Devil's In The Details

This is no dream, she thought, this is really happening...

Ira Levin isn't concerned about taking things at face value, about what's on the outside, on the surface. His forte is what's skittering, squirming underneath the mask of human nature. Rosemary's Baby is notorious for its Satanism motifs, it being the definitive tale of woman becoming impregnated by Satan himself, but between the lines the real horror isn't the devil --- no, that's to stir the curiosity --- the real horror is the shattering of seemingly docile domesticity. Where the quiet muffles screams. Where the ordinary reveals its odious odor. 

Levin is so good at this, masterful even. After reading The Stepford Wives and The Boys From Brazil, I became enamored over his knack for shattering the sense of so-called "normalcy". Nothing is "normal", there isn't such a word, a feeling, and I like that Levin is blunt about that as he wriggles a little subtext into the mix. Little warnings to not trust that a neat suburban neighborhood is tranquil, or that just because Hitler is dead that right-wing Nazism can't be resurrected in his Führer's image. "Horror" as genre isn't associated with Levin, and even the man himself didn't ascribe to being a practitioner of the genre, but I do think he taps into a realistic, naked horror that explores the enduring nature of evil within ordinary settings, the type that can't be considered terrifying at first glance --- well, that is depending on what one considers terrifying. 

I'm late to the devil baby party of Rosemary's Baby. A paperback has lounged about my house for years (and wouldn't you know it goes MIA when I want to read it most...), and the book isn't out of print, or difficult to find, just that I admit after partaking in super famous film adaptions first and hearing things such as "this movie is EXACTLY like the book" (see The Shawshank Redemption), that I tend to ignore the source material. I know. I suck. It pains me to even type that I have such a reflex, but Roman Polanski's 1968 film adaptation made such a deep impression on me over the years, to where reading the text felt...redundant.

For me, Rosemary's Baby as a film is ingenious and intriguing for its details. Those tiny, blink-and-you-might-miss-them details that are sprinkled throughout retain a delicious sense of unsettling ambiguity. Polanski is a terrible person (and the gross irony of him directing a film about a woman's rape isn't lost on me...), but he crafted a classic blueprint for domestic horror with this film (...and we will dare not speak of the dismal 1976 TV sequel, Look What Happened To Rosemary's Baby or the even more ill-advised 're-imagined' 2014 miniseries). It raised the bar on taking horror films from the b-movie mire into the mainstream and approaching them from a more psychological perspective where the details mattered. Details that would take on larger, more unnerving forms and meanings of uncertainty to where, by film's end, everything is not what it appears to be --- while being exactly what it appears to be.

I never watch this movie the same way as I did before. I'm always finding something new that I missed, some little quote spoken that takes on new meaning or those fine-tuned little visual details that spring up to change my perspective or question others motives. I know every twist and turn, and of course, the doomed outcome, but it still feels fresh with each viewing, and never am I not trying to warn Rosemary to get away from those meddling neighbors and that shifty-eyed husband of hers. I'm also never not chilled over the fact that a woman's pregnancy --- something that is supposed to be intimate and innocent --- is turned into something so perverse and terrorizing. 

Still, without Levin's wonderful text, his attention to every detail from the start, there wouldn't have been this brilliant film affair. Polanski studied Levin's text to the letter to where character ticks, whole dialogues, and even the food that is consumed is replicated on film. It's about as faithful as an adaptation as you'll get, a film that complements the book, extending the terror it has laid bare. The genius Levin flexes in text, (and I repeat) shows that that everything is not what it appears to be, but then sentence by sentence, detail by detail, everything is exactly what it appears to be --- and then the rug is yanked beneath our once stable conscious.

Reading Is Protest

Racism is comprised of countless facets. Facets of oppression, power, controlled infrastructure, restricted and limited opportunities and resources. Protesting against all its abhorrent angles is also dimensional. As we witness an unsettling, hideous history unfold in all of its cacophony of confusion and brutality, it's evident that the display of resistance and solidarity isn't a one-size fits all, and that accentuating all the positives becomes key in a time of crisis and division. 

Toni Morrison notes in her excellent essay "Peril" (from 2019's The Source of Self-Regard) that there are three human responses to the perception of chaos: naming, violence, and stillness. The latter is not to be confused with passivity, but the stillness in art, in the creation of. Being a writer, I'm aware of the power the pen and keystrokes posses, but the reading of such words is just as potent and proactive as taking to the streets to raise fists skyward. 

Reading --- of books, of newspapers, of websites, specifically --- allows us to respond with stillness. To sit, absorb, and apply words for tangible thought. No comment boxes, no click-bait headlines, just you and lines and lines of words, words that cultivate ideas, histories, and worlds. Flip pages, scroll, swipe left, and curiosity and knowledge are ignited. Reading is an constant ignition switch for knowledge and for change. Its why autocratic governments despise and dispel the practice of reading and spreading information, why the free press and free speech are often the first causes of contention as these practices derail their game plans for systematic oppression and controlled conformity. The ol' 'you speak what I say you should speak, you act as how I say you should act'. Once you find different ways to speak, its difficult to fall in a singular line.

It isn't lost on me how my ancestors, slaves, were barred from and were brutalized for reading, and acquiring an education. It was nothing short of a crime to even posses a book, much less write one. The methodical execution of racist laws, the instillation of fear of the written word was all to hinder generations of being educated and aware of their existence. The effort was to have them "not exist", to erase them as a culture, as a people, all to maintain one kind of supreme racial, social, and economic control. Placing books in the hands of slaves was a defiance to their captivity. Books signified freedom. Reading a book taught one how to learn and say words, and use them to free and reclaim themselves. 

As the decades go on, where the 19th Century still bleeds into the 21st Century, interest in the preservation and practice of reading in the United States has dwindled. America (in muddled fashion) "elected" a treasonous, bigoted bunker-dwelling creature of ill-intelligence to reinforce such a decline, almost as a chest-thump affirmation for ignorance and illiteracy. It used to be shameful to say you couldn't read, now it's a source of some weird alter-pride where the abuse of words, the abuse of books, even sacred texts, using them as (upside down) props for nefarious and narcissistic gains is almost lauded. You'd raise eyebrows over some of the individuals I've come across who've proudly told me they don't read, never liked reading, or find it a "boring intrusion". A surprising number of them proclaimed they wanted to --- get this --- write books. Stephen King has some things to say about that dizzy contradiction (see point #8).

Reading, books, language, writing --- these are treasures to be persevered and practiced, used as mechanisms of human connection, survival, and resistance. Now more than ever we need to engage in reading, in the creation and stillness of art. This to comprehend and understand where we're coming from --- and where we're going to. Reading has been the one thing to keep my head above the swill of raging waters as a pandemic persists, political chaos commences, revolutions are televised, and America addresses for the umpteenth time its original sins of racism, and the denial and unjust extermination of Black lives. 

Reading, writing, and creation --- these are my contributions that maintain my existence as a Black woman in America. It's my response, my protest, my resistance towards the powers, and the ills that be.

...and yet we all must be thoughtful what we read and consume in this time of turbulence. Amid chaotic uncertainty, where a lot of words, ideas and opinions are thrown around, the challenge is to carve clarity and positive productivity from them. Thus, read widely and diversely. Read authors of different races, genders, sexualities, from variant cultures, religions, and regions. Read fiction. Read non-fiction.  Read what speaks to you, read what speaks up for you. Read to practice self-care. Read out of your comfort zone. Read to be aware of where you stand in these moments, in this life.  

Stay safe. Stay informed. Stay protesting. Stay reading. 

✊🏿✊🏾✊🏽

March On

I couldn't help but roll my eyes when I saw the trailer. Another Little Women adaptation? Groundbreaking.

From operas to television miniseries, there are a lot of Little Women adaptations, seven film treatments alone --- this including two lost silent films and anime adaptations. Lousia May Alcott with one book penned an ode to sisterhood that can be crowned the OG of reboots, predating the reboot craze of today. A craze that far too often in its eagerness to cash in on nostalgic comfort, disappoints at renovating its source anew for richer thought.

Little Women, in all of its 151 years of shelf life, has endured as a classic text as it's not just a product of its era, but can be read as a timeless portrait of family dynamics and coming of age during uncertain times. Is it a universal tale? Somewhat. Verdict is out on that as one could argue that for all the times that Little Women has been adapted for a new generation a tale of girlhood from a diverse voice isn't given the chance to speak, but the question of relevancy rises more so when it's brought to life on screen. When each generation gets a re-introduction to the March sisters I do tend to wonder: Do we really need another film about four sisters who are growing up in the midst of the Civil War, this in 2020, this when there has been so much social upheaval for women's rights, and this when there are other stories and novels worthy to be told about the turmoil and wonder of growing up girl?

Be Kind Rewind --- one of my favorite YouTube channels --- answered my question, and then some as it not only nudged me into giving the 2019 Greta Gerwig-directed version a shot after being indifferent about it initially, but to see Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy come alive for the umpteenth time isn't as stale or redundant at first glance.

BKR focuses on the 1939, 1949 and 1994 versions (skipping the 2018 Hallmark-y modernized one --- yeah, there's a modernized Little Women), giving ample discussion on how each film is approached by its prospective release era, and what it meant for the social climate of the time. Being raised on, and showing some bias with the 1994 Winona Ryder-led version, it was interesting to understand that the tone of the film, though being set in the 1860s, echoed the '90s being in the throes of the 2nd wave of women's movements, as it emphasized more on the March sisters career choices and desires to be seen equal to men much more than previous adaptations.

Whatever the opinion on reboots and refashions (please...STOP!), it is fascinating how one story --- written over two centuries ago --- can be told with such variance, and yet never once lose its message and its literary achievement.

I Capture The Blue Castle

L.M. Montgomery does something refreshing with The Blue Castle: she writes the anti-romance story.

Um, let me dial down that sweeping statement just a bit...

This is a romance story, straight up. There is passion, flushes of cheeks, silent stares, dinners that look out on a enchanting lakeside landscape, the archetypal brooding, enigmatic mountain man that can blow a back out and chop a tree with ease (and who in my mind looked liked a rugged Henry Cavill...rowr). It's riddled with all the romance book clichés that conjure up wistful, windswept cover women, promises of a love affair to end all love affairs, and "heaving bosoms". Still, even sainted with these hallmarks, The Blue Castle is the type of romance story that doesn't fuss in the proverbial as it not only deals with matters of the heart, but also concerns itself with how the heroine finds love within.

For a book written in 1926, set in a time before World War I, it was a pretty bold choice to have a heroine who is 29 years old, unmarried, and loathing it. Women aren't supposed to show this on their face, no, they're supposed to grin and bear the spinsterhood, be the subservient shut-in. Valancy Stirling is a archetype character that doesn't want to accept such complacency, and I already love her for this.

Blue Castle was Montgomery's first novel written for adults, and its obvious that Valancy Stirling is no Anne Shirley, L.M. Montgomery's most iconic literary creation. She's jaded and cynical, bereft of hope and just plain miserable, relegated to being the spinster of her family and seeing no prospects for her future. She lives with an overbearing mother, and whiny elder cousin who hover over her like an infantile invalid, and dictate her daily existence. tl;dr: they are insufferable. Her other family members are equally insufferable, with one creepy uncle (isn't always there always that one creepy uncle?) who makes her the butt of his sexist and lame jokes, all while holding the rest of the Stirlings hostage with his ample will if they dare so challenge his opinions. Oh, and to add to the #firstworldproblems, Valancy is often compared to her beautiful (but dingbat) cousin, Olive whose simple existence frustrates Valancy because why is always about Marsha, Marsha, Marsha?!?

For this, Valancy is truly living in a private, socially claustrophobic hell, as she has resigned herself to never living for herself and living out her days unloved and untouched by a man, even though she desires such. Her only escapes are the nature books of a John Foster whose prose Valancy knows by heart --- this to the chagrin of her mother who finds them "racy reads" (cause oak trees make one horny?) --- and in dreams of a "blue castle", a fictitious place where she can be free to be the woman she wishes to be.

"They never knew that Valancy had two homes–the ugly red brick box of a home, on Elm Street, and the Blue Castle in Spain. Valancy had lived spiritually in the Blue Castle ever since she could remember. She had been a very tiny child when she found herself possessed of it. Always, when she shut her eyes, she could see it plainly, with its turrets and banners on the pine-clad mountain height, wrapped in its faint, blue loveliness, against the sunset skies of a fair and unknown land. Everything wonderful and beautiful was in that castle. Jewels that queens might have worn; robes of moonlight and fire; couches of roses and gold; long flights of shallow marble steps, with great, white urns, and with slender, mist-clad maidens going up and down them; courts, marble-pillared, where shimmering fountains fell and nightingales sang among the myrtles; halls of mirrors that reflected only handsome knights and lovely women–herself the loveliest of all, for whose glance men died. All that supported her through the boredom of her days was the hope of going on a dream spree at night. Most, if not all, of the Stirlings would have died of horror if they had known half the things Valancy did in her Blue Castle."

These escapes to this imagined "blue castle" bring some ease to Valancy in her lonely hours, but once departed from them Valancy begins to feel chest pains and becomes worrisome to their cause. Not wanting to involve her family, she take matters into her own hands to visit in secret Dr. Trent, a noted heart specialist, who lives in the same (fictional) Ontario town of Deerwood as the Stirlings, and who has been denounced by her family as a no-nothing "quack". Seeing Dr. Trent only provides a devastating blow of news for Valancy, but such news allows her to shed her conventional constraints and truly live life for herself, and well, "do crazy shit".

Union Street

Who wants to read a book about working class women and girls who live in squalor in the back avenues of an industrial city north east of London?

Well, I do.

See, my hand is raised?

Still I'm not everybody.

Hollywood couldn't handle what British author Pat Barker was trying to convey in the pages of this book because in 1990 they released it as a sweet romance story called Stanley & Iris, starring Jane Fonda and Robert De Niro. In the film Fonda and De Niro play two working class individuals who are at a standstill in their lives, with Fonda's character later on teaching De Niro’s how to read and write, the two of them falling in love during the process. I admit, it's an excellent film, and one of my favorite romance stories, Fonda is fun to watch and De Niro pulls out one of his best performances in it --- but the film isn't Baker's 1982 debut Union Street. Fonda's Iris King, the cake factory, a pregnant teen, and a man who can't read are the only elements that have any sort of association to this book, and these elements are still sprinkled with sugar crystals on it when they made it to screen.

Book publishers couldn't handle what realism Barker had written as she had a difficult time trying to find a publisher for the book. Nobody wanted to give Union Street the time of day because it isn't a pretty book. It just isn't a book that goes down easy. It's a book about worn-out, hard-working women and young girls, but it's not in the Norma Rae-rah-rah spirit, or wraps itself in warm camaraderie like Gloria Naylor's classic Women of Brewster Place. Baker wrote a book that is a stark and unsettling contrast to the usual working-class woman narrative.

Foxfire Burns and Burns...

Exploring female disenfranchisement and rigid class structure within a 1950s cultural backdrop, Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang is the saga of a girl gang from the working class factory town of Hammond, New York. With immediacy this book appealed to me as I have an odd affinity for films and stories about gangs and so-called misfits who live on the outer fringes of society. Something about the fierce loyalty and camaraderie coming out of isolation and misunderstanding hits me right in the feels. I don't know. Either that or I watch The Outsiders and The Warriors way more than I need to.

Foxfire is of a different breed than the bro-fests like The Outsiders as it allows you to ride shotgun to all the mischief and patriarchy dismantling with a band of fierce teen girls. They are unique in that they aren't an off-shoot of a local boy gang, nor are they the 'property of' a bunch of hoods. No, the Foxfire girls have formed this group on their own accord, and have done so more as a survival tactic than out of obligation. Flotsam and jetsam these girls are, misbegotten throwaway junk that is cast out into a briny ocean of problems that are largely not of their making. These girls all come from broken, dysfunctional, and financially strained households, and are looking for a way to just get the hell out of them. The only option for them, the only way they can have some sense of dignity and to fight back against their struggle, is to band together. With bruised knuckles and pride, the Foxfire girls and their aggressive social justice crusade make the Pink Ladies look like mere powder puffs on Sandra Dee's vanity table (...and yes, I’m ignoring Rizzo's cold stare right about now...).

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.

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.

Vagabond Heart

 "A female I was, and a female I find myself again; to suffer from it and to rejoice in it."

Renée Néré is my kind of heroine. She's damaged, but still tenacious in the fight; smart, but human enough to second guess such intellect when her heart wants to run free.

She's a 30-something Parisian vaudeville performer whose reveling in a crucible of change and newfound freedom after divorcing a controlling philanderer. Emotionally beaten and bruised by the marriage, Renée is suspicious of romance and isn't keen on surrendering the singular life she has so meticulously assembled for herself. When a handsome and wealthy admirer named Maxime makes his intentions known, Renée is thrust into a tailspin of doubt and temptation, where she wonders if she should allow herself to love again, or remain in a hardened shell of independence.

Colette is my kind of writer. A writer who isn't afraid to prick at human emotion and write about the battle scars. A writer whose works feel so human, so 'lived in'.

Usually I'm not much of a fan of stream-of-consciousness narratives, but Colette's approach at the technique in The Vagabond is exquisite and engaging. Never does Renée's voice wander or sound contrive, and even when it feels frantic it still romantically swings as we experience every doubt, every act of resistance, every passionate surrendering, and every anguished decision. At times while reading a section of prose, I would find myself nodding in agreement, thinking --- is this me? --- even though last I checked I occupy a different skin, a different world than Renée. It's this intimacy towards a character that Colette has achieved best of all in the pages of The Vagabond.

There are claims that this is the most auto-biographical of Colette's works, and that's quite the truth as Renée is in a lot of aspects a vivid rendering of Colette. Like her, Colette was a young woman whose much-older first husband, author and publisher, Henry Gauthier-Villars, was a notorious libertine and an imposing figure in her life. Gauthier-Villars was the one who steered her into a writing career, this at the cost of her own voice, as her classic Claudine series was first published and promoted under her husband's nom-de-plume "Willy".

Most writers often write from experience, and then lie about it later (ha!), but after learning this bit of information I got the sense that Colette, in a way, regained her suppressed voice within the pages of The Vagabond, being one of the first books she wrote that was correctly attributed to her. It's why Renée is written to have such determination for autonomy, and why it's so potent whenever she declares it for herself:

 "You want me to behave like everyone? To make up my mind? Him or somebody else, what does it matter? You want to disturb the peace that I’ve won back, you want to direct my life toward some other concern than the rugged, bracing and natural one of earning my own living? Or are you prescribing a lover for my health, like a purge? What for? I’m feeling well, and thank God, I’m not in love, I’m not in love, I’ll never love anyone, anyone, anyone!"