Archive for the ‘Challenges’ Category
Catching Up pt. 3: A Natural History of the Senses, The Housemaid, North and South, The Book of the City of Ladies, Epileptic
In A Natural History of the Senses, Ackerman draws from a number of sources and memories in a meandering rumination about the senses through which we understand the world and interpret our own human experience. It is particularly hard to communicate the specificity of different physical sensations, but Ackerman writes about smells, touch, and the like so effectively that these mercurial interpretations manifest concretely and jump straight off the page, making the reading experience, well, sensual. The book is filled with interesting trivia, such as that smell was likely the first sense developed in the primordial oceans by the earliest living organisms, and I enjoyed the recounting she did of an interview with a professional “nose”, or perfume mixologist. Clearly I was most won over by the chapter on smell, as it sticks most strongly in my memory. However, I became increasingly annoyed with Ackerman and her frequent, bizarrely specific and lengthy descriptors. They often distracted from her main point and felt unfocused, a feeling intensified by the book’s format of short, thematically arranged but otherwise non-sequitor chapters. Also, while not generally opposed to heavy reliance on anecdote, hers felt obnoxiously self-referential and pompous. So, while the subject matter was fascinating, I didn’t really get along with Ackerman very well and will likely avoid her other writing.
One day, an older woman labeled a “witch” and disowned by her grown children finds a dead infant abandoned behind her hut in rural Ghana. Word spreads quickly through her village and suddenly everyone is arguing about who is to blame, with men vilifying the imagined neglectful mother and the women bemoaning the sad arrogance of undependable men. But as the true story of what happened is told through the perspectives of a number of women, it becomes clear that this child’s death is not the fault of one or another sex, but a society in which exploitation is quickly becoming a dominant means of attaining wealth. It begins when a young housemaid travels from her village to Accra to work for a wealthy older woman whose deceased husband’s family believes that her money rightfully belongs to them. The housemaid gets caught up in a plot of inheritance to win back the money for the husband’s family, but does not realize that her employer, though happy and confident in her independence, is not free of the sexual demands of the businessmen who remain in a class above her and so is not easy to manipulate. Nor does she understand that her own family’s motives may not be good for her, personally. The final telling of what happens to her baby is tragic but it is the fault of no individual: instead, it is the result of greed and an caustic individualism. A very worthy novella that counts toward Kinna’s Africa Challenge.
I’d been wanting to read North and South forever, but passed up the North and South read-a-long because it overlapped with my trip to Kenya and then promptly forgot about it. Even though I coincidentally ended up reading it at the same time as the read-a-long, I guess it’s still good that I wasn’t signed up because I didn’t have regular internet access nor the time to participate in the discussions, but anyway. I had huge expectations for this book, and while I enjoyed it, it fell just a little flat for me. It’s hard not to compare Gaskell to her contemporaries: not as much nuance as Austen, not as righteous as Dickens, less detailed than both. Perhaps such comparisons are unfair, but some combination of Austen and Dickens is what I thought I was going to get. Margaret, who moves from an idyllic country village to a busy, crowded industrial town, falls in love with the rugged Mr. Thornton (about whom I agree with Iris is a much more worthy love interest than most of Austen’s suitors ;)). There, she befriends some of the working poor that she’d previously been so judgmental about, and sides with them in a strike against factory-owner Thornton. Thornton, a proud, self-made man, learns through Margaret to sympathize with those less successful than he in “working their way up” while Margaret reconciles herself to the reality that the country isn’t exactly paradise for the poor, either. Culture clash, class, and the industrial boom frame this troubled love story, and I appreciate how direct Gaskell was in dealing with such themes. However, there was a bit too much compromise and neatness in the way it all wrapped up for my taste. Still liked it, though, so will try more of Gaskell.
This was (ahem) the FIRST book listed for The Year of Feminist Classics challenge* and yes, I only got to it last month. This book was written by Christine de Pizan, the only (?) professional female writer in late fourteenth century Europe. It is impressive not only that she was able to support her family with her writing at this time, but that she was able to do so while unequivocally challenging the most common anti-woman sentiments of her day. Here, she imagines a scenario in which Reason, Rectitude, and Justice come to her aid embodied as three strong and lovely women to help her construct a city of positive history and mythology in which she will collect and house all the world’s most virtuous ladies. They do so first by debunking myths such as that women are natural liars, that they lack conviction and are emotionally weak, that they are selfish and are intellectually inferior to men. Much as Mary Wollstonecraft would do almost four hundred years later in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, de Pizan argues that it is the way in which society brings girls up differently from boys that makes these stereotypes appear true and universal, but that given an equal education, girls would show as much aptitude as boys and in the same subjects (she does, however, fall very short of actually advocating for this). While her argumentation rested on reworking mythology, and this is not an acceptable form of debate nowadays, it was then–and since I was unfamiliar with so many of the stories, I kind of got a kick out of ’em despite the fact that it became very, very tedious reading. All the stuff about being a good, chaste wife etc. was irritating to my modern sensibilities, too, but I get that then she was reacting against the fact that women were only thought to be about their bodies, rooted in materiality with no spiritual or mental inner lives and value. I wouldn’t call this book relevant for feminists today, but I still enjoyed it as a feminist for the times when de Pizan utilized her stinging sense of humor and because it really made me consider context. It’s interesting to see that some ideas which are completely regressive and sexist now were once a step AWAY from an oppression that we still know, but in a completely different transformative phase. Of course, not all reactions against oppression are “progressive”, nor can that word be applied evenly across cultures and eras, which raises a lot of important questions about what constitutes progress in any given situation.
Epileptic is the deeply troubling autobiographical story by David B., formerly Pierre-Francois Beauchard, whose life has largely been shaped by his brother’s epilepsy and his family’s never-ending search for a cure. Epilepsy was little understood in 1960’s France when Jean-Christophe had his first seizure, and one of the most horrific aspects to this family history is how cruelly Jean-Christophe was treated by children and adults alike, alienating him, his siblings, and his parents from the community as punishment for exposing them to the symptoms of his illness. Their parents move Pierre-Francois, Jean-Christophe, and their sister in and out of various new-agey macrobiotic communes, inspiring hope in an unrelenting succession of mystical mentors and spiritual healers who are ultimately as lost as they are. While his parents experience increasing guilt after every failure to “fix” their eldest son and his sister becomes despondent with depression, David B. pours himself into his illustrations, picturing epic uphill battles that signify his struggle against his brother’s sickness. His thick, bold-lined drawings are appropriately claustrophobic and disconcerting, adding a fantastical element to this tragedy. David B. is always honest, refusing to leave out the ugliest bits of his history and the resentment he sometimes felt toward his brother, whose disease he could never measure up to. Dark and moving; beautiful work and intensely raw.
*I think it’s time I admitted to myself and everyone else that I’m not going to catch up on The Feminists Classics challenge this fall like I wanted to. In fact, there’s only a few books from this year’s selection that I haven’t read, but even excluding re-reads, it just isn’t going to happen. Truth be told, I’ve been dealing with the aftermath of a Very Bad Thing that happened earlier this month in the life of myself and my friends and have had difficulty concentrating on books, so I know that if I don’t allow myself to read at whim I won’t be doing much reading at all, and I don’t want that. Sincerest apologies for committing to it and then only reading one book and not participating in any of the conversations**…hopefully I will get to all the others at a later date, as they all remain interesting to me. I still plan to host the last read when the time comes, but all reading projects and such will otherwise be put on hold or ignored.
**Hello, guilt.
So Far From God, by Ana Castillo
…and so begins another LONG overdue review of a book read months ago
I began So Far From God after Eva of A Striped Armchair recommended it to me while discussing the Read and Resist Tucson challenge that Melissa of The Feminist Texican started early this year in protest of Arizona’s ethnic studies bans (yes, this was on the banned books list). She referred to it as something like a pleasant surprise which, happily, I found it to be as well!
So Far From God takes place in a small town in my home state, New Mexico, though the world that Sofi and her four enigmatic daughters inhabits evokes experience I was never privy to as an (atheist, Jewish) Anglo. Theirs is an existence steeped in local and ancestral lore, Catholicism, and magical realism on the most mundane of days. But it is also one that is routinely challenged by industrial development and modernist appeals to progress.
Despite Sofi’s best attempts at raising her daughters safely through adulthood, all four come to untimely, tragic ends. La Loca, so-called because her childhood death and subsequent return from the world of spirits left her mind wandering somewhere between the realms of life and death, falls prey to epileptic fits and terminal illness. Caridad, once beautiful and reckless, is ravaged by la Malogra, a wild, invisible monster. She then trains to become a curandera (healer) and falls in love with another woman on the holy march to Chimayo, where she begins to make a name for herself that travels far and wide throughout the religious community, but leaves her vulnerable. Fe, the most conventional of the sisters, wants only to work and maintain a comfortable household with her new husband, but falls ill after being exposed to toxic chemicals at the factory that employs her. Esperanza, the oldest, achieves her dream of leaving New Mexico by becoming a reporter and flying overseas to cover conflict in the Middle East…but never returns.
None of these devastating ends comes as a surprise. Instead, they are regularly foreshadowed in the exaggerated way of upcoming soap opera events. What’s surprising is the way in which Castillo manages an easy, light-hearted tone throughout such sad happenings and keeps the reader hopeful that somehow, things aren’t all as bad as they seem. That hope finds place in the girls’ mother, Sofi, who is repeatedly devastated by the loss of her daughters, but who is not left destitute by them. In fact, she seems to swallow all their strengths as they depart her world, and she becomes a courageous, capable community organizer who works with friends, family, and strangers around her to change what isn’t right, adapting to a world in flux when necessary and holding steadfast to tried and true traditions when possible.
Castillo is a joy to read. Spanish and English flow together in a way that feels natural even to readers who know little-to-no Spanish at all. Her characters are interesting and strange but knowable, her narrative is creatively spun, and she plays carefully but easily with a number of cultures and ideas. A pleasant surprise, indeed.
Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics, by bell hooks
Wow. So, after making a quick trip to a cousin’s wedding and having to replace my old computer, it’s been really hard to get back into the rhythm of writing about what I’m reading. It’s been made no less difficult by the amount of school work I need to make up, and by the amount of time I’m spending with my band preparing for SXSW next week. In any case, I woke up early this morning, so let’s see if I can eke out just one post real quick!
Feminism is for Everybody was our first pick for The Year of Feminist Classics 2012. It’s a brief introductory text that covers a number of topics and is both inclusive and honest about the strengths and weaknesses of feminist movement politics. hooks maintains a relaxed tone and seems to speak directly and comfortably to the reader about the relationships between feminism, sexuality, class, race, gender, U.S. history, parenting, love, and more. Short chapters keep the reading brisk and engaged, but remain substantive. In other words, it was a great place to start this year’s project.
hooks wrote this book to be a straightforward primer that would serve to explain some of feminism’s key concepts to the uninitiated or misinformed, and in that sense I’d say she the book is a success. However, it isn’t perfect. I wish she’d done a bit more contextualizing, for example…feminism in the United States didn’t start with the Second Wave in the ’60’s and ’70’s, and this work was very much grounded in a specific era of feminist thought.
On the project discussion page for this month, Amy asked:
do you think this book would convince someone who didn’t identify as a feminist why it is important to do so / that they might want to do so?
I really like what onereadleaf had to say about this. She describes coming to identify personally with feminism as a process, and my experience with it was similar. Many of us have had “click moments”, but for me those had to be followed up by long bouts of introspection and info-seeking before I became comfortable using the term “feminist” to describe myself. So, I don’t know if this book alone would “convert” someone who wasn’t already a feminist or at least interested in feminism, but that’s okay: instead, it works to familiarize the reader with a diverse and conflictual set of related questions and beliefs; to reveal the ways in which the struggle for gender equality is relevant to us all, no matter who we are. It’s a place to start.
But, while I would recommend this to new feminists or people interested in feminism, I would include with it recommendations to more contemporary sources, including blogs. The book is only about ten years old, but as onereadleaf also points out, the internet changed a lot of things for popular feminism and this book predates those changes. The content of the book isn’t outdated because of that, I don’t think, but some of the language marks it as very, very ’80’s to me, which: fair enough! bell hooks is certainly the product of an older time, even if the book is new. I was especially struck by her repeated use of “females” and “males” as nouns, for example, because I only ever see them as adjectives in feminist writing now, IF that. Also, phrases like “white male capitalist patriarchy” are not inaccurate in describing interlinking systems of oppression, but they are just so typically ’80’s (and so typically bell hooks, too). I don’t think these things are a big deal, at all. But they don’t feel entirely current.
And another thing: my recommendations for new feminists or those curious about feminism would need to include specific examples about the ways in which we’re all affected by sexism and the strategies that feminists might use to think about them or act against them, too. hooks is great at introducing feminist sensibility, but she can be very vague about it’s application!
Amy also asks:
hooks defines feminism simply as:
“A movement to end sexist oppression”
What do you think of that…?
I like it. I like that it’s simple and cooperative, rather than individualistic. I like that it’s flexible and open to interpretation. I also like “the struggle toward gender equality”, as it’s more about making something than ending something. I like that hooks argues that feminism is and must always be political, and that she emphasizes activism. I don’t think you have to be an activist to be a feminist, though…unless you consider challenging your own viewpoints, the sexist status quo, and standing up for the gender equality you believe in to be activism 😉
All in all, I trust and respect bell hooks, and agree with her most of the time if not all (she said something about prostitution in one chapter that made me lift an eyebrow). I think it makes a good introduction to certain feminist issues, particularly those first articulated in the ’60’s and ’70’s which have persisted to trouble us in the early twenty-first century. I would gladly pass it along to those who’d like a primer, but it probably wouldn’t be the only thing I’d give them. A list of other recommendations deserves it’s own post, perhaps one day to come…
For now, please excuse the possibility of another lengthy blog silence. I will try to schedule some updates for when I’m out of town the next few weeks, but no guarantees. I’ve been reading some really great stuff, and can’t wait to talk about it with you eventually!
ETA: OH, I forgot. This book also counts toward the Read and Resist Tucson challenge, as it’s one of the books that was banned there in conjunction with ethnic studies!
Joining Two Challenges Last Minute
That’s right. At the end of last year, I was aware of few challenges that looked interesting to me, but craving more structured reading I opted for creating two fun projects for myself instead. I’ll still be doing these, but I’m also going to join two new challenges, both because I want to support them and because they overlap significantly with my own projects and with my reading for a Year of Feminist Classics.
The first is Kinna’s Africa Challenge, for which I will read:
5 books. That’s it. There will be no other levels. Of course, participants are encouraged to read more than 5 books. Eligible books include those which are written by African writers, or take place in Africa, or are concerned with Africans and with historical and contemporary African issues. Note that at least 3 books must be written by African writers.
My previously-stated personal goal to read five books by Kenyan authors, and one non-fiction book about Kenya before my travels there next summer/fall, means that if I satisfy those goals I will also satisfy the requirements of the challenge. I’m going to read more than that, though, and include at least one or two books from other countries so as not feel completely that I’m cheating somehow (though I know overlap is okay). I read The Famished Road by Ben Okri last month, too, so I’m already one book into this challenge 🙂
The second I’ll be joining is the Read and Resist Tucson! challenge hosted by Melissa at The Feminist Texican. Like Melissa, I’m outraged about Arizona’s banning of ethnic (Mexican American) studies classes and the subsequent removal of more than eighty books from classrooms and school curriculums–from prominent Chicano/a and Native American authors like Rudolfo Anaya and Sherman Alexie to Howard Zinn and bell hooks—on the grounds that they supposedly:
- Promote the overthrow of the United States government.
- Promote resentment toward a race or class of people.
- Are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group.
- Advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.