who has found it uncertainly between two identities. R Lahiri takes the reader through easier to break out of their parents’ Nikhil’s parents, meanwhile, begin to the life of Gogol Ganguli, a second-gen- restrictive boundaries, insists on calling slowly put out feelers into American eration male US immigrant from India. him Gogol or Goggles. She has abbrevi- society. During Nikhil’s childhood, their She delineates with insight and empathy ated her own name, Sonali (“the golden social life took place completely within a how two generations of the Ganguli fam- one”), to Sona, and then changed it to Bengali circuit. Visits to Atlanta, Toronto, ily come to terms with their very differ- Sonia, a link to the Russian literary cul- or Chicago were made solely to visit ent lives and how, despite resistance and ture her father enjoyed, and a more usual other Bengalis. There were also visits to alienation, manage to build a bridge to name in America. Sonia cuts her hair, Calcutta with the unwilling children in each other. In a nation of immigrants, goes to dances, and has a secret boyfriend tow. These witnessed their parents’ affir- such stories are hardly unusual. while still in high school, yet urges her mation of their Indian identities in a sur- Immigrants loosely grouped as “Asian” brother not to change his name because real daze: “Within minutes, before their are beginning to write about their par- “he is Gogol.” eyes Ashoke and Ashima slip into bolder, ents’ homelands. In this novel, Lahiri Nikhil’s university years and his first less complicated versions of themselves, introduces her Western readers to job at a large architecture consulting their voices louder, their smiles wider, Bengali upper-caste, (Hindus of high rit- company in New York—for he has bro- revealing a confidence Gogol and Sonia ual status), middle-class, well-educated ken free of the Indian immigrant parents’ never see on Pemberton Road.” immigrants who came to the US in the insistence on medicine, engineering, or Back in America, they retreat into the late 1960s to work in the medical and Jhumpa Lahiri some more “established” profession— safety of their Indian community. It is not engineering professions or to teach in enable him to distance himself further until she is over 40 and takes a job at a universities. Their middle-class status sets phone directories and in all other from his background. Yet Nikhil, so public library that Ashima makes the Bengalis apart from many American public places... (p. 25) American in his education and apparent American friends. When Ashoke leaves to immigrant communities, though the reinvention, still has enough of the glam- work for two semesters at a university near experience of cleaving to the ethnic com- Interestingly, the author herself uses her our of difference to attract women like Cleveland, she decides to remain behind munity remains the same. daknam, Jhumpa, as a bhalonam (I am Maxine, an assistant editor with a New so that she can continue her work, assert- Lahiri’s novel begins with Gogol indebted for this observation to Indrajit York art publisher whom he meets at a ing her independence for the first time. Ganguli’s father, Ashoke, who comes to Hazra, who also points out that only Tribeca loft party. He soon moves into Ashoke dies unexpectedly in the Massachusetts Institute of Bengalis will have perceived it). her flat above her parents’ beautiful Cleveland, and his death affects Nikhil Technology as a graduate student in Gogol Ganguli’s problem, as he sees Greek Revival house, in a remote block critically. He gravitates to his family and engineering. He later returns to Calcutta it, is that he has been saddled with a dak- for an arranged marriage with Ashima nam in the place of a bhalonam. Readers Bhaduri, whose name provides a mark- learn why he has been given this name er; like Ashoke, she is also a Brahmin— well before Gogol does: Ashoke was IOWA Women’s Studies not surprising, as marriages are general- saved from a train wreck because the ly arranged on caste lines. Caste, howev- pages in a book of short stories by the er, does not play much of a role in The Russian writer, Gogol, fluttered in his RACE & TIME Namesake; it ceases to be of much rele- hand, catching a rescuer’s eye. Gogol first American Women’s Poetics from Antislavery to Racial Modernity vance in America, where the common- hears the story as a college student who by Janet Gray alities of class and ethnic interests has been feeling estranged from his fam- “Gray’si arguments and interpretations are convincing cement bonds within the community. ily, and this moment of enlightenment is and compelling. She convincingly illustrates how the Indeed for the second generation, perhaps the most important in the book, complex relationship between racial and temporal the- Gogol and his sister Sonia, caste hardly and contributes to the building of the matics is at the heart of nineteenth-century American rears its head. What is more interesting fragile bridge between the generations: women’s poetry and poetics. In the process, she reveals is that race as such is scarcely consid- the ways in which these texts and their contexts are a ered either. As educated immigrants And suddenly the sound of his pet fascinating, dynamic, and diverse field for students of within a university community, whose name, uttered by his father as he nineteenth-century U.S. social and cultural history— in particular, scholars examining race, gender, modes children are high achievers in a society has been accustomed to hearing it of historical representation, childhood, literary history, that respects achievement, perhaps all his life, means something com- and print culture.” Lahiri’s characters have been shielded pletely new, bound up with a catas- —Gregory Eiselein, editor of from racial discrimination. But the lack trophe he has unwittingly embod- Emma Lazarus: Selected Poems and Other Writings of it in their lives is surprising. ied for years. ‘Is that what you 332 pages . $44.95 hardcover Throughout the book, Gogol’s closest think of when you think of me... relationships are with mainstream Do I remind you of that night?’ American whites. ‘Not at all,’ his father says even- IRMA The importance of nomenclature to tually... ‘You remind me of every- A Chicago Woman’s Story, – an alien society resonates throughout the thing that followed.’ (p. 124) by Ellen FitzSimmons Steinberg novel. Lahiri discusses the practice of assigning two names, a pet name and a efore he leaves for Yale, Gogol “Fromi this chance collaboration between two women “good” name, that sets the Bengalis apart reinvents himself by a legal deed who never met, I have learned first-hand about a Chicago and Chicagoans that I’d only read about and both abroad and in India: as “Nikhil” (“he who is entire, B a culture that I grew up in, but which seems to have encompassing all”), his parent’ chosen slipped away without my knowing it. Irma speaks of In Bengali the word for pet name bhalonam for him. And the name does free all these things with wit, insight, and a reflection that is daknam, meaning, literally the him from his parents’ constraints. It is as touches the mind and the soul, as we say in Chicago, name by which one is called by Nikhil that he embarks on his adult life, early and often. Steinberg has managed to do for Irma friends, family, and other intimates, as Nikhil that he loses his virginity at a Frankenstein what Thornton Wilder could not, and it at home and in other private, party, as Nikhil that he begins to have is our good fortune that she has.” unguarded moments. Pet names relationships with white American —Michael Lieber, professor of anthropology, are a… reminder that life is not women, keeping his private life secret University of Illinois at Chicago . always so serious, so formal, so from his parents: 256 pages $19.95 paperback complicated. They are a reminder, too, that one is not all things to all By the following year his parents people... Every pet name is paired know vaguely about Ruth. Though with a good name, a bhalonam, for he has been to the farmhouse in IOWA identification in the outside world. Maine twice, meeting her father where great writing begins Consequently, good names appear and her stepmother. Sonia, who University of Iowa Press . Iowa City . www.uiowapress.org on envelopes, on diplomas, in tele- secretly has a boyfriend these days,

The Women’s Review of Books / Vol. XXI, No. 6 / March 2004 9 tries to support his mother through her the business end of expeditions, vague in grief. Nikhil’s devotion to his mother many adventure books, is discussed with leads to a break with Maxine, who cannot real interest. understand his new priorities. After some Because it’s there These supporters discuss the conta- time, Nikhil allows himself to be intro- gious nature of dreaming big. This project, duced to Moushumi, like him a second- by Judith Niemi said one, “went beyond providing role generation Indian immigrant, whom he models for girls to changing the way people had known as a child. She, who had fled No Horizon is So Far: A Historic Journey Across Antarctica think about a woman’s place in sport and in the pressures of her parents to become a the world.” Men and women left corporate scholar of French literature, agrees to the by Ann Bancroft and Liv Arnesen, with Cheryl Dahle. jobs to join Yourexpedition because of its match, and soon they marry. They have message telling people to follow their own much in common. Yet Moushumi feels Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 253 pp., dreams. The message was especially mean- drawn back into the world that had ingful to children; both Bancroft and threatened to stifle her, and the marriage 2003, $26.00 hardcover. Arnesen have been teachers, and, as they breaks up. Where does it leave Nikhil? He Ada Blackjack: A True Story of Survival in the Arctic hoped, their team invented curricula and returns home once more to help his technology to bring the expedition to 3 mother dismantle Pemberton Road as by Jennifer Niven. New York: Hyperion, 2003, million children in 46 countries. (The edu- part of her decision to live six months in cational work of Yourexpedition.com still India (with an American passport) and 433 pp., $24.95 hardcover. goes on, with other adventures.) The book six months in America. takes seriously community and relation- Jhumpa Lahiri’s beautifully crafted The Woman Who Walked to Russia: A Writer’s Search for a ships. Each woman soon concluded she and elegantly written novel will speak to had found a soul-sister, but the authors are many. It is as different as it can be from Lost Legend by Cassandra Pybus. New York: Four Walls, frank about the ways the expedition the exotic outpourings of Indian immi- Eight Windows, 2002, 238 pp., $14.00 paper. strained the friendship. And, unusual for grants writing in English for whom the an expedition book, they include stories of home country provides a canvas for their I influential parents, and teachers, and of magical interpretations. Here, Lahiri Pam and Einar, their partners at home. writes of people who need to make sense nly 20 years ago it wasn’t easy to of their own destinies, in their own find stories of adventurous terms. It is interesting that, in Lahiri’s O women; there were explorers’ account, Sonia has a much easier time wives, back-to-the-land families, and many adapting to the new society than Nikhil undaunted Victorian lady travelers. What does. What if Lahiri’s protagonist had interested me more were hints of stories been a woman? Would she have been like not yet written. Some of the hidden stories Sonia, who participates easily in the are emerging today, along with reissues, white American mainstream during her rediscoveries, anthologies, and a flood of high school days and later lives the life of recent adventure books. The popularity of a college student in California, changing these books raises new questions: about apartments and roommates with ease, the ethics of expeditions or guided climbs possibly because her parents have real- of Everest; about the impact of publicity. ized that they cannot enforce their pref- When “survivor” means to many people erences? Sonia sees herself as wholly nastily competitive stunts filmed in “exot- American, selecting her partner, a ic” places, what is the meaning of genuine Chinese American, without any help, or extreme adventures or survival narratives? opposition, from her parents. Yet she Three recent books concern women in remains committed to her Indian family, danger in cold places. Ann Bancroft and moving back to live with her mother Liv Arnesen ski across Antarctica in 2000- Arneson and Bancroft at the edge of the Ross Ice Shelf, ready to after her father’s death. Perhaps she is 2001. Jennifer Niven revives the story of board the Sir Hubert Wilkins. From No Horizon is So Far. the catalyst that draws her mother into a Ada Blackjack, sole survivor of a 1920s more American lifestyle, helping her to Arctic expedition. Cassandra Pybus visits tinent. Although the travel season ended The backstage view of an expedition’s break away from the old mold of the the Canadian Rockies, tracking a mysteri- before they could also cross the Ross Ice oddities is fun and instructive. They meet perpetually self-sacrificing mother or the ous woman who walked that way in 1927. Shelf (these things matter to people who the Dalai Lama. The start is delayed, the unobtrusive widow who must never grat- Besides pleasing readers of adventure liter- see expeditions as a large scale competitive party stranded in Capetown, South Africa, ify herself. Or would she have been like ature, these books record valuable game), they set a distance record. Their when their air charter company arbitrarily Moushumi, who adapts by searching out women’s history and examine the social book is not about records, though, but demands they re-route through Punta a third identity in a French cosmopolitan and economic context of chosen or inad- about the passion that drives them, the Arenas. Political and military connections, character, getting away as far as she can vertent adventures. fierce intensity of purpose that got them and luck, get them a then-secret Iridium from India and Indians? Perhaps Lahiri Ann Bancroft and Liv Arnesen are to Antarctica. As young girls they had a satellite phone. The phone makes possible did not want to create a character whose thorough professionals, although in an common hero—Ernest Shackleton, who the bizarre experience of listening to experience would be too close to her unusual profession; Bancroft had already never reached the pole; they admired him Muzak (while on hold for CNN) on the own as a second-generation immigrant. been to both poles; Arneson had skied to for extraordinary leadership, for his “grace Shackleton Glacier. The sheer exhilaration By choosing to focus on a man who has the South Pole solo, unsupported. Still, the and compassion.” of Antarctica, its seductive beauty and ter- difficulty reconciling his identity, she dangers were huge: risky ski-sailing, when Their own expeditions they regard as a ror, are often mentioned, but three people steers away from providing easy answers, there was wind; storms; crevasses; brutally calling. Arneson says, writing a book together can’t quite find the offering readers a complex look into the hard work; injuries. At 45 and 47, they poetry to evoke this, nor to make a reader immigrant experience. I became the first women to cross the con- Asking me why I go to Antarctica long, for one mad moment, to be on the is like asking a... painter why he ice. They do a fine job, though, with their paints.... For me, an expedition is a main story—the daily struggles and why work of art expressed on a canvas the trek was worth it. The book’s most of snow, air, and time. (pp. 20-21) impressive accomplishment is showing Spirit Taking Form: how two big-spirited women find ways to And Bancroft realizes, lead their authentic lives and encourage Making a Spiritual Practice of Making Art. others to do the same. Part of what I came to understand By Nancy Azara after that first trip is the extent to da Blackjack is a very different story Available at your favorite bookstore, online or www.nancyazara.com. which economics is a barrier for about women, money, dreams, and Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC (ISBN 1-59003-016-8) 2002 $18.95 women to live out our potential, A survival. An orphan raised in mis- “This book is a labor of love from an experienced teacher. Azara’s visual and doing what we were meant to do sion schools, and an abused wife, Ada had meditative exercises will help you know your deeper self and needs… to find your in our work. I feel I was meant to few of the survival skills of her Inuit cul- place in the world and be at peace with yourself and others.” make these expeditions. And I was ture. She did not dream of adventure, only Louise Bourgeois stopped for seven years from mak- of earning money to get her son from the ing a second attempt to cross orphanage. Recruited as expedition seam- “This charming, inspiring, and intimate book will gently tempt your spirit into taking— Antarctica—because I was mired stress by Vilhjalmur Stefansson’s 1921 and making—some new forms” in debt. (p. 41) Wrangel Island Expedition, she went Phyllis Chesler along reluctantly. “Tells us how to meditate our way into our imaginations and gives our thoughts and Bancroft paid off $450,000 in debt “An adventure is a sign of incompe- feelings visible form.” and pulled together a group of visionary tence,” Stefansson is famous for saying, but Gloria Steinem people who invented a new model for he sent others into adventure and tragedy. expedition sponsorship, a 12-person Jennifer Niven’s previous book, The Ice company, Yourexpedition. In No Horizon, Master, tells how in 1914 a few men of the

10 The Women’s Review of Books / Vol. XXI, No. 6 / March 2004 tragically.” Niven creates a convincing por- Pybus can’t drop the story, so she rambles gorging on crisps and chocolate. (Pybus trait of Stefansson as shockingly negligent the back roads of British Columbia, the notes that her own obsession with Lillian and self-promoting—a hit on the Yukon, and Alaska, and plans a side trip to irritates Gerry.) The old friends agree to Chauauqua circuit. She’s at her best detail- Providenija, Russia (“one thing about a part ways, but for a time their story is ing the nasty public and private aftermath police state: they keep wonderfully good comic, exasperating, and sad. of the expedition: wages not paid, lying records”). A travel grant, a rented 4-wheel Pybus’ outspoken, breezy Aussie style scoundrels, grieving families, Ada buffeted drive car, and she sets off, a hunter-gather- works well; it is emotionally accurate as around, wanting anonymity. er, to find what she can. Not much, as it well as refreshing to read, “it is crack- The book, however, seems hastily com- happens; the legend keeps unraveling. brained to think that Lillian was going to piled; the list of sources is impressive, but Lillian being so elusive, the author Siberia,” or, “As I said, the woman was the material is repetitious, not digested or becomes the main character. A reliable, clearly unhinged.” But did Lillian herself well crafted. With the diaries of the young determined researcher, she’s also a woman ever say she was going to Siberia? She men and Ada herself available as sources, on a lark, having an adventure of her own. spoke as little as possible. Journalists it is disappointing that we rarely hear their She’s always finding something of interest invented freely. Noting how easily a own words. Brief direct quotations are in wild landscapes, local history, and local woman without a man vanishes from duly cited in endnotes, but never the para- people. She chats them up about notice, Pybus constructs a plausible, more phrasing; it’s frustrating not to know what America’s mystique of the wild: Jack ordinary, somewhat happier ending, then is actually in the diaries and what is a nov- London, or (a story like Lillian’s) the disap- adds, in honesty, “Isn’t it pretty to think so?” elistic re-creation. The men practice pho- pearing Chris McCandless of Jon Lillian Alling stays lost, but the book tography, “attempting to capture the Krakauer’s Into the Wild. Pybus takes on as works because it doesn’t need to be about moonlight on the ice”; they see the beau- driver a travel companion of her youth, her; it’s about the fascination such charac- ty of “strobing greens, reds, and blues” of imagining “a kind of feminist adventure. A ters have for us and about the joy of the Northern lights. I wish we knew what cross between Thelma and Louise and Two almost any new adventure undertaken Ada or the men actually wrote (not Fat Ladies.” The reunion isn’t a success. wholeheartedly. All three of these books, “strobing”)—and this description should- Pybus is content to be in her 50s and a in fact, remind us that it’s not exactly hero- n’t appear in the July 1922 season of mid- lover of fine food, but Gerry frets about ines and role models we need, but women night sun. Accurate details are essential to her (younger) age and weight; she’s volatile, who tell us to dream, trust ourselves, and the power of a survival story, and Niven is judgmental, and abstemious, when not learn from our odd journeys. I Lillian Alling. From The Woman Who Walked to Russia. careless. “She had never heard the word igloo,” she writes—but Ada grew up hear- icebound Karluk survived starvation on ing her grandmother’s stories. Whether Wrangel Island only because seasoned the distance between the main camp and Capt. Robert Bartlett walked to Siberia to an outpost was “ten to fifteen miles” or send rescue. Stefansson next tried to set up six would have mattered to Ada, when the a colony on Wrangel Island to support his men took the dogsled and forced her to theory of a habitable “friendly Arctic,” and walk, in November. Niven uses “rifle” and to assert Canadian sovereignty (Ottawa “shotgun” interchangeably, creating con- refused any part of this). The brave, under- fusing hunting scenes. Quoting diaries prepared party consisted of two young more often would not only have avoided men who had been to the Arctic (one a sur- many problems of ambiguity or misinter- vivor of the Karluk disaster); a bright pretation; Ada might have emerged not Dean, Franklin College of Arts and Sciences University of Toronto student as nominal just as a remarkable, strong woman worth leader; a Texas lad of 19; and shy, tiny Ada, knowing, but a more vivid personality. She The University of Georgia invites applications and nominations for the 23. A large support team of Alaskan Inuit was not an educated, fluent writer, but she position of Dean of the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. was in the plan, but no one had consulted could have been trusted to tell more of them—and they sensibly declined. her own story. Ada’s story is a painful one. Panicked, The University of Georgia, located in Athens, GA, is the flagship institution alone with four strange white men on a assandra Pybus’ The Woman Who of the University System of Georgia. Fourteen schools and colleges carry desolate island, she slid into “Arctic hyste- Walked to Russia is lively, person- out the University’s programs of teaching, research and service for approx- ria.” She refused to work, developed a C able, and scholarly in the most imately 25,000 undergraduate students and 7,000 graduate and profes- romantic passion for the nice Canadian light-handed way. The legend of Lillian sional students. boy; she ran away, perhaps suicidal. The Alling runs that she was a Russian immi- young men, at a loss how to handle “the grant in New York, so homesick and poor Founded in 1801, the Franklin College is the central and oldest part of UGA, native,” tied her to a flagpole; they laughed that she decided to walk home. Guided by at her howls of despair. Still, Ada recov- a hand-drawn map, she followed the tele- with more than 700 faculty members and about 13,000 undergraduate and ered, and the first year passed relatively graph line north into the Yukon. Then her graduate students. The College consists of thirty departments and twenty well. But the relief ship failed to come; by story peters out, with a vague report of her centers and programs, encompassing the natural and social sciences, the January 1923, food was running out; three setting off in a raft across the Bering Strait. humanities, and the arts. of the men tried walking to Siberia, as Cassandra Pybus, an award-winning Bartlett had; they disappeared. Australian writer and senior fellow in his- The Dean’s responsibilities include: overall responsibility for leadership of Ada was left with the man she had tory at the University of Tasmania, came the College; fundraising; program development for departments and most feared, Lorne Knight, the boister- across the story browsing in a bookstore in schools in the College; strategic planning and analysis of College opera- ous, de facto leader of the group. He was Prince George, British Columbia: ill with scurvy and soon too weak to get tions; budget development; faculty recruitment; liaison with department out of bed. Ada cared for the invalid as just one of the many remarkable heads, school directors, and College staff; representing the College to the tenderly as for a child; she did all the camp tales of endurance and determina- University administration; and alumni relations. chores and hunting for them both. This tion that make up the folklore of transformation of the timid young this spectacular, wild region. Candidates must have a distinguished record of scholarship and qualify for woman is the heart of her story—the only Masculine tales for the most part, tenure at the professor level; a demonstrated commitment to excellence in time when she was consistently actor these stories belong to the genre of teaching; be able to manage a diverse college with over 50 units; be a strong rather than acted upon. She learned to heroic self-improvement: carving internal manager with good budgetary skills and the ability to work in a trap foxes and taught herself to shoot, out new territory, striking it rich, although terrified of guns. In June, Knight that sort of thing. Lillian’s story collaborative and collegial manner with a diverse faculty and staff; and, be died; alone on the island with his corpse intrigued me in a way that the oth- a successful fundraiser, working with foundations and individual donors and the expedition cat, Ada made a skin ers did not, because of the intensely as well as encouraging supported scholarship. boat and started storing up dried meat for domestic impulse that fueled her the next winter. A relief party in late extraordinary feat. She had simply Applications and nominations may be submitted, in confidence and prefer- August found a woman with “the look of wanted to go home. (p. 9) ably by March 1st, to: Shelly Weiss Storbeck, Vice President and Managing a hunter.” Hospitably, she served tea in Director, A.T. Kearney, Inc., 333 John Carlyle Street, Alexandria, Virginia her tattered tent. In her final months on Pybus takes us on a lively spin through 22314. Voice: (703) 739-4613, FAX: (703) 518-1782, e-mail: the ice Ada appropriated the forbidden prison archives, genealogy websites, immi- typewriter and started to record a journal gration records—no historical Lillian. A [email protected] of her own, as all the men had done. Lillian Alling (or Alenik, or Olejnik) would In Ada’s own time, much against her probably have been Jewish, from Additional information about UGA and the Franklin College of Arts and wishes, she was a prize to journalists, “the Belorussia; Pybus sketches briefly the Sciences can be found at www.uga.edu and www.franklin.uga.edu. female Robinson Crusoe,” but race and unenviable lot of those girls. Still, a strange gender can erase people from history. woman did walk the telegraph line, refus- The University of Georgia is an Equal Opportunity, Affirmative Action Institution Stefansson’s entry in the Canadian ing to speak; she was put in jail for a win- Women and Minorities are Encouraged to Apply Encyclopedia of 2000 reads, “all 4 members ter to save her life. (There’s a photograph of the Wrangel Island expedition... died of Lillian, a waif in ragamuffin clothes.)

The Women’s Review of Books / Vol. XXI, No. 6 / March 2004 11 of her audience. Sedgwick is one of the which the subtitle of any truly queer handful of critics who founded queer (perhaps as opposed to gay?) politics will studies and gave it its defining shape, its be the same as the one Erving Goffman The performative and the peri- characteristic set of methods and con- gave to his book Stigma: Notes on the cerns. In books such as Between Men Management of Spoiled Identity.” While by Heather Love (1985) and Epistemology of the Closet shame was not exactly the going thing (1990), this student of the Gothic novel for critics thinking about same-sex desire Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity (The Coherence of Gothic Conventions (1980) ten years ago—pride would have been a was her first book) carried out a series of more expected, resonant, and palatable by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. Durham, NC: Duke rhetorical acts of such boldness and per- choice—the field of queer studies has suasive force that they seemed to con- spent the intervening decade catching University Press, 2003, 195 pp., $18.95 paper. jure a field out of a pure and unrelenting up. Following Sedgwick’s lead, the desire that such a thing should exist. University of Michigan hosted a well- I Which is to say that Eve Sedgwick, long- attended conference last March called, standing champion of the marginal, the simply, “Gay Shame.” ut, in a larger sense, we cannot viously published, Sedgwick repeatedly partial, the failed, the shy—all the trap- Sedgwick’s remarkable power to dedicate—we cannot conse- voices her refusal to put forward the pings of the periperformative—is no define the field of gender and sexuality B crate—we cannot hallow this kinds of world-shaking pronounce- stranger to the performative. studies over the past couple of decades ground.” This moment from the ments that some readers, at least, may Listen, for instance, to the first sen- can be traced to a number of causes: her Gettysburg Address opens a chapter in expect from her. In a characteristic tence of Epistemology of the Closet,in undeniable brilliance; her apparently infi- Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s new book moment in a chapter on Henry James which Sedgwick, dissolving her own nite will to read—and especially to read Touching Feeling in which she discusses the (“Shame, Theatricality, and Queer agency into the agency of the book, for- against the grain of a deadening common “periperformative.” Taking off from the Performativity”), Sedgwick writes, “The wards a thesis so ambitious it seems sense; her generosity, to which nearly all philosopher J. L. Austin’s work on the thing I least want to be heard as offering almost to threaten physical harm to its who write about her attest. But her influ- “performative”—statements like “I do,” here is a ‘theory of homosexuality.’ I reader: “Epistemology of the Closet propos- ence is also certainly traceable to her “I swear,” and “I promise” that do not have none and I want none.” Again and es that many of the major nodes of wonderful talent for performing linguis- describe something but actually make it again Sedgwick insists that this book thought and knowledge in twentieth- tic acts of definition. Sedgwick’s earlier happen—Sedgwick defines an alternative aims merely to touch on matters of feel- century Western culture as a whole are work is a series of highly effective class of statements that “allude to explicit ing, sexuality, shame, pedagogy, and structured—indeed, fractured—by a speech-acts through which she set the performative utterances,” that “cluster mourning—and most emphatically not chronic, now endemic crisis of terms for a generation of critics about around” them but are not effective in the to offer a definitive theory of any of homo/heterosexual definition, indica- what would (and would not) count as same sense. Lincoln’s string of deflec- these concepts. tively male, dating from the end of the “truly queer.” This passage defining the tions at the cemetery at Gettysburg offers Why is Sedgwick so concerned to nineteenth century.” Or consider, a few “truly queer” disappears from the 2003 a good example of what Sedgwick calls shrug off these great expectations? The years later, Sedgwick’s linking, in a 1993 version of the essay; the refusal to offer a the negative performative: Called upon to best way, perhaps, of explaining this essay that is the original of her essay on “theory of homosexuality” survives dedicate, to consecrate, to hallow that reluctance is to consider the similarity James in Touching Feeling, of the word intact. Touching Feeling thus extends the ground, Lincoln famously demurs, stat- between Lincoln’s situation addressing a “queer”—still only a few years into its “periperformative neighborhoods” that ing that “the brave men, living and dead, national audience in 1863 and career as a name for a style of antiho- have always clustered so attractively who struggled here have already conse- Sedgwick’s situation addressing a queer mophobic scholarship and politics—to around the more “prestigious centers”— crated it, far above our poor power to audience in 2003. While a comparison the affect shame. “If queer is a political- the performatives—that have character- add or detract.” between the 16th President of the ly potent term, which it is, that’s because, ized her writing. But these centers, now, Sedgwick’s citation of Lincoln seems United States and a self-deprecating far from being capable of being are mostly empty: Sedgwick’s grand apt. For starters, Touching Feeling itself professor of English literature might detached from the childhood scene of claims about queer studies are diminished might be read as just such a string of seem unlikely, it is nonetheless the case shame, it cleaves to that scene as a near- here, but the queerness—the idiosyn- negative performatives. Throughout this that when Sedgwick talks about matters inexhaustible source of transformational crasy and the surprise—of her writing collection of essays, many of them pre- of sexuality, she has a similar command energy. There’s a strong sense, I think, in remains, and is perhaps deepened by the

Poetry by Maud Lindsay

Witch It’s Just Like Metaphor

My mother said she was a witch It’s just like metaphor, and I believed her. I said, describing to a friend She could rearrange fire the way it feels not knowing who I am. with her bare hands One second, it’s my sister’s voice coming from my mouth the hissing coals like ice cubes as if she were a ventriloquist between her fingertips. and I her dummy reading the opening format at a meeting or talking nonsense to the cat. Once, drawing the paring knife Suddenly, she lets go – I’m back. along the steel it slipped and sliced her palm. Or I’ll be fixing dinner and I see the hands She sewed it that chop the onions and the garlic, with ordinary thread, the hands that peel the ginger, pushed the needle through how they rinse the fish and light the oven and tugged till the gash drew closed. aren’t my hands, but hers. And who is this pinning up a hem, She made me a black sea seal, tying a knot at the end of a thread? firm flesh rippling It’s not like her; it is her in me. to meet my stroking hand It’s a chance to know but I left it in the rain. what I would like to kill. The next day it lay matted to love what I think is strangling me. in clumps of cotton batting, And before I cast her out I’m grateful the black dye running, that with the person I followed, imitated and most adored, its chest waterlogged and sunk. I choose metaphor over simile; I feel what it is to be, not just be like. Recently I dreamed that my house burst instantly into flame as if she’d drenched it in gasoline and struck a match. It ate my breath. I could see her in her home miles away, her arms trembling with satisfaction.

12 The Women’s Review of Books / Vol. XXI, No. 6 / March 2004 relinquishing of a certain kind of intel- ing human experience in terms that are lectual ambition. material, varied, and corporeal. Sedgwick To explain this phenomenon of shares with Tomkins a habit of listing— Poetry by Frieda Gardner “urban flight” in Touching Feeling, I’d like -which she understands as a way of to return to Gettysburg, and to the occa- extending rather than shutting down pos- sion of Lincoln’s address. Lincoln sibilities. In Tomkins’s writing, “pages are Through the Late Imperial Drugstore explains that he cannot consecrate this taken up with … sentences not exempli- ground because it has already been con- fying a general principle but sampling— In proportion to expertise secrated by the blood of those who listing the possible.” Through elaborating or its mirror-image fought and died on the battlefield there, such lists—what Sedgwick has elsewhere grows suspicion. and, implicitly, by the blood of the revo- called “nonce taxonomies”—she maps a lutionary soldiers whose struggles territory of shaded differences, not In proportion to money founded the nation. Like Lincoln’s, opposition. In her effort to put forward exchanged for the removal Sedgwick’s ceding of the authority of “some ways of understanding human of organs rises fear. the performative appears to follow from desire … quite to the side of prohibition an encounter with death. The AIDS epi- and repression,” Sedgwick offers won- Or not—we talk mathematics demic has played a crucial role in derful lists, which not only catalogue but to cover uncertainty. Sedgwick’s intellectual work for years, significantly expand the possible. Don’t know the figures. pushing her toward both the “direct Describing the intimate relation between action” of the performative and the identity and shame, Sedgwick describes Surgeon-magicians remove “passive resistance” of the periperfor- what she calls “performativity identity what kills, also fall subject mative. In addition, Sedgwick’s own vernaculars,” resistant and often pleasur- to fashionable body parts. struggle with breast cancer over the last able practices that grow up in response several years has led her more clearly in to experiences of social injury. She Naturopathic wizards raid the direction of the periperformative. offers a typically expansive list of such transculturally now: China, Appalachia, Belize. “Such encounters as those with mortali- practices, naming queer ways of being in ty and Buddhism,” she writes, “have had the world that she sees as particularly The vials line up: some some slip-slidy effects, for better or for “flushed with shame”: “To name only a to the good, when not poison. worse, on the strong consciousness of a few: butch abjection, femmitude, leather, Some poison, ending in good. vocation that made a book like pride, SM, drag, musicality, fisting, atti- Epistemology of the Closet sound confident tude, zines, histrionicism, asceticism, We weigh it all, contact of its intervention on contemporaneous Snap! Culture, diva worship, florid reli- our wombless friends scenes of sexuality and critical theory.” giosity; in a word, /flaming/.” read, phone, obsess, react. Sedgwick’s experience as a teacher is hese “slip-slidy effects” are part crucial to the work that this book does. The shelves bend down of what has always made reading Sedgwick considers pedagogy in the offering lots if you’ve got T Sedgwick so great. The warm sat- classroom, but also in the context of good insurance and wads of time. isfactions afforded by what she calls “the activism, Buddhist practice, theater, and art of loosing” take the place, here, of the care for the dying. Looming not far Be careful not to complain scorching blasts one used to feel coming behind such discussions is the question mutters the Pharmacist: from a forge where Sedgwick seemed to of the pedagogical value of her writing. We’re here to help. hammer out new paradigms by the hour. Her writing has, over the years, called Within a short span of years she turned into being an attentive and devoted audi- And soon it’s on the way. out a set of conceptual tools—the ence, more like a group of students than, In a flood of sweat and headache— homosocial, the glass closet, universaliz- perhaps, a traditional readership; there is Lupran starts false menopause, ing v. minoritizing models of homosexu- a strong sense in which many of us, hav- ality, the privilege of unknowing, and the ing never sat in a classroom or lecture begins to shrink the cysts epistemology of the closet itself—with- hall with Sedgwick, nonetheless think of down to size for the knife; out which it is quite difficult to imagine ourselves as her students. One of the then shut-down ovaries call queer studies. In a chapter of Touching questions that the book raises, though, is Feeling entitled “Paranoid Reading and about what Sedgwick refers to at one Water! Ginseng! Black cohosh! Reparative Reading, or, You’re So point as the “transmissibility” of its gifts. And the Siren of Healing Paranoid, You Probably Think This “In writing this book I’ve continually felt chants Mushrooms! Potassium! Essay Is About You,” Sedgwick offers a pressed against the limits of my stupidity, We walk with trepidation critique of what she describes as the even as I’ve felt the promising closeness down these medicinal paranoid model of critical theory, which of transmissible gifts.” The meaning of aisles, flashing laser seeks everywhere to expose and demysti- stupidity that Sedgwick invokes here is fy “hidden violence”; according to not, I think, that of lack of intelligence, lights on one side, raising Sedgwick, the now compulsory and near- or sluggishness, or insensibility. This candles on the other, ly universal practice of a “hermeneutics book is quite simply brilliant: a live cur- hoping some combination’s of suspicion”—Paul Ricoeur’s term for rent of feeling runs through it; it blushes, the demystifying reading practices of and it can make you blush too. I think by right for the red-black cave Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud—has meant stupidity Sedgwick means something beneath your live skin, that contemporary critics are great at tak- much closer to the work of consolation so smooth, so faultless. ing things apart but at a loss when it and making whole, of love and political comes to putting them back together. hope, that she associates with reparative False consciousness, the colonial gaze, reading. Such generous techniques might Before Anesthesia patriarchal domination, heterocentrism, seem less “smart” than the demystifying surveillance society: any first-year PhD protocols of paranoid reading; they are The science of unconsciousness student reading around in the canon can also more difficult to imitate, and, there- is doubtless down cold, but where name those tunes in about two notes, fore, to teach. But these are the gifts that you will be when the kindly Sedgwick suggests. Such an approach Sedgwick offers us nonetheless. gases have filtered through your cells remains mysterious, not allows critics to be right without being “The world will little note, nor long a question of medicine. (or doing anyone) much good. remember what we say here, but it can Sedgwick identifies some of her own never forget what they did here.” Lincoln A negativity called Out past work with this impulse, but calls in was right that the country would not for- Cold will warm your blood, still fear this essay for an alternative and more get what the soldiers did at Gettysburg; leave you to gravity and skill generous form of reading. Reparative but he was wrong about the fate of his let you wander away from reading, in her account, “undertakes a speech. Over the past couple of decades your language and personhood. different range of affects, ambitions, and of romancing the performative, risks” in a project of repair that she iden- Sedgwick has learned the lesson of May it be for you as it once tifies with love. Lincoln’s address—that deflecting atten- was in Yellowstone—pregnant The work of the affect theorist Silvan tion from yourself can be the best way of and hot you fainted in a field Tomkins has been crucial to the recent making people listen to what it is that you of dusty grass and woke up shift in Sedgwick’s work away from the want to say to them. At every turn in surrounded by grazing elk who epistemological crises of the closet and Touching Feeling Sedgwick gives up her took you for a rock and sauntered toward rich phenomenological accounts authority, ceding her ground to a host of away as soon as your human of embodied experience, feeling, and others. This doesn’t stop the book from eyes alighted. intimacy. In Sedgwick’s view, affect theo- being gorgeous, ardent, hypnotic, bold— ry offers a useful vocabulary for describ- in a word, flaming. I The Women’s Review of Books / Vol. XXI, No. 6 / March 2004 13 assault charges. After his release, he I decided I would humble myself approached DonAlda in a parking lot before God, and see what hap- with a gun, and she shot him three pened in my life. (Donna) Voices from prison times with a weapon she carried for self-defense. DonAlda reports that she I just decided God wasn’t ready by Patrice Clark Koelsch was taking tranquillizers “like Tic- to kill me yet. (Betty Tyson) Tacs” during her trial and believes that Inner Lives: Voices of African American Women in Prison she was badly represented. The all- Religion has helped me overcome white, mostly male jury found her a lot because I know all people by Paula C. Johnson. New York: New York University guilty of first-degree murder. She was fall short of the glory of God. stunned by her 15-years-to-life sen- (Karen Michelle Blakney) Press, 2003, 338 pp., $30.00 hardcover. tence and her immersion into the prison system: I felt as though God was saying Couldn’t Keep It to Myself: Testimony from Our Imprisoned to me, ‘I got you, honey; it’s going I was not a career criminal. I felt to be okay.’ (Millicent Pierce) Sisters by Wally Lamb and the Women of York Correctional that I was just as smart or bright as some people, and it was diffi- There are so many incentives for Facility. New York: ReganBooks, 2003, cult to be talked to, sometimes, inmates to get religion—chapel is often 350 pp., $24.95 hardcover. like a dog. I would curse and go one of the few places where offenders off, and I’d end up in the hole a from different cell blocks can meet; I lot of times, so it was rough on prison chaplains may advocate for me... I couldn’t have the medi- offenders within an institution; and cor- ere are three sobering facts: experiences while incarcerated, and, for cine that I had depended on for rectional authorities look favorably on the United States has become those released, re-entry to the outside. so many years... I had to deal but participation in mainstream faiths—it H the world’s leading jailer; peo- (Johnson cites Gwendolyn Etter-Lewis, just couldn’t. Not only dealing would have been instructive for ple of color are disproportionately rep- who said that “It is oral narrative that is with the time, but dealing with Johnson to have explored the etiology resented in prison populations; ideally suited to revealing the ‘multilay- the fact I killed somebody I and ethnology of individuals’ faith. African-American women are now the ered texture of black women’s lives.’”) loved. First love, only love. Johnson presents each interview as a fastest growing group of incarcerated Each of the interviews included in this Despite the abuse, I loved him. monologue that begins in the subject’s persons. The two volumes under con- volume was transcribed and edited; then (p. 62) childhood and moves on to her sideration here, Inner Lives and Couldn’t the narrative was reviewed, corrected, involvement in the criminal justice sys- Keep It to Myself, give us the faces behind and approved by the interviewee. While serving time, DonAlda has tem. Unfortunately, in several the grim facts. Inner Lives focuses on Generalizing about the interviews, become the first black woman to com- instances, the narrative becomes ellipti- African-American women offenders, Johnson notes: plete a course of study from the cal and confusing. Important details historicizing, contextualizing, and ana- Children’s Institute of Literature. “You are missing. Children suddenly appear lyzing their situation; Couldn’t Keep It to While there is considerable diver- might think this is crazy,” she said, “but and vanish in the course of the story; Myself presents the work of an inmate sity within their individual cir- prison has brought out the best in me... husbands come and go. Offenders writing workshop. cumstances, the women often because it makes me resourceful.” make casual references to their inmate In Inner Lives, law professor Paula experienced similar traumas that The theme of resourcefulness con- wives. Consequently, many of these Johnson illuminates how the race and began in childhood or developed nects many of these stories. Joyce Ann interview-portraits seem fragmentary gender of African-American women later in adulthood. Invariably, Brown served nearly ten years in a and incomplete. affect how they are treated in the their traumas resulted from fami- Texas penitentiary for a much-publi- American criminal justice system. The ly dysfunction; an inability or dis- cized murder she did not commit. he 11 authors of the stories in initial chapters of the book provide inclination to make wise deci- Brown refused to become “institution- Couldn’t Keep It to Myself have the framework for interpreting the sions about friends and intimate alized.” Instead of watching re-runs on T much in common with the subsequent narratives that are the companions; the realities and televison, she became a sports fanatic, offenders in Inner Lives: Four are women heart of Inner Lives. Johnson outlines perceptions of limited or non- because “that’s today, not yesterday.” of color; eight have been battered; nine the racialized history of women’s existent life choices; and a lack of She paid attention to commercials, are victims of sexual abuse. Their incarceration in the United States and alternatives for productive, fulfill- “things that bring you up-to-date in crimes include drug trafficking, then examines recent trends contributing, and economically viable today’s technology and whatever, and manslaughter, and homicide. Novelist ing to the extraordinary growth of lives. The persistent impact of you get to know what the world is still Wally Lamb and writing teacher Dale both male and female prison popula- structural gender, race, and class like.” When Brown’s case was over- Griffith worked with the contributors in tions. She summarizes the conse- oppression that affected the turned, and she was released, she wrote a writing workshop at York quences of a politicized “war on women’s ability to achieve or a book about her experiences and Correctional Facility in Connecticut. drugs,” harsher drug laws, and manda- project an image of value as a founded an organization to support (The one exception is Lamb’s cousin, tory minimum sentencing guidelines. productive member of society prisoners’ children and their caregivers. Nancy Birkla, who served seven years in Out of the 84 current and former undergirds these difficulties. Several interviewees insist that they a Kentucky penitentiary and is his pri- women inmates Johnson interviewed (pp. 14-15) are innocent; others note entrapment, vate writing student.) while researching Inner Lives, she chose inadequate legal counsel, and the dis- Lamb explains that students wrote 17 first-person narratives for inclusion. The interviews Johnson chose tease proportionate severity of their sen- numerous drafts and had classroom These narratives are followed by inter- apart easy stereotypes of who goes to tences. Once incarcerated, they report instruction that included: “the use of views with individuals involved in reha- prison. For example, DonAlda is a that white inmates are frequently treated past versus present tense in writing bilitation and the justice system. Catholic high school graduate who more leniently than women of color. memoir, how to recast memories as Johnson employed a “life history” studied graphic arts in college. She had Like DonAlda, women who committed dramatic scenes with the help of fic- methodology, asking her subjects about two children with an abusive, repeat homicide often maintain that their tional techniques, how to balance nar- childhood, adolescence, initiation into offender who used drugs and threat- crimes are at odds with their real selves. rative with exposition, how to write criminal behavior, legal adjudication, ened to kill her after she pressed Cynthia says, “I felt that what happened successful segues.” He notes that was totally ironic to what I believe my “there is a range of editorial involve- nature was. I really thought that if any- ment, from minimal ‘nip-and-tuck’ to a thing, I would die to save someone level of activity approaching ‘as written else.” And Millicent Pierce says, “I felt with.’ Most fell somewhere in the mid- that I was a life-giver. I’m a mother, I’m dle of the continuum. In all cases, the a woman; I brought life into this world. writers had final approval over their I killed another woman’s son. edited works.” Regardless of the circumstances, I had In her autobiographical short story killed somebody.” “Motherlove,” Michelle Jessamy has 14- Special Offer Many interviews contain religious year-old Mo’Shay conceive a child in a To Book Group Members testimonials: tender scene that contrasts with her secret rape by a friend of her mother’s. Send us the names and addresses of the people in your I just try to say God is in control The narrator in Nancy Whitley’s piece, group and we will send each of them a free sample copy and whatever happens is because “The True Face of Earth,” moves of The Women's Review of Books. God allows it. (Cynthia) between a little girl’s adoration of her amateur pilot father; and an abandoned OPRAH AND BEYOND I’ll give it to God and let Him teenager’s compulsion to have sex by Send addresses to work it out for me. (Mamie) the local airfield. The pathos of the tale Book Group Offer is tempered by the narrator’s sense of Women's Review of Books Getting to know Jesus is the best humor: “Dr. Cusamano had poofy hair Wellesley Center for Research on Women 106 Central Street thing that ever happened to me and a mouth full of perfect game-show Wellesley, MA 02481 aside from giving birth to my host teeth. “‘Nancy Johansson, come on darling son. (Rae Ann) down!’ I half expected him to say,

14 The Women’s Review of Books / Vol. XXI, No. 6 / March 2004 ‘You’re the lucky winner of a BRAND- tle dizzying in its detailing of the players NEW PREGNANCY!’” from both sides. These are the men who “Puzzle Pieces,” Barbara Parson founded some of the biggest media oper- Lane’s visceral memoir, begins with her Media mergers and you ations in the world: Gerald Levin, who first visit in prison from her four adult later became head of AOL Time Warner, (or nearly adult) children and her alien- by Leslie Brokaw launched HBO for Time Inc.; future AOL ation from the other inmates (“I don’t chief Bob Pittman co-founded MTV. know why these girls act like we’re at a There Must Be a Pony in Here Somewhere: the AOL Time When Levin became CEO of Time pajama party. No one seems to under- Warner, he decided the company lacked stand the seriousness of our situation. I Warner Debacle and the Quest for a Digital Future “Internet DNA.” The pursuit of AOL feel like I’ve been stranded on an island was his answer, but, as with the Time where the native speech is street talk, by Kara Swisher with Lisa Dickey. New York: Warner merger ten years earlier, the 2000 Spanish, and jailhouse slang”). With union with the Dulles, Virginia, company cinematic skill, Lane returns to her Crown Business, 2003, 294 pp., turned out to be a cultural nightmare. childhood, her molestation by her AOL’s managers were perceived by their mother’s father, her mother’s injunction $24.95 hardcover. New York partners as not just geeky— not to tell. This is followed by her they expected that—but infuriatingly mother’s psychiatric hospitalization and I cocky as well. AOL’s staff had “little suicide; and the subsequent revelation he title of Kara Swisher’s endless- through family and friends; in her media experience, but a lot of hubris that that Lane’s mother was also sexually ly entertaining There Must Be a Pony author’s note she mentions that her part- their way was the way of the future,” abused by the man who violated her. “I T In Here Somewhere refers to a joke ner Megan Smith used to be a top execu- writes Swisher; they “rampaged through am tired now, sick of puzzles and mem- told by Ronald Reagan and then repeated tive at PlanetOut, which AOL invested Time Warner with little care and no sense ories. My grandfather is long dead, and regularly, and more coarsely, around the in. This book is peppered with direct of respect.” my mother, now, too. And I’m in prison offices of America Online (AOL) during quotes collected by Swisher going back a The companies couldn’t click in basic for having taken the life of my hus- its early days. The story goes like this: A decade and careful borrowing from other strategic ways, either. The fact that AOL band, the man who molested my grand- young boy finds a pile of horse manure journalistic sources. (Swisher is generous couldn’t get included in the package of daughter, the child of my child.” and, wide-eyed, starts digging into it. to her colleagues in her citations, quoting cable services that Time Warner was Lane’s lengthy narrative covers six When a passerby asks what he’s doing, he from, for instance, the “talented Carol already selling to consumers —even after years of incarceration and the previ- says, “There must be a pony in here Loomis” at Fortune and “a typically excel- they were all part of the same company— ous eight years of a marriage to a man somewhere!” The brash, aggressive, lent Newsweek column” by Allan Sloan.) “was the single clearest indicator that the who regularly threatened to kill her. visionary AOL was like that—facing one More than all that, though, her writing is merger was never going to work,” Swisher While Lane is in prison, her younger disaster after another during through the a treat: funny and smart. says. Financially, the new company ended son is killed in a car accident; she is 1990s, but remaining as optimistic as a kid The first half of the book, particularly up being worth less than the sum of its taken in shackles to the funeral home digging through dung. the prologue and chapters one and two, parts. By the merger’s one-year anniver- to see his body. Lane documents cal- Swisher’s 1998 book, aol.com, outlined outlines the entire story in broadbrush sary in January 2002, the joint company’s lous corrections officers, the sexual the rise of AOL from before 1991, the year and then dives into the AOL piece of the stock had dropped to a 52-week low. exploitation of inmates by inmates, that Quantum Computer Services renamed puzzle. (In fact, those sections plus chap- And last September, after this book had the use of religion to cover a multi- itself America Online, to its complete ter five make a nicely condensed version gone to press, AOL Time Warner tude of sins. domination of the consumer Internet mar- of the book). Most of us were part of dropped the “AOL” from its name in a ket in 1998. This new book both summa- this story as consumers—at some point in move acknowledged to be the clearest Many women go to pray for the rizes aol.com and picks up on the company’s the past ten years, it’s likely that you or symbol yet of the merger’s failure. At the miracle of a reduced sentence, extraordinary story of the past five years, someone in your family had an AOL time, Richard Parsons, the chair and others go for the sex. Recently, a outlining just how a dial-up Internet serv- account. You probably know from per- CEO of the company said, “We believe church service was halted when a ice provider (ISP) managed the astonishing sonal experience the inherent incongruity that our new name better reflects the ‘kite’—a love note folded in the coup of buying Time Warner in January about AOL: The service was lousy, but portfolio of our valuable businesses and shape of a small triangle for 2000. (Swisher explains that what was everyone joined anyway. Customers faced ends any confusion between our corpo- inconspicuous delivery—was termed at the time a merger between equals random disconnections, mangled text rate name and the America Online brand found and turned over to the was really a buyout. Despite bringing just attachments, infantilizing news headlines, name for our investors, partners and the minister. Inside the note was a 18 percent of the combined revenues to endless pop-up ads, a mother lode of public.” Talk about cold shouldering half promise of true love and a the table, AOL, because of its wildly inflat- raunchy spam, and a design that looks, as of your company. request; please wear your special ed stock price at the time of the deal, Swisher puts it, “like a brochure rack at a Women are nearly absent from this pants with a hole in the crotch ended up with 56 percent of the new com- tourist rest stop.” And still they came. book—Meg Whitman, CEO of the enor- next Sunday, and I’ll take you to pany.) The creation was the biggest media “Even though it completely dominated its mously successful eBay (which had part- Heaven. (p. 238) company in the world, a combo-platter of competition throughout the late 1990s, nership deals with AOL), gets the briefest businesses whose revenues totaled more no one could ever quite believe AOL was of mentions, and the highest female It is an unflinching account by a dis- than $30 billion. succeeding,” writes Swisher. “After the AOL exec covered here, Jan Brandt, the tinctive voice. But the buyout is just the book’s set- CompuServe purchase in 1997, Fortune marketer responsible for flooding One obvious difference between the up: What There Must Be a Pony In Here magazine pictured [company chief] Steve America with AOL software disks, gets as essays and stories in Couldn’t Keep It to Somewhere really focuses on are all the Case on the cover under the headline much ink in the book as RuPaul. Ann Myself and the monologues in Inner Lives ways that the merger has been a near total ‘Surprise! AOL Wins!’ How could this be Moore, who became chair and CEO of boils down to the writer’s rule: “Show disaster and what that will mean for the happening? Didn’t AOL suck?” Time Inc. in July 2002 after 24 years with rather than tell.” It’s not just that the assimilation of old and new media in the Well, it did, particularly if you had bet- that company, is mentioned once. women in the York Correctional Facility future. If you follow American corporate ter Internet options through your office or The lack of women players in this coa- get to know themselves more deeply and business news, many of the details will be school. But making sense of ISPs and lescence of media giants hints at the clearly through writing, but each offend- familiar—the company’s crashing stock POP3 servers was too intimidating for broader topic of why media consolidation er learned to make of her experience prices, fallen leaders, and the widespread most people, and millions were happy to is a feminist issue. The National something more than just another sad resentment by each side of the other. If have AOL’s Internet training wheels. “The Organization for Women, for instance, piece on the six o’clock news. Each you don’t follow business news, this book genius in Steve Case lay not in developing lists “Media Activism” right alongside woman managed to make art out of life. provides a full service tour of the greed the most sophisticated, versatile product “Economic Equality” and “Judicial This observation is not meant to of the early Internet years and the setting he could, but in realizing that most people Nominations” as one of its 21 Key Issues denigrate Johnson’s interviews or her aside of commonly held business rules, wanted the exact opposite of that,” writes on its website, and NOW came out in interviewees. It is useful to hear the the challenges of mixing old and new Swisher. “Most average users simply opposition to last June’s Federal voices of incarcerated women, to be media, and ways that print companies longed for a convenient way to be part of Communications Commission decision reminded of injustice and the pursuit and web-focused companies might better this great new communications medium to relax its already soft rules about how of justice. However a several-hour partner in the future. It’s all punctuated without doing a lot of heavy lifting.” AOL many broadcast outlets any one company interview is a single and singular by Swisher’s charmingly light touch. created a new world of online communi- can own. “Our media content is being fil- episode in a woman’s incarceration— Swisher is probably the best journalist ty—from buddy lists to chat rooms to tered through five profit-driven corporate albeit an important one. In contrast, a around to tell this slice of Internet and instant messaging—that changed in deep giants,” said NOW President Kim Gandy. workshop is an ongoing commitment communications history: She began cov- ways how people communicate and how “How much worse can it get? Much to and by an offender. Johnson herself ering AOL in 1994 as a reporter at The they spend their free time. worse. The new FCC rules threaten to acknowledges the transforming power Washington Post and continued writing shut out women and people of color of artistic engagement in Inner Lives by about it as technology columnist at The wisher explains that while AOL was from top-level participation in the media including a piece by performer and Wall Street Journal, where she works today. sopping up customers, there was industry and virtually eliminate local pro- playwright Rhodessa Jones, who organ- In 1999, the white-heat year of the online S trouble in media’s parallel universe: gramming.” Concentrated ownership ized a drama workshop at an unnamed explosion, Swisher was named “the Time Inc. had joined with Warner means fewer independent voices in the California jail. “I always begin by telling Internet economy’s most influential jour- Communications in January 1989, and “by media, and that means it’s going to be people that theater saved my life,” nalist” by the magazine most closely con- all accounts, many considered it one of harder than ever to find a pony of intelli- Jones insists, “the art making, being nected to the niche, The Industry Standard. the worst mergers ever consummated,” gent thinking within the crap heap of sto- part of a theater community, saved this And, like most journalists, she has a web she writes. There were inevitable power ries about Britney Spears, Michael colored girl’s life.” I of personal connections in the field struggles, and here the book becomes a lit- Jackson, and Ben Affleck. I

The Women’s Review of Books / Vol. XXI, No. 6 / March 2004 15 DARTMOUTH COLLEGE Domestic tyranny HANOVER,NEW HAMPSHIRE by Carol Bere

Dean of Libraries and Librarian of the College The Bookseller of Kabul by Asne Seierstad. New York: Little, Brown & Company, Dartmouth College invites nominations and applications for the position of Dean of Libraries and Librarian of the College. We seek to appoint 2003, 288 pp., $19.95 hardcover. an energetic leader to guide an accomplished staff with a reputation for I high-quality scholarly support. S/he should be a skilled manager who understands and is sensitive to the traditional academic library and the She keeps losing sight of the bil- The legal threats, media debates, and innovations and challenges brought to it by rapidly emerging informa- lowing burka. Sky blue every- criticism may have generated increased tion technologies. where…. They walk on, and weave interest in The Bookseller of Kabul, but even their heads around in all directions without this background noise, Seierstad’s With over 5800 students and 650 full-time faculty members, Dartmouth to see better. Burka women are like story of life with the Khan family would be College combines the best features of an undergraduate liberal arts col- horses with blinkers: they can look a worthwhile read. Briefly, the backstory is lege with the intellectual vitality of a research university. The highly only in one direction. Where the eye straightforward: Seierstad, a well-known selective undergraduate college has been at the forefront of American narrows, the grille stops and thick correspondent, who has covered wars in higher education since 1769. In addition, over 1500 graduate students material takes its place; impossible the Balkans, Iraq, Chechnya, and to glance sideways…. The whole Afghanistan, first met Sultan Khan, the are currently enrolled in 16 programs in the arts and sciences and three head must turn…. (pp. 84-85) bookseller, in November 2001 when she professional schools: business, engineering, and medicine. Like the accompanied the Northern Alliance to liberal arts college, these schools have a long and distinguished history his is one persuasive example Kabul following the fall of the Taliban. and are among the first established in their respective fields in the among many from The Bookseller of Visiting his shop in a hotel in Kabul on sev- United States. T Kabul, Norwegian journalist Asne eral occasions, she was impressed by the Seierstad’s controversial account of life in English-speaking bookseller, his collection Dartmouth views the Libraries as an essential resource to support a var- an Afghan family, in which she implies that of books on Afghan history and literature, ied and demanding curriculum and the research needs of its faculty and Afghan women are victims of entrenched and his dedication to promoting knowledge students. Dartmouth recently invested over $65 million in library expan- cultural traditions, their confidence under- of Afghan culture and history. This has sions and consolidation. The Libraries presently comprise the Baker- mined, and their basic human rights to been no easy task, and Sultan built and Berry Library, which contains a state-of-the-art media center, the map freedom nonexistent. rebuilt his business after his collection was center, and library administration and central services, plus eight special- Published in the fall of 2002, The destroyed successively by the Communists, ized collections located in several academic centers. Together, these Bookseller of Kabul quickly became the most the Mujahadeen, and the Taliban. He has libraries house 2.4 million volumes, 26,000 serials, a vibrant and grow- successful nonfiction book in Norway, hidden books around the region, covered with over 220,000 copies sold by fall 2003. pictures in books with paper to circumvent ing sound and film collection, and a substantial rare book and manuscript The book has since sold 500,000 in the Taliban’s ban on images, fled on a cou- collection. Dartmouth’s digital library system links users to a broad array Scandinavia overall and has been translated ple of occasions with his family to Pakistan, of databases, thousands of full-text journals, electronic books, and digi- into 17 languages. Just prior to the UK pub- and survived imprisonment. And, like many tized images, and it facilitates direct access to the book collections at lication in August 2003, the terrain shifted: of the Afghan people, Sultan Khan has Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Penn, Princeton, and Yale. The Libraries Shah Mohammed Rais, the bookseller endured years of political upheaval, wars, belong to the Digital Library Federation and the Association of Research (referred to in the book as Sultan Khan), and the destruction of his home. Libraries and operate within a technically robust networked environment, read galleys of the book in English, and With the fine-tuned instincts of a good which includes campus-wide wireless access to the Digital Library. The sprang into action. He published state- journalist, Seierstad viewed the bookseller Baker-Berry building is also home to Computing Services—the institu- ments in Kabul and Norway, listing the as “a history book on two feet,” and pro- tion’s central computing organization—and the newly created Dartmouth ways in which he believed that Seierstad posed to Khan that she write a book about Center for the Advancement of Learning. had defamed “myself, my family, and my his family. With his blessing, she moved into country.” Rais also flew to Norway, met the crowded Khan household in February The Dean of Libraries oversees an annual budget of nearly $20 million with Seierstad and her father, a political sci- 2002, with the objective of learning first- and about 200 professional staff and support personnel. Dartmouth’s entist, and insisted that the book be hand about the society and culture of the removed from bookstores and “stopped” Afghan people. She wore Afghan clothes Libraries are proactively involved in the life of the institution, joining in all languages. He also hired high-profile (including, occasionally, the burka), slept on with faculty, for example, to launch new virtual journals such as Norwegian lawyer, Brynjar Melling, who a mattress next to Khan’s youngest daugh- Linguistic Discovery. The Dean plays a creative role in fostering a cli- threatened lawsuits, questioning Seierstad’s ter, Leila, and, as much as possible, became mate conducive to supporting the scholarly enterprise of diverse faculty, veracity and the reliability of her sources, part of the fabric of family life for four students, and staff; aiding in the recruitment and retention of new facul- particularly for what is perhaps the most months. Expectations swiftly collided with ty; and tending to the development of collections and services. The Dean horrifying incident in the book, the story reality, and Tolstoy’s comment that of Libraries reports to the Provost and will be a member, along with the (which may have occurred some years “….every unhappy family is unhappy in its academic deans, of the Provost’s Academic Council. before Seierstad’s residence at the Khans) own way,” quoted in the epilogue, is certain- of the niece of Khan’s first wife, here ly borne out by Seierstad’s portrait of the With primary administrative responsibility for all units of the Dartmouth referred to as a neighbor, who was killed by Khan family. Seierstad quickly discovers that Library, the Dean of Libraries must have a strong commitment to main- her brothers for having an affair while her the public persona of Khan, an English- taining excellence in academic research and library services, to working new husband had returned to the US tem- speaking, educated, successful bookseller collaboratively with academic and administrative departments, to operat- porarily. According to an interview on and entrepreneur, is at odds with the private ing in a technologically sophisticated environment, and to developing the www.cnn.com, Melling also claims that since Sultan, a tyrannical patriarch at home, The Bookseller is Khan’s story, he is entitled whose word is law and whose offenses expanding libraries into a center of campus-wide learning. to some of the profits accrued by both against human dignity are often harsh. He Seierstad and her publishers. The lawsuit is takes a teenaged second wife while his first With an even distribution of male and female students, about a third of pending as of this writing. wife, Sharifa, is in the humiliating position the undergraduate student population members of minority groups, and Seierstad’s book and her journalistic of living in the same house, continuing to the highest proportion of tenured female faculty in the Ivy League, methods quickly became the center of wait on him. His sons have not been edu- Dartmouth is committed to diversity and encourages applications from debate in Norway and elsewhere. Some cated, and 12-year-old Aimal works seven women and minorities. Dartmouth College is an Equal Opportunity, critics questioned the credibility of days a week, 12 hours a day at Sultan’s hotel Affirmative Action employer. Additional information is available at Seierstad’s portrait of the Khan family, her booth, while Mansur (or Manu), Sultan’s http://www.dartmouth.edu. Please send a letter of application, a curricu- actual knowledge of Afghanistan, and teenage son, who also works these long lum vitae, and the names of three references. Review of applications will whether she had breached ethics by accept- hours at another bookshop, is frustrated by begin April 15th and continue until the position is filled. All applications, ing Khan’s hospitality and then portraying his lack of freedom and his father’s refusal nominations and inquiries should be directed to: him as a hard-line patriarch. Others said to let him attend school. that Seierstad’s book was one-sided, that Professor Katharine Conley she had essentially reinforced pre-existing ut Seierstad’s greatest sympathies are Dean of Libraries Search Committee Western views, or perhaps myths, about with the women in the Khan family. Dartmouth College, Office of the Provost the position of Afghan women. Yet critical B Critics routinely say the book repre- reception of the book in general continues sents a “culture clash,” but the phrase is a 6004 Parkhurst Hall, Room 204 to be encouraging, and Seierstad claims particularly empty cliché when viewed in the Hanover, NH 03755-3529 substantial support from Afghan women context of the real lives of the Khan in Norway and elsewhere. women. One sister, Bibula, now 30 years

16 The Women’s Review of Books / Vol. XXI, No. 6 / March 2004 old, as a child suffered an undiagnosed ill- daughter, Leila. Seierstad does not appear in ness that left her unable to think clearly, with the book, and claims that she has just writ- the result that no one has had much to do ten what she saw, and has not made judg- with her: “…life dropped her.” The story of ments. This is somewhat disingenuous, Nostalgic for monarchy the youngest sister, Leila, the drudge who since the mere selection of incidents, the cooks and cleans for the Khan family, is per- reporting of internal thoughts of the char- by Andrea Hoag haps the most poignant. Leila wants to teach acters, and the choice of descriptive lan- English, but her attempts to navigate guage itself implies judgment. Farewell, My Queen: A Novel by Chantal Thomas, bureaucratic requirements frustrate her, and Seierstad makes convincing efforts to she retreats, her life at a standstill: “She has suggest the feelings of hopelessness of translated by Moishe Black. New York: George reached a deadlock in a system that is root- Leila, perhaps the most sympathetic char- ed in centuries-old traditions and that para- acter in the book, Manu’s rage at his Braziller, 2003, 239 pp., $22.50 hardcover. lyzes half the population.” Seierstad’s sym- father’s control, and Sharifa’s vulnerability pathies go somewhat astray in her unflatter- and humiliation. Her interpretations of I ing description of Sultan’s mother, Bibi Gul, Sultan’s thoughts or motivations are some- at the hamman (public bath), for which she what limited to external commentary, and n the cover of Farewell, My and loyal friend at court. Marie- has been justifiably criticized. A full-figured the resulting portrait of this extremely Queen, Marie-Antoinette’s weep- Antoinette beseeches her friend to flee woman close to 70, Bibi Gul was married at complex character is ultimately sketchy. Yet O ing children bury their faces in Versailles, and finally brings herself to 11 to a man 20 years her senior, bore 13 Seierstad is not without admiration for the folds of their mother’s billowing admit that the monarchy is doomed: children, and is now a widow, given to exces- Sultan’s genuine love of books, his ability dresses; Marie-Antoinette’s face is terror- sive eating. Seierstad has said that she delet- to build a successful business, and for the stricken as she stares off at an invisible I have lost all hope. I am touched, ed some sentences from this chapter in the personal risks he has taken to bring books horror. Above, the immense, jewel- however, that you should have American edition, but the remaining into Afghanistan—in a sense, to provide encrusted chandelier has been lavished thought of me when you chose descriptions of the unclothed Bibi Gul are Afghans with knowledge and pride in their with just as much majesty and artistic the color of your dress, green, my still gratuitous, and should have been culture. He has also provided relatively well detail as the cowering royal family favorite color… We are going excised altogether. for his large family, although his actions are beneath it. As it happens, this detail from through an unhappy phase. Will Seierstad says her story is of one family inconsistent, both modern and traditional: Gyula Beneczur’s painting Louis XVI and we see the outcome? I doubt it. in Afghanistan, but without commentary, it Marie-Antoinette with Their Children at Nevertheless…one must have is apparent that, economics aside, she con- In many ways, Sultan was a liberal. Versailles is a potent metaphor for the hope. I must believe in the color siders the situation of the Khan women a When he was in Iran he had bought workings of French historian Chantal you are wearing. (p. 171) proxy for the position of all women in Sonya Western clothes. He often Thomas’ multilayered first novel. Afghanistan. It seems clear that Seierstad’s referred to the burka as an oppres- Though Marie-Antoinette’s final days Agathe, too, clings to hope. She and greatest anger is directed at the tradition of sive cage, and he was pleased that of freedom at Versailles are at the fore- another low-ranking court functionary, arranged marriages, which she refers to as the new government included front of the book, the queen herself is Honorine, spend their idle evening hours the buying and selling of women, the treat- female ministers. In his heart, he not the protagonist. Instead, the story is embroidering a tapestry begun but aban- ing of women as objects. Thus, Sultan wanted Afghanistan to be a modern told through the eyes of Agathe-Sidonie doned by a frivolous courtier. Thomas negotiated with the parents of Sonya, his country, and he talked warmly of Laborde, faithful court reader to Her carries this symbolism one step further as teenaged bride, to marry her. His 30-some- the emancipation of women. But at Majesty during the last, dread-filled days the faithful servants sew “gradations of thing sister, Shakila, whose career as a home he remained the authoritarian of the monarchy. The ever-bustling green, mosses, ferns, tall forest trees.” teacher was cut off by wars, a necessary patriarch. When it came to ruling chateau becomes a place where “panic” As the protagonist clutches at threads flight to Pakistan, and later, life under the his own family, Sultan had only one becomes a nearly human character: of optimism that the long-smoldering Taliban, is married off to a distant relative, model: his father. (p. 277) “Panic does not take time; her sphere of revolution can be put down, she herself a widower with several children, in a “third- influence is a hole in time, into which she begins to symbolize the hope—the rate wedding,” while the unfortunate Bibula Whether fiction, nonfiction, or so- flings everyone that she snatches up pathetic hope—that life at court can con- is thrown in free of charge to another dis- called immersion journalism, provocative along her path.” tinue as it did before these inconvenient tant cousin. Shakila has little choice, and her works like The Bookseller of Kabul add to the Agathe moves almost imperceptibly social rumblings. qualms about the marriage are quickly dis- growing body of literature that explores among the royal bookshelves and bed- missed by Bibi Gul, who states flatly that the situation of Afghan women from his- chambers, absorbing everything around oishe Black turns in a masterful “he’s a good husband for you.” torical, social, and cultural perspectives. her and committing it to memory. The translation of Thomas’ text, The book is written in “literary form,” a Women’s rights to freedom, to personal novel is one long reflection, told in 1810, M preserving all the nuance and vague term which provides sufficient lee- choices—whether in work or in mar- some 30 years after she escaped to a witty charms of original. Black particu- way for Seierstad’s interpretations of the riage—and to education in a country community of French émigrés in Vienna. larly excels when translating Thomas’ lives and thoughts of some of the Khans. where the literacy rates for women are While Agathe commits to paper her last dialogue, which often conveys the com- The writing is occasionally flat (perhaps the marginal, are certainly the subtext, indeed days at court, she mourns the queen she mon folks’ anger toward what they see as result of translation) but Seierstad has a the implicit argument of The Bookseller of still idolizes as well as the grand, aristo- Louis’ repressive regime. The spoken journalist’s eye for detail and place, and her Kabul. Seierstad also leaves little doubt that cratic lifestyle she had grown to love. word—overheard by our faithful narrator sharply etched descriptions of the dreary, she believes that her obligation to report As in the well-chosen cover painting, Agathe—showcases the human suffering crowded Soviet-bloc housing in Kabul, of what she saw and experienced during her architectural details reign supreme in that spurred revolution in France, as in the burka-clad women shopping, of Manu’s residence with the Khans supersedes issues Farewell, My Queen, and the inner thoughts this conversation between two Versailles first pilgrimage to Ali’s tomb in Mazar-I- of hospitality, or theoretical notions of and dialogue of shrewd underlings pro- servants who decry their former masters Sharif and his efforts to take pictures of what the journalist owes her subjects: “If vide a more fascinating look at the sur- as they prepare to abandon their posts: the new president of Afghanistan, Hamid you want to write the truth about harsh roundings of a much-reviled queen than Karzai, and his sheer joy in his freedom are regimes…whether it’s inside a family or do many recent biographies. Antonia The aristocrats take milk baths particularly effective. Although Seierstad whether it’s on a political national level, Fraser’s recently published Marie and our children die. The same as speaks several languages, she does not your subjects will not be pleased with it, and Antoinette: The Journey, for example, offers with the flour. The flour shortage speak Dari, the Persian dialect spoken by he [Sultan Khan] is not pleased with it, and a detailed portrait of the queen’s life, yet comes from them using it all to the Khans; she had to rely on the three peo- I don’t feel I owe him anything,” Seierstad fails to engage readers as thoroughly as make gruel for their cats! Or the ple in the Khan family who speak English told National Public Radio reporter Brooke Thomas’ complex, servant’s-eye view. houses! People have no place to as interpreters: Sultan, his son Mansur, and Gladstone in October 2003. I Agathe records how small, unspoken bed down for the night. In winter changes around Versailles signal the the ones who are the poorest drop Asne Seierstad doom ahead. The ritual mourning for the like flies. In the charity shelters recently deceased Dauphin ceases to be they pack them together on straw strictly observed, for example, and the to sleep... You wake up in the mid- daily bouquets of fresh flowers that usu- dle of the night, you’ve got a dead ally adorn each chamber are neglected. guy lying against you, stretched Thomas has a genius for symbolism, and out stiff and cold. (p. 123) just as the reign of Louis XVI is dying on the vine, the chateau’s old blooms shrivel The long-bitter servants offer a taste in their vases. In unmistakably frank of both the truth and the myths sur- imagery, the animals in Louis’ menagerie rounding the royal couple. In these also die off one by one: first the ele- rather frequent passages, Thomas calls phant, then the prized, exotic lion. upon the research from her previous It is also no mistake that the author work, a sympathetic account of the interweaves the color green—Marie- monarch entitled The Wicked Queen: The Antoinette’s favorite and the “color of Origins of the Myth of Marie-Antoinette. hope”—into the narrative at key Readers can easily discredit some—but moments. In the most evocative episode, not all—of what the subjects complain Agathe witnesses a poignant farewell of, and will marvel at Agathe’s naiveté, between Her Majesty and Gabrielle de which she clings to in her almost irra-

Photo courtesy of Asne Seierstad Polignac, long the queen’s most intimate tional adulation for the queen.

The Women’s Review of Books / Vol. XXI, No. 6 / March 2004 17 Agathe has spent her years at court of explanation she offers, as in these happily submerged in books, leisurely lines from “Attachment:” choosing which to read to the queen when next she is called to service. Rhyming romance Now I understand to want, to lust, Ignorant of court affairs, she makes an to watch the flickering needle: ideal narrator; as the regime crumbles, by Enid Shomer trust; Agathe questions her clever, well-placed to wonder where he is, court acquaintances to decipher the Open Slowly by Kate Light. Lincoln, NE: Zoo Press, with whom, to try hard not to events surrounding the collapse of assume Louis’ throne. Though many readers are 2003, 59 pp., $14.95 paper. is Attachment.... (p. 17) knowledgeable about the basic events of France in 1789, they will remain trans- I Light’s poems lack concision and fixed by Agathe’s pursuit of the truth. muscularity, the gristle and pluck of Does Her Majesty truly deserve the pen Slowly, Kate Light’s second This poem conveys nothing of the gen- Anglo-Saxon words that are the bedrock wrath of her people? collection, is single-minded uine angst that we encounter later in this of poetry in English. This is not a prob- After the hordes storm the Bastille, O both in theme and style. In volume. One can only wonder why the lem in her light verse. But when she and the end draws near, terror spreads strict, rhyming poems (18 sonnets, two weakest poem in the collection was given applies the diction and poetic strategies among the hundreds of courtiers living villanelles, and assorted other forms), she such primacy. of light verse to her chosen topic, the in Versailles. Among those whose names explores the tension between the desire The poems that follow are of greater suffering of unrequited loved, the appear on “the list of the 286 heads that for individuality and the need for com- verve and complexity, full of the pleas- results are disastrous. Later in have to fall in order to effect the neces- munion with a beloved. Her touch, befit- ures one finds in the best light verse: “Attachment,” for example, feeling is sary reforms,” there is a mass exodus. ting her name, is light. glimmering verbal arpeggios, rhyming dissipated through the insertion of filler The aristocrats are rendered near-help- The arrangement of the poems fol- riffs, witty observations. In “Greg’s words and phrases to complete the less without their fleeing servants, and lows the calendar, beginning and ending Legs,” for example, Light combines clev- meter or rhyme scheme or add a note of Agathe proves to be an especially like- with fall, with the seasons providing the erness, syntactic litheness, and rhyme to casualness, both of which strip her voice able witness: section titles. Despite this chronological produce a playful, syncopated homage. of authority and avoirdupois and coat it scaffolding, the interior weather of the “Greg’s Legs//are long/strong/ exhala- with stagey melodrama. “Find me a The courtiers were moving out, poet, which could be described as wintry tions/of bone/and soft fur...” home/like that, where love hovers/in and it was abundantly clear that obsessional, is the actual organizing prin- At her best, through a rapid succes- the air like breath./But to be they were quite unused to what ciple of the collection, for the poems sion of tonal shifts and imagery, Light is lovers/with one who does not love/is... this entailed. In truth, it would be make no reference to shifts in the sea- able to create ornamented verbal struc- well, it is to live/a living death.” hard to imagine a more unlikely, sons, the weather, or the contours of the tures, each one balanced like the arm of a There is nothing obsolete about awkward group or anyone less relationship. There are break-up poems mobile, all of them simultaneously turn- rhyme, meter, received forms or any of skilled in the handling of furni- near the end of the book, but nothing at ing, as in this opening: the myriad formal devices in the poetic ture, luggage, and packages that the beginning or middle to account for armamentarium as long as they are not gaped open because they were not them. Was the lover always cruel and We Are given precedence over the truth of the properly tied… [they] balked at unfeeling? We never find out. poem. It is no exaggeration to say that the prospect of traveling without Light is a poet with a penchant for separated by a nightside table; you when the rhymes are too easy, the truths their creature comforts. Perhaps, abstract rumination who explains things sleep are too easy. Furthermore, loud too, it occurred to them that for her reader; she seems not to trust in ardently, submerged in a translu- rhyming drowns out anything more they…might be glad one day to the power of details. This is evident from cent dream, subtle vying for attention in the poem. have the option of selling the the very first poem (the title poem), and I clear my throat periodically, In “A Blip on the Radar Screen,” the rosewood console table, the mar- which summarizes what the poet has deep easy rhyme and resultant hyperbolic ble statuette, the Sèvres umbrella gleaned from her soured romance. Here fogs of throat-gunk clogging me imagery actually preclude sympathy for stand, the sapphire-inlaid clock… is most of it: like cream the poet, who describes herself after (p. 197) clogs an artery. Doesn’t this seem the breakup as Open Slowly; typical, your sleep clear sleep; That Thomas, winner of France’s mine troubled, neap ...me, me in an emergency state, prestigious Prix Femina literary award, someone may be standing on and low tides of it, with thoughts blood gushing from my core, is an expert on 18th-century French lit- the other side. Open slowly so you that creep for two months, or more... erature is evident on each page; Farewell, know like crabs up a beach... (p. 9) (p. 50) My Queen is meticulously researched. you’re swinging wide The author provides details that may, at of them, and then This is sophisticated pillow talk, fun to If the poet had not used such an easy first glance, appear frivolous, yet step through. read and admirable for its jauntiness, rhyme (core/more) perhaps she might Thomas provides a vivid portrait of a forceful rhythms, and comic sensibility. have discovered a more original and cred- past era. For example, in a time when ....Open softly, Like a sturdy wire whisk, the poet’s dead- ible image. Additionally, settling for such the poor of France lived in appallingly and then shout on rhymes lighten the poem into an airy simple rhymes allowed her to throw desolate physical conditions, even opu- It’s me! concoction, a soufflé whose texture, not restraint to the wind, to leave the emo- lent Versailles was overrun with fleas once you are out. taste or heartiness, matters most. In “At tional floodgates open when they should and other pests, including Least Three Nights,” about stroke, strong have been closed. As a great thespian Love guardedly, if you love; rhymes in the service of dignity and once commented: If the actor cries for an unimaginable swarming of do not push, or shove— restraint produce poignant maxims: “Life herself, the audience doesn’t have to cry rats, for there was food left lying do you understand? is less/like its image and more like its for her. In this poem, what should have about more or less everywhere in husk./His body is a skull. Every daytime been transformed to pity in the reader is the apartments, food that had fall- This will be your task, is a dusk.” instead perceived as self-pity in the en under the furniture, that had not to command, In “Little Miss,” the strongest of the speaker. been forgotten between the but ask. (p. 3) love poems, Light uses shorter lines, In “The Apple,” the poet offers an sheets or quite simply left to spoil monosyllabic rhymes, and greater detail explanation for her addictive behavior in the food closets or in the Here, Light relies upon an aphoristic to achieve an uncharacteristically intimate with her abusive partner: warming ovens that were installed style, drawing the reader into her world tone. Often in her work, directness of in window nooks, on landings, not with sensory information—color, expression comes off as pedantic. Here, That was why I could not keep and under staircases. The rats smell, sound, taste, or texture—but, combined with brevity and eschewing away no matter what terrible thing thought Versailles was wonderful. instead, cerebrally, with wit and wisdom. verbal frippery, it translates into bone- I deeply knew, (pp. 18-19) Sound, in the form of dead-on rhymes honest feeling. about how love dies in a certain (shout/out; fair/there) rather than image broken valve in you— Thomas does not recreate Marie- or metaphor, provides the poem’s struc- The child bled from me I know how it is, my love, for I Antoinette’s final doomed hours—her ture and dictates the choice of language. before I knew I had have done it too... sad end is already known to us, and Ever since the Romantics, when poet- the child.... (p. 52) even Agathe cannot bring herself to ry changed from a vehicle for story- write of it 30 years later. What Farewell, telling or education to a means of self- Who could give four, five weeks a Surely every poetry reader is enough My Queen does offer is a largely favor- expression, one of the things every poet- flood of an expert on love to recognize that the able—if fleeting—portrait of a sover- ry reader does automatically is evaluate of child-material and blood putative similarity between the wounded eign who was by most accounts a very the poem for originality and sincerity. and be fine? And who could turn speaker and the wounding lover is a wish- average woman. Where Thomas tri- The question then becomes this: Is the away from such a one? I learn ful fantasy. But shouldn’t the poet know umphs is in her absorbing view into a wit and wisdom in this poem fresh someone could turn away: You that? Shouldn’t she have explored more vanished way of life. This she delivers enough to blaze a new path through the (p. 59) deeply her incipient desire to answer with details so sumptuous it is as if she reader’s mind? Are we reading hard- wound with wound? Alas, the poet does- herself had been rustling about the earned introspection or recycled pop psy- he majority of her love poems, n’t probe any deeper. Open Slowly is a royal bedchamber with a velvet sack chology? The answer will be different for though, evoke genuine feeling in book in thrall to romantic love and to an full of books. I every reader, but one thing is certain: T inverse proportion to the amount easy, rhyming version of it, at that. I 18 The Women’s Review of Books / Vol. XXI, No. 6 / March 2004 Packer lingers over the sound of the was as insistent as his tongue, and brakes and a slow-motion rendering of as they swam over one another on Lynnea’s two victims howling, limping, the couch, she knew this was her No winners here and cursing just beyond her windshield. chance, like birth, to be a part of Lynnea promises half-heartedly, “if these someone. Then it hit her with a by Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts boys lived…She’d visit Sheba at Our sadness: if sex and birth meant Lady of Peace.” Her realization of the being part of someone, then Drinking Coffee Elsewhere by ZZ Packer. New York: meaninglessness of her vow comes just death meant you belonged to before she shifts into reverse and flees nobody at all. (p. 173) Riverhead, 2003, 238 pp., $24.95 hardcover. the scene. The story ends with an invoca- tion of Sheba “speaking up for every In “Geese,” a second Dina, now I pissed-off kid in the world.” escaped from Baltimore to seek “loveli- With Sheba as stock-character ness” in Japan finds only starvation “pissed-off-pregnant-inner-city-teen,” among hapless expatriates. She delivers Z Packer’s debut story collection © Marion Ettlinger and Lynnea as stock-character “well- herself to a love motel for a rendezvous brings Kafka to mind, but not meaning, do-gooder rookie teacher,” with a Tokyo businessman that ends with Z because the work can be described nothing internal or even external to the a “wad of yen” and a bleary-eyed rhap- as Kafkaesque or even Kafka-ish. It’s story prepares the reader for this ending. sody comparing her plight to that of because they are unhappy stories or—to Somehow touched off by the encounter kamikaze pilots. be fair—they make me unhappy, and this with the cop, the final act seems random Packer seems concerned with the reminds me of a quote from Kafka, and yet is more than random, proceeding, moments in her characters’ lives when which I cherished when I was a teenaged as the other stories in Coffee show, from a everything spins out of control—but it reader as confused as some of the girls in view that the universe is pitched toward seems beyond her ability to truly com- Drinking Coffee Elsewhere. “I think we this sort of destruction. When, at the end prehend those moments, which are ought to read only the kind of books that of the story, you are left drop-jawed and always figured as haphazard, unaffected wound and stab us,” he wrote. “We need wondering Did it really come to that? flip- by the exigencies of cause and effect or the books that affect us like a disaster, that ping the pages back to see if you missed action and reaction; or perhaps they are grieve us deeply… A book must be the a crucial turn, looking for motivation and set in motion by chains of events so axe for the frozen sea inside us.” Packer’s finding only Lynnea’s sudden desire to remote that the narrator cannot let us in stories wound and stab, but they do not maim, you are meant to have learned on the progression. The vicious scenarios hack at the frozen sea. Indeed, they seem something about human nature. with which several stories close become a chiseled from that glacial formation, pre- transparent special effect, repeated with served by a permanent chill at the core. his view of human nature surfaces such frequency that the violence A catalogue of cruelty and indifference again in “The Ant of the Self.” becomes schematic, as if part of an aca- at once dazzlingly confident and frustrat- ZZ Packer T Spurgeon Bivens’ deadbeat father demic exercise. The characters are so ingly unrealized, this is a book to be reck- has hoodwinked him into attending the completely doomed that they are beyond oned with, if only because of the assured and finds herself at the head of an unruly Million Man March to sell off a pack of understanding, and the psychological way Packer has entered the literary scene. “inner-city” freshman English class, where exotic African birds. Full of disappoint- insights offered are on the same level as A New Yorker debut fiction writer, she is a fingernail polishing, rap lyric swapping, ment, father and son find themselves in a the pat narrative provided by Dina’s graduate of Yale, of the selective creative and marijuana smoking are the norm; bar at the end of their mission, the father school-appointed psychiatrist at Yale, writing MA program at Johns Hopkins, of Lynnea is even smacked in the face by one punching while the debate-champion son that of the “black living in a white the prestigious MFA program at Iowa, and student when she orders her to stop braid- is not fighting back but screaming: world.” This rather shallow, cynical view of the nondegree program at Stanford. ing hair in the middle of a vocabulary les- of race is the only one offered up: It She is also a winner of by-internal-nomi- son. The arrival of a new student, Sheba When he grabs my collar, almost explains the destroyed family lives, the nation-only awards from the Rona Jaffe Simmons, resident of a girls’ home called lifting me from the ground, I feel as girls with missing mothers, and the over- and Mrs. Giles Whiting foundations. The Our Lady of Peace, adds a welcome struc- though I’m floating upward, then I arching theme of cartoonishly oppressive stories collected here have already been ture to Lynnea’s chaos. Sheba is the enthu- feel some part of me drowning. I Pentecostal religion that figures substan- added to the canonical literature of black siastic enforcer of classroom rules and for remember something, something I tially in half of the stories and is a shad- girl—and womanhood. It is right there on a short time, Lynnea’s ally in her attempt know will kill my father. My father ow character in all the others. the copyright page in librarians’ code: 1. to teach the unteachable. But then Sheba dodged the draft. They weren’t In the explicitly religious stories, the African-Americans—Fiction 2. African- stops coming to class, and when she going to get this nigger, was his world is divided between the Saved and American women—Fiction. 3. Young returns she is sour and disruptive. She is view of Vietnam. It was the one the Unsaved. Packer’s characters are all women—Fiction. Yet under each of these pregnant. A few days later, Lynnea meets thing I’d respected him for, and yet among the Unsaved, but what is disqui- headings, Drinking Coffee Elsewhere is poten- Sheba in the street, offers her a ride, and somehow I said it, “You didn’t eting is that this judgment isn’t handed tially mis-shelved. Its protagonists are makes shoddy attempts at amends. Finally, know fucking Huey P. Newton. You down from without, from the oppressive African American and young and—in all Lynnea is pulled over by a cop (a former never even went to Vietnam!” (p. 99) hand of the church, but seems to come but one instance—female, but the stories aspiring teacher who dropped out) and from within the stories themselves, pay little heed to the contours of little- given a speeding ticket. It is this mere “I had turned into something ugly,” he indeed from the author herself. It is hard lost-black-girl tales ever since The Bluest annoyance that must carry the crippling decides “and of all the million of words to think of a more blameless group of Eye. Alternative and more specific classifi- weight of the hideous events of the next I’ve ever spoken to him in all my life, this innocents than these characters; so, why cations might read: 1. Inertia—Fiction 2. page and a half. is the one that blows him to pieces.” are they the victims of so many horrors Sudden, Senseless Violent Encounters— In the last bit, Lynnea speeds away Instead of a car, Spurgeon hurls words at at the hands of their creator? We might Fiction. 3. Anticlimactic—Fiction. from the cop and dashes through traffic his victim, as does Dina, the freshman at understand their downfall as precipitated The external traits of race, gender, lights red and green, coming to a crossing Yale who, in the beginning of the title by society, except that Packer has robbed and youth (with sidebars on class, region, where two young men are in her path. story, gets herself into trouble by declar- us of that option by sketching the out- and religion) are at the center of a coming that the inanimate object she most side forces too lightly. And if we are plicated shuffle. Throughout the book, They were the sort of kids who identifies with is a revolver. By the end meant to see their ruination as unjust, one feels Packer thrashing against the thought they had all the time in the she has nothing to say to a friend grieving then her protests are too quiet. She sentimental reading of these stories as world; time to play around, time to the death of her mother but, “And she’s offers her characters no way out, and being about anything so simplistic as disobey, time to do whatever they going to be dead for a long time.” they find no redemption. They are set up oppression or thwarted opportunities. Yet the wanted….the types of kids who Similar, if not worse atrocities are vis- for ritual immolation, and all we can do work clings to those same attributes to seemed to love watching faces ited upon other characters, who are not is marvel at the swiftness of the killing the degree that they provide a veneer of curse noiselessly on the other side so much actors as pawns controlled by (the tightly structured stories) and the authenticating toughness—not to men- of the windshield, their vengeance forces equally unaccounted for. In sharpness of the blade (Packer’s well- tion some justification for the violence against the world. (p. 71) “Speaking in Tongues,” a 14-year-old wrought prose). In the bizarre moral and hard-edged nature of the work. runs away from a long-skirted, ruffle- universe of Drinking Coffee Elsewhere, These are stories “about” black girls, She is going too fast for them to make bloused Pentacostalism in Alabama to readers gain no pleasure from their sacri- dealing in racialized, gender-specific the intersection. She blows the horn for seek her drug-addicted mother in fice and no edification. There is very lit- types; but strangely, it is as if the violence them to move, she yells at them to get out Atlanta. There she finds herself in the tle joy in this world, and no one ever done to and by these figures is a violence of the way. They don’t. hands of a 32-year-old would-be pimp; in wins. Instead, the stories present a dark against the type. The characters don’t the midst of a groping session she muses fantasy, masquerading—with their plain, destroy or self-destroy; instead, the sto- She had a chance to slow down, with a sophistication incongruous to her sober style—as clear-eyed realism. By the ries themselves do. The internal rebellion and she didn’t want to. She’d experience (yet confused all the same): end we are asked to share the knee-high against these themes, which are clearly scare them, for once. Make them view of the world expressed by the little present, leads to a sort of anarchy. run. Her foot slammed the accel- This, she thought, was why every- girl narrating “Brownies,” who “sudden- A closer look illustrates this conun- erator for what seemed like no one talked about sex, why widows ly knew there was something mean in the drum. In “Our Lady of Peace,” Lynnea time at all, but when she changed in church seemed to spin and world that I could not stop.” This is the Davis has recently “escaped lackluster her mind, trying to brake, she whirl when given the chance, logic that pervades the entire collection, Kentucky” for a new life in Baltimore. She knew it was too late, she couldn’t unraveling their skeins of frustra- and somehow, this logic is also intended joins a teaching program for the benefits stop in time. (p. 72) tions and woes. Dezi’s erection as its absolution. I

The Women’s Review of Books / Vol. XXI, No. 6 / March 2004 19 choice cause. This is the thinking behind © Bettye Lane the slogan, “safe, legal, and rare.” The Saving women’s lives reality is harsh and cold and difficult. AH: So the feminist movement has by Amy Hoffman not given women who have had abortions the space to talk about what A conversation with abortion rights that means to them. activist Merle Hoffman MH: They always have to apologize for it. “We’d all rather not have abortions; I an abortion is a tragedy.” No, it’s not! It can be a life-saving thing. But, it’s a ack in December 2001, The providers became pariahs. It and they woman’s life being saved. We used to have Women’s Review of Books published became dirty. a button that said, “A woman’s life is a B an interview with Merle human life,” when Congress was consid- Hoffman, an activist for reproductive AH: Even to feminists? ering a Human Life Amendment that rights since the early 1970s and founder would have declared that the fetus is a of CHOICES Women’s Medical Center MH: To everyone, feminists included! I person from the moment of concep- Merle Hoffman marches for choice in in New York City. Hoffman, to her was once at a fundraising party where I tion. And here we come to another Manhattan, December 1985. regret, had become an expert on living met a philanthropist who had given a issue, which is that women’s lives don’t with terrorism—the kind visited on lot of money to NARAL and other really matter that much. movement uses that: “Women regret.” abortion practitioners and clinics, which organizations. She said to me, “You do Well, many women regret having a have been the targets of murderous ram- those things?”—I was talking about AH: In other words, women feel child. Some women regret having two pages, bombings, vandalism, fake second-trimester abortions—“You guilty about that decision, about say- or three children. anthrax letters, and other attacks of the actually do them?” ing “My life matters, and I have to Religion and fear of judgment are kind that the rest of the country had Even now, pro-choice feminists say, choose that first”? parts of the decision, too. I’ve had suddenly begun to fear. The article was “Oh my God, you do that?” They are women wake up from anesthesia and called, “Wecome to My World.” uncomfortable with the basic reality that MH: Many women feel that is selfish. say, “God will punish me, God will This winter, after George Bush signed abortion is a physical procedure that’s But, I would describe it as selfless, punish me.” the ban on so-called partial birth abor- terminating the life of the fetus. because the self does not exist in a vac- I ask them, “Did God give you free tion and the “Plan B” morning-after pill uum. As Carol Gilligan says, women’s will?” made news headlines, we decided it was AH: Is that because pro-choice sense of self and morality exists in rela- “Yes.” time to re-visit Hoffman, to learn about activists are concerned about playing tion to others—in community—and “Are you using it?” her perspective on these and other into the hands of the right wing? when a woman decides, she’s making a “Yes.” events 30 years after the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision not only about her own life but “And if God or Jesus forgives every- Supreme Court decision that legalized MH: What we have to say is, “Yes, it’s also about her life in connection with thing, can’t you forgive yourself?” abortion. Women’s Review Editor in Chief the termination of potential life. We her family and her children, as well as “Well, yes, I think I can.” Amy Hoffman (no relation) interviewed know that, and we accept that responsi- about her ability to give love and sup- When I speak publicly, I ask people, Merle by telephone in December. bility.” What we’re talking about here is port to an additional child. So the my, as an exercise, “Who would you give Merle Hoffman co-founded the power. The medical establishment, the the me is not singular. It’s almost a com- your ‘last abortion’ to—the woman with National Abortion Federation and military establishment, and the criminal munal me that the woman puts ahead of HIV, the 12-year-old, the 48-year-old, the founded the New York Pro-Choice justice establishment have always had the fetus. woman who was raped, the woman who Coalition. She founded, published, and that ultimate power: It rests in the wants to finish her PhD, or maybe the edited On the Issues magazine, a feminist hands of the patriarchy. But through AH: That sounds like a way to make woman who wants to be the editor of quarterly. The recipient of numerous abortion, women have the power of life a good decision. You’ve also men- The Women’s Review of Books. Or the awards, including from the National and death. Women are uncomfortable tioned that women have the right to woman who just doesn’t want to be preg- Organization for Women and the with that power, which is the accept- make bad decisions. nant. She doesn’t want a baby.” Isn’t that Congress of Racial Equality, she has ance of responsibility. enough? She doesn’t have to give a rea- published many articles and debated In debates, anti-abortion activists MH: The anti-choice people say, “They son. Why a woman makes a decision to Jerry Falwell and other abortion foes. have said to me, “You’re killing your have abortions for the wrong reasons. have an abortion should not even come Her papers were recently acquired by baby!” Yes. We are killing these fetuses. They want to look good in bathing suits. into the equation. Duke University, and she is currently You know, you can’t just say it’s blood They want to get their PhDs.” Even fem- There are so many realities that a writing her memoirs. and tissue. If you’ve ever seen a 16- inists say “I wouldn’t have an abortion if woman has to work through, walk week, 18-week, 22-week abortion, it is I was married,” or “Why did she wait so through, almost jump over sometimes to Amy Hoffman: You have said that not just blood and tissue. There are long, until she was four or five months get to the point where she can make her feminists advocate for choice but observable parts. By denying that reality pregnant?” After 33 years of speaking own decision about right or wrong. don’t really explore the true nature of you actually denude the connection to to thousands of women, there are some When I debate anti-choice leaders the choice, and they’re uncomfort- the issue that gives you the passion, the women whose decisions I don’t agree they always say they want to fine or crim- able with the reality of abortion. persistence, and the courage to continue with! If I were in the same set of cir- inalize or even execute the doctors. I say, the struggle. cumstances, I would not have made “Why not the woman?” Merle Hoffman: In the early 1970s, The problem with the pro-choice their decision. And some women make “But, the woman is the victim!” feminists understood that the decision to movement is that there’s a sense that a decision, and they regret it afterwards. I have a political fantasy that a woman have an abortion was a decision of “Yes, it’s my right, I want to have this So—so what? You make many decisions comes forward and says, “Put me in jail power. They understood that women abortion, but really, you know, I’d rather in your life that retrospectively may not because I made the decision, and the require the ability to choose—morally, not.” Our cause is not as pure as the anti- be the correct ones. The anti-choice doctor was just my accomplice.” legally, and psychologically—in order to be full participants in society. The power of the state has to stop at their skin. Once abortion became legal, and n Sunday, April 25, 2004, tens of thousands of pro-choice activists will gather in Washington, women started to line up in the thousands outside of clinics to have abor- DC, for the March for Women’s Lives, sponsored by seven national women’s rights groups: the tions, there was a bifurcation between OAmerican Civil Liberties Union, the Black Women’s Health Imperative, the Feminist Majority, theory and practice. Most feminists and NARAL Pro-Choice America, the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, the National activists were not involved with the actual doing of the thing. Organization for Women and the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Participants will begin assembling at 10:00 A.M. on the national mall, and the march will kick off at noon. For information on the AH: What about people like the Janes march and how you can participate, visit the march website at www.marchforwomen.org. [a feminist medical self-help collec- tive in Chicago], who actually did The website www.imnotsorry.net is posting women’s stories about their positive experiences with abor- abortions [before Roe v. Wade]? tion. The “I’m Not Sorry” campaign also includes a film that will document women’s experiences with MH: Right, right, they did them. But abortion; the distribution of postcards that list abortion resources; and t-shirts that read, “I had an abor- those days passed relatively quickly tion.” The message, according to an article by Jennifer Baumgardner in The Nation (February 2, 2004), is because abortion wasn’t integrated into the institutional medical system. It was that “women might have complex, or even painful, experiences with abortion, but they are still confident not performed in hospitals or group they made the right decision and adamant that it had to be their decision to make.” To order t-shirts or practices. It was done in freestanding postcards, to donate, or to offer your story for the film, contact [email protected]. facilities. The practice of abortion was outside and apart and very soon the

20 The Women’s Review of Books / Vol. XXI, No. 6 / March 2004 AH: Have you seen people in your of us can become pregnant—gay, clinic whom you know have been straight, black, or white—through activists against abortion? rapes, through unwanted intercourse— or through wanted intercourse and the Compassion heals MH: That is a question about what I birth control fails. We’re either going to call the “rape, incest, or me” position. have it done in comfort, safety, compas- by Karen Malpede Some clinics have seen people who were sion, or we’re going to have to put our previously out in front picketing. We lives at risk. Common Shock: Witnessing Violence Every Day have seen women who, if not activists, We have to hold the feet of elected were against abortion until they became officials to the fire. When they say they by Kaethe Weingarten. New York: Dutton, pregnant. I did a study with Adelphi are pro-choice they must define their University a few years back when position. We should ask them, “What is 2003, 382 pp., $24.95 hardcover. Reagan was president. The abortion rate your position on RU-486, on so-called was rising, and I blamed Reaganomics partial birth, on parental consent?” Once I for increasing the rate of abortion. In a candidate has made his or her position my study I found that a majority of my clear, we can make our decision. he premise of Common Shock— It is morally impossible to remain patients were against abortion until they Also, I think that we have to clearly that we become “compassionate neutral… The bystander is forced became pregnant and because of eco- explain that the anti-abortion agenda is T witnesses” to ourselves and others to take sides. It is very tempting to nomic pressures could not have a child. the first wave—it’s the landing on the as we endure the “thousand common take the side of the perpetrator. All At that point their moral concept of beaches of Normandy. Behind it is an shocks that flesh is heir to” (Hamlet)— the perpetrator asks is that the abortion changed, and they came to the extremely conservative agenda. There’s could hardly be more meaningful to citi- bystander do nothing. He appeals clinic. Abortion is a decision that’s very an anti-gay agenda, civil rights that may zens of a nation whose government is in to the universal desire to see, hear, easy to judge when you’re not in the be rolled back. Feminists must connect thrall to what psychiatrist Robert Jay and speak no evil. The victim, on position of having to make it. We’ve had the dots. Lifton calls “superpower syndrome.” He the contrary, asks the bystander to pregnancy conversions. I would like to see a really good femi- defines this as “a national mindset—put share the burden of pain. nist think tank on reproductive issues, forward strongly by a tight-knit leadership AH: Have you dealt with violence or that would come out with position group—that takes on a sense of omnipo- When the bystander agrees to “share threats at your clinic? papers immediately. Immediately! As tence, of unique standing in the world the burden of pain,” she or he becomes a soon as an issue hits the headlines—like that grants it the right to hold sway over witness. How we might effect this trans- MH: Let me go back a few years to the when [Operation Rescue founder] all other nations.” As a superpower, the formation in our daily lives is the subject murders in 1994 in Pensacola, Florida Randall Terry appeared in Florida with US, like the Islamist forces it opposes, is of Weingarten’s book. In 250 pages (with [of abortion provider Dr. John Britton Terri Schiavo and her feeding tube. “ready to release untold levels of violence nearly as many pages of bibliographic and his bodyguard James Barrett], and People like him and the issues he attach- to achieve [its] purpose.” notes) Weingarten provides a plethora of Brookline, Massachusetts [of clinic es himself to cannot go unanswered. The practice of compassionate witness- examples and anecdotes to illustrate how workers Shannon Lowny and Lee Ann Silence in the face of attack is a defeat! ing can be an antidote to brute force and bearing witness in our ordinary lives is Nichols]. There was a raging debate in We need to become more savvy calm the fears that feed the will to domi- both possible and important. She is the pro-choice community about how to about public relations, about images, so nate. Kaethe Weingarten’s book translates knowledgeable in the field and aware of its defend ourselves. I believed that clinic we can really go head to head with these contemporary psychological understand- international applications, having worked guards should be armed. Some of us people. I had to fight to get the repro- ings of trauma and post-traumatic stress in South Africa and Kosovo. had buttons that said “I’m pro-choice ductive rights movement to accept the disorder (PTSD) into plain talk and pro- Because Weingarten’s book is intended and I shoot back.” But there was a lot of hanger as a symbol. This was years ago, vides ordinary people affected by cata- to help the ordinary person who may have resistance to the idea of arming our- when I founded the Pro-Choice strophic violence or illness with common- no prior experience with the language or selves. Some feminists said, “They kill Coalition. Now they’re wearing them as sense activities that they can use to alleviate ideas of witnessing, her use of words, people, we don’t kill people.” Oh, okay, earrings. But in the beginning it was just stress, to prevent themselves from becom- while careful, situates her book within the so pro-choice people and patients and too much. ing emotionally distant or numb, and to genre of self-help. She writes “in the last providers and doctors are sitting ducks! But most important, every single woman avoid passing the violence on. chapter I did this… and now I will do It was a rough time. At one point I was who has had an abortion should come out dur- The current focus in the psychiatric and that…” sorts of sentences; provides many written up in the Daily News under the ing an “I’ve Had an Abortion Day.” We psychoanalytic professions on the study of brief stories; and summarizes, often in too headline, “Make Her Day,” because I got have to overcome our shame and declare trauma is the result of a century that pro- cursory a fashion, the impact of others’ a shotgun, and I was learning how to use it publicly. It would be nice also if, like duced millions of survivors of war and research or art. She ends the book with it. But I never shot at anyone. I was talk- Lysistrata, women refused to have sex genocide, campaigns of torture, and sexual two witnessing exercises readers can do at ing about self-defense. At the memorial with men until we were assured of the abuse—individuals whose continuing home. In one, victims re-experience past service for Dr. David Gunn [an abor- right to have a legal option to the results problems are evidence of the depth of disturbing events but imagine different tion provider murdered in Pensacola, of that heterosexual experience. their struggles with their memories. outcomes, as if an empathic witness were Florida, in 1993] I was standing next to Every time I give a speech I say, “I’ve Various practices of bearing witness— present. The usefulness of such an exer- [Feminist Majority Foundation had an abortion.” Sometimes there’s an careful listening; taking testimonies or oral cise would, I think, depend upon the President] Ellie Smeal, who was wearing audible gasp, as if my intelligence or who histories; creating rituals of remembrance; severity of the past trauma. It is difficult to a bullet-proof vest. I am should somehow exempt me from establishing war crimes tribunals and truth bear witness alone. I’ve been living in a war zone for 30 getting pregnant when I don’t want to and reconciliation commissions; writing years; it’s a parallel universe. What we’ve be. So I think it’s critical. I say I had an and art-making, which memorialize and eingarten starts her book with a had to do at the clinics is spend hun- abortion because I didn’t want to have a transform memory—have gained credence story of child abuse on a play- dreds of thousands of dollars on exten- child, and I didn’t want to have a child worldwide. Such practices can reduce sor- W ground. She and a little girl in sive security devices. But these security because I wanted to give my strength row, anxiety, and rage while restoring digni- her care watch a boy they don’t know devices only work up to a point. If and energy to the movement. That’s it. I ty to the victim, acknowledging the courage being hit by his father. They experience somebody wants to get you, they will. I didn’t want to be a mother. implicit in survival, and providing renewed “common shock”: consider everyone working in my facili- I debated Jerry Falwell back in the social cohesion to shattered communities. ty and the patients everyday heroines. mid-’80s in Detroit. He said, “Miss In the last 25 years, the practice of bearing It is common because it happens all They come in. Even after the murders, Hoffman, how many abortions did your witness became a multidisciplinary endeav- the time, to everyone in any com- nobody left! facility do last year?” or that included, along with mental health munity. It is shock because, regard- I said, “I believe we did 9,000 abor- professionals, human rights activists, jour- less of our responses—spaciness, AH: What can feminists can do to tions.” nalists, creative writers and artists, police distress, bravado—it affects our help clinics? And he said, “When you meet your and firefighters, clergy, teachers, rescuers, mind, body and spirit. (p. 3) maker with the blood of 9,000 babies on historians, and family members. MH: What can feminists do? They can your hands, what will you say, how will In 1992, Judith Herman’s landmark She asks the girl about her reaction. acknowledge that the clinics are the front you justify that?” book Trauma and Recovery took trauma line of the women’s movement, and they I said, “Reverend, when I meet her,I studies elegantly and passionately to the Had I not seen and not asked, I can get out there on a daily basis to will be very proud because I fought and wider public. Herman convincingly argued wouldn’t have known that I needed insure that the patients are safe. The struggled for women’s rights.” that traditionally male combat trauma and to help her express and rid herself anti-choice people understand that this a “Her? Are you saying God is a the sexual traumas of rape or incest that of the bit of violence she had long-term struggle, and it takes a pas- woman?” women secretly endured were similar. She glimpsed and was now carrying sionate commitment. You don’t just go I said, “God is beyond gender.” elaborated a common approach to the within her. I wouldn’t have asked to a march once a year. They are out in I was never political. I started out as treatment of all types of trauma. Herman her, “Do you think there is some- front of my clinic rain or shine, with a concert pianist and a social psycholo- credited the peace movement and the sec- thing we can do, right now, by our- their plastic pink Baby Jesuses. The pro- gist. And the women politicized me. ond wave of the feminist movement with selves, to show that we don’t like it choice people are not. Standing next to a woman, holding her creating a social climate of concern that when people hurt each other?… I often invite young feminist activists hand while she was having an abortion, allowed trauma studies to re-emerge from Like stamp our feet,” I said stamp- to come to my clinic. I want them to listening to her story, understanding the “episodic amnesia” where, in conser- ing both my feet “and saying, meet the women they’re fighting for. both the vulnerability and the incredible vative times, it had been relegated. She ‘Don’t hurt people!’” These women are putting their lives on power of her decision—that’s what wrote that when faced with evidence of Which is what we did. For two the line. And they can be anyone. Any politicized me. I violent trauma, blocks. (pp. 3-4)

The Women’s Review of Books / Vol. XXI, No. 6 / March 2004 21 This tale’s resolution is sweet, and few Witnessing is difficult not only could object to the chant. Yet Weingarten because of the gravity of the situations it evades the larger moral issue—the sore demands we enter, but because it requires of domestic violence, the invisibility of us to develop a new worldview. Ways of loving its victims. The abused boy on the play- Weingarten quotes an Israeli mother, ground is left alone in his pain and Mourit Pelet, whose 13-year-old daughter by Rebecca Tuch shame—each of which might have been was killed by a suicide bomber: made worse if he heard the chanting of Curled in the Bed of Love: Stories by Catherine Brady. Weingarten and her small friend. The lit- After the death of a child the only tle girl’s stress might have been better thing that you want to do is pro- Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2003, alleviated had Weingarten addressed tect the child, and since you can’t some soothing words to the boy, or even, protect your child, you want to 232 pp., $24.95 hardcover. if she could have done it safely, to the protect all other children…So father. Failing that, Weingarten might there’s no forgiveness, but there’s no Blind Love by Mary Woronov. New York: Serpent’s Tail, have talked with the girl about why it is revenge.” (p. 178, my italics) so difficult to intervene in cases of 2004, 144 pp., $14.00 paper. domestic violence. The girl would then In the witnessing worldview, revenge have seen an adult taking a moral posi- is no longer the imperative—compassion I tion, or in Herman’s words “shar[ing] the is. Revenge only increases the world’s o title could be more apt for © Tom McAfee burden of the pain.” legacy of unendurable pain, without pro- Catherine Brady’s new short- Later on, in the calmer moment of viding comfort. This mother’s response N story collection, Curled in the Bed writing, Weingarten might have served acknowledges the stark truth—the of Love. It evokes an image of someone her topic better if she had paused to wrong cannot be undone. Yet, sorrow tangled up in cool white sheets, savoring reflect on the inadequacy of her can motivate a person to take compas- the feel of cotton on her skin, yet simulta- response. Imperfection in the moment, sionate action. Many survivors become neously feeling a fearful claustrophobia. It the sense of having come up against our advocates for human rights causes. raises the question, “Is this all I am?” Each limits and been found wanting, is a hall- Weingarten envisions a world in which of Brady’s characters struggles to answer mark of witnessing. Witnessing is diffi- acts of compassionate witness are com- these questions. Some continue with their cult, often overwhelmingly so: If it were monplace. In New York City, where I usual lives, some begin new ones, some easier, its benefits, chief among them a live, in the days and weeks after the 9/11 feel as if new lives are forced upon them. sense of hope, would be easier to accrue, attacks, many found themselves engaged Yet each character is linked by yearnings, and we would all choose to do it. in such acts—listening, hugging, sharing and desires to know, be, and feel more. However, when Weingarten interacts meals, baking cookies for devastated fire- The opening story, “The Loss of directly with a victim, her examples are houses. Witnessing was all we could think Green” is essentially a love triangle instructive. She believes that each time to do to give our shattered lives some between Claire, her ex-boyfriend, and her we dissociate ourselves from another’s meaning. Few called for revenge. Most current boyfriend. Yet for Claire, each pain, we increase the actual, biological felt instinctively that the suffering in the man is more than a lover; each man sym- upset in our body and theirs, increasing world ought not to be increased. bolizes a way of life. Sam, her ex-, is the potential for masochistic or sadistic Unfortunately, our national decision- impetuous, reckless, and also irrepressibly Catherine Brady violence. In Kosovo, she meets Izet, a making has been at odds with our creative. After a near-death kayaking trip, former member of the Kosovo impulse to bear witness. Since 9/11, he urges Claire to “listen to what your in order to preserve her private self? Liberation Army, who is now tending the thousands more have been killed in a body’s telling you now. That gorgeous Brady writes, graves of hundreds of his murdered “war on terror.” Still, the reality of the kick of adrenaline.” Meanwhile, Claire’s comrades. She hears his story, photo- shared impulse to bear witness was doc- current boyfriend, Russell, is responsible, I’m not the only one in the world graphs him, and tells him she will carry umented in the Oral History Archives at dependable, and secure. When Claire with the eyes of a liar. No, there’s his tale home. A year later, counseling Columbia University, where I worked as returns from their adventure, he says, a herd of us, the comrades of grieving coworkers after the 9/11 attacks, an interviewer. This unofficial story of “Better get out of those wet clothes. I lonely craving, slapping down fold- she hangs up his picture. the wish for reconciliation is on record in don’t want to risk you getting sick.” As ing chairs in a thousand musty the words of over 400 people who saw or Claire chooses one man over the other, meeting rooms. I close my eyes the How could I possibly have suffered the attacks, and it can be used she imagines she is committing to one way I closed them when Walter known the year before that Izet for inspiration by generations to come. way of life over another. While this theme kissed me, and again I can feel the would become my symbol of Weingarten explains that such wit- is common enough, Brady writes with a rushing warmth of desire, of hun- hope and that I would tell his nessing brings luminous rewards: sensuous grace that eludes cliché. Claire is gered-after contact. Such allegiance story to many people? When I a rich character, whose complex choices it claims, this second self, this scav- look at his picture, I see a fighter I believe that compassionate wit- are depicted through the surrounding enger who returns to demand its who had decided to mourn, not nessing can set off the brain’s geography she observes. “How still and sweet share, whom I must let fight.... I imagine that his work capacity to experience unity. I solid darkness and the shapes it reconsti- come and go, come and go, move means that he wants the cycle of believe hope happens when we see tutes can seem, when below the surface through me like fog. (p. 53) revenge to end. (p. 206) a pathway to effective action…The the tectonic plates grind against each effects of hope are profound, as other with the accumulated force of sixty Brady is a meticulous writer. Every And we can imagine that Weingarten’s are the effects of hopelessness…. million years of yearning.” word seems carefully chosen in order to ability to listen and to document Izet’s Compassionate witnessing is a way A similar tension arises in “Thirteen trace the fine contours of her characters’ work helped strengthen his resolve, even we can contribute to the equitable Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” with subtle and complex desires. Jo, an aging as his story helped to comfort Americans distribution of hope, and work for Katie, who becomes pregnant at a young hippie who lives in an isolated California in the throes of massive loss. justice for all. (p. 242) age. The baby’s father, Malcolm, is a hero- town, says of her heart-broken employee, I in addict. After leaving him, Katie settles “Her hands transmit to me the raking con- down with a man who is supportive and sciousness of what it means to feel rav- kind. Yet she cannot let go of her earlier aged, broken by one’s will, and in this life. She sees Malcolm every time she trembling contact telegraph the slashing www.wellesley.edu/womensreview looks at her son, and this recognition force of need.” In the title story, Jordan, an brings her back to her earlier life, before HIV+ gay man struggles with sexual frus- she was a mother, when she was a young tration, fear, and fatigue. Brady writes, “For Now on The Women's Review of Books website: girl—desirable, sensual, unafraid. “She two years they’ve fallen asleep every night thinks, no one here knows me. Her real in the embrace of new love, spooned Subscribe by VISA or Mastercard self moves shiftily behind the screen of together with their arms entwined, but mommy-honey. She’s snuck off to see now, after a quick hug, Jordan rolls away on our secure server. Malcolm. She’s clung to him as talisman, from Jim into a sleep he needs so desper- proof that she can slip free of this life: ately that it must be solitary.” View the Bookshelf, our list of recent books delicious fear, thrilling vice of the wicked, The grace of Brady’s writing is only and no timid little weakness.” enhanced by the dialogue between the No character knows the double life characters. At times it is surprisingly snap- Check our useful index of back issues- better than Maizie of “Nothing to Hide.” py. Surprising, perhaps, because their searchable by subject, author, or reviewer Maizie is a mother, a wife, and an alco- internal lives are described with such care, holic. She is accustomed to hiding parts their desires and inner struggles mapped Win a free subscription-what a deal! of herself, sneaking down to the laundry so astutely. One wouldn’t expect, for room for a glass of wine. In recovery example, a character with as much sass as however, she must let go of that secret Malcolm of “Blackbird.” “Man, I got to wwwwww..wweelllleesslleeyy..eedduu//wwoommeennssrreevviieeww self. Yet she misses it. In particular, she go through an incredible amount of misses the empowerment that secrets orthodontic work. Horse rots your allow. How far, then, is she willing to go teeth…But one good thing, out of all

22 The Women’s Review of Books / Vol. XXI, No. 6 / March 2004 this—surprise, surprise—I was always going over his sexual exploits with that careful about needles, never shared. A incredibly charming grin he had.” At its good middle-class kid after all.” And in brisk pace, the story shows the reader a The Bookshelf “Nothing to Hide,” Maizie is berated by good time without demanding a great deal her fellow alcoholics: “You lie right and of emotional investment in its characters. The Bookshelf provides a sampling of books of interest by and about women that we’ve left,” Walter says. “Bullshit you only drank While the above stories have a defini- received in our office recently. For a more extensive listing, please visit our website, wine. Never had a desperate moment tive structure with real characters, many www.wellesley.edu/WomensReview. when you drained the cough syrup…Why dive deeper into alternate realms of reali- do you put that on for all the other ty. “Amazon” tells of a young woman who Bonnie Adrian, Framing the Bride: Globalizing Beauty and Romance in Taiwan’s Bridal drunks? Like they don’t know the is on a boat with her husband. Although Industry. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003, 297 pp., paper. A closely researched look at the cultural craze that brings Taiwan’s newlyweds to spend, scam…You’re not happy.” the purpose and the story of their lives are spend, spend on elaborate wedding albums that by the time of their “paper anniver- Of all Brady’s talents, the most notable unclear, what drives the story is the myste- saries” collect dust on closet shelves. is her ability to shift points of view. She rious setting, and the protagonist’s general writes of men and women, young and mood of paranoia, dislocation, and fear: Marjorie Agosín, ed., Gabriela Mistral: The Audacious Traveler. Athens, OH: Ohio old, gay and straight, with the intimacy of “The single yellow light slid around like an University Press, 2003, 308 pp., paper. As the only Latin American woman to win the one who has lived multiple lives, as multi- egg yoke in the black bowl of the night, Nobel Prize, Mistral’s writing is familiar throughout the region, but not well known in ple people. In “Comfort” she writes as a sliding to and fro in time to the heaving of the US. These essays place Mistral’s work into the context of her life as a teacher, human young chauffeur who is impotent. In the engine which seemed to be choking on rights activist, political leader, and traveler, and will introduce Mistral to a new audience. “Side by Side,” Bill survives a car acci- its own oil as it pulled against the long dent, then suffers from terrible physical arms of the river.” Muriel Feiner, Women and the Bullring. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, and mental pain afterward. He takes The next story, “Alligator Man,” seem- 2003, 384 pp., hardcover. Feiner uses a combination of personal accounts, her own experiences, and historical evidence to paint a vivid picture of the history and present nightly walks and wanders through aban- ingly picks up from where “Amazon” left circumstances of women in the arena. She documents the shifts in ideology concerning doned houses, ultimately with drastic off. Yet it is not certain whether the two women’s direct participation in the event that occurred after the Spanish Civil War, when consequences. And in “Roam the stories are in fact related. Here a woman it became illegal for women to pursue bullfighting professionally. Her stories of individ- Wilderness,” Marshall mourns his broth- who calls herself Destiny gets picked up uals from various periods in the sport’s history include not only those of women in the er’s untimely death by taking a road trip on the side of the road by a truck-driver. ring but also spectators, relatives, journalists, and even the designers and makers of the down the California coast. His route It turns out that he is the “Alligator Man” elaborate costumes. includes the homes of all the women he for the local carnival, a job that entails has ever known, both lovers and friends. wearing an alligator costume and surpris- Kathryn A. Flynn, The Sexual Abuse of Women by Members of the Clergy. Jefferson, NC: In all of these stories, Brady’s empathy is ing families as they walk around. He takes McFarland, 2003, 296 pp., paper. A study of 25 women in the United States who have boundless—the depth and realness of Destiny back to the carnival campground experienced clergy sexual abuse. Arguing that a sexual relationship between clergy and her characters is stunning. where he lives, and she becomes the members of their community is always an abuse of power, sexual only incidentally, Flynn places the focus on the victims of the abuse and their suffering rather than on the “Electric Girl”: “I perform my electrical perpetrators and their punishment. ary Woronov’s short story col- tasks of lighting people’s cigarettes with lection Blind Love also deals my finger, turning on lightbulbs and Margaret Morganroth Gullette, Aged By Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, M with themes of desire, longing, showering the audience with sparks at a 2004, 267 pp., paper. Gullette opens her book by describing an exhibit at a science lust, and love. Yet the two books could single glance.” As things take a turn for museum where young children were shown pictures of what they might look like as they not be more dissimilar. While Brady’s the worse, the reader is exposed to a vari- aged. The children gasped, “I don’t want to get old!” Gullette sets in opposition to these stories are serious and evocative, ety of outrageous scenarios; yet kinds of images the benefits of aging—maturity, a greater understanding of self—and Woronov’s are playful and occasionally Woronov’s tone remains blunt, brash, and challenges the current ideology that aging is about mental and physical decline. irreverent. While Brady’s writing is metic- unrestrained, like a friend telling another ulous, Woronov’s has a stream-of-con- friend about a nightmarish incident. Sylvia Kahan, Music’s Modern Muse: A Life of Winnaretta Singer, Princesse de Polignac. sciousness quality, with portions rolling The stories that follow are increasingly Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2003, 546 pp., hardcover. Singer’s contributions to the early 20th-century music and art. As heir to the Singer Sewing away from the central plot like random lighthearted, as the characterizations of Machine fortune, Singer became an important patron of the 20th-century composers small trees sprouting up in the midst of people become increasingly irreverent: and musicians, including Igor Stravinsky, François Poulenc, and Erik Satie, as well as of one’s path. And while Brady’s characters “Susan did two things in life: she worked women composers such as Ethel Smyth. She hosted a salon frequented by Marcel Proust invite compassion and empathy, in a law firm and she went to AA meet- and Colette, among many other luminaries. Woronov’s characters make you flinch, ings. She was not particularly attractive, laugh, or simply shake your head—a and her social life was dead.” Or, in Stephanie Wellen Levine, Mystics, Mavericks, and Merrymakers: An Intimate Journey reaction she seems to encourage. “Martha,” “In the back of her mind among Hasidic Girls. New York: New York University Press, 2003, 254 pp., hardcov- Woronov’s style is punchy and blunt. Martha knew why her husband had mar- er. Levine spent a year living with a Lubavitcher Hasidic family in Crown Heights, The first story, “We Were Jewish for a ried her. She had the perfect look for the Brooklyn, observing the various ways girls mature in this insular neighborhood of ultra- Little While” opens, “When Uncle Nat furniture in his new home.” And in “Wall orthodox Jews. Contrary to the stereotypes of conformity and repression that some of keeled over on the living-room rug in the Street,” “Stewart lumbered along com- Levine’s family members and graduate school mentors expressed when they heard of her project, the girls Levine met were assertive individuals, who “exuded vibrancy and true middle of a Dodger no-hitter, I knew it pletely out of step with the rest of the chutzpah.” In the girls’ single-sex school and social environment, individuality and respect was bad because Uncle Nat was an avid office wolves. Not only was he married for one another often flourished—although Levine encountered girls who were unhappy Dodger fan.” The story goes on to with four children, but he was religious, and rebellious as well. Carol Gilligan wrote the forward to this study. describe a young girl’s infatuation with honest to a fault, and completely lacking her cousin Nicky, a sentiment spurred by in any deception whatsoever. He was a Ellen FitzSimmons Steinberg, Irma: A Chicago Woman’s Story, 1871-1966. Iowa City, her uncle’s sudden death. Woronov by-the-numbers guy to the point of IA: University of Iowa Press, 2004, 229 pp., paperback. Wandering through a used writes, “Four years older than me, he absurdity, boredom, and finally irritation.” bookstore on a rainy day, independent scholar Steinberg literally stumbled upon a carton never paid me the slightest glimmer of At times Woronov’s straightforward- containing the diaries and writings of Irma Rosenthal Frankenstein. Born in Chicago of attention and I retaliated by calling him ness is a breath of fresh air: She trusts her German-Jewish parents, Frankenstein lived through the Chicago Fire, the suffrage move- conceited. He was conceited, but as he audience enough to not beat around the ment, the Great Depression, and World War II. As she raised her family, she wrote— knelt where his dad had [lain], his body bush, to use language that feels personal- poems, diaries, and letters—and although she was, in her words, “nobody famous,” she was encouraged by acquaintances like Carl Sandburg, Zona Gale, and Thornton Wilder. softly sobbing, I wanted to get down on ized, and to take her readers on unexpect- Steinberg has edited and annotated her transcriptions of the material she found in that my knees beside him and lick the tears ed—and sometimes unexplained—jour- carton, creating a kind of collaborative memoir of Frankenstein’s life. from his face. I wanted his hands to touch neys. But the reader may tire of the clev- me the way they touched the carpet.” erness, the snappy one-liners, and the Sibyl A. Schwarzenbach and Patricia Smith, eds., Women and the United States The stories of Blind Love fly by at an superficial character descriptions. Constitution: History, Interpretation, and Practice. New York, NY: Columbia incredible speed, and consequently it is Woronov’s gentle parodies and not-so- University Press, 2003, 396 pp., paperback. Women were not among the authors of often difficult to empathize with the char- gentle sarcasm give the reader little room the US Constitution, nor for its first 200 years were they among its official interpreters. acters. The reader becomes content to to identify or empathize with the charac- This unique anthology examines how assumptions about gender and laws concerning watch the spectacle of their experience as ters. Perhaps this is Woronov’s inten- women’s property rights and divorce contributed to the development of the Constitution. it zips past in a dizzying and colorful tion—a literary statement on the nature It looks at how the so-called Reconstruction Amendments as well, of course, as the 19th whirlwind. In “Jack, Part One,” the story of feeling and community in a vapid, Amendment giving women the right to vote affected women. It goes on to explore contemporary issues such as abortion, gay rights, and employment discrimination. The book of Jack’s life is thus: “Jack’s parents were fame-obsessed culture. Or perhaps she concludes with an essay that asks a question many have wondered about: “Whatever no great enigma…His mom was a just enjoys making fun of people. Happened to the ERA?” Catholic martyr and his dad was an Brady’s characters are afflicted with extremely entertaining bastard.” When longing, saturated in the weight and inten- Carol I. Winkelmann, The Language of Battered Women: A Rhetorical Analysis of Personal Jack grows up, “He decided to become a sity of their own lives. Whether they are Theologies, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2004, 273 pp., paper. writer, which fit nicely into his schedule of searching for deeper love or deeper The epigraph of this book is from a resident of a shelter for battered women: “The unemployment.” The story traces Jack’s meaning, their quests are genuine and Bible says the meek shall inherit the earth and, ladies, we know this is not true.” success, his departure from his home- well illuminated. Because Woronov takes Sometimes church teachings contribute to the suffering of battered women, by reinforc- town, and the protagonist’s sense of loss. her characters less seriously, their search ing men’s power in relationships, for example. Nevertheless, says Winkelmann, the resi- But in “Jack, Part Two,” he returns: “Since for love seems farcical and is less satisfy- dents of the Southern US shelter she studied used their Christian beliefs and shared reli- Jack came back from New York City, he ing. Reading these two collections togeth- gious language to bond together across racial and cultural differences and to come to an understanding of their ordeal. Healing, says Winkelmann, arrives in three stages: “silence told everyone he had to rest, and rest er creates an interesting juxtaposition and isolation; lamentation; and solidarity and action.” meant sitting all day in the dark insides of between the two writers’ approaches both a bar, drinking bourbon and beer and to writing and to love. I —Nissa Hiatt, Amy Hoffman, and Bethany Towne

The Women’s Review of Books / Vol. XXI, No. 6 / March 2004 23 position offered is a cross-appointment the present at the Assistant ed for new collection: “In Search of a between the Program in Professional Professor level. The successful candi- Feminist Faith.” Deadline: 6-30-04 Classified Writing in the Department of English date will have considerable range with- postmark. For full submission guidelines, (2/3) and the Centre for Academic in, and ideally beyond, this period and contact: [email protected]. Writing (1/3) at the Assistant Professor will have significant university teaching Book your classified ad at www.wellesley.edu/ level. The successful candidate will have experience. Innovative approaches to WomensReview or e-mail [email protected] particular expertise in writing pedagogy or rethinking of the period and its Travel/Rentals and the mechanics of style. Expertise is a diversity are particularly welcome. The considerable asset in one or more of: the position, to commence 1 July 2004 is Carol Christ, She Who Changes, Re- Publications history and future of the book, research subject to budgetary approval. Imagining the Divine in the World methods, one-to-one tutoring, and ethics Deadline to apply: 26 March 2004. All (Palgrave-MacMillan, 2003), leads two pro- Need materials on the contemporary in workplace writing. Some professional qualified candidates are encouraged to grams in Greece: Goddess Pilgrimage in feminist movement? The monthly femi- experience of writing or editing outside apply; however, Canadian citizens and Crete and Sacred Journey in Greece. nist newspaper off our backs has been of the university is highly desirable. The Permanent Residents will be given pri- Ariadne Institute, P.O. Box 303 Blue River, reporting on the movement since 1970. position, to commence 1 July 2004, is ority. Qualifications include a Ph.D. or OR. 97413;(541) 822-3201; institute@god- We have published detailed coverage of subject to budgetary approval. Deadline equivalent in American Literature, with dessariadne.org; www.goddessariadne.org/. every NWSA conference. Use off our to apply: 26 March 2004. Qualifications specialization in writing in the period backs in your classes. $25 per year. $30 include a Ph.D. or equivalent in rhetoric, between 1930 to the present and Sunny Greece! Small island house! institutional rate. 2337B 18th St., NW, professional writing, journalism, commu- demonstrable excellence in both teach- Weekly, monthly. On isolated terraced Washington, DC 20009. Attn.: WRB. nications, or composition, and demon- ing and research. It is expected that the mountain slope overlooking sea. (202) 234-8072; www.offourbacks.org. strable excellence in both teaching and successful candidate will enter into the Breathtaking sunsets, moonsets. Dramatic research. The successful candidate will be teaching rotation for our large-lecture, hikes. Marvelous peace. Moonrock: (614) Women’s History Postcards, archival a key contributor in building York’s devel- second-year, American Literature 986-6945; email: WISEWOMN@ photographs with detailed captions. oping program in Professional Writing. course, teach upper-year courses in BRIGHT.NET. Labor, Arts, Suffrage, Social Protest. 50 The candidate will be expected to step her/his field of specialization, and, assorted, at least 15 different views: $15 into a rotation for teaching a large first- either immediately or very soon, con- postpaid; 1000 postcards, at least 50 dif- year lecture course, to offer upper-year tribute to the graduate program in Miscellaneous ferent views: $100 postpaid. Send check courses in areas of particular expertise, English. A letter of application, cur- to: Helaine Victoria Press, Inc., 132 and, either immediately or very soon, to riculum vitae, three confidential letters LIGHTBOX CO of NEW ENG- Winfield Street, San Francisco, CA 94110. contribute to the graduate program in of recommendation and a sample of LAND lightboxes for SAD, sleep English. York University is an Affirmative the applicant’s written work (no longer problems, PMS, all biological rhythm Action Employer. The Affirmative than 25 pages) should reach the Chair disorders: 800 853-6456; www.lightbox- Job Opportunities Action Program can be found on York’s by 26 March 2004. Professor Kim Ian co.com/; [email protected]. website at http://www.yorku.ca/acad- Michasiw, Chair, Department of Humanities, Classical Studies: Greek jobs/ or a copy can be obtained by calling English, Faculty of Arts, York WRITING COACH AND EDITOR. Literature and Culture. The Division of the affirmative action office at 416 736- University, 4700 Keele street, Toronto, Get that article or book into print with Humanities, Faculty of Arts, York 5713. All qualified candidates are encour- Ontario M3J 1P3 Canada (email: coaching or editing from author praised University, invites applications for a one- aged to apply; however, Canadian citizens [email protected]; phone: 416 736- by Charlayne Hunter-Gault, Gloria year contractually limited appointment and Permanent Residents will be given 5713; fax: 416 736-5412). York Steinem and Maya Angelou. beginning July 1, 2004, at the Assistant priority. A letter of application, curricu- University is an Affirmative Action www.JoanLester.com/; (510) 548-1224. Professor level. The area of specialization lum vitae, three confidential letters of Employer. The Affirmative Action is Classical Studies-Greek Literature and recommendation and a sample of the Program can be found on York’s web- Editor: Experienced, award-winning, Culture. Details at: http://www.yorku.ca/ applicant’s written work (no longer than site at http://www.yorku.ca/ acad- Ph.D., Feminist writer. Can mentor or acadjobs/. Deadline to apply: March 31, 25 pages) should reach the Chair by 26 jobs/ or a copy can be obtained by call- edit dissertations, theses, or grant propos- 2004. York University is an Affirmative March 2004. Professor Kim Ian ing the affirmative action office at 416 als. Reasonable rates; electronic or print. Action Employer. The Affirmative Action Michasiw, Chair, Department of English, 736-5713. Contact Joan at: [email protected]. Program can be found on York’s website. Faculty of Arts, York University, 4700 All qualified candidates are encouraged to Keele Street, Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3 Feminist editor. Ph.D. Prize-winning apply; however, Canadian citizens and Canada; email: [email protected]; Call for Papers author. Twenty years’ experience editing Permanent Residents will be given priority. phone: 416 736-5166; fax: 416 736-5412. every imaginable kind of writing. Call for manuscripts: narrative essays by References provided, including many English: Rhetoric, Composition, The tenure-track position offered is young women (age 18-35) who identify as happy WRB readers. (510) 524-7913; Professional Writing. The tenure-track in American Writing from 1930 to feminist and cultural Christians are need- [email protected].

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