the bumpidee reader

Alice Walker on The Sisterhood

2011-04-10T22:11:00.000-07:00

From "Outlaw, Renegade, Rebel,Pagan", an interview with Amy Goodman from Democracy Now (2006) in Conversations with Alice WalkerAmy Goodman: Alice, I want to ask you about the Sisterhood. Who was this group of women writers in the 1970s that you gathered with?Alice Walker - The Sisterhood was the brainchild of myself and JuneJordan, because we looked around one day -- we were friends -- and we

The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

2011-03-31T21:58:00.000-07:00

BISAR is reading The House of Mirth by Edith WhartonI was trying to finish it by April 1, but it turns out we have until May 1 to finish...that's good because I'm only halfway done. I have been doing a lot of reading here and there but I don't have too much to report. So far 2011 has been a lot of reading in many different books and working on projects. More psychology than usual. I want to get

February Round-Up

2011-02-28T19:41:00.000-08:00

"Lots of women can hang tight with one another and bond if one of them has a problem or it they share a problem. Affirming another woman's success is the difficult issue for many females, even those of us who claim to be feminists. From girlhood on, females learn how to use terroristic tactics of exclusion, ostracism, and shunning to police one another. Studies show that boys may fight with one

King Kong Theory by Virginie Despentes

2011-02-16T13:12:00.000-08:00

On recommendation of both Kanako and Tobi I read this book. As of late with the mass media look back at riot grrl I've been wondering what feminism in punk rock is today. Does it exist? Is there a purpose? What is it's function? Is there a cohesive movement? Judging by critics and sound bites this seems to be being hailed as the new punk feminism. It's got some good points, it's got some bullshit

Hi Bumpidee Readers, it is 2011

2011-01-15T21:41:00.001-08:00

hello readers...I am going to try and be better about updating the bumpidee reader in 2011, I read a lot last year that I didn't review here and I need to stop doing that! I often don't read a whole book and am always reading more than 5 books at once...maybe I have A.D.D., maybe I should read a book about it! or A.D.H.D. or whatever it is...but guess what? NO EXCUSES!here's a short list of stuff

WOMEN OF UNDERGROUND MUSIC interviews by Zora von Burden

2011-01-15T17:10:00.000-08:00

I picked this up in the hopes that it would be similar to re/searchs ANGRY WOMEN, which is one of my favorite books ever, and was sadly disappointed by this. It has an amazing line-up of interviews - Laurie Anderson, Nina Hagen, Adele Bertei, Deanna Ashley, Patricia Morrison, Moe Tucker and the list goes on. It's pretty interesting but it's more because of the subjects rather than how the

Marx at the Margins

2010-11-27T09:10:00.000-08:00

It is one of history’s ironies that in some ways it took the death of Marxism as an orthodox political movement for scholars to undertake serious philological study of all of Marx’s work. There are, of course, notable exceptions to this characterization. But in many ways, the work on Marx that has taken place since the 60s has been marked by the first attempts to provide an understanding of Marx

This Week=Rock-n-Roll vs. Feminism

2010-11-07T22:37:00.000-08:00

This week has been funny. I've been reading Life by Keith Richards, which Liz Phair reviewed in The New York Times on ThursdayThen the new translation of The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir came in at the library and now the two books are at war with each other for my attention. This is literally "Rock-n-Roll vs. Feminism" happening in my apartment. Of course, Rock-n-Roll is winning! I learned

BISAR is back

2010-11-07T22:32:00.000-08:00

BISAR is back and they are reading Moby Dick...if you want to join you have to email Slim Moon I've already read Moby Dick but I plan to join in at some point.

Fanzines by Teal Triggs

2010-10-30T12:51:00.000-07:00

This came in the mail today:I got this email from the author back in August:I wanted to let you know that I have included covers of your zine Jigsaw 5 and 5 1/2 in FANZINES (Thames & Hudson) which talk about the history of riot grrrl fanzines. The book in general covers a history of zines from science-fiction to present day. The book is due out in September an I hope it will help celebrate the

Girl Power by Marisa Metzler

2010-10-28T17:46:00.001-07:00

I expected this book to have more of a focus on just punk but it was much more an overview of women in nineties music in general. It was also a slightly bizarre read because not only is this ladies name marissa too (though spelled differently) she grew up in the Bay Area and then attended Evergreen, which eerily sounds a lot like my life story. The book kind of chronicles the rise of riot grrrl

In The Beginning There Was Rhythm!

2010-09-28T23:59:00.000-07:00

Girls To The Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution by Sara Marcus came out today. I read it straight through when it came in the mail without stopping. It took about six hours. I thought "oh I'll write a review, but I have plenty of time, it's not coming out for a few months". Then I got an email from Johanna Fatemen where she mentioned she was reviewing it for Book Forum, so I

summer is nearly ok really over, what did you read?

2010-09-18T22:21:00.000-07:00

It has been a month or two since I've been posting and I keep meaning to...but this summer totally sucked and I have been a little off in my own world. I did still manage to read a lot, here's a short list off the top of my head and maybe I'll get it together to write up some proper reviews in the next few weeks:I started the summer out reading and re-reading a lot of feminist theory, which led

Summer Reading: abandoned books and The Slave Ship: A Human History.

2010-08-14T11:23:00.000-07:00

I go through phases where I don't finish reading what I started. Right now I'm in one of these phases. I have a pile of books beside my bed. Half lie open where I abandoned them.I haven't come up with a satisfactory reason for why I go through these phases. Its certainly not that my taste suddenly and inexplicably turns to shit or that I hit a patch of bad books. All but one of the abandoned

A Visit from the Goon Squad

2010-08-03T08:51:00.000-07:00

I was drawn to read this novel, by Jennifer Egan, because of the excerpt in The New Yorker that featured early 80s punker kids in SF playing in a band and hanging out the Mabuhay Gardens, so maybe I was, in a way, setting myself up for disappointment—that time and place is only a snapshot in this book, in which each chapter is narrated by a different character, from a different location and

My Name is Legion

2010-07-04T09:12:00.000-07:00

My Name is Legion is a 1976 collection of three longer stories or novellas by Roger Zelazny that all revolve around the same central character.I started looking for this book a while ago because it was mentioned in a footnote in Hardt and Negri's Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire. In a discussion of the threatening specter of the multitude in Dostoyevsky's The Devils, Hardt and

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America

2010-05-23T10:13:00.000-07:00

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America - Barbara EhrenreichIn 1998 and 2000 journalist Barbara Ehrenreich investigated the conditions of the working poor by taking a series of low-paying jobs - Walmart employee, waitress, hotel maid, nursing home server - and trying to live off her earnings.She is successful at landing jobs, sometimes holding two jobs at a time, but unsuccessful in

All too human monsters.

2010-05-14T22:39:00.000-07:00

I had just read yet another in an epic but short list of Roberto Bolaño novels, this one called Nazi Literature in the Americas, when I noticed an article on BBC news website about the death of Paul Schäfer, the bizarre ex-luftwaffe, cult leader and pedophile. Schäfer died in Chile, Bolaño's country of birth on April 24th, 2010, as I was finishing Nazi Literature in the Americas. Good riddance

King Kong Theory By Virginie Despentes

2010-05-06T20:06:00.000-07:00

Punk feminist writer/film maker Virginie Despentes wrote King Kong theory, her manifesto in 2005, recently translated from french (w/help from Lydia Lunch!) and released on The Feminist Press. Virginie is writing from a lower working class, socialized punk, post fame, post rape, post sex worker, 41 year old experience. She is pissed, into who she is and calls a lot of idiots out in this text.

The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf.

2010-04-07T18:16:00.000-07:00

So, this book blew my mind. I realize a lot of stuff in it is kind of dated (it was first published in 1991), and sometimes Naomi Wolf gets a little bit dramatic with her descriptions, but still. It's one of those things where I had some ideas about some of the things she talks about (everything from shaving to age to plastic surgery and in between) but this kind of threw all the facts connected

Stoner and Buchers Crossing

2010-04-04T09:08:00.000-07:00

From what I've gathered John Williams wrote four books during the course of his life. Two of them, Stoner and Butchers Crossing, have been reissued by the New Review of Books Classics series. Although different in style and plot, both works center on the inability of male protagonists to achieve happiness through their ideals in an unrelenting, brutal world, which puts them in a better position

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

2010-03-30T00:48:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I read the book and today I saw the movie of The Road. A parable is a story that teaches a moral lesson. Fruits of virtue are reaped when the moral endorsed by the parable is practiced. We know this and we know that the dominant parables throughout history aren't the ones that teach of the glories of cannibalism and rape but instead ones that lead to the simple joys of family life. The

No disrespect by Sister Souljah

2010-03-29T09:00:00.000-07:00

I've never been really all that certain who Sistah Souljah really was or what she really did. I've never read any of her books, I've never listened to her music. I know she said something during the LA riots which instigated some sort of racial debate from Bill Clinton, and that I didn't even remember the details of until I looked it up again. Basically she in inconsequential to my life, so for

Totally Wired by Simon Reynolds

2010-03-26T17:05:00.001-07:00

Totally Wired was published last year, but I just got around to reading it now. As the front cover says, this is the "essential companion" to Reynold's previous book on post-punk, Rip It Up and Start Again, with "Post-Punk Interviews and Overviews." The best way to experience this book is to read it in segments. Pick a few interviews, skim the rest. Then when you have some time, really sink

A Meaningful Life

2010-03-02T14:31:00.000-08:00

Steve Dore lent me A Meaningful Life. It’s not the first time, and it won’t be the last time, he’s turned me onto something incredible. In this case imagine a story that combines the misanthropic satire of Evelyn Waugh the rapid-fire humor of Woody Allen’s prose and a touch of French existential literature. What you get is the story of Lowell Lake a totally banal married middle class schlub who

Winter Music Round up

2010-03-02T13:53:00.000-08:00

For some reason 4 out of the last 5 books I read had to do with musicians. I didn’t plan it this way. But that’s how it turned out.The first two I read because of circumstance. I was in Portland and I was due to take the train back to Olympia for New Years Eve with nothing to read. While chasing Vinnie around the Buyolympia warehouse during a game of ‘monkey harvester’ (explained by Vinnie as

The Fallen: Life in and Out of Britain's Most Insane Group by Dave Simpson

2010-02-24T05:00:00.000-08:00

All terms used to describe The Fall almost instantly seem redundant and slightly pointless. Unique, prolific, shape-shifting, inspiring. Yeah, yeah, yeah - we all know that about The Fall. And yet, we also seem to know nothing about The Fall. Are they a mystery. Or perhaps so ordinary and straight-forward they just appear mysterious. As if we are desperately trying to find an answer to a riddle,

Feuchtgebiete (Wetlands) by Charlotte Roche

2010-02-21T12:12:00.000-08:00

Woa. Last night I started reading Feuchtgebiete (Wetlands) by Charlotte Roche. It's a totally insane and amazing transgressive novel that was a best-seller in Germany and has recently been translated into English. The debates of erotica vs. porn really don't come close to encapsulating the total gross-out subversiveness of main character 18 year old Helen Memel's obsessions with bodily fluids and

Lucinella by Lore Segal

2010-02-10T07:15:00.000-08:00

Melville House makes beautiful books, and not that many of them by women, so I was happy to pick up Lucinella, by Lore Segal, which is part of MH’s Contemporary Art of the Novella series. It’s a reissue of a book that originally came out in 1976. Lore Segal has written a few other books for adults (including one that recounts her experience fleeing Austria on the kindertransport to England

I Change Worlds by Anna Louise Strong

2010-02-06T14:41:00.000-08:00

Today is the anniversary of the Seattle General Strike, which took place February 6-12, 1919. Anna Louise Strong, a radical journalist who was involved in the action, wrote an autobiography called I Change Worlds: The Remaking of an American that is totally amazing. I didn't discover this book until I was in my mid-20's, and even then it was through an English friend (thanks Dale!). We were not

Girl Power: The Nineties Revolution in Music by Marisa Meltzer

2010-02-04T22:18:00.000-08:00

Girl Power traces the influence of OG "riot grrl" groups (Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, Heavens To Betsy) to the Spice Girls, covering "foxcore", Sleater-Kinney, Le Tigre and Ladyfest as well as several other pop stars and other all-female alternative/indie rock groups along the way. The book is written for a mainstream audience and suffers from some of the awkwardness that comes along with trying to

Remembering Phyl Garland

2010-02-02T11:50:00.000-08:00

I didn't know that Phyl Garland, who wrote The Sound of Soul: The Story of Black Music (1969), died, back in 2006. I didn't know too much about her, but have always appreciated the research she did on women in soul and thought she was an interesting writer. In 1981, Phyllis Garland became the first African American and first woman to earn tenure at the Columbia University Graduate School of

The Last Secret by Mary McGarry Morris

2010-01-31T19:48:00.000-08:00

The Last Secret is a thriller that is supposedly well-written. It got good reviews and the author is critically acclaimed. The story centers on Nora, who works at a newspaper and has a couple of kids and a successful husband. From the fact that she has a career and a family (I guess) the reader is supposed to think her life is perfect (according to the reviews) but from the very beginning of the

One-Dimensional Woman

2010-01-31T06:03:00.000-08:00

One-Dimensional Woman, by Nina Power- a philosophy professor and blogger- is an incisive work of feminist cultural critique. Power’s book makes important connections between mainstream trends in feminism and contemporary capitalism and raises important questions. It also reminds me of The Baffler with its compelling use of academic theory for compact, lucid, trenchant and hilarious screeds

Just Kids by Patti Smith

2010-01-30T23:44:00.000-08:00

Like Bob Dylan's Chronicles Volume One, this is a remarkable book for us longtime fans and I hope it is merely the first volume in a longer series of memoirs. Patti Smith the poet, rock-n-roll star, mother, artist, icon, rebel, myth maker and performer gives us her own coming-of-age story the way only she could have told it. Wow. To sum up what she says would be to deny you the pleasure of how

Intersex (for lack of a better word) by Thea Hillman

2010-01-28T12:17:00.001-08:00

please read this first: http://www.isna.org/faq/what_is_intersexThis is one of the most honest memoirs I have ever read. Hillman writes with natural courage about her experience and her criticism. She is queer, Jewish, feminist, and intersex, for lack of a better world. She lives in SF and recounts her formative life in this past decade. I started reading this book right after i got my heart

Edith Wharton

2010-01-24T14:26:00.000-08:00

I got this Edith Wharton anthology for Christmas. I am reading it this morning but who knows how far I will get. I don't think I've read her before, but I'm not sure. I feel like I read Age of Innocence, but I may have just seen the movie. It's good by the way.Wish me luck! So far it reminds me of George Eliot.

Trouble by Kate Christensen

2010-01-23T23:43:00.000-08:00

Earlier in the week I read Trouble by Kate Christensen. I actually think this was a little better than Commencement, though similarly cringe-inducing at times but you can't tell it has any redeeming qualities by reading the promo blurb, which sums up the action as follows:A vibrant story of female friendship and midlife sexual awakening from the acclaimed author of The Great ManJosie is a

Commencement by J. Courtney Sullivan

2010-01-22T22:06:00.000-08:00

I read Commencement by J. Courtney Sullivan this week. I must have put it on hold over the summer after reading a review, not sure. On one level this book grossed me out. By focusing on four women who meet at Smith College, an elite all-girls school, it presents an upper middle class/rich, white American version of young womanhood as "reality"...I guess that is "reality" for some of us...but

'54 and Manituana

2010-01-10T07:22:00.000-08:00