I will be forever annoyed that there are no commas in that title.

I’ve told this story for many more years than I lived it, but it only recently became clear to me that the radical part of the tale is not that I stopped dieting; it’s that I stopped trying to fix myself.

You may have heard of Women Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything by Geneen Roth. It’s been on the non-fiction bestsellers’ list since its first week, and it was featured in O Magazine (how I first heard about it) and on a little something called The Oprah Winfrey Show.

The title alone had me interested in the book, and before I read one O-endorsed word, I knew I was going to read the book.

It’s funny because when I started the book, I was a detached observer thinking the book didn’t apply to me.  I kept feeling that way until I got to the end of the prologue and one line jumped out at me. In that one line, the book became personal.

When Roth was on Oprah (and, yes, I watched both of the episodes before reading the book), Oprah said that you could substitute “food” with “sex” or “drugs” or with anything else women may have an unbalanced relationship. After reading the book, I’m inclined to agree. The main thrust of the book is getting women to consider why they crave or reject food when it comes to dealing with emotion. Why is it so much easier to over- or undereat instead of allowing ourselves to feel?

When a diabetic tells me that she can’t eat what she wants because what she wants will kill her (and therefore she feels deprived), my response is that what will kill her is wanting another life than the one she has, another condition than the one that is hers…It’s not her eating that is killing her, it’s her refusal to accept the situation.

I think Roth is definitely onto something in terms of examining relationships with food. She advocates mindful eating and intentional eating. Eat when you’re hungry without distractions and make sure you feel your feelings. Easy enough, right?

In some ways, though, I think she oversimplifies. Her notion that you’ll eat what’s right for you if you stop and listen to your body sounds good, but the reality is that sometimes people do need to be re-taught what and how to eat. Not only that, but her book ignores the importance of support in the form of a group or an individual to help women work through the issues/triggers for over/undereating.

Ironically, most of her observations are made based on not only her personal experiences with dieting and weight, but on observations of retreats she runs for a group of women. I mean, I know the focus is on self, but feeling full emotions can be terrifying if there isn’t someone else around to help you as you think about turning to food instead.

Maybe that’s why Mighty O started a companion guide for the members of her community? [Yeah I am kind of an Oprah kind of person. Shocker, right?]

I also got annoyed with the tone at times. It’s very calming spa/yoga voice, which I don’t necessarily have a problem with, but it just got annoying to me in a few places. [It's kind of like when someone starts talking to me like I'm going to flip out. Granted, I may be on the edge, but the calming voice can be its own irritant. Then again, it does give me something else to focus my annoyance/rage on. But I digress.]

I’m glad I read the book. It made me think about my relationship with food–as well as other areas in my life I might use to numb emotion.

Women Unbound: 8/8

See larger image Women Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything (Hardcover) By (author) Geneen Roth List Price: $24.00 USD New From: $11.10 In Stock Used from: $12.95 In Stock

Masturbation is a primary form of sexual expression. It’s not just for kids or for those in-between lovers or for old people who end up alone. Masturbation is the ongoing love affair that each of us has with ourselves throughout our lifetime.

I chose to read Sex for One: The Joy of Selfloving by Betty Dodson specifically for the Women Unbound reading challenge. I hadn’t actually heard of the book before, so when I saw that Susan over at Black-Eyed Susan’s said it should be required reading in Women’s Studies classes, I had to check it out. Since, you know, it was certainly never mentioned in any of the Women’s Studies classes I took throughout college or graduate school.

Betty Dodson is a sexologist (her Ph.D. is in sexology). She also has a very current website (Warning: Not Safe for Work) to answer questions about sex, masturbation, and orgasm.

I think the book is very important. Dodson completely demystifies masturbation and celebrates it as a way to build self-esteem, encourage body knowledge, and improve partner sex. She is pro-masturbation as a way to combat sexual repression, especially for women. What power women would have if they understood their own genitals and their own orgasms. How great for our teenage girls and young women to know they can have sexual release without the fear of pregnancy or STDs–that they are their own greatest lovers. That it’s okay to please themselves sexually and that it’s not just about the boys and their pleasure. (Think about girls who feel pressured to perform oral sex on boys while getting nothing in return–except damaged reputations.)

If girls and women know their own bodies and know how to please themselves, then they are empowered.

That doesn’t mean Dodson ignores men in her book because she doesn’t. Masturbation without shame is just as important for men as women in the battle against repression.

Dodson does all of this while also offering this book up as a memoir of sorts. It operates as a chronicle of her journey to being more sex positive and pro-masturbation. From her childhood to her first awesome lover to the opening up of her relationship with her mother to her development of her art to her bodysex groups, she details how all of these things came about and their impact on her thinking about gender, sex, and sexuality. And masturbation plays a part in all of these events.

While the book does contain erotic art and detailed descriptions, I didn’t find it to be pornographic at all. The point is to educate, not titillate. And I walked away from the book feeling way more knowledgeable than before.

I wish I would’ve read this book sooner.

Thanks to Susan for suggesting it as a must-read for the Women Unbound Challenge. I would encourage others to read it as well.

Women Unbound: 7/8

See larger image Sex for One: The Joy of Selfloving (Paperback) By (author) Betty Dodson List Price: $14.00 USD New From: $7.97 In Stock Used from: $1.55 In Stock Release date March 12, 1996.

The fact is, I had no love from my mother or my father from the beginning, from birth. But I survived. To tell the truth, I haven’t received a real love almost ever in my life, believe it or not. People look at me now and think what a hot life I must’ve lived–ha! I never found a real, lasting love. But I have survived.

I, Tina: My Life Story is definitely a survival story. It details Tina Turner‘s life story in her own words (with some narrative help from Kurt Loder. Yes, that Kurt Loder), focusing on her youth in Tennessee, her rise to fame as part of Ike Turner’s revue, their terribly abusive marriage, her fall from fame, and then her career as a solo artist, which culminated in her being the oldest female artist to have a #1 hit.

The style of the book is certainly different. Unlike most memoirs, Tina’s is written in the third person with first person sections in Tina’s voice or her colleagues’ voices. And (surprise!) even Ike’s voice. So even though it’s definitely her story, it’s not exactly a memoir/autobiography the way I’ve experienced either before. The approach makes for interesting–and fuller–reading.

Before I move onto the content of the book, let me just say up front that it’s impossible for me to think about Tina Turner’s autobiography separately from the movie What’s Love Got to Do with It?. In college, my friends and I watched it practically every weekend, so much so that we knew the words to the movie and songs by heart. It had a profound effect on how I read the book and also how I’ll watch the movie in the future. So much left out! Some stuff that’s really, really important even.  So my review of the book will be tempered by the knowledge I have of the movie, focusing on what’s different.

Mainly, all I can say about the differences is that her life in the movie was bad, but her life in reality was much, much, MUCH worse.  It was basically terror-filled hell.

Here’s what I learned:

- Tina’s mother didn’t take her sister and leave Tina behind. Both she and her sister were left in the care of relatives until they each decided to join their mom in St. Louis at different times in their lives. (Tina, in fact, had several siblings, but she and Alline were closest in age.)

- Ike was not Tina’s first and only romantic relationship. She had a high school sweetheart, Harry Taylor, that she L O V E D and lost her virginity to.

- Tina was involved with someone else in the band (Raymond Wilson) before she and Ike ever got involved. In fact, Tina got pregnant by Raymond and they had a son.

- Ike and Tina were more like brother and sister when they started performing together. The first time she slept with him was more out of obligation than anything. (Ike initiated it, and she went along to get along. Definitely a sign of what was to come.) Both of them described the experience as weird/icky.

- Before they got involved he paid her for singing with the band, but after they got a record deal, he told her that he would pay her rent and keep the money for himself. They were romantically involved by this point and she was pregnant by him.

- Ike beat Tina before they ever got married. The first time he beat her was with a shoe stretcher in his office when she told him she wanted to go back to just being friends but would continue to work with him. She was pregnant by him at the time (he was still married, btw). He also made her have sex with him immediately after.

- Ike was involved with several of the women in Tina’s life. He would pick Ikettes based on who he wanted to sleep with. Once the women became involved with him, he would beat them as well.

- It was nearly impossible for almost anybody–male or female–to get away from Ike. He would threaten people and hunt them down if they tried to leave. He also carried a pistol at all times and had a reputation for pistol-whipping people. It was easier for him to control women, though, so most of the people who worked for him were women, including one of his ex-wives.

- He lost several band members because of his treatment of Tina.

- It took Tina a long, long time to fall out of love with Ike.

- After the drug use started, she says he became even more erratic and unstable, and the constant fear was even more constant. Where he used to do a slow burn and she could have days between beatings, she started to endure several a day.

- Tina’s closest friends were the other women in the group, most of whom were sleeping with Ike. How messed up is that?  Because her whole life was being on tour (Ike had them performing every night, basically), they were the only women she knew, and, because they were involved with Ike, they understood her situation very well.

- He stalked her terribly after she left him.

- Here is the one thing I am absolutely APPALLED that they left out of the movie, and that I think should have been addressed.  When Tina left Ike, she had to start over from scratch. That much is clear. What the movie doesn’t tell us is that Tina was responsible for paying back all of the no-show fees to the venues and promoters because she was the talent listed on the bill and who everybody was coming to see.  And she owed over $200,000 dollars.  So when she was doing the disco/cabaret performances, it wasn’t just to rebuild her image or jump start her career.  It was because she owed so much money, and she had to pay it all.  ALL OF IT.  Ike was not liable; she was.

- It took her over five years to re-establish herself as a viable artist. And she didn’t write “What’s Love Got to Do With It?”; someone else did.  But it was written FOR her to sing by someone not even aware of her situation.  And she was totally against it!  But they convinced her to sing it, and history was made.  So basically Tina Turner + “What’s Love Got to Do with It?” = MFEO.

Tina’s tale is a survivor’s tale. She talks about her transition from taking care of everyone else to realizing she needed to take care of herself.

The most surprising thing about the book is the humor. I’ve had the experience before of listening to women speak of their pasts, horrible though they may be, and laughing about it. My grandmother is a woman who does it. Tina is, too. She never makes light of her situation, but she’s able to see the ridiculous moments and find the hope there. Even when she talks about being depressed, she’s able to focus on the things, small though they might have been, that kept her going.

Though the book is hard to read at times, it’s a very satisfying read. I’m glad I read it.

Women Unbound: 6/8; POC Challenge: 16/15

See larger image I, Tina: My Life Story (icon!t) (Paperback) By (author) Tina Turner, Kurt Loder List Price: $13.99 USD New From: $4.32 In Stock Used from: $4.85 In Stock Release date June 22, 2010.

Did u hear about the rose that grew from a crack
in the concrete
Proving nature’s laws wrong it learned 2 walk
without having feet
Funny it seems but by keeping its dreams
it learned 2 breathe fresh air
Long live the rose that grew from concrete
when no one else even cared!

I picked up The Rose That Grew from Concrete, a collection of Tupac’s poetry that he wrote from 1989-1991 (so he was 19-21), after Susan over at BES reviewed Jacqueline Woodson’s After Tupac and D Foster. At first, I was going to read Woodson’s book, but then I saw Tupac’s poetry on the shelf and knew I had to read it first.

What can I say about Tupac Shakur? I remember watching the “Brenda’s Got a Baby” video on The Jukebox Network. I saw Juice (and Gridlock’d) in the theater. I remember his road trip with Janet Jackson in Poetic Justice. I remember his guest spot on A Different World playing Jada Pinkett’s best friend from home who didn’t quite get college her and why she was going out with a boy who wanted to wait for marriage to have sex. I remember explaining to my mom how much I loved “I Get Around” even though I knew it was so problematic (and it’s still my favorite 2Pac song).

I remember finding out his mom was a Black Panther (yay!) who spent most of his youth addicted to crack (boo).

I remember when he joined Death Row; I remember the feud.

And I absolutely, 100% remember where I was when I found out he had been killed. It was my freshman year of college, and I was riding around with my friend, her sister, and her sister’s boyfriend. And Tupac Shakur was dead.

But mostly I remember riding around in the car with one of my close friends who loved his music, rapping along with the windows down after work. I also remember when the Don Killuminati album came out, and I was in this boy’s dorm room, listening to the first few seconds of the CD over and over because he was convinced that if you listened closely enough, you could hear Tupac say, “Suge shot me.” Seriously. Over and over again. (This same boy also listened to “Hit ‘Em Up” over and over, but that’s because it’s funny.)

So that’s what reading Tupac’s poetry was for me: a trip down memory lane. It made me remember what I knew about him and about my experiences with his music.

The foreword (written by Nikki Giovanni) promises to show Tupac’s “sensitive soul”—a soul Giovanni says people want to obscure and overlook because “after all, if he loves, if he cries, if he cares, if he, in other words, is not a monster, then what have we done?” (Tupac’s bio is largely about the trouble he got into with the law. Make of that what you will.)

Sometimes when I’m alone
I cry because I’m on my own
[…]
It’s painful and sad and sometimes I cry
and no one cares about why.

Here’s what I know: Tupac died too young. But he also expected it. The last poem “In the Event of My Demise” addresses this expectation directly:

I will die before my time
Because I feel the shadow’s depth
So much I wanted 2 accomplish
Before I reached my death

He was only 25 when he died, which I didn’t know at the time. I thought he was much older because, for me, he had been around so long. I knew he was young, but my 17-year-old mind thought he was in his thirties at least.

But my experience of reading the book tells you nothing about the book. It’s set up interestingly with the handwritten poem on the left and a typewritten poem on the right. Reading the poetry online does not provide the same experience because some of the line breaks are wrong, which I discovered when I searched for a link to the book. For example, in the title poem, one site had the first line break after “grew,” which totally changes the meaning of the poem (hello, there’s a reason “crack” is the last word on the first line). So, if you want to read Tupac’s poetry, I highly recommend reading the book, and NOT finding the poems online.

My favorite poems are the ones about his mother because you can totally feel his heartache coming through. One is “When Ure Hero Falls” which lets you see the complicated relationship he has with mom, and then there’s a poem dedicated to crack called “U R Ripping Us Apart!!!” which also talks about his hero. It’s just really sad. I’m glad she got clean and they did repair their relationship before he passed away.

There are also poems about love and women. There’s a poem about his girlfriend’s miscarriage, about his resistance to government assistance. There are a couple of poems dedicated to Jada, which I’ll admit, made me smile. Poems about bravado and heartache. Poems that run the gamut.

I’ll admit, part of the charm of reading the poems it that they’re by Tupac. Because, honestly, some read like emo poetry that a nineteen-year-old might post on his MySpace page or blog or as his AIM away message.

I don’t think the content or sensitivity would really be a surprise to anyone who actually listened to Tupac’s music. He had songs about teen moms and loving his mother and saying good-bye to people.

I’m not so sure how the book would read to a non-fan of Tupac, or someone who wasn’t a participant of his generation of music. As I said, quite a bit of it reads as emo poetry. But I think anyone interested in Tupac as a figure should definitely read this book to hear about Tupac and what he thought as a young man in his own words. It definitely adds a different dimension to the persona of him as a “gangsta rapper” (as soon I typed that “Gangsta Party” popped in my head. True story).

But 2morrow I c change
A chance to build anew
Built on spirit, intent of heart
and ideals based on truth

POC Reading Challenge: 11/15

To speak behind others’ backs is the ventilator of the heart.

I was in a graphic novel kind of mood, and I enjoyed Persepolis, so I picked up Embroideries by Marjane Satrapi.  It’s a brief glimpse into afternoon samovar between the women in Marjane’s life.  (Previews of the book are available on the linked page.)

To be honest, there’s not a whole lot to say about this book.  It’s extremely short, which I found disappointing because I felt that to truly understand the women, the book should have spanned a couple of afternoons instead of just one.  That said, candid conversations between women = win.  I just really wish it had been longer and delved deeper.  Especially because Satrapi briefly touches on the attitudes of younger women towards sex in Persepolis, I thought it would’ve been nice to see some of the less sexually liberal young women confront the more cynical–and in some ways less sexually conservative–older women and their views on sex.  This was great as a slice of life, not so much as any kind of deeper or more challenging conversation.  I don’t know how else to describe it.

Best thing about the book?  Return of Marjane’s grandmother.  LOVE.  HER.  (She is also the source of the breakout quote.)

Women Unbound: 5/8; POC Challenge: 9/15

Since then, this old and great civilization has been discussed mostly in connection with fundamentalism, fanaticism, and terrorism.  As an Iranian who has lived more than half of my life in Iran, I know that this image is far from the truth.  This is why writing Persepolis was so important to me.  I believe that an entire nation should not be judged by the wrongdoings of a few extremists.  I also don’t want those Iranians who lost their lives in prisons defending freedom, who died in the war against Iraq, who suffered under various repressive regimes, or who were forced to leave their families and flee their homeland to be forgotten.

That’s from the introduction of The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, a graphic novel that chronicles her coming of age as a young woman in Iran, Europe, and Iran again.

- I have to say, the graphic novel format really suits this work.  It’s in black and white, and the graphics are relatively simple (or maybe deceptively simple), which makes the people and their attitudes the real stars of the story.

- I love, love adolescent Marji.  She’s just such a kid, trying to understand the world the best way she knows how.  She wants to be a prophet, she plays martyr and torture, and she isn’t afraid to stand up for herself.  She is just adorable.

- I also love young adult Marji, but in a different way.  She, too, is trying to find her place in the world, but that story is more heartbreaking because she has to leave home to be safe and then she’s a stranger in a strange land once she gets to Austria, and then she’s a stranger in her homeland when she goes back to Iran after being in Austria.

- I also love her parents and her grandma (love her grandma!) and just…all of the characters/people are very fully drawn, and their motivations are clear.  It’s just wonderful characterization all around.

I just really enjoys books like this and Anne Frank because, honestly, it just shows how similar all of our experiences are, even when they’re vastly different.  War torn countries aside, both stories are about girls becoming young women and so much of that experience is universal.

Sometimes it is hard to really like a book because there is nothing to say except “I like it!  It’s awesome!  Read it!”  But, you know, I like it.  It’s awesome.  Read it!

Women Unbound:  4/8; POC Challenge 3/15

So you will have to know something about the time and place where I come from, in order that you may interpret the incidents and directions of my life.

Dust Tracks on a Road by Zora Neale Hurston is another book I chose specifically for the Women Unbound challenge.  I read Their Eyes Were Watching God in undergrad and some of her literary criticism in my lit theory classes, so I thought it befitting to read about her life in her own words.

This book was a lot of fun to read.  Unlike Angela Davis, Hurston is a novelist as well as a folklorist, so her autobiography is alive with characters and settings.  The first half or so is told chronologically and the second half includes her musings on her friends, religion, race, and reading.  Even though the second half is not story-like in its narration, it’s still an easy and relatively fast read because it’s easy to hear Hurston’s voice and imagine you’re just sitting down for a chat and she’s telling you what she thinks.

The version of the book I read has a foreword by Maya Angelou and an afterword by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. In the foreword, Angelou calls the book “puzzling” because, although the book was written 1940-1941, there are no mentions of unpleasant racial incidents and that the nicest people Hurston encountered were whites–one of whom cautioned her not to be a “nigger,” which Hurston notes does not mean race, but a contemptible person of any race.  Angelou wonders who the audience for the book is.  At the end, to sandwich it, Gates says that Hurston gives an account of a “writer’s life, rather than an account, as she says, of ‘the Negro problem’” because so much of the book is focused on her sources of language (294).  I only point it out because I find it fascinating to think about how to read the book, especially since race is certainly not absent in the book.  In fact, there’s a part where the men in Hurston’s town are pretty sure someone’s been lynched, though she doesn’t use that word.  What Hurston does, and pretty masterfully, I think is make this point:

Light came to me when I realized that I did not have to consider any racial group as a whole.  God made them duck by duck and that was the only way I could see them.  I learned that skins were no measure of what was inside people.

and also

I have no race prejudice of any kind.  My kinfolks, and my “skinfolks” are dearly loved.  My own circumference of everyday life is there.  But I see their same virtues and vices everywhere I look.

She shows most of her experiences as a young girl and young woman living in a world where people don’t ignore her race but she is not treated horribly because of it.  It makes sense that she would write the book this way.  Part of what incensed some of her contemporaries about her was her refusal to act differently around whites and her insistence on being fully herself.  No citation for that, but my professor told me so it must be true!  (It’s also mentioned in the afterword.)

In the latter half, she slams local politics, the way people relate to race.  She talks about love.  I found a lot of her conclusions interesting, mostly because she reminds me a lot of the character Temperance Brennan on Bones.  So, to that end, maybe it’s an anthropology thing?  I don’t know.  What I do know is that I found her critiques of government and religion fascinating.  Which makes sense since she’s fascinating.  I also think the appendix and the section on race are brilliant satire.  I almost didn’t read the appendix because I thought it was just repeating what was in the text, but the appendix shows different versions of some of the chapters.  So the appendix offers a more complete picture.

There is some (a lot!) of narrative distance here.  The writing is personally impersonal or impersonally personal in a lot of ways.  I do understand Hurston as a writer, but I was disappointed that she skimmed over her time doing research and her experiences when she won the Guggenheim, etc., but it may be because she felt her contemporaries were familiar enough with her work.

What the book did do is make me want to go back and read some of her literary criticism.  While she makes a case for individualism, she obviously supports honest and authentic portrayals of culture as evidenced in her writing, and so I want to go back and read what she says about writing outside of the autobiography.

Women Unbound: 3/8; POC Challenge:  2/15

Writing in a diary is a really strange experience for someone like me.  Not only because I’ve never written anything before, but also because it seems to me that later on neither I nor anyone else will be interested in the musings of a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl.

Oh, Anne Frank.  If only you knew!  Although, you did kind of know there, didn’t you?  Because I read The Diary of a Young Girl:  The Definitive Edition by Anne Frank (edited by her dad, Otto H. Frank, and Mirjam Pressler), and it’s based on both of Anne’s diaries.  The foreword of the book explains that the first diary was written for herself, and the second was revised and edited in response to a radio broadcast wherein Gerrit Bolkestein said he hoped to collect eyewitness accounts from Dutch people under German occupation, and he specifically mentioned letters and diaries.  So Anne planned to have her diary published as part of that account.

I really don’t know what to say about the book.  I read it for the Women Unbound challenge because it’s a memoir that I haven’t read yet (I’ve seen bits of the movie and read some excerpts).  And, I’ll be honest.  Part of the reason I wanted to read it is The Freedom Writers movie.  I wanted to know why it had such an impact on the kids Erin Gruwell worked with.  And I get it now.  I do.

Because Anne is just a girl.  A girl who fights with her mom and feels frustrated by the perceived favoritism of her sister and likes boys and is curious about sex and has ideas and feels deeply and thinks deeply.  And all of that is compounded by the horrors of war, by the fact that she can never escape her parents and the suffocating feelings she gets being around them all the time.  She feels ganged up on and misunderstood and cries a lot and fights a lot and…Anne is just a teenager.  Who, as my daughter said, had a really hard life.

Memories mean more to me than dresses.

The book starts when Anne is thirteen and ends when she is fifteen.  As the book goes on, she becomes less of a petty self-involved teenager and more of a thoughtful young woman–which is to be expected.  In the beginning it’s all, “Nobody understands me!  Nobody listens to me!” but by the end, Anne has a handle on what she adds to these situations.  This clarity probably would’ve come much later had she not been, essentially, imprisoned in the Secret Annex, but because she has nothing to do but think and consider her actions, she has that depth of thought and feeling at fourteen.  (It took me until I was in my twenties to even think that way.)

I think the unfairness of the story really resonates.  I went into the book knowing Anne would die, which made it hard to read at times.  I found myself thinking how unfair it was, and how I wished she would survive. And while it’s good that Anne personalizes the experience for the reader because we’re attached to her, it also made me stop and remember that Anne’s story doesn’t exist in a vacuum.  She is one of millions of Jews who were unfairly and systematically murdered to further racist ideology.  And it makes me sick to think of it.

I love that Anne plans for the future, even as it makes the book even more devastating to read.  That she and her sister focus on education, so that when the war is over, they can pick up where they left off, go back to school, and become productive members of society.  I love that Anne longs for school, not only for the book learning but because she realizes it provides a much needed break from her family.

I found all of the quarrels that broke out in the Annex fascinating.  Not because they were fun to read about or anything, but because it was so clear that the fighting was so petty and always about control.  Well, not always.  Sometimes there were very real things to be upset about, like the arguments over food.  But others were so ridiculous and Anne would point out how they were ridiculous, and it was the type of thing that could probably be blown over if they were living in ordinary times, but they weren’t in ordinary times.  They were trapped in a house, terrified for their lives.

I really liked that Anne explained everything that I wondered about (bathroom schedules) and things I wouldn’t even think about.  Her descriptions of the bombings, of the terror they lived in was so real and palpable.  I liked when she made fun of how scared they were because it was clear that if they couldn’t laugh about it sometimes, they would surely die from the tension.  I liked knowing the bathroom schedules because I wondered how they worked that out, but I hated when the toilet would break or they couldn’t flush the toilet for fear of being overheard.  And usually when that happened it was because they were terrified, so everyone’s stomach was a mess.

A good hearty laugh would help more than ten valerian drops, but we’ve almost forgotten how to laugh.  Sometimes I’m afraid my face is going to sag with all this sorrow and that my mouth is going to permanently droop at the corners.

The friendship/romance with Peter was something I thought was just in the movie (for Hollywood tension, you see), but no, the two were drawn to each other.  And why wouldn’t they be?  Anne points out that she would’ve sought out Peter’s company if he were a girl because she longed so much for a friend.  But Anne is also aware of her own (sexual) power.

And she has her own ideas about sex.  She is all for comprehensive sex education–from parents.  The danger of learning about sex is not the facts of life, but getting information from your classmates who don’t understand anything.  She thinks parents are scared to talk about sex with their kids because “purity is a bunch of nonsense.”  She thinks it’s okay if a man has experience before he gets married, and she also knows that she wants more for her life than being an “ordinary housewife.”  Anne is, in short, a budding feminist:

One of the many questions that have often bothered me is why women have been, and still are, thought to be so inferior to men.  It’s easy to say it’s unfair, but that’s not enough for me; I’d really like to know the reason for this great injustice!

…but how many people look upon women too as soldiers? [...] in childbirth alone, women commonly suffer more pain, illness and misery than any war hero ever does.  And what’s her reward for enduring all that pain?  She gets pushed aside when she’s disfigured by birth, her children soon leave, her beauty is gone.  Women, who struggle and suffer pain to ensure the continuation of the human race, make much tougher and more courageous soldiers than all those big-mouthed freedom-fighting heroes put together! [...] I don’t mean to imply that women should stop having children…What I condemn are our system of values and the men who don’t acknowledge how great, difficult, but ultimately beautiful women’s share in society is.

Ultimately, though, Anne is relatable.  She wants to be a writer and a good person.  She wants a better life.  And she wants people to stop being so stupid.

To be honest, I can’t imagine how anyone could say “I’m weak” and then stay that way.  If you know that about yourself, why not fight it, why not develop your character?

I have often thought the very same thing!  Oh Anne.

My favorite bit in the book comes near the end when Bep, one of the women helping to hide them, gets engaged, and Anne talks about how it is a Bad Idea.  Because Bep wants to get ahead in the world, but Bertus is holding her back.  Sound familiar?  Then there are the arguments about the proper way to raise a child and how parents are stupid and boring and grown ups are lame and everything you’ve probably ever thought when you were 13, 14, or 15.

I was reading this at the same time as Summer of My German Soldier and what struck me most is that both are, ultimately, about acts of kindness and how they can change your life.  Anne and her family get two extra years, even if they are in hiding.  They are as safe as they can be in a country filled with warmongers who hate them.  And it’s all because of the kindness of the people hiding them.

That’s something we should never forget; while others display their heroism in battle or against the Germans, our helpers prove theirs every day by their good spirits and affection.

Hiding Anne and her family is an act of heroism.  And an act of defiance.  These people are putting their lives on the line to help keep Anne and her family safe for as long as they possibly can.

But in the end, Anne dies.  Everyone hiding with her dies.  Except her father, who gets her diaries from the secretary who helped hide them, and decides to publish her diary–first heavily censored/edited and later in full.  The great tragedy is that Anne, Margot, Peter, Anne’s mom all die shortly before liberation.  And Anne and Margot are dumped in a mass grave.  She doesn’t make it.  But like I said, she’s one of millions.  Millions.  I’m just glad her dad was able and willing to share her story with the world.

I sometimes wonder if anyone will ever understand what I mean, if anyone will ever overlook my ingratitude and not worry about whether or not I’m Jewish and merely see me as a teenager…

Oh, it’s sad, very sad that the old adage has been confirmed for the umpteenth time:  ”What one Christian does is his own responsibility, what one Jew does reflects on all Jews.”

One day this terrible war will be over.  The time will come when we’ll be people again and not just Jews!

Women Unbound challenge:  2/8; YA Reading Challenge:  5/75

I was not anxious to write this book.  Writing an autobiography at my age seemed presumptuous.  Moreover, I felt that to write about my life, what I did, what I thought and what happened to me would require a posture of difference, an assumption that I was unlike other women–other Black women–and therefore needed to explain myself.  I felt that such a book might end up obscuring the most essential fact:  the forces that have made my life what it is are the very same forces that have shaped and misshaped the lives of millions of my people.

When I signed up for the Women Unbound Reading Challenge, I knew immediately that I was going to read Angela Davis’s autobiography.

I feel like I can’t even talk about this book without talking about why I wanted to read it.  So, a brief history.

I have seen this book practically my whole life because my mother owns it.  (It has a slightly different cover than the picture in this post.)  I never read it.

In college, I read Assata:  An Autobiography, and I absolutely loved it.  LOVED IT.  I was enthralled by her, wanted to know more about the Black Panthers.  So when my professor said he was going to teach a class on the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, I signed up.  [The Wikipedia page may be more accessible.]  And I read a host of literature by and about the Panthers.  We read Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale and Elaine Brown and George Jackson.  We read about Eldridge Cleaver and Li’l Bobby Hutton and the Soledad Brothers.  (My favorite book we read that semester was David Hilliard’s This Side of Glory.  I wrote a paper on it.)  I saw the movie. Still, I didn’t read her book.  (It wasn’t on the list.)

Angela Davis came to speak at Iowa State University when I was a student there.  I went; I was enthralled by her words.  She is an eloquent speaker.  Still, I didn’t read her book.

When I went to Oakland this summer, I considered going on the tour.  I didn’t go for boring financial and time reasons.  And still, I didn’t read Angela Davis’s book.

Until the challenge came, and I knew there was no excuse not to anymore.  In fact, I was going to make it my first non-fiction read for the challenge.  So when I went to my parents’ house for Christmas, I asked my mom if I could read her copy, and she told me yes, and I started it the day after Christmas.

And finished it a month later.

I was kind of surprised by how long it took me to read the book.  It’s well-written to be sure, and I have read these types of autobiographies before (see above), but for some reason I couldn’t quite engage with the book.  Then I figured out what it was.  The last memoir I read was I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, and the two books are vastly different in style.  For one, Angelou’s book reads like a novel.  There’s dialogue and scene building and characters.  Not so with Davis.  And that’s when I realized I was reading the book wrong.

Romanticizing the plight of oppressed people is dangerous and misleading.

This is an autobiography, but it’s intention is not to describe people and places.  It’s not even to provide a clear snapshot of Davis’s transformation into a revolutionary leader.  Her assumption is that the reader understands all of that (probably because it was first published in 1974, on the heels of the Black Liberation Movement).  When I guide my students in their reading, I always tell them they should be able to answer one question clearly at the end of a selection:  “What am I supposed to do, think, or feel after reading this?”  I know what I wanted to think and feel when I was reading.  But what I actually wound up realizing is that this is the chronicle of the events that led to Davis being on the FBI hit list.  It’s to show what she was actually doing and involved in while the charges were being trumped up against her.  It’s also to show the conditions of prisons and prisoners, the importance of communication between prisoners and those outside, the reasons we shouldn’t isolate their experiences from our own.  It’s to show the systematic oppression of blacks and women and black women.

Prisoners–particularly Black prisoners–were beginning to think about how they got there–what forced them into prison.  They were beginning to understand the nature of racism and class bias.  They were beginning to recognize that regardless of the specific details of their individual cases, most of them were in prison because they were Black, Brown, and poor.

When I finished the book, I didn’t feel like I knew Angela Davis the person or the adolescent, the way I felt I knew Marguerite after reading I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings or even Harriet Jacobs after reading Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl or Frederick Douglass or David Hilliard.

But I do understand Angela Davis as an intellectual and a fighter.  I understand her approach to activism, the fact that she won’t tolerate bullshit from the people she works with or the people who sought to silence her. I also understand that there are benefits to being educated, to being a part of the intelligentsia, and to knowing and understanding our rights.

This is, in actuality, her defense.  She talks about her trial and that she and her legal team had set up a fantastic defense, intended to last days or weeks.  But it was condensed to three or so days once it became clear that the prosecution had nothing on her.  But the thought and care put into the autobiography shows what she put into her opening and closing statements of her trial.  This is the narrative to support her defense, not the narrative, necessarily, of her life.  It’s her story in her words and it paints a complete picture of the woman who stood trial, why she stood trial, and how she accounted for her time before and during her trial.

Jails are thoughtless places. [...] The void created by this absence of thought is filled by rules and…fear.

When I saw Angela Davis speak at ISU, she spoke again of the importance of connections in prison.  She spoke about the importance of narratives, and how important it is for the voice of the people to be heard.  She talked about how the media shapes our responses and our forgetfulness.  All things addressed in her autobiography.

The tremendous energy of the movement which had so swiftly transformed my jail situation was energy my sisters and brothers had a more than equal right to.  I tried to assuage some of my pain by establishing contact with sisters and brothers in prisons all over the country. [...] I answered letter after letter from prisoners…More than ever before I felt a need to cement my links to every other prisoner.  My very existence, it seemed, was dependent on my ability to reach out to them.  I decided then and there that if I was ever free, I would use my life to uphold the cause of my sisters and brothers behind walls.

I’m glad I got over my assumptions of what I thought the book should be and appreciated for what it is.  It’s a political document, not a story narrative.  It’s Angela Davis speaking in her own voice and constructing her own narrative and making sure her story isn’t forgotten.  But it’s also a call to not let other people’s stories be forgotten.  It’s a call to keep fighting for the rights of those who maybe can’t speak for themselves, especially political prisoners.  It’s a call for a continuing social justice movement.

What had just unfolded was incontrovertible proof of the power of the people.

Women Unbound Challenge:  1/8; POC Challenge:  1/15

A review I wrote of Robinn Gourley’s Bring Me Some Apples and I’ll Make You a Pie and Anita Silvey’s I’ll Pass for Your Comrade: Women Soldiers in the Civil War appears in Purdue University’s First Opinions, Second Reactions. [Direct link:  "First Opinion: Women of Distinction".]