Bookshelf Newness: White Oleander, Dusty, Fire This Time, Herland, Black Eyed Susans

"I don't need to buy any new books" --- said no one EVER. 

Last month was my birthday (*throws confetti*) and all I wanted was a messy cheeseburger, a margarita, and to spend the day among dusty bookshelves. Wish was granted...well, a few weeks later, cause that's what happens when you get your adult on --- things just don't work out when you want it. But better late than never, right? So these are the first books I picked up as a 32 year old...

White Oleander, by Janet Fitch

This is one of those books that has been persistent in making itself known to me. It's a book I often come across when browsing bookshelves in stores and libraries. A book that is often recommended to me whenever I finish a novel akin to it. A book that was turned into a movie that comes to me whenever I browse movie titles online. After all these years of it nudging at me, I have relented and picked up Janet Fitch's debut novel in a nice paperback with an Oprah Book Club sticker on it (see even Oprah wants me to read it...) All I know about this book is that it's a story about a young girl who gets ensnared in the foster system after her mother is sent to prison for committing murder, and since I'm all about character studies that explore the complex intimacy of mother-daughter relationships, I see why this book kept being relentless.

Dusty: An Intimate Portrait of a Music Legend, by Karen Bartlett

I love my music biographies, and love them even better when they are about women in the industry. Back when I was writing music reviews, I noticed the lack of in-depth analysis on female singers and songwriters, especially those outside the rock genre. It's why my previous blog (Audio Diva, for those who wanted to know) was reinvented to be more female-focused, as I attempted to really analyze and celebrate a lot of the women artists I adore. I'm quite the Dusty Springfield fan, after being exposed to her music by way of an Internet friend many moons ago, and really get annoyed when she's not mentioned among the great voices of the 20th Century. She was one of the few white singers who sang soul without gimmick as she churned out searing classics such as 1969 classic, Dusty In Memphis. I saw this book sticking out on a shelf, right when I walked into the store, so like White Oleander's persistence, it was fate. The reviews on it are spotty, and less than stellar, but it's about the only book on Dusty Springfield that is in print, available on American shores, and is updated, so I will definitely dig into it.

The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race, edited by Jesmyn Ward

When this book was first announced last year, it immediately went onto my to-reads list. I'm figuring this book is even more necessary now than when it was published considering the shitshow that is our government at current, but as long as America keeps entertaining racism, such topics will (unfortunately) never read as ancient news. Reading about rampant racism in America as a Black American is never what I call a "leisure read", but I'm up for the challenge, and to be enlightened as well as keep that fire lit for change.

Herland, by Charlotte Perkins-Gilman

Thought the classic that gave awareness and a voice to post-pardum depression, The Yellow Wallpaper was Charlotte Perkins-Gilman's only proto-feminist rodeo? Nope. She had this slim little number in her bag as well, and it's about an all-female society that is discovered by three male explorers, who freak out as they for the first time have to think about their position in a society where they are now considered inferior. Oh yeah, this is pure fantasy feminism, with a smattering of early science-fiction to make this book a curiosity for the 21st Century mind. Since it was written in 1915, I'm going to be forgiving of some of the politics and sociological faux pas that I know will leap out of this (wanna bet this society is an all-white female society?) because the concept as a whole sounds so damn fascinating, and sounds like something that could be turned into a Netflix series in 5, 4, 3....

Black-Eyed Susans and Midnight Birds: Stories By and About Black Women, edited by Mary Helen Washington

This is yet another book that leaped at me from the shelves (that happened a lot on this trip...), and couldn't resist having it in my little hot hands considering it's a collection of Black women writers and you know I'm ALL about that. Scanning the pages there are some writers who are unfamiliar to me (Jean Wheeler Smith, Frenchy Hodges), and there are familiar names (Gwendolyn Brooks, Toni Cade Bambara, Toni Morrison) with works here that I'm un-familiar with so it looks to be a good mix of rare gems to unearth. Only bummer is the portion focused on auntie Alice Walker feature selections from her short story collection, You Can't Keep A Good Woman Down, which I've already read. Still, it doesn't hurt to read them again, you know?

Breathe In, Breathe Out

"Feminism. I'm new to it. The word still sounds weird and wrong. Too white, too structured, too foreign: something I can't claim." 

Juliet Milagros Palante is a bit lost, but she's desiring to be found.

She's a 19-year-old queer Latina that feels out of pocket in her Bronx community and the world at large. She hasn't exactly come out to her family (or more so to herself), and she's unsure of where she stands in a relationship with a girl whom she met in a gender studies class. Juliet also constantly struggles with how feminism and queerness work, especially when these things weren't created to include her brown body and voice in mind. She consults the pages of a feminist tome called Raging Flower, and feels she has found her literary lifeline and she-ro in its author, a feminist icon by the name Harlowe Brisbane, as both have opened Juliet to questioning her view of life on a deeper level than she ever thought possible.

So moved by the book, she is compelled one day to write to Harlowe and express her feelings. Juliet is beside herself when Harlowe writes back and invites Juliet to make a trek to her homestead in Portland, Oregon, where she has a summer internship awaiting her. With little trepidation, Juliet accepts the invitation, and goes forth, hoping to seek and find herself.

There is much to celebrate within a book like Juliet Takes A Breath. Not only for the queer Latina protagonist with a compelling voice that trumpets not just fierceness but vulnerabilities as well, we're also privy to a melting pot of personalities, cultural pride, sex positivism, and motivational dialogue that gives you that warm and fuzzy fight the power feeling. It's radical as fuck. It's intersectional as fuck. It's proud as fuck. It's truly one of the few works of fiction I can think of that confronts how feminism isn't a default code word for "white women only", as author Gabby Rivera has crafted a world where many characters are exploring how their sexuality, ethnicity, and gender intersect, and do it all without compromise. Such grounding for a book is refreshing and bold to read, and should be championed more in fiction, especially young adult fiction.

As this is a book for young adults, I understand that this book was designed to be as a primer of sorts for those whom like Juliet are attempting to wade through the contradictory waters of feminism and find themselves within the movement. If I was in my teens reading this, I would've been enthralled, and savoring the range of topics, characters, and communities mentioned, getting a nice taste of what living that intersectional life can be like, and should be like. The message of evolving as an individual is strong here, and that is oh so important. Still, my thirty-something self felt that for the diversity dreamscape Rivera has crafted, that she didn't exactly provide her younger readers with something with a bit more sustenance.

Let The Long Walk Begin...

"They're animals, all right. But why are you so goddam sure that makes us human beings?"

Humans presented as the true monsters is what all the best horror stories entail. Stephen King, no doubt raised on a diet of Rod Serling, Shirley Jackson, and Ray Bradbury, learned such a notion from the best, and he too has explored with wit and depth how malevolent and miserable human beings can be, and are to each other.

King might not be as verbose or fragrant in his prose as his predecessors, but he knows how to push you, headfirst, into the pool of facing reality through a warped lens. So realistic are the worlds and the people he creates that deja vu sets in --- you have encountered such a surreal moment, you're acquainted with that abusive asshole, you've passed through that weird town or even lived in it for a time --- and that dahhling, is the horror in itself, how fiction begets truth.

This aspect is what I've always liked about King's works ever since my Mom (a King fangirl before it was in vogue to be so) allowed me to read and watch the film adaptations of 'Salem's Lot, Carrie, and The Shining as a kid. I was drawn to how a vampire could just move into a small community and separate the strong from the weak, how a meek high school girl's menstrual cycle emboldens her and sparks cataclysmic horror, how a family would just willingly stay at this strange isolated resort, and cave into their own mental madness. For all it's fictitious elements, it all still felt real. What King laid out had definitions, but various shadings, and you can bet even my precious R.L. Stine and Christopher Pike paperbacks began to lose their luster due the types of complexities King coaxed out of his works.

I'll be honest: I haven’t read a lot of King's works, post-1990s that is. I got turned off after Dreamcatcher (farting aliens? Go home Uncle Stevie you are drunk...), and have been content with sticking with the classics. I know. I know. I might be missing out on some gems he wrote (11/22/63 has me intrigued), but I prefer my King old school, so I went old school with The Long Walk, one that he wrote under the Richard Bachman moniker, and was treated to one of his best nightmares set to paper.

The Bachman years dealt with King trying to distance himself from Stephen King: The Brand, and where he could rework and release unpublished material so it wouldn't rot in the depths of his desk. The Long Walk is said to be the first book King wrote, this back in the 1960s when he was in college, and such a fact lends to why this book doesn't feel quite as fleshed-out or rich in character and dialogue as his future works would, but some of the bare nakedness of this heightens the ominous intensity of the plot, as well as provide the reader to put themselves into the literal worn shoes of our doomed travelers, and oh boy, it's brutal.

Catwalking With The Muses

Walking With The Muses is a literal escapade into the intoxicating swirl of the 1970s fashion world, as told by a true BAP (Black American Princess).

The title is perfect as supermodel Pat Cleveland truly walks (or more so) struts and twirls side-by-side with her "muses" which are a colorful cavalry of creatives from the 1960s and 1970s. Halston, Karl Lagerfeld, Andy Warhol, Antonio Lopez, Stephen Burrows, Yves Saint Laurent, Diana Vreeland (and an extremely weird) Guy Bourdin are all ruminated on, as are legends and icons like Marian Anderson, Nina Simone, Salvador Dali, Diana Ross, and Liza Minelli. Also a peppering of paramours such as Muhammad Ali, Mick Jagger, and Warren Beatty (who's kinda an ass) are kissed, and lead to some juicy tells. And to round out the glittering world of Pat Cleveland, along for the ride are a who's who of top models of the time like Donna Jordan, Sterling St. James, Naomi Sims, Marisa Berenson, Grace Jones and Jerry Hall.

Oh yeah, this book is deliciously gossipy and drops names like cookie dough batter on a baking tray, with Pat being that personable and glamorous griot, delivering a vibrant oral history that is nothing short of fun.

As a fan of this era, and the 1970s fashion culture in general, I was enthralled reading about Pat's adventures in couture paradise. From spiritual awakenings during her flower child days, sojourns in Europe and Africa, pre-gentrified New York City in all of its 1970s era grit and artistic gusto, near-death experiences (Pat clearly has nine lives...), to even an UFO sighting (!), Pat pours an effervescent cocktail of stories and keeps the libations flowing. Still her grandest adventure is being the daughter of artist Ladybird Cleveland, and their relationship, while marred by the exit of her musician father and Pat being passed off to some less than supportive relatives for a short spell, is a beautiful meditation on the mother-daughter bond, and the intimacy that it so entails.

Come On Eileen

"I deplored silence. I deplored stillness. I hated almost everything. I was very unhappy and angry all the time. I tried to control myself, and that only made me more awkward, unhappier, and angrier. I was like Joan of Arc, or Hamlet, but born into the wrong life—the life of a nobody, a waif, invisible. There's no better way to say it: I was not myself back then. I was someone else. I was Eileen."

Unreliable and unlikable narrators usually fall into two categories: fascinatingly frustrating or frustratingly annoying.

With Eileen there is deception, a grey area. A character that is an exception to such rules. Author Ottessa Moshfegh has assembled her in a ominous lab a la Dr. Frankenstein. You'll either see her as a disfigured, pathetic misfit or want to raise a pitchfork to a complete monster --- or you may find yourself somewhere in that muddled middle.

The voice of Eileen that we're introduced to is less than pitiless, as its in the distant present. She's older, calmer, and seems more at peace with herself, as she reflects on the muddled mythology of a time when she claims to have "disappeared". That time is the early 1960s, somewhere near Boston in a town that she distinguishes simply as "X-ville". She is in her mid-20s, self-loathing, and miserable, wiling the days away occupying two separate prisons. One she works within --- a private boy's prison where she shuffles papers and swoons over a prison guard named Randy who doesn't even know she exists. The other she lives in --- a disheveled trash heap of a home playing warden to her drunk and disorderly father, a widowed ex-cop who exudes verbal and mental abuse towards her on the daily. Vying for a way out of her hell hole, Eileen receives it one day when the beautiful, red-haired siren Rebecca Saint John glides into the prison as its new education director, and the two of them intertwine and submerge into a seedy reality.

This reality is what is warped. On the outside Eileen is seen as a dowdy, apathetic spinster, but on the inside, a storm of deviant thoughts swirl within her ranging from the sexual to the violent to the disgusting (TMI on the what she does with her bodily fluids...). Her unhealthy thoughts on her body and with food swirl around her in a cloud of filth.

"I guess that is how those sick people get by. They look like nobodies, but behind closed doors they turn into monsters." 

Even in times of self-loathing, she also possesses a superiority, this especially when she gets around her loathsome father, and her co-workers at the prison, but strangely, never the young prisoners she's around, she in fact sympathizes with them even though some are child killers and have slit the throats of their parents. Though she denies it, Eileen wants to belong, to not be as invisible as she's made herself to be, but she still has a "I'll show them" fist wave in her hunched shuffle.

"I was naive and callous. I didn't care about the welfare of others. I only cared about getting what I wanted."

Choices

The harpoon moment during the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice occurred when California Senator Kamala Harris asked nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh if there were any laws, on the books, that give the government power to protect the male body. With this question she was met with a furrowed brow, some beads of sweat, and not a clear answer. She repeated the question, and Kavanaugh, assembling the few brain cells he possesses, replied thus: "I'm not thinking of any right now."

This exchange lets us know three things: 1) Harris is one bad mutha, and deserves to be a Senate majority leader, 2) Kavanaugh is an unqualified sexist assclown, and 3) it's 2018 and this is where we are. We are in a time where a senator has to pose a question like this, and that the question is met with pause, with a dumbfounded look, and with a muddled non-answer. If anything, this disqualified him for me, this even before all that would emerge about Kavanaugh in the coming weeks. It was a simple "yes or no" question, "no" being the answer, but it was his lack, his reluctance at saying this, pissed me off.

There are numerous things that make Kavanaugh unfit for the Supreme Court (and a lot of it goes beyond the scope of just his opinions on Roe v. Wade and women's bodies), but the strongest stench that permeates off of him is his utter disdain and disinterest of women, and the frenetic need to control said women. I don't care if he has a wife and two daughters, or that his staff is comprised of all-women. Hitler had a mother, and a girlfriend, and women who followed him throughout the Nazi regime. There is no such thing as a "good sexist".

Pushing aside a lot of the ugly that occurred during, and in the aftermath of a hearing where a woman had relay the most traumatic moment of her life to a prying audience of strangers, and an Angry White Man who conveniently made himself the victim made me return to a read that made one of the deepest impressions on me last year. So I write this on the eve of the assured confirmation (barf) for Kavanaugh, and wonder still: will we ever get to a point where women and their bodies are left the fuck alone?

Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights, by The Nation writer, Katha Pollitt didn't have to convince me of anything, even at the time of reading it. I have a fierce belief that women, from all walks of life, deserve choices and to rule their lives the way they see fit. I'm against patriarchal-driven governments and churches, and rooms filled with avaricious white men making decisions towards people and matters they know nothing about, and choose to know nothing about when it's all said and done. Pollitt didn’t need 272 pages to convince me that pro-choice is a balm to aid a bulk of our societal ills or that "abortion opponents" (her wording) have ill-informed, insincere thinking, and yet, she converted me, a 100xs over converted, confirmed, and made me stand stronger in my convictions that pro-choice is what I believe.

So why are others so feverishly against abortion? To quote Janet Jackson: "cause it's all about control" --- but control of what?

Pro takes on the heft of such a question and outlines how abortion opponents, and even some defenders, use their words as weapons to terrorize and hold women hostage within their own bodies, and how there are layers to how society as a whole punishes, controls, and shames women ---- particularly women of color, and women who live in a poorer class bracket. Though its a book preaching to the pro-choice choir, Pro is mostly written for the "muddled middle", those who sit on the fence about reproductive rights, or don't think two ways about it. Pollitt dispels a lot of doubt, and puts forth a lot of potent truth, as she gives clear and reasoned arguments to time-worn conspiracy theories and junk science, making sense of what "pro-life" is, what stokes people's fears about legal abortions, and how we should re-frame the concepts of sex, childbirth, and motherhood for the sake of our future.