Alice Walker on The Sisterhood

From "Outlaw, Renegade, Rebel,Pagan", an interview with Amy Goodman from Democracy Now (2006) in Conversations with Alice Walker

Amy 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 June
Jordan, because we looked around one day -- we were friends -- and we felt that it was very important that black women writers know each other, that we understood that we were never in competition for anything, that we did not believe in ranking. We would not let the establishment put one of us ahead of the other. And so, some of us
were Vertame Grosvenor, Ntozake Shange, Toni Morrison, June Jordan and myself, and I think Audrey Edwards who was at Essence, and several other women that I don't tonight remember.

The very first meeting was at June's apartment because it was the
larger of -- I had moved out of my marriage house into basically two
small rooms. And so June had this beautiful apartment with lots of
space, and the women gathered there, and I remember at the first
gathering -- I had bought this huge red pot that became the gumbo pot -- I made my first gumbo and took it to this gathering of women, all so different and all so spicy and flavorful like gumbo. And we have this photo. There is a wonderful photograph that someone took of us gathered around a large photograph of Bessie Smith, because Bessie
Smith best expressed our feeling of being women who were free and women who intended to stay that way.

King Kong Theory by Virginie Despentes

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. Through the intro and first chapter I hated it. The writing struck me as that of a rebellious teenager trying to go for ultimate shock value, the content read like an overly wordy rip off of the SCUM Manifesto.

The second chapter deals with rape. This is the point where I started understanding the book. Despentes brings about several points: we are at our most feminine when being raped, rape is thought of as this huge life shattering thing that we are powerless against, men are really good at excusing themselves out of being rapists. There were other themes but these are the ones that stood out to me, especially the idea that rape is this huge life shattering thing that we are powerless against. As in the book, I am in no way trying to diminish the effect of rape on our lives, but it made me think of something a friend once said "women get raped, then they get over it". Casting rape as this huge horrible unimaginable thing not only prevents us from talking about it, but prevents survivors as permanently damaged creatures, rapists as horrible monsters you can spot from far away, and streets as places that innocent young girls shouldn't tread. At one point in the book Despentes talks about after getting raped while hitchhiking she continued to hitchhike. If she didn't continue to hitchhike she would have stayed at home, scared and closed off from existing in the world - this is such a hugely important point - giving into the fear of rape, whether that it might happen or might happen again - makes women cease to exist.

The rest of the book seemed to wander back into the same territory as the beginning of the book. A lot of it was also incredibly heteronormative, which at this point with the intermingling of feminist and queer theory seems like an outdated path to take. There seems to be a lot of time taken casting femme girls into a shameful light, which really just seems kind of juvenile to do. Though there are femme girls out there that seem so complacent that I do wonder if they've ever had a critical thought in their life - to sit around and say that femme girls=useless fucked up enemies, which is what she seemed to be implying a good amount of the time is pretty fucked. To imply that somehow being a femme girl myself somehow ousts me from outsider status and dumps squarely into playing the game of normal society is pretty absurd.

Then the worst of it reared it's head at the end. Despentes wraps up the book by talking about becoming a figure in mass media through her banned movie Baise Moi and how because of it she temporarily became more of a feminine woman and became quieter and more complacent - and that her savior out of this was Courtney Love? Don't get me wrong, as a teenager Love was somebody I looked up to in a way (I was more into Kat Bjelland) but keep in mind, I was 13 and it was 1995. If anything Courtney Love demonstrates the villanization you come into as a woman in the spotlight, I wouldn't really see her as someone who exists as both a more masculine leaning female and respected in media. Despentes goes on to end the book with some gender role switching - for example taking a break up letter by Antonin Artaud and replacing all uses of "woman" with "man". I really hate this strategy of switching genders to prove points because it doesn't make sense, it completely denies the power dynamics of society.

All and all, if I had this to read when I was 15 it would have blown my fucking mind, and there were parts that did blow my mind now. Even though there are things in this book that wander into juvenile shock rock and its overall tendency towards heteronormity, even though there were multiple times I wanted to throw this book against the wall, I am glad that this voice exists. Even though I feel her writing has a tendency to shock to be shocking rather than prove a point that anger is real and not surprising that it exists and I am glad it's articulated in some way. The majority of the bare bones ideas in this book are really good, I hope people can discover them.

Hi Bumpidee Readers, it is 2011

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 I'm reading now, for my obligatory january post:



culture clash: dread meets punk rockers by don letts...don letts hung out with the clash, managed the slits, djed punk shows, makes films, was in big audio dynamite and was a part of the kings rd proto-punk anti-fashion scene...this is a great book, read it if you are interested in cultural history, racism, punk, reggae, post-colonial london or the politics of style.



a tale of two cities by charles dickens. started this before xmas because of oprah (for real) but also because I'm about to go to london and paris. i read this book in 9th grade, but it's not my favorite dickens, it's got less humor and more streamlined storytelling. it's reminding me a little bit of nathaniel hawthorne, who I'm not super into...it's good though, gotta hurry up and finish so I can move on to great expectations...I read the first half really fast and then got interrupted by the holidays and then chaos at work aka inventory...so this is what I'll be reading for the next few days...I am realizing all my ideas about the french revolution come from this book, so that needs to change, but it's a vivid, fast-paced class-struggle-themed political drama/romance...on the side I am reading a book by peter ackroid about c.d. and also reading a little about him in some london travel books.
at one point I was going to london a lot and got really obsessed with peter ackroyd in the way you do when all these coincidences start happening that seem to connect with the book you are reading and things get weird. actually the last time this happened I was reading a dorothy sayers mystery on tour and stayed the night at my friends parents house. we arrived at night via amsterdam I fell asleep reading about a murder that took place in epping forest, which I thought was in london. over breakfast I asked "where's epping forest" and the people we were staying with informed me that we were in epping forest and in fact it was across the street from their house. I'm sure if you live in london (or new york or l.a.) you are used to stuff like this happening, but nothing ever takes place in olympia..so this is something that is really cool about travelling, getting all caught up in the literary landscape and history of a place, uncovering multiple layers of narratives embedded in the geography of a city.


king kong theory by virginie despentes...I asked for and got this book for xmas, since kanako said she might start a book club. I read the first and last chapter and skimmed the rest. that's usually what I do with theory, a habit from school, where you try to figure out what the thesis is and evaluate whether or not it's argued coherently. so far it's more poetic than I expected and rebellious in an in-yr-face punk style, which is rare these days. in that sense it reminds me of s.c.u.m. manifesto by valarie solanis, which I'm not a big fan of although I recognize its historical impact was major --it helped inspire the women's liberation movement for example--but I never got totally into the poetry or rhetoric of solanis like some of my friends did.
I don't know too much about virginie despentes other than that she is a filmmaker. I've heard her compared to catherine breillat. I know some people think her movies reinforce patriarchy in their depiction of violence against women, even though that is not her intent. she's provocative and controversial and seems to be more of an artist than anything. she's interested in power...the weak and the strong...she evokes some of nietzsche's ideas in the genealogy of morals/beyond good and evil... also: lydia lunch helped translate this book.
I'd like to read some contemporary feminist criticism of king kong theory to see how people have reacted to her work. there seem to be some possible limitations here repeated from early 'radical feminism'...radical feminism in the sense of feminists who believe that gender oppression is primary and trumps class or race...that despentes has a class analysis and talks about economics and capitalism is relevant here, but so did many "radical feminists" and as invigorating and influential as a lot of those early texts are, they are limited in scope and have been widely critiqued. I'm not saying king kong theory is necessarily fucked up in the same ways, just that I'm questioning a lot of her claims and some of my thought process is the same as what happens when I read a lot of what is known as radical feminism from the late 60's/early 70's...I am questioning a lot of her generalizations and broad sweeping statements and wishing for more specificity.
these are my initial impressions, which will probably change as I read more. I want to finish this before february so I might actually go ahead and read it this week...but maybe that is just wishful thinking...so far I'm not super into it, but I can see how it might be totally inspiring if you read it in the right time and place. it's got a lot of anger and vision to it. it's cool to hear someone say "fuck you, this world is totally fucked but I am not". it's a bold thing to say and something that women need to hear. there is a lot of resistance and courage in this work. it's visceral and descriptive.


a strange stirring: the feminine mystique and american women at the dawn of the 1960's by stephanie coontz...i got a review copy of this in the mail this week and have been reading it today...it's excellent....read johanna fateman's review here...I am forcing myself to put it down until next month...if anyone would like to read this book and meet up to discuss it I would be totally into that, so let me know! it's a nuanced, social history of betty friedan's the feminine mystique, but it doesn't seem to be just for theory-nerds or womens studies majors; this book is for anyone interested in having a clear understanding of post-war 20th century American history.
coontz has a race and class analysis of the feminine mystique , but persuasively argues that it is worth a deeper look, not a quick dismissal. I read the feminine mystique when I was 18. I wasn't a 50's housewife or mom, I was a teenage girl in a band in a male-dominated punk scene struggling not to be defined as "someone's girlfriend", and it resonated with me at the time. I look forward to reconsidering it in its social context.

other than this, I'm reading a lot of travel books about london and paris but that will soon stop and I will be there! I think I'm going to have to return everything else to the library and save it for another rainy day. I'm sure there are plenty to look forward to.

what should I read when I'm on my trip? that's the real question!

WOMEN OF UNDERGROUND MUSIC interviews by Zora von Burden

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 subjects are handled. There are some highlights - the Teresa Taylor (Butthole Surfers) and the Sean Tseult (White Zombie) interviews were good - but beyond that and even with those overall I was kind of disappointed. The type of interviews I like to read are more like discussions rather than question and answer. The interviewer comes off as cold and scripted for the most part, like she's doing an interview for food stamps or something. Really stand-offish. There's a lack of inquiry and a lack of opinion input from the interviewer. It's almost like a sales call for creative people. Luckily, the women featured in this book are really interesting, and honestly the most exciting parts of the book were when the interviewees veered off course and just started talking about whatever they wanted to. On top of that it seems like the interviewer wasn't exactly a fan of most of her subjects, but rather just picked them out because they are considered "underground women" - what I mean is there was a lack of excitement and enthusiasm, and a lot of the topics seemed to be gleened from internet research rather than actual fandom. It just seemed incredibly disconnected. Overall, this is a book about some of the most rebellious and rule-breaking women of the underground - yet it manages to stay incredibly sanitary.

Marx at the Margins

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 based on a scrupulous philological attention to his writings. The ongoing Mega2 Project- started as a follow up to the MEGA1 project which was aborted following Stalin’s purge of the editor- will eventually publish every known piece of writing by Marx including all of the notes for, drafts of, and editions of his published works, has been an invaluable aid in this enterprise, providing sources previous scholars did not have access to. Such work has already cleared up a number of myths and legends and given new insight into Marx’s thought.

The Marxist humanist scholar Kevin Anderson’s newest work, Marx at the Margins, utilizes this Marxological approach to tackle the nature of Marx’s thought on nationalism, ethnicity and non-western societies. In doing so Anderson utilizes a host of neglected sources to call into question the popular perception that Marx was a deeply ethnocentric thinker who held a Eurocentric and uni-linear model of historical development. Instead Anderson aims to show that Marx’s thought evolved into a multi-linear theory of history with a complex global critique of political economy.

To prove this thesis Anderson provides a diligent exegesis of Marx’s writings on nationalism, ethnicity and non-western societies from The Communist Manifesto to copious as yet unpublished notes Marx took on writings on non-western societies at the end of his life. Anderson then tries to relate these varied sources, which also include Marx’s journalism and other under utilized and unpublished materials, to Marx’s theoretical writings on political economy—The Grundrisse and Capital.

In the course of this exegesis Anderson covers some very interesting ground. He unpacks Marx’s writing on a host of non-western areas like India, China, Algeria, Poland, Ireland and Russia as well as Marx’s article on the American Civil War, demonstrating that there was a development in Marx’s thinking following the Manifesto.

Since the particular development that Anderson traces in each of these topics is too detailed to give a short recap, I will focus on the ones I found most interesting. In the case of India Anderson shows-- that in contrast to Edward W. Said’s portrayal of Marx in Orientalism-- Marx’s later writings on India, Algeria and Latin America possess a “harsh and unremitting condemnation of colonialism” that appreciates how “communal forms of property were directly tied into anti-colonial resistance.”

In the case of Marx’s writings on The Civil War and Ireland Anderson also shows how Marx attributed racism as a divisive and retarding factor for the Labour movement. In the case of the USA this caused Marx to presciently predict that the failures of reconstruction would “drown the country in blood.” In the case of Ireland it led the English workers nationalism to side with the English Ruling class leading Marx to argue that revolution in Ireland was a necessary lever for revolution in Britain.

Anderson relates these writings to Marx’s theoretical works by arguing that they informed important changes in Marx’s critique of political economy. Anderson argues that this can be seen in the multi-linear history that Marx provides in the Grundrisse. He also argues that “almost all of these considerations” found their way into the French edition of Capital, which Anderson argues is Marx (not Engel’s) definitive edition of Capital as subthemes. ( This is because it was the last edition Marx edited from which Engels excised 70 printed pages worth of material for later editions of Capital.) Here Anderson argues the multi-linear model of history can be seen in Marx’s statement that primitive accumulation only applies to Western Europe as well as highlighted how Marx’s example of India and Ireland portray the heinous affects of capitalist development.

Finally, Anderson closes by emphasizing Marx’s late interest in Russia, whose communal villages, led Marx to argue that Russia might transform into communism provided it had technological assistance from the West.

In all, by it diligent examination of what Marx actually wrote, Anderson’s work successfully revokes the popular conception of Marx’s ethnocentric and uni-linear idea of historical development. This puts beside other recent and important works that provide serious studies of Marx

There are, however, a number of potential criticisms of the work that might be raised.

The first has to do with the status of sources that Anderson uses, particularly the later notebooks, which were taken by Marx in his later years, which many Marxists discount as a time of intellectual decline. While Anderson acknowledges this belief he dismisses it rather then refuting it. This may be because Anderson believes the notes will speak for themselves, but if this is the case he doesn’t tie them back in to refuting this perception, which becomes problematic when Anderson speculates that these notes might form the basis of an even later and more open development of Marx’s thought.

The second has to do with Anderson’s interpretation of the nature of Marx’s critique of political economy, which outside of a few references and footnotes is largely absent. Although Anderson designates the orientation a dialectical form of a universal critique of political economy with particular examples, this omission leaves the question of how Anderson views the theoretical orientation of Capital—which many read as Marx’s attempt to depict capital in an ideal abstract form- and how it relates to the historical examples Marx somewhat unresolved. On this question a discussion of Michael Heinrich’s argument that MEGA shows that “The different drafts” of Capital “ have to be recognized as different layers of an ongoing and unfinished research process” might also prove interesting and fruitful.

Never the less, Anderson’s work does much to refute many of the leading misperception about Marx’s supposed ethnocentric uni-linear social theory. His closing argument that what he has uncovered provides a diverse truly universal critique of capital which realizes difference that can be used in three potentially fruitful ways- as (a) a multi-linear dialectic of social development (b) a heuristic example that offers indications about the theorizing of today’s indigenous movements in the fact of global capitalism (c) theorization of class in relation to race, ethnicity and nationalism—also provides grounds for an interesting and important project that I hope he will continue to develop.

This Week=Rock-n-Roll vs. Feminism

This week has been funny. I've been reading Life by Keith Richards, which Liz Phair reviewed in The New York Times on Thursday

Then 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 the open G "Keith Richards" tuning this weekend and have been playing guitar non-stop. I guess me playing guitar is feminist, but as this is happening, the feminist theory is going unread and I feel crazy, like I need to do the dishes or something. I really hate that feminism is becoming a chore in this sense. It's not that I don't love Simone de Beauvoir, but reading that stuff takes concentration and the Keith Richards autobiography (while totally offensive and sexist and often ridiculous) is pure entertainment/mythology that is super fascinating AND it's teaching me how to play guitar better, so it's also instructive

Last week I was re-reading Inessential Woman: Problems of Exclusion in Feminist Thought by Elizabeth Spelman

It examines the white middle class bias in (north american/euro) feminist theory and spends quite a bit of time discussing why The Second Sex is biased even though de Beauvoir had a race and class analysis. It's a great book, the first two chapters are pretty history-of-western-philosophy heavy but you can skip around if that's not interesting to you. It came out in the late 80's and was really groundbreaking in arguing that all feminist theory needs to have an inter-sectional lens at its core, meaning that there is no gender without race or no race without class, no sexual identity without ethnicity etc etc. As a result, feminism that tries to isolate gender and universalize along those lines is not really useful because no woman exists outside of society...so when women are talked about in general terms, "white women" are being referred to--following this line of thinking-- "middle class" women and "straight women" and "abled bodied women" become the norm and everyone else is an exception to the norm, "the other" (which, paradoxically, is what The Second Sex is trying to say about women in relation to men). Spelman traces the tendency to falsely represent reality in this way back to the beginning of western philosophy and her analysis of The Second Sex explains why de Beauvoir, who was one of the most highly esteemed thinkers in the world at the time, was not able to wholly escape the philosophical tradition she was trying to question.

I was also reading feminist theory essays in a few different anthologies and came across Cherie Moraga's classic piece From a Long Line of Vendidas: Chicanas and Feminism,...it deals with a lot of issues of race/gender/sexuality and class...it takes the authors' specific experience of growing up queer and Chicana and situates it within a larger historical/social framework --she then uses that understanding to critique white, middle class hetero feminist theory of the time period--as well as the white, middle class lesbian culture/radical feminism of that era, arguing that bias and assumptions need to be examined in order for the movement to be inclusive. C. Moraga is pretty famous for being one of the women of color/queer feminists whose writing actually changed things in the early 80's. She co-edited This Bridge Called My Back: Writings By Radical Women of Color with Gloria Anzaldua. Her writing is complex, the opposite of dry, poetic, personalized...vivid. She uses her skills to take apart the world and present a fresh, inspired vision. It's cool reading it now, knowing how much of an impact her words had on feminism.

Other than this I've been reading a lot of gluten-free cookbooks and stuff about mortgages and the housing crisis. Maybe I'll post about that later, but maybe it's sort of boring...well it bores me since I don't know how to bake and try not to worry about money/the future. One thing that did occur to me in my research is that I don't understand why the "for dummies" books are so popular. Using the "for dummies" approach makes sense--breaking down a subject matter into an easily understandable, digestible format--but the writing style in all the books is pretty terrible...lots of stupid humor and a weak author personality, that is supposed to make it more conversational and "fun" or less intimidating? I've always liked the "An Introduction To" series or "For Beginners" or anything with comics/illustrations...but "for dummies" kind of gets on my nerves, although I do find them useful. I wish everything was just a comic book instead of a "for dummies" book.

Maybe I'll have more to say about Keef later, but Liz Phair did a pretty good job, though she fails to examine his sexism at all. He calls women "bitches" or "baby" or "dear" or "honey" in every other sentence. If you heard his recent appearance on NPR's Fresh Air, then you probably noticed he had some cringe-inducing moments with Terry Gross. It's like he's your weird uncle or grandad and you don't want him to embarrass you, but then he keeps doing it and your like, oh I get it, he really IS a big sexist asshole...duh! But then he gets around to talking about guitar playing and it's so awesome...way better than "guitar playing for dummies"!!!

BISAR is back

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

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 work of self-publishers.

I do hope this is okay -

Usually people contact you ahead of time, you know to get your permission and stuff! This put me off a little, but I thanked her for writing and asked for a free copy. People always say "I didn't know how to get ahold of you" when they fail to ask permission for something, but really all you have to do is turn on a computer and type in my name and you can find me in about two seconds so I have a hard time believing that.

Anyhow, reading through the section on grrl zines, I immediately noticed a few blatant factual errors and thought the contextual framing was bizarrely off. Again, it seems like if the author (or editors or publisher) had just bothered to use the internet, they would have been able to clear a lot of this up. Example: Bruce Pavitt had something to do with organizing The International Pop Underground Festival? And of course Calvin Johnson is named too. But actually it was Candice Pederson from K Records who organized IPU. You can ask Calvin himself! Or anyone else who lived in Olympia or went to the convention. It made me not want to go back and read the writing on early fanzines. But I will.

I think there should be a way for people to contest "false information" in published works. Because once it's in a book, it's a "fact". People will use this book as a source for further writing on the subject matter. Maggie had an idea for a website called Interview Regrets dot com, where bands can go in and clarify what they actually really said when they are misquoted, or even what they meant to say. Maybe we need something like that for history books too. Because once something is in print, it becomes an authority.

Fanzines is mostly full of primary documents-scans of fanzine covers and pages. So it seems like the author might have had a lot of time to research and fact check, since there's not too much original text in the book. It has a nice paper-back cover, but it's kind of flimsy and doesn't ship well--mine arrived with a severely dented corner so I guess I won't be selling it on eBay. The printing is a little color xerox-y in tone, but it kind of works for the subject matter. I will put it on the shelf to be reconsidered at a later date. Hopefully by then I won't have forgotten what actually happened and read it and think that Sub Pop had something to do with IPU!

Girl Power by Marisa Metzler

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 and the subsequent mainstream appropriation of it covering everything from Bikini Kill to Taylor Swift. It was interesting, but at the same time it kind of felt like review to me, like the book is more for casual music listeners than for feminist punks. She also included a lot about her own feelings toward all these things, which tended to be feelings I didn't relate to. I liked how she showed the connections between the watered down corporate versions of underground things, like Alanis Morisette to riot grrl and Lilith Fair to Michigan Womyns Fest. She fucking GUSHES over the Spice Girls like crazy, basically saying that the conversion of girl power from an idea to a brand actually did empower young girls, her attempts at showing that their message of girl power translated to actual girls as the importance of friendship and being yourself above all things rather than buying stuff to show your girl power seemed kind of whatever and anecdotal. Not gonna lie, in between reading my moms old copies of MS. magazine and playing bass along to Helium records I totally did stay up all night with my friends choreographing dance moves to the first Spice Girls album, but really - reading MS. led to me going to the library to find books on feminist theory, grrl punk music led to me playing music, and the Spice Girls led me to buying lollipops emblazoned with their image at the 7-eleven. I realize that's my own anecdotal evidence. Also, her talk of Taylor Swift being a positive female role model in music made me balk. I mean, really? She puts Miley Cyrus and Taylor into the same basket- while I find Miley annoying for the most part she is accessible to tweens and spends her time with that crowd singing songs about becoming president and what we see of her "personal" life tends to consist of her goofing off with her friends, which overall is pretty cool - but Taylor Swift? All we hear about her is how innocent she is and who broke her heart this week and songs about falling in love with prince charming. And fuck that. Overall it was an ok book, but I really hate playing the "watered down feminism is better than nothing, right?" game.

In The Beginning There Was Rhythm!

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 decided to wait. I'm glad I did. Jo is a really, really, really good writer. She's one of the smartest and more captivating writers-who-wrote-zines-in-the-90's for sure--definitely in my top five favorites of that era of feminist fanzine writers. If you ever get a chance to read her zines you totally should do that: Snarla, Artaud-Mania or My Need To Speak on the Subject of Jackson Pollock are the ones I remember, but she may have written more. I'm imagining you finding her work in a zine library or in a musty archive or perhaps in PDF format or maybe will get a shitty xerox sold on eBay for too much $. Please sit there and read everything she has written, you will be grateful that you did and your life will be altered and enriched and you will want to make art or culture or just plain want to make something happen.

Johanna's review of Sara's book is pretty favorable, but there is a hint of criticism lurking underneath the surface. That is the part I would have liked to have read more of, but I understand she is writing the review for Book Forum. If I was reviewing this book in a pretty mainstream publication with a wide-audience I would give it a good review too. I am giving it a good review now. I liked the book. When I was done reading it I wrote to Sara Marcus and said something like "Dear Sara Marcus, Thank You For Writing This Book. I Can't Imagine How Much Work It Took. Wow! You Really Did It! Congratulations!" and mentioned that there were some things I remembered a little differently…other things I didn't know about….but really the emotion I felt when I was done reading the book was appreciation and relief and while I was reading I was totally consumed by it, not noticing that any time was passing at all. So yeah, I like the book, some things I liked about it more than others. You should read it and make up your own mind though and post your review so that there are multiple feminist voices discussing this representation.

Whenever one of these books comes out, I get a little nervous about how I will be represented. I felt a little odd about that in this book, but I tried not to let my self-image issues get in the way of my perception of the work as a whole. My own relationship to riot grrl is complex. Riot Grrl would not have happened without Bikini Kill for example, but I identified as a riot grrl for only a short time, when it had two "R"'s instead of 3 maybe. Who added the third "R"? This is a real question?! Riot GrrL/GrrrL started in Washington DC in June 1991. But it really started the year before that in Olympia, WA. Girls To The Front explains that history really well I thought. I moved back to Olympia (from DC) at the end of 1992 and the third "R" had been firmly established. It was at this time that I finished writing Jigsaw #5, which documents a pretty hard year, Fall 1991-Fall 1992. By the way if you are 23 years old and you think you should write a fanzine about everything in your brain you might regret it later because it turns out that fanzines are not ephemeral art after all, they actually last forever! I guess if you are that age now (or way younger even) then you have no illusions about anything being temporary because you grew up with the internet and you don't care about privacy. Well, I made 10 copies of Jigsaw #5. Yes, 10 copies. I am serious. It's about 92 pages long. I couldn't afford to print them. I sent them to 10 people. A few years later I printed 25 more copies. At the end of the 20th century I published Jigsaw #7 and printed about 20 more copies of Jigsaw #5 to send to friends and that was it. So even though that fanzine seems like it may have been written for a lot of people to read, I tried to keep it a secret.

There are a lot of reasons for that deliberate decision, but I think the best explanation is that the overnight success of Nirvana changed everything. I had been going to shows in Olympia since 1983, so when Riot Grrl (with one R) was formulating- pre-Nirvana success story-we were still thinking in that 80's mindset. The 90's hadn't happened yet. We were living in an underground culture that was being turned into a commodity and sold back to us, which was really disorienting. It is impossible to explain this, because it was so different, but if you use your imagination maybe you might understand a tiny bit. So when everything changed, it felt natural to take a step back. It was confusing. I was confused. Bikini Kill was confused and suddenly "riot grrRl" had a media created-definition and that was not the sound of the revolution because the media was sexist and all about selling shit and we wanted to destroy society. (Later it became obvious that the media had a positive impact as well as a negative one, but that was not clear at the time.)

Jigsaw #5 basically kind of says "fuck you" and "get away from me" and "we don't need you" and "we go with the kids yeah yeah yeah yeah" over and over and over again, in an attempt to navigate the distance between the 80's underground idea and the early 90's pop culture crap that was for sale at the mall. I was trying to say, "hey let's not all become capitalists, let's try to make something revolutionary happen." But I was also freaking out and fluorescent lights were shining on us and we were naked and lots of flashbulbs were going off and people were being exploited and no one had any money. Ok, well some bands on major labels did, but nobody in a "riot grrrl" band was getting paid, but a lot of money was being made off of our image. It's fine to make shit for free, but to make shit without a profit motive and to see something you helped create being used to make money for corporations without your permission totally sucks. So Jigsaw #5 uses terms like "squares" a lot, to try to set up the idea that if you are against capitalism, you are not interested in "the square world", you want to create an alternative, where making money and being successful in those terms is not the point of art or music or whatever it is you do.

I feel like I need to explain this, because Sara Marcus quotes Jigsaw #5 in her book. In fact, she kind of uses a quote from me in her book in a pivotal way in the story arc. I wrote a long-winded Gertrude Stein-meets-Jack Kerouac inspired rambling girl of an essay that tries to address this 80's underground mindset collision with the still emergent 90's pop culture reality where I say that I do not identify as a riot grrrl anymore and say some kind of insulting sounding stuff about "well intentioned hopelessly enthusiastic isolated young girls who still feel that label is meaningful to them". Looking back on this now, it sounds really harsh! But I am me and I can remember writing it and I know what I meant at the time. I was ready to give it up and start something new! I wanted to move things forward. I thought that it had become meaningless and that we needed to start the next era. It had seemed miraculously easy to make riot grrl happen, so why couldn't we just re-invent punk rock feminism again and again and again? In fact, isn't that what we are still doing over and over and over again even now in the year two thousand and ten?!!! We are still making things happen, creating independent culture, self-representing, making work, participating in community life, sharing ideas, listening to each other, disagreeing, discussing, making mistakes, learning and living our lives with our eyes and ears and mouths and hearts open. Right?

History is tricky. For instance now everyone calls that whole time period of punk feminism "riot grrl" and it has a much broader definition than it did back then. There is a market for "riot grrl" history, so we have to be suspicious of that economic factor but we shouldn't let this stop us from documenting our own scenes. Nostalgia is the enemy. Just look at what happened to the baby boomers. 60's radicalism was actually radical, but you have to unearth that radical history, it will not be handed to you. Read Marissa Magic for more on this theme.

Bringing up the question: Is punk rock feminism dead? No. Is "riot grrrl" dead? Well I will not make that claim now because in retrospect, it was certainly not dead in 1993, it had relevancy to all kinds of girls then, even if I no longer felt it was a useful term, and I think the same is probably true today. In fact I know it is true, because I get letters (ok emails) from girls all over the world all the time who tell me they are riot grrrls and love Bikini Kill and that they believe in "The Revolution, GRRL STYLE NOW!" By the way, I still think that the emphasis needs to be on "now" and "revolution" rather than on "grrl" or "style", but if you disagree, please let me know why! But if you are a Riot Grrl then own it! Don't get all caught up in early 90's retro crap. Start a fucking riot!!!!

Riot Grrl belongs to whoever needs it and believes it has the power to give their lives meaning and change things. That is the reason for all of this. Change the world. Don't accept things "the way they are now". Create your own meanings. Make your own definitions. Use culture as a tool. Just know you will have to be quick and constantly on your toes and maybe it's harder than ever to create something ephemeral, to live in the moment, but maybe it's even more than necessary now. The now of now.

If you are interested in starting a young feminist movement rooted in your generation, my advice to you is not to let anyone stop you. People will laugh at you. Ignore the sound of their voices and listen to your own. Scream if you have to, even if you think that no one can hear you. If you are actually threatening the status quo you will not have the approval of the status quo. Call it whatever you want, the point is to fuck shit up. This is true for feminists of all ages and eras by the way.

And never forget what Ari Up taught us: silence is a rhythm too.

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

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 me back to Simone de Beauvoir...I went back over The Second Sex but didn't read it straight through, then I re-visted her memoirs...I read the first volume, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter when I was 18 or 19 and The Prime of Life when I was in my mid-20's...I decided it was time to read Force of Circumstance and found that it has been split into two volumes. After The War covers the period 1944-1952 and Hard Times covers 1952-1962. It was really fun and easy to just pick up one of the books open it up and read for an hour or two, but it was sort of dull and laborious when I tried to start from the beginning. I figure I will get through them both eventually. I really enjoyed Toril Moi's introductions, which explains some of the themes and sets them in a broad historical context...Then I got drawn in to A Dangerous Liasion: A Revalatory New Biography of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre by Carole Seymour-Jones for about two days before deciding it was kind of crappy and unnecessarily reductionist and sensational...After that I found a copy of A Very Easy Death by Simone De Beauvoir. A friend died of cancer this summer and I found this book to be a really honest and existential take on dying and death. She wrote it about her mother and it documents the last few weeks of her life. Knowing that death was imminent, I put off reading the very end of the book. I think I will go back to it in a few weeks. Simone de Beauvoir is a favorite writer and thinker of mine. It is really nice to have someone like this to turn to when life becomes overwhelming. I always go back to her, like an old friend and teacher. She was courageous and brilliant and determined to explore all aspects of life as she saw it through her writing and ideas.

For about four weeks I was reading The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron, which is a sort of new age self-help Oprah book club type book about "creative unblocking". Most people seem to have heard of this book. A writing teacher of mine used some of her tools in a class I took a few years ago. I don't really have problems being creative, but I do get into long periods of time when I stop writing or stop playing music because I get really overwhelmed and stressed out. Basically I've been trying to work on self-discipline and setting up a routine so that I'm always writing and playing music. So I was using this book to help me do that...until I got really overwhelmed and stressed out and quit doing the exercises, Ha! What's interesting about this book is that has really concrete, practical tools that can help you be more focused and disciplined creatively. It's broken down into 12 weeks, where you are supposed to do a chapter per week. I don't really believe in a lot of her ideas--she uses an AA approach of surrendering to "the higher power", explaining that creativity IS the higher power and as an artist all you need to do is tap into it and be open. Well, ok whatever! Like with AA (as I understand it?) I don't need to believe in god in order to get a lot of practical things out of this book as a tool, but maybe if I was a believer I wouldn't have quit when summer started to kick my ass...anyhow I am currently about to finish Julia Cameron's biography, Floor Sample: A Creative Memoir, which tells her own story of "creative unblocking" and is turning out to be one of the kookiest autobiographies I've read since Dave Davies' Kink. Whatever my reservations, her regimen has been useful to me as a writer, both in that class I took and in my creative work, so I'm gonna try to get back on that. I also like that she believes that being creative is a natural state that all humans can tap into. I agree with that, which helps me suspend my disbelief when she gets a little too spiritual for my atheist brain.

Then I read Role Models by John Waters followed by Lips Unsealed by Belinda Carlisle , which I got for my birthday. I also got a copy of Suzuki Beane by Sandra Scoppetone for my birthday from my dad and re-read it for the first time since I was a little kid and used to read it every day! I also read Girls To the Front: The True Story of The Riot Grrrl Revolution by Sara Marcus, Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin, which I had never read before, and A Friend of The Family by Laura Grodstein. I have sort of half-written reviews of all of those happening in my head right now and will probably finish at least a few so I will leave it at that for now...

Oh, in the past few weeks I've been reading Shelia Rowbotham, who wrote Women's Consciousness, Man's World a Women's Liberation classic text that I read in high school. I re-read the first half of that and then realized she became a historian and have been looking up some of her other work. I also finally got a copy of Nimo's War, Emma's War: Making Feminist Sense of the Iraq War by Cynthia Enloe and read the first chapter. Today I read the first few essays in The Essental Nawal El Saadawi: A Reader, which is a recent release from Zed Books "Essential Feminism" series...other than that I've been reading a little Middle Eastern history, specifically focusing on Iran, but I don't have much to say about that yet.

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

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 books that lie next my bed are good and I would like to finish them some day. The good ones are Hopscotch by Julio Cortazar, Promise of a Dream: remembering the sixties by Sheila Rowbotham, The England's Dreaming Tapes by Jon Savage, The Crying of Lot '49 by Thomas Pynchon and Engels: A Revolutionary Life by John Green. The bad one is Lipstick Traces by Greil Marcus, which Stewart Home deservedly obliterates in a fantastic manner in Cranked Up Really High. Nor is it some sort of neo-romantic explanation where the book doesn't click with who I am. The only thing I can fathom is that its somehow symptomatic of my summer which has consisted of the previously structured activity of working and teaching being replaced by working two days a week and spending the rest of my time working on my thesis. For some reason this type of activity makes me listless while sapping my attention span.

However, I am now close to finishing a book: The Slave Ship: a Human History, which I spotted looking for Sunday reading at the library, forever proving I'm an odd duck with unconventional interests.

The book, by Marcus Rediker, has a structure and approach that make me think of Evergreen. This is because Rediker, a historian at Pittsburgh, gives a social history from the bottom up that incorporates the different classes and types of people on slave ships, their coercive relations and the technology that ensured these relations. As can be imagined it is work, that like Mike Davis' books, is numbing in the proliferation of death, dehumanization and brutality. But it is also humanizing in giving names and stories to the previously anonymous Africans coerced into slavery, as well as in providing an explanation of how sailors were economically coerced into working on slave ships where they served as de-facto prison guards. Although such things are meant to be behind us, as Rediker says this chilling and compelling portrait of the wooden factory of slave ships also serves as an essential aspect of the prehistory of capitalism, sharing many parallels with the factories and prisons of today. I look forward to reading his The Many Headed Hydra: sailors, slaves, commoners, and the hidden history of the Revolutionary Atlantic.

A Visit from the Goon Squad

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 moment in time. The characters are (surprise!) eventually all interconnected, but, for the most part, they make only cameos in each other’s stories. Reviews I’ve read have praised Egan for the innovation and riskiness of her form, but I found the book too diffuse, too unguided, and thus gimmicky rather than genuinely surprising. Nothing—no emotion, no sense of character—accumulates from one chapter to the next, and thus we’re left with a whole that’s less than the sum of its parts.

By far the strongest chapters are those where Egan is writing about teenagers. There’s an energy to her writing about those SF punkers whose band, The Flaming Dildos, practices in the drummer’s garage in the Sunset; to the perfectly awkward poles of adolescence brother and sister Rolph and Charlie find themselves on during an African safari with their record-producer father; to the beautifully-wrought portrait of a post-suicide-attempt maybe-gay former-football-player-NYU-student taking ecstasy and walking the streets of the Lower East Side all night. That energy allows for a multi-dimensionality of character which is missing from the portrait of the washed-up record producer, the failed publicist, the depressed housewife. Is “energy” too vague a term? Is that just my prejudice toward punk rock and teenagers showing through? Maybe, but it seems to me that that kind of unevenness is a major risk you run when you switch protagonists so frequently, if you don’t have some kind of strong thread tying it all together.

The one chapter in the book that I did find both risky and moving is one that comes near the end. It’s a PowerPoint presentation made by a teenage girl about her family—particularly, her brother, and her brother’s relationship to her father. Her brother is obsessed with charting the “Great Rock and Roll Pauses”—the moments in songs when nothing is happening, when you’re waiting for something to happen. Through pie charts, graphs, and wrenchingly simple sentences, Egan utilizes the Microsoft Office Suite for more emotion than I knew was possible. This is one case in the book where the concept—the form—meets its content as if the two were destined, rather than forced, to be together.

My Name is Legion

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 Negri contrast the liberating multiplicity of identity that is central to My Name is Legion.

"[...] in a future world where the vital statistics of Earth's inhabitants are maintained on a central computer, Zelazny's hero manages to gain access to his files and change his identity repeatedly, thereby escaping control. Being legion for him functions as an exodus from the oppression of identity." (Hardt and Negri p 383)

The main character - we never learn his name - had been a programmer working at the government agency that created the data tracking system.

"Ever go looking for a job and get an intelligenct test or an aptitude test or a personality inventory for your pains? Sure. Everybody has by now, and they're all on file in Central. You get used to taking them after a time." (Zelazny p 38)

Before the system goes live he destroys his own data and drops out, hacking into the system and assigning himself other people's identities as necessary.

What does he do with this freedom? He hooks up with a shadowy secret agent person and carries out dubious undercover missions for money. Wait - that's the meaning of freedom?

Having someone else's identity means that he gains power by acting outside of what others expect of him. He surprises some would-be saboteurs by not conforming to what they think they know about his "Personality Profile."

I was not wild about the writing and the hardboiled main character seemed to have no real motivation. But it was interesting to compare how the vision here of data tracking is rooted in the idea of centralized control. But today we live in a world where we exist in many databases. A ton of data on each of us is out there, and while it's incomplete in each it's also diffuse. There are driving records, health records, what Google knows about us (Google owns Blogger, YouTube and DoubleClick by the way), what Facebook knows about us, browser fingerprinting by individual sites, etc. The massive system is in place because the different datasets can be correlated and combined, but it's not entirely centralized. The stories in My Name is Legion respond to a fear of centralized authoritarian control, but we're already in an age where you can't wipe out your data trails or just hack into one place and update your identity.

The title - My Name is Legion - is a reference to a passage in the new testament where Jesus meets a man possessed by many demons. It is used to references the uncanny state of being both one and many at the same time.

Whereas Zelazny's protagonist is an individual who eludes control by appropriating different identities, cultural critic Brian Holmes theorizes "collective phantoms" the practice of multiple individuals eluding control by appropriating a common identity. For instance the pseudonym
"Luther Blissett" was taken up by many activists. In the words of (a) Luther Blissett, "the multiple name is a shield against the established power's attempt to identify and individualize the enemy." (from Mind Invaders qtd. in Holmes)

Facebook's privacy policies have people talking about leaving the site, or continuing to use the site but overloading their accounts with junk information. Collective, shared accounts might also allow people to use and misuse the site at the same time.

Here's a link to the Brian Holmes essay, "Unleashing the Collective Phantoms: Flexible Personality, Networked Resistance" (I feel like I've read a longer, more developed version elsewhere with more examples, but I can't find it online. Maybe it's in this book.)

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

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

In 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 making ends meet, largely because of the cost of housing. Without money for first, last and a security deposit, she ends up, like many low-wage workers, living week to week in motels. Living without access to kitchen or refrigerator also means more reliance on higher-cost pre-prepared food. Notably, she is only trying to support herself whereas some of her co-workers have kids or extended family that they are responsible for and she also does not have any significant health issues. She recounts the huge physical and mental effort of the jobs and the strain and stress of working and living without access to resources.

Particularly interesting is the psychological environment she describes. It starts with the application process as several times she is asked to take personality tests that ask questions about one's disposition toward conformity, respect for authority and identification with the employer over fellow employees. And after passing a drug test she's told to show up for work but the wage hasn't been discussed yet. Then there's the power of approval or disapproval that supervisors hold over the employees.

The most interesting thing for me was the description of her attitude when working as a waitress serving a full room of customers. She realizes that she identifies with the "needs" of the patrons over her own needs. She's not just trying to do the job she's hired to do , but she feels the customers' needs for their ice water, their toast, their entrees, etc. So despite the impossibility of the situation, the unfairness of being expected to serve the whole room, the low pay, etc. she pushes herself and pushes herself.

All too human monsters.

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 Schäfer, scumbag. Reading the description in the BBC article of the cult that Schäfer started in 1961, Colonia Dignidad, a little faux Bavarian village in the Andes visited by Josef Mengele and that served as a Pinochet torture camp...I started to think that it sounded familiar and started looking back through the Bolaño book that is a compendium of supposedly fictitious authors who wrote in the Americas all sharing fascist ideologies of various flavors. then I found it! One of these fictitious writers, the experimental poet named Willy Schürholz, came from a village called Colonia Renacer (colony of rebirth) that sounded just like the very real Colonia Dignidad. In reading Bolaño it quickly becomes apparent that his "fiction" is a thin label applied to allow him to speak openly about very real history or even events that were current up until when he died in 2003. Like Santa Teresa, Bolaño's stand in for the Ciudad Jaurez femicide in his book 2666. So it made sense that his fictitious little cult in Chile might be based on a real place. So then are we to think that the entire list of nazi writers are based on real writers or partially?...as they interact with Gary Snyder and Alan Ginsberg alongside characters from Bolaños own literary universe like Eugenio Entrescu, the Romanian general, lover of Daniela de Montechristo in this book and Baroness Von Zumpe in 2666...in the back of Nazi Literature in the Americas there is a section called Epilogue For Monsters which is a reference of secondary figures, publishers and a bibliography of this pantheon of American Nazi authors. Since of course fiction is based on reality, what does it serve to relate this fictional catalog so close to reality...does it strengthen the absurdity of the fascist ideologies to know that their adherents are all too real? Does it get anymore absurd than the famous figures of fascism, the Mussolinis, Hitlers, Francos, David Dukes? Well maybe it doesn't get more absurd not but it does get more commonplace...from the spoiled Argentine, Columbian and Bolivian fascist rich kid book worms to the porteño nazi soccer hooligans, Topeka, Kansas science fiction writers, Haitian plagiarists, Aryan Family poets from California and Bolaño himself comes into the novel to observe a Chilean Pinochet skywriter in exile...the descriptions of these writers that are nazis but artists none the less are so compactly poetically complete that though they are monsters, they are monsters that we can begin to understand. That can be fit into a real framework rather than remain veiled in mythically gigantic horrible shadows...sometimes their framework makes them laughable other times exalted but fleshed out and somehow less mythical and more human. Maybe Bolaño's triumph here is making monsters human without discounting that they are human monsters...ones that can be learned from and if not changed or killed, then at least recognized in the people all around us.

King Kong Theory By Virginie Despentes

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. Virginie dissects pornography, sexuality, hetero-conditioning, rape...there is a whole lot covered in this little book. She writes about prostitution and how it can liberate/empower women, argues that prostitution threatens upper and middle class women and their financially dependent domestic partnerships and exposes how theses same classy women are making prostitution remain illegal and dangerous (which oppresses sex workers much more then prostitution itself).

Virginie Despentes shares her criticism of the over glorification of motherhood, describes how mothers can act like the ultimate police state, and exposes the trap of motherhood in which women are doomed to feel like failures due to impossible expectations and the dire state of society. She does this all while respecting women who chose motherhood.

One idea of Virgine's that won't stop knocking around in my head is her hypothesis that women who show cleavage/wear make up/uncomfortable shoes/act submissive/seductive (prostitutes excluded) are actually apologizing to men because they feel guilty that men lost (or more are threatened to lose) their macho unearned authority. still processing that idea, but I find it super interesting. King Kong Theory also sympathies for men up against redonkulous masculine ideals and Virginie includes her thoughts on how/why all that is problematic.

Despentes is best known for her rape revenge novel, Bosie-Moi. She also co-directed a film adaptation of her novel with the film's lead actress Coralie Trinh Thi, released in 2000.

killer read, check it out...

The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf.

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 to those ideas in my face. It pushed me to reevaluate my own beauty regimes, thinking about them in terms of what they take up financially and time-wise, and question all of them and why I participated in them. Was it all really for me or was it for everyone else?(and then I stopped shaving). One of the most shocking parts to me was the part about dieting where it basically lists off calorie counts for a bunch of popular diets and then compares then to the calorie intake of that of a starving person in a third world country - and they're pretty much all the same numbers.

The book is broken up into sections: work, culture, religion, sex, hunger and violence. Work delves into multiple court cases wherein women have been fired/harassed/basically whatever other bullshit you can think of for being too pretty, too ugly, too scantily clad, too modestly clad, etc. Basically highlighting that women have been given little to no options when comes to how to "dress for success". Culture expands on this idea of damned if you do and damned if you don't along with introducing the idea of Beauty Porn. Religion and sex of course goes further into the idea of everyone but women controlling women's bodies. Hunger mainly deals with diet culture and violence mainly with plastic surgery.

In a lot of ways this book to me was reminiscent of Backlash by Susan Faludi. It's kind of a thorough look at what the mass media tells us, what that means, what is the truth, and how everything looks if you try stepping back and looking at things logically. Pretty fucked up.

This is a little off topic but makes sense, I was talking with my friend about why in general, drag queens made more sense to us then drag kings. Drag in a lot of ways is playing up the absurdities of gender, and the way society wants women to portray themselves is not only completely absurd but totally alien, therefore it's easier to push these already absurd beauty regimes even further. A lot of this book was basically peeling apart different aspects of what female beauty is supposed to be in order to reveal how bizarre and a lot of times destructive it is.

So, though it was real depressing and kind of dated, it's had a pretty big impact on how I think about the idea of beauty and what it means.

Stoner and Buchers Crossing

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 then the secondary characters—-especially the female ones-- who Williams for the most part treats as inherently alienated without the prospect of achieving any ideals or happiness.







Stoner is primarily a book about alienation. It tells the life of a low grade Literature professor in a small liberal arts college in Missouri in the first half of the twentieth century. We see how the main character, John Stoner, holds onto his love of learning through the travails of a life that sees him alienated from his family, his wife, his daughter and eventually his job.
Although, some may read Stoner as championing the humanist ideal of learning, Williams actually complicates this by treating Stoner’s attitude toward literature, and the institution of university, as a refuge from the alienating forces of the ‘real’ world. A theme which is all too dated in our time with the privatization, rationalization and factoryialization of the university. (Just the fact that Stoner get tenure on the basis of publishing one book is anachronistic enough).
While I suspect this story will have little appeal to the readers of the Bumpidee reader, I highly recommend it. Williams fashions a riveting and affecting tale while achieving a perfect union of style, content and structure throughout with taught, well-crafted sentences and flawless transitions from one chapter to the next.




Butchers Crossing, on the other hand, is more ambitious in scope, structure and style. Williams uses the western genre to convey the themes of the quashing of youthful idealism, the elective affinity between the romantic idealization of nature and the domination of nature and the precarious and ruinous affect capitalism has upon human life.
Williams tells the story of a naïve Harvard student, who following his interpretation of Emerson goes west to live a life of self-reliance. Williams work incisively depicts how this ideal functioned in the context of manifest destiny and American capitalist imperialist expansion. To live his Emersonian ideal the youth funds a buffalo hunting party. Without ruining the plot the party slaughter an obscene and unnecessary amount of buffalo, fall prey to the cruelty of nature and get fucked over by the precariousness of the market. While many would end such a disillusioning narrative as one of realization—or the even more trite coming of age story—Williams leaves his characters traumatized, yet somehow still determined to carry on. A predicament, that sadly persists, which is why I recommend this excellent and illuminating work.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

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 Road is a story of the latter kind. A latter day parable. And as such is familiar as it plucks the heart strings of all we hoped for or had as children. The joys of family life. It tells us if we keep trying we will enter back into the fold of the family but it will be bitter sweet to lose those we love. Bitter and sweet. But that the family and society must continue. Otherwise we will just blink out of sight like the million year old light of a million years dead star. And that would be...bad. The haunting image of the shopping cart from The Road lingered with me today in the grocery store. A George Romero-esque anti-consumerist shorthand or just a concise symbol of modern society? Either way, the shopping cart was a cool choice Cormac. (I thought I could get through the whole post without commas but I couldn't...let alone a whole book like McCarthy does!)